Asking for Trouble - Leslie Kelly [6]
Hey, maybe the guests were just the early-to-bed types. Which might be good…after nine hours in the car, my hair had to be a straggly mess. My makeup had washed off my face in warm beige streaks during my last gas-up because the old station hadn’t had an awning. So privacy was a good thing. Hopefully I could just check in, escape to my room, get a good night’s sleep, then tomorrow morning meet up with Roger Denton, the current owner of Seaton House.
That was the plan, anyway.
So, taking a deep breath and reaching for my small overnight bag—which I’d thought to leave on the passenger seat rather than in the trunk with my bigger suitcase—I opened the door.
And immediately got drenched. The rain washed down and flooded me as soon as I stuck my head outside. “To hell with it,” I muttered as I hopped out, my black leather boots immediately sucking up a few gallons of water from a puddle like a baby diaper sucks up…well, you know.
Not pausing to lock the car, I dashed toward the front of the hotel. Skidding and sliding on the watery gravel, I kept my head down to protect my face from the stinging pellets of freezing cold rain, and literally took the porch steps two at a time. I leapt up onto the verandah, immediately grateful for the shelter of its roof. Shaking out my wet hair, I groaned, imagining how I must look now, with thick, dark curls plastered to my cheeks and sticking to my eyelashes.
Even Zangara himself wouldn’t want me now.
While standing up on the verandah, I glanced out toward my car in the parking lot, reaching for my keychain so I could remotely lock it. My brothers were such worrywarts that they’d installed this superfancy antitheft system on it, with all the bells and whistles. Sometimes I considered trying to make the thing stand on its back tires and dance like Herbie the Love Bug.
But as I clicked the lock button and saw the headlights flash in response, I suddenly made a really strange realization. One I should have made as soon as I arrived.
My pretty yellow PT Cruiser was sitting completely alone out there in the parking lot. There wasn’t another other car in sight. Not anywhere.
Perfect. I was the only guest. Just call me Janet Leigh and yell for Norman Bates because this was exactly how her night started out, wasn’t it?
“You’re being an idiot,” I mumbled as I swept my wet hair back, straightened my shoulders and strode across the veranda to the front door. The striding wasn’t terribly effective since a cup of water squirted out of my boots with every step, but I did the best I could, just in case anyone was watching from the closest window.
Grasping the knob, I twisted it…and realized it was locked. Strange. I’d never heard of a public hotel that locked its doors when guests were expected. Especially since it was only 9:00 p.m.
Sighing, I lifted my hand and grabbed the ornate brass door-knocker. I somehow couldn’t muster up any surprise that the thing had a weird-looking gargoyle head. Cracking it hard against the door, I waited. And waited. And waited some more.
“Come on, it’s fricking cold out here,” I muttered as I knocked again.
More waiting.
Really getting annoyed, I lifted that sucker with both hands and slammed it hard against the brass plate, whacking it a few times just like I used to whack my brothers in the head with a Ping-Pong paddle when they were picking on me.
This time, somebody answered. I’d been lining up to take another swing, and the door opened so fast—thrown back almost violently—that I fell forward into the place. Stumbling over my own wet, slippery boots, I skidded, dropping my overnight bag on the slick tiles inside in the process.
I didn’t hit the floor. But I still landed against something hard. Something really hard. And big. And warm.
Something that smelled downright sinful—musky, spicy and male.
My fingers clenched reflexively as I realized I’d fallen right