Hideaway Hero

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Copyright

Chapter One

Greta Kinyon stood at the window of her Hideaway Hill suite, gazing at the sunset that shimmered on Bodega Bay and wondering why she couldn’t relax. This B and B was her favorite retreat. Ordinarily, the minute she set foot in the lobby, she felt a lovely wash of peace and her worries fell away.

Today, though, the magic hadn’t kicked in. She was restless. Nervous. Wrong from head to toe.

And she had no idea why. She’d just closed one of the biggest real estate deals of her career. She’d been able to give a nice bonus to her assistant, who was going through a tough divorce. Greta’s father, her main investor and mentor, would be thrilled about the sale, though the bonus would exasperate him. He had many wonderful qualities, but giving without expectation of return wasn’t among them.

Still, the sale had been a coup. And now she was starting a week’s vacation at one of the prettiest spots on the California coast and planning to spend it with Franklin Marks, the man she’d been seeing for the past year.

Recipe for bliss, right?

And yet…

Greta stepped out of her heels, then peeled off her jacket. Plopping on the bed, she tossed a pillow across her stomach, as if applying pressure there might settle the butterflies she seemed to have swallowed. Just for a minute, she shut her eyes.

Suddenly someone rapped at the suite’s door. As she jolted awake, the stomach butterflies reacted to the knock, fluttering frantically.

And then she knew. Franklin. As strange as it sounded, she was dreading seeing Franklin.

“Come in,”she called, noting that the last of the sunset was merely a gold shadow on the carpet. How long had she slept?

She heard the door open in the front room, followed by the rumble of a room-service cart. She whisked her feet down and tried to smooth the bed-head out of her hair. Franklin must have ordered something.

“Thanks…please just put it—”

But as she entered the other room, she got a look at the man pushing the cart.

“Gabe!”Her heart lifted.

Though this was her fifth vacation at the Hideaway, the gorgeous owner, Gabriel Lennox, never seemed to change. He always wore some version of a soft Henley shirt that molded to his sexy chest, and faded jeans, which did the same for his lean legs. His chestnut hair still didn’t have a single strand of gray, even though he was thirty-six—six years older than Greta—and she’d found one on her pillow just last week.

He always looked casual and earthy, as if he’d just come from building a tree house, yet he never seemed out of place, even among his most elegant guests.

“Hey, Chicken Little.”He opened his arms. “Welcome back.”

She groaned at the old nickname, though secretly she loved hearing it. Her first year at the Hideaway, she’d booked this suite for the express purpose of losing her virginity on her twenty-sixth birthday. She’d ended up chickening out, and instead spent all night on the back porch with Gabe, crying into her wine until he began making jokes so absurd she had to laugh.

She returned his hug warmly. As usual, she stole a glance at his left hand. Still single. Amazing. Female guests at the Hideaway outnumbered the men five to one, undoubtedly because word had spread that the owner was a hottie.

Some of the guests weren’t subtle about what they wanted, either, and Greta wondered how often he accepted. Last year, she had spotted a well-known actress emerging from his suite in the predawn hours, looking dazed and delighted. It was the only time she’d seen anyone near his room…but, then, Greta only came to the Hideaway once a year.

Still. Apparently even the actress hadn’t received a permanent offer. Maybe Gabe just wasn’t the marrying kind.

His arm still around Greta’s shoulder, Gabe surveyed the empty room. “So where’s Mr. Lucky?”

Over the past four years, she’d come to the Hideaway with three different men. Gabe referred to them all as Mr. Lucky.

“Franklin,”she corrected. “Franklin Marks. I guess he’s late.”

“Guess so. He ordered this, though, so he must have expected to be here to drink it.”

She looked at the champagne, glittering with condensation in its icy silver cradle. A bowl of strawberries and cream sat beside it, and a single red rose beside that.

She imagined Franklin standing before her as midnight chimed and Valentine’s Day officially began. He’d pour their glasses and propose a toast.

Propose…

Suddenly she knew the cause of her anxiety. Deep down, she was afraid Franklin might choose this vacation to propose.

“Maybe he’ll have to cancel.”Optimism sparked in her chest. “Maybe something went wrong at work.”

Gabe’s brows arched, touching the hair that tumbled onto his forehead. “Wow. I’ve never heard anyone sound so happy about getting stood up. You’re actually hoping he won’t show.”

“Of course not.”She dropped onto the armchair next to the sofa, lifting her feet onto the ottoman. “Okay, maybe a little. He’s getting too persistent. About…commitment.”

Gabe smiled. He plucked a strawberry from the plate, then sat on the ottoman, nudging her ankles to make room. “I can’t tell you how much I enjoy the soap opera that is your love life.”

“It’s not a soap opera,”she protested limply.

“Sure it is. Although there’s never quite enough dirty stuff to make it really juicy.”He consumed the strawberry in one bite—an oddly sexy action—and tossed the stem expertly back onto the pink tablecloth. “Out with it. What’s wrong?”

With anyone else—especially her father—she would have denied it. But with Gabe, honesty was easy. A relief, even. He knew all her secrets. Sometimes she wondered how much she’d spilled that first year, over the wine.

