LITMIR.BIZ

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Hideaway, all right. Basement to attic. Wraparound front porch to backyard garden. Front to back and side to side.

      But she never knew the place was haunted.

      At the bottom of the winding stairway that led to the guest rooms, Laurel’s legs froze at the same time her stomach caught fire. Noah Cunningham couldn’t be standing at the main desk chatting with her grandmother. It wasn’t possible. It had to be a ghost.

      “Deep breaths, Laurel,” she whispered to herself. “Deep breaths, just like you tell your patients in labor and delivery. In and out. Slowly. Slowly.” She steadied herself and closed her eyes, sure that when she opened them again, the hallucination would be gone.

      She was wrong.

      Eyes closed. Eyes opened. He was still there.

      Live and in living color.

      Not the ghost of anything but her own past.

      Laurel was carrying an armful of newly laundered, flowery smelling towels and she pressed them close in hopes of keeping her heart from banging its way right out of her ribs. Good thing neither Noah nor Maisie had seen her yet. Noah was leaning against the front desk, and his attention was on Maisie. She was too busy flittering around and giggling at everything Noah said to pay any attention to anything but him.

      Laurel had the advantage. At least for the moment. She could see without being seen and she used the opportunity to regroup and collect her thoughts and her wits. It didn’t hurt that she also had a chance to size up the man she had tried not to think about for the last four years.

      Noah was still as handsome as hell and twice as tempting as sin. Just like in the old days. Still the same chestnut brown hair, cut closer at the sides and shorter on top than he used to wear it back in the days when it always looked as tousled as it did when he just got out of bed. The cut wouldn’t have worked on most guys, at least not most guys of Noah’s age and professional reputation. It was a little too young, a little too cocky, a little too nonconformist. But then, she supposed that made it a classic case of truth in advertising. The haircut suited Noah’s personality, and if what she’d heard from colleagues was true—things they insisted on telling her even though she insisted she didn’t want to hear them—Noah’s way of wearing his hair had spawned a trend of sorts with the medical students he regularly lectured. Wasn’t that just like Noah? An innovator when it came to everything, even hair.

      Laurel ignored the tiny thread of resentment that threatened what was left of her composure. Instead of regretting the past, she concentrated on the present. And on the man standing not twenty feet away. The one she’d walked out on four years before and swore she’d never see again.

      His profile was the same, of course. Firm chin. Nose that was a little crooked from his days playing college rugby. He was a shade under six feet tall, and one look was all it took to tell Laurel he was still running a few miles every day. His exquisitely tailored navy cashmere suit made the most of a body that was long and lean. It did great things for his nice, tight behind, too.

      Caught off guard both by the thought and by the memories it conjured, Laurel sucked in a sharp breath and warned herself to get a grip. Noah’s rear was none of her business, not anymore, and just so she wouldn’t forget, she forced her gaze up and away from it. His jaw was long enough and square enough that it should have warned people he could be stubborn beyond reason. No one ever guessed. Not until it was too late. Or in Laurel’s case, not until it was way too late.

      She knew why, of course. She’d known it all along. It was because of his smile. The one that lit up a room and invited confidences and made everyone he honored with it feel as if Noah was singling them out for special treatment.

      For a couple of incredible months, that smile was the first thing she saw in the morning and the last thing she saw at night. It was still the thing she remembered most about him. That, and how much it hurt when she found out his smile wasn’t any more sincere than he was.

      Funny how old, healed wounds could slice open so quickly. Laurel blinked back tears and thought about the irony of it all. Judging from the blush in Maisie’s cheeks, she wasn’t troubled by any of the old stories. But then, Noah and Maisie had always gotten along famously. Looked like his smile was still working its magic, and Laurel supposed she should be grateful it was. While Noah and her grandmother were busy acting like old buddies, she could compose herself. She could collect herself. This might be her only chance. Unless…

      She glanced to her right, gauging the distance between herself and the ornate front door that led out to the porch and the lawn that sloped down to the lake.

      She could make a break for it, and if she was quick and quiet, no one would ever know she’d been there. The coward’s way out? There was no denying that. But then again, maybe it was better to be a coward than it was to be a stammering idiot. And if Noah turned around, if he saw her, if he talked to her, something told her that acting like a stammering idiot would be the least of her problems.

      Her mind made up, Laurel had already made a move toward the front of the house when she heard Maisie call out. “There she is! It’s Laurel. Laurel, come here, sweetie, and see who stopped to visit!”

      Laurel gritted her teeth. Her breath tight in her throat, her palms damp against the stack of towels, she pasted a half surprised, half I-really-don’t-have-time-to-stop-and-chat smile on her face and crossed the lobby toward the man who four years earlier had broken her heart into a million tiny pieces that still hadn’t found their way back together.

      The closer she got, the more Laurel saw that she wasn’t the only one who was surprised by this unexpected encounter. As if it was happening in slow motion, she saw Noah’s mouth drop open and his disbelieving glance go from Maisie to Laurel and back again to Maisie.

      “But…” He spluttered. “But you said—”

      “I said Laurel was cruising. Yes, I know.” Maisie smiled and nodded, and her perfectly styled, perfectly white curls bobbed along with her. Reaching across the desk, she patted Noah’s hand. “She was cruising. She was—”

      “I was out on the lake on my sailboat,” Laurel intervened. There was no use letting Maisie try to explain. Something told her there was no easy explanation. Not for this. “Out on the lake,” she said with a glance over her shoulder toward one of the windows that looked at the water. “For three full hours. You calling that cruising, Grandma?”

      Not one to let something as simple as the truth get in her way, Maisie twinkled. “Well,” her grandmother said, “technically…”

      “Technically, nothing.” Laurel plunked the pile of towels on the desk. Though she wasn’t sure what was going to fall out of her mouth, she turned to greet Noah. She couldn’t quite force herself to offer her hand just like she couldn’t quite look him in the eye. She started out by staring at his lips, but that didn’t work, either. Too many old memories there. Instead, she concentrated on the splashes of red and yellow on his two-hundred-dollar Italian silk tie.

      “Hello, Noah,” she said. “What brings you to Cupid’s Hideaway?”

      As soon as the question was out of her mouth, Laurel had the feeling she might not like the answer. She darted a look around the lobby. There was no sign that Noah was there with a significant other, and she let go a long, shaky breath. It was bad enough seeing him so unexpectedly. She wasn’t sure how she would have handled it if she knew Noah and some woman were checking in for a little hanky-panky in the land of heart-shaped tubs and massage oils with names like Love Nibbles.

      “He’s here to visit, of course.” It was Maisie who answered, Maisie who hurried around to the front of the desk and grabbed Noah’s arm and tugged him toward the parlor where, this time of the evening even when there were no guests, she kept a fire blazing in the fireplace, and tea and cookies on the old rosewood buffet in the corner. “And isn’t it a nice surprise?”

      It wasn’t, and Laurel congratulated herself. At least she had the presence of mind not to point that out.

      “We’ll get some tea,” Maisie said,

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