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to be selective, and when she thought she was ready to enter the world of dating again, she mentally outlined a set of traits she was looking for. She wanted someone intelligent and kind and attractive, but more than that, she wanted someone who accepted the fact that she was raising three teenagers. It might be a problem, she suspected, but since her kids were pretty self-sufficient, she didn’t think it was the type of hurdle that would discour-age most men.
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In the last three years, she hadn’t been asked out at all, and lately she’d come to believe that she never would. Good old Jack could have his fun, good old Jack could read the morning paper with someone new, but for her, it just wasn’t in the cards.
And then, of course, there were the financial worries.
Jack had given her the house and paid the court-ordered support on time, but it was just enough to make ends meet. Despite the fact that Jack earned a good living while they were married, they hadn’t saved as they should have. Like so many couples, they’d spent years caught up in the end-less cycle of spending most of what they’d earned, They had new cars and took nice vacations; when big-screen televisions first hit