“It’s just that I’m not ready for…the next step. But Franklin thinks I should be. And I’m afraid I’ve goofed by scheduling this vacation right before Valentine’s Day. It’s such a perfect setup for a proposal.”She lifted her hand. “I might as well have tattooed a bull’s-eye on my ring finger.”

Gabe laughed. “Every time you bring a man here, Chick, the poor guy leaves with his dreams dashed.”

“Not every time.”

“No?”He ticked off on his fingers. “The first year was that Roger guy. The one who slept alone for two nights, then gave up and went home. Year two…was his name Ty?”

“Ty and I did just fine,”she reminded him.

“Yeah, but by the next year things had definitely cooled. If I remember correctly, you spent a lot of your nights helping me muck out stalls.”

“That wasn’t my fault,”she said, poking his thigh with her toes. She couldn’t help noticing that his muscles were rock solid. He worked hard, day and night, to keep the Hideaway running at its best…but never complained. He loved this business.

He loved building and growing and cooking—unlike Greta, who created nothing. She merely brokered deals between other people. People who didn’t have her problems with commitment. People who were willing to say Yes. I want to put roots down here.

“Ty issued an ultimatum.”She frowned. “Marriage or nothing. He should have realized that would be a mistake.”

Gabe nodded slowly. “He was in love. People in love don’t always think clearly.”

“Which is why the next year I brought Red Malone. Back then, Red wasn’t interested in getting serious with any woman, so I knew it wouldn’t be complicated. It was great. No strings, no false hopes.”

Actually, she’d decided against having sex with Red that year, too, but Gabe didn’t know that. Red had accepted her decision so gracefully she hadn’t needed to flee the suite. Red had cheerfully made up the sofa bed and turned the week into a platonic festival of food and fun.

“Okay, Red went well,”Gabe admitted, “but now this Franklin guy. Apparently he, too, is wanting more than you can give.”

Something about Gabe’s thoughtful expression made Greta feel twitchy. He was usually so nonjudgmental. Was he looking at the pattern, these five years of failure, and finding her flawed? Did he really think she was a callous heartbreaker?

Surely he realized that she wanted to find a life partner. Sometimes her fear of ending up alone woke her in the night and scared her breathless.

She was thirty. She’d had two lovers in her entire life.

All her relationships had fizzled out.

Still, Gabe couldn’t believe she should marry the wrong man just because she feared she’d end up alone. That would be as depressing as marrying for the reasons her father recommended—financial security or professional advantage.

“What are you thinking?”She didn’t know why Gabe’s opinion mattered so much to her, but it did. “Is there something wrong with me? Should I say yes if—”

Before she could finish, another knock came at the door. She stared at the spot, paralyzed. Gabe shot her one unreadable glance, then stood and opened it.

But it wasn’t Franklin this time, either. It was Warren, the bellboy. He held an arrangement of yellow roses.

“Flowers for Ms. Kinyon.”

Finally Greta found the use of her limbs again and joined Warren and Gabe at the door. She took the flowers, put them on the coffee table and tugged the card off its plastic stick.

The card stuck briefly in its envelope, and she had to yank it free. But finally she could see what was typed on the note.

She heard Gabe shut the door, then felt him at her shoulder. She registered his cool, manly scent—of growing things and open air.

“What? Don’t tell me Mr. Lucky really decided to propose.”

“No.”She reread the card. I’m sorry, Greta…

“Well, what, then?”

She turned and held out the card.

“He’s tired of waiting. He found somebody else.”

Chapter Two

This Valentine’s Day was starting out colder than usual—well below forty degrees at midnight, darn near flirting with freezing. When Gabe went out to replace a beam of rotten wood at the top of the grape arbor, the full moon had risen, a cold, white wafer in the starry black sky. From his perch, he could see its reflection lying on the bay like a crust of ice.

He turned away from the sight and shifted the hammer in his gloved hand, ignoring the familiar twinge in his bad shoulder. He forced his focus back on his work. Tomorrow was an important day, the day that could save his business from bankruptcy, and he was already behind schedule. If he allowed his gaze to keep drifting to the bay, the repair to the beam would take twice as long as it should.

For ten years, ever since his driven, upwardly mobile life had exploded and left him at rock bottom, he’d worked hard to develop an immunity to stress. Even when he bought the Hideaway, he hadn’t allowed himself to invest too deeply in it—emotionally, at least. Succeed or fail, he told himself, it didn’t matter. Instead of always climbing, with his eye on the next dollar or the next score, he tried to appreciate the simple things. Like a crisp pear, or a smart dog. Or an icy Valentine’s moon.

But somewhere along the way, he’d started to care about the Hideaway. Really care. The hotel and its staff had become his heart, and now that he was in danger of losing it, he felt all the old passion and ambition boiling to the surface.

Tomorrow a woman from Bay Beauty magazine was coming to do a feature spread on his low-profile bed-and-breakfast, and to ensure the Hideaway stayed in business he needed to impress her. And he had to prevent her from pursuing the angle she’d hinted she might want to use—the sexy innkeeper and his bevy of female guests.

