Asking for Trouble - Leslie Kelly [80]
“Anything I can do to help?”
“Absolutely not.”
Restless, he paced the kitchen. “I’d feel better if I had something to do,” he muttered, talking more to himself than her.
She paused, turned around and said, “I know. Listen, I had another thought. Something else we could research without waiting for the lawyer.”
“Tell me. I need a distraction.”
“I brought a box of papers up from the basement and left it in the old restaurant. There are a lot of guest ledgers, registration records and correspondence. It’s recent stuff, like from the last year or two.”
He immediately followed. “If someone was really interested in the hotel, they might have approached Uncle Roger directly.”
She nodded. “Very good, you’re catching on to this investigative stuff.”
“I’m a fast learner.”
“Unlike me, who didn’t decide until I’d nearly finished college what I wanted to be when I grew up.” Getting back to work, she rinsed a few tomatoes in the sink. “You might also want to look through the ledgers to see if there’s anyone who stayed here a lot, particularly last spring when someone was trying to get your uncle to sell. They might have come as a hotel guest a few times before deciding to try to buy the property.”
Damn she was smart. And gorgeous. And sweet.
And he was falling for her. Staring at her back across the kitchen as she started chopping vegetables, he froze, unable to move as the truth washed over him.
He was no longer developing feelings for her. He was in love with her.
“What are you waiting for?” she asked, looking at him over her shoulder.
“Eyes front, lady, watch that knife,” he said, seeing her continue to slice into a ripe tomato with a sharp blade.
“Fine, but get out of my kitchen and make yourself useful.”
Laughing, he left the room to do exactly that.
He found the box right where Lottie had left it. Pulling it over to the nearest table, he made a mental note to give her hell for carrying the thing up by herself. It was not light.
For the next hour, he went through every piece of paper, organizing them all by date where possible. Lottie wasn’t the only one who knew how to do a little research. One of these days, he was going to have to remind her what he did for a living.
One of these days.
Like, tomorrow? Wasn’t that, after all, the only day he had left with her? She was leaving on Tuesday, driving out of his life as quickly as she had driven into it.
Ask her not to go.
He thought about it, but quickly realized he couldn’t. Yeah, he was a selfish bastard. He’d proved that in any number of ways since he’d known her. But asking her to stay here meant asking her to babysit a screwed-up man. One who’d obviously been so emotionally whacked-out, he’d practically invited someone to terrorize him in his own home.
She would probably do it. Lottie’s tenderness, her concern for him—her pity—meant she’d probably give him whatever he asked.
Which was why he’d never ask.
He didn’t want her to stay on those terms. He didn’t want her pitying him, thinking she needed to save him from the dark morass he’d allowed his life to become.
No.
If she stayed, it would have to be because she saw—and loved—the real man. The man he’d been before. The man he would become again. Maybe not by Tuesday, but someday soon, he would be the kind of man she’d be proud to be with.
After this is over….
Thrusting all those thoughts out of his mind, he got back to the task at hand. He had to push away the sadness whenever he stumbled across something handwritten by his uncle, knowing Roger would have wanted him to get to the bottom of this nonsense. The hotel had been in the family for decades. If someone was trying to make a grab for it by using some stupid psychological game, Uncle Roger would be the first one to insist that Simon nail the bastard.
Starting with the older paperwork, he realized it would take too much time, so he moved forward, to this past spring, as Lottie had suggested. It wasn’t long before he stumbled across a note his uncle had jotted down on his daily planner. A note about a meeting