“Used to be a time when I carried a spare razor and a few other basic necessities with me for just this sort of occasion,” he explained. He shut the door and pocketed the keys. “But I got out of the habit.”
His social life had never really picked up again after his divorce, he reflected. Probably because he had not worked very hard to get it up and running. He’d had other interests to occupy him.
He stopped once before he went up the steps and plucked a few sprigs of the mint that were growing beneath the garden’s water faucet.
Back inside the house he spent a few minutes in the downstairs bathroom, where he discovered that none of the Harte males had left a razor behind.
“Thoughtless,” he told Winston. “But, then, what do you expect from a Harte?”
He listened to the silence upstairs for a moment before he wandered into the kitchen and started opening cupboard doors. He found the usual assortment of aging condiments and spices that tended to get left behind in a vacation cottage. Salt, pepper, sugar, a half-empty bottle of vanilla extract, and an unopened jar of maple syrup. The last item was the real thing, not caramel-colored sugar water, he noted.
He took the vanilla extract and the syrup out of the cupboard and went to check the contents of the refrigerator. The eggs and milk were fresh. The loaf of dense, rustic-style bread baked by the New Age crowd who had taken over the old bakery near the pier was a day old.
Perfect.
The bride’s gown was three sizes too big. She tried desperately to pin it into place, but it was hopeless. She knew that no matter what she did the dress would never look right. The client was in tears. The groom kept looking at his watch.
She glanced at the clock and saw that the reception was supposed to start in a few minutes. But the caterers had not yet arrived. None of the tables had been set up. The flowers were limp. She opened a case of the premium-quality champagne that she had ordered and discovered bottles of mouthwash inside. She looked around and realized that the musicians had not yet appeared
On top of everything else, there was something dreadfully wrong with the room. The reception was supposed to be in an elegant hillside mansion overlooking the city. Instead, she was standing in an empty, windowless warehouse.
The tantalizing smell of something delicious being cooked nearby distracted her from the chaos. She realized that she was very hungry, but she could not abandon the client to go get something to eat. She was a professional, after all…
Hannah came awake with a start and found herself gazing into the depths of the impenetrable fogbank that hovered outside the window. For a few disorienting seconds she thought she was still in Portland trying to hold together the unraveling threads of a disastrous wedding reception.
Then she smelled the exquisite aromas from downstairs. Reality returned, jolting her out of bed.
Rafe. He had not vanished discreetly at dawn as she had expected. He was down there making himself at home in her kitchen. She had been so sure that he would be gone by the time she awoke.
She looked at the foot of the bed. There was no sign of Winston. What had become of her faithful pal?
Now that was a really dumb question, she thought. Winston was a truly fabulous dog in many respects. But in the end, he was still a dog. If she wanted to find him, she had only to follow the smell of food.
She staggered into the bathroom, the last wisps of the familiar anxiety dream trailing after her. She’d been plagued by the wedding-reception-from-hell nightmare for months before she had made the decision to sell Weddings by Harte.
She gripped the edges of the white pedestal sink and stared at herself in the mirror. Her hair hung in lanky tangles. There was a sullen, surly look in her eyes, and the flush in her cheeks was unbecoming, to say the least. She could not face Rafe in this condition. Her only hope was a shower.
She whipped the long-sleeved nightgown off over her head and stepped beneath the hot spray. Seizing the shampoo in both hands, she went to work with near-violent determination. It had not been a good night.
When she emerged a short time later she felt infinitely better. She pulled on a sweater and a pair of jeans, brushed her freshly washed hair behind her ears, and anchored it with a headband.
She took another look in the mirror just before she left the room. With dismay she realized that she still looked a little too pink. Probably because of the shower, she decided. All that heat and steam. The effect would surely fade quickly.
She squared her shoulders, opened the bedroom door, and stepped out into the hall.
By the time she got downstairs her mouth was watering. She saw Winston sitting just inside the kitchen doorway. He rose to greet her with his customary gallantry, but it was clear that he was distracted by what was going on in the vicinity of the stove.
Rafe looked just as she had known he would look in the morning. Incredibly sexy, right down to and including the shadow of a beard that gave the hard planes of his face an even more dangerous cast than usual.
It really was not fair. A gentleman would have been gone by dawn. But, then, no one had ever called Rafe Madison a gentleman.
“Right on time.” Rafe’s eyes gleamed as he surveyed her with one swift, all-encompassing look. He picked up an oven mitt. “You can pour the coffee.”
She watched as he removed a pan from the oven. The faint scent of vanilla teased her. “What is it?”
“French toast.” He put the pan on the stove and tossed the mitt onto the counter. “Baked instead of fried. Sort of a cross between a bread pudding and a soufflé.”
She gazed at it longingly. “It’s beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.”