Not just because it would make him, and his inn, look sleazy and ridiculous. The real problem was that it was a dangerously short trip from “hunky hotelier”to the ugliness buried in Gabe’s past.

Which meant he’d have to keep a strictly professional distance from all his guests this week.

Including Greta.

He gripped the hammer tightly and shook his head. Could the timing be any worse? This was the first year Greta would be staying alone. And he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

“Hey, gorgeous. Are you going to stay up there all night?”

He peered over the edge of the arbor. The voice had come from the pool, back toward the main building, and it was decidedly female.

He kept the pool light on until three, since many of his guests liked moonlit dips in its heated waters, so as he peered in the direction of the pool, the glowing turquoise rectangle blinded him for a minute. But after a few seconds, he made out the body stretched across a cushioned lounger. A curvy body—but oddly…well, hairy.

She looked like a long, undulating…ferret.

He squinted, then groaned. Not ferret. Mink. Above the ankle-length mink coat, the platinum-blond tresses helped him put a name to the body. Katie Marchada. Bay-view suite, second floor west.

Where her twelve-year-old son and her husband were undoubtedly sound asleep right now.

Damn it. The truth was, the Bay Beauty reporter had a point. He did have a lot of female guests—a lot of lonely women who enjoyed getting a few days of TLC from a handy, attractive guy like Gabe.

Some of them wanted a lot more than that, though, and it wasn’t always easy to convince them that simple TLC would actually make them happier in the long run.

And something told him it would be extra difficult to convince Katie Marchada of that. He’d had a rotten sense about this woman from the minute she checked in. It hadn’t taken a rocket scientist to interpret the way she twirled the shiny end of one platinum curl while she scanned Gabe from head to toe.

“So are you coming down?”She shifted, the glossy fur catching the moonlight. “Because a girl could freeze out here, you know.”

Maybe not mink, after all. More like cougar.

He thanked his lucky stars the reporter wasn’t on-site yet. What a great photo this would make for the Bay Beauty magazine spread! The cornered hunter run up a tree by the hungry predator.

He stuck the hammer into his belt like a gun and stepped onto the ladder with a sigh. His to-do list was already long enough without adding pest control to his chores.

No choice, though. Somehow, without wounding her self-esteem, he had to maneuver her back into her room before her husband woke up.

And before he found out what, if anything, she had on under that coat.

As his foot hit the ground, the perfect idea came to him. “I’m sorry you can’t sleep,”he said as he picked up his tool bag and headed her way across the pool deck. “But I’m actually glad to see you.”

“Ditto,”she said, her eyes half closed and a smile like the Cheshire cat playing on her full lips.

“I don’t know if you heard about the magazine reporter coming tomorrow.”He didn’t wait for an answer. “But just my luck—the garbage disposal chose tonight to go kaput. I could really use someone to help me clear out the gunk.”

Her eyes widened suddenly. Somehow, he managed not to laugh.

“Well, I’d love to, of course I would.”She licked her lips nervously. “But if I were gone that long, my husband might—”

As she fumbled her way through her excuses, Gabe could hardly bring himself to pay attention. All he could think was…

Greta would have said yes.

“What’s wrong with me?”

The face in the mirror repeated Greta’s question back to her, like some annoying elementary school monkey-see-monkey-do game. As she lifted her hair and piled it on her head, the woman in the mirror did the same with her own dark red hair—which, in all honesty, seriously needed brushing. Greta stuck out her tongue, and the mirror woman did the same.

“This is not a joke. He dumped me in a card. And he didn’t even write the card himself. He dictated it to the florist. What’s wrong with me?”

The woman in the mirror just blinked stupidly.

About half an hour ago, Greta had realized that opening the bottle of champagne and drinking two-thirds of it had been a mistake. Especially with only strawberries and cream in her stomach to absorb the alcohol.

But hey. No use crying over spilled milk.

Spilled champagne.

Whatever.

She sat on the big canopied bed, cross-legged, wearing nothing but her underclothes, a slip and the beautiful green scarf she’d bought herself after last week’s triumphant closing. Frivolous, her father would have said about the purchase, if she’d mentioned it to him. Plow the money back into the business, and you’ll have time for self-indulgence later.

“Well, I needed it now,”she told him, or at least an imaginary version of him. “Later I’ll be a dried-up, lonely spinster, and no one will care that I absolutely rock this scarf.”

The woman in the mirror rolled her eyes and chose that moment to speak. “Well, no one cares now, either. I don’t see anyone else in this bed. Do you?”

To her horror, her eyes started to glisten. She put her hands up to her face, hard, as if they could form a dam to hold the tears in. She wasn’t going to cry over Franklin Marks. She wasn’t going to cry over anything or anyone.

And not because, for as long as she could remember, her father had always called weeping a form of cowardice. Your mother died bringing you into this world, he’d say coldly. And you’re going to repay her with whining?

She wasn’t going to cry because…

Because it was ridiculous. She hadn’t even loved Franklin.

And because suddenly she felt a lot more like getting sick than crying. She flattened her hands against her stomach, groaning. She needed food. She hadn’t eaten all day…except for the strawberries.

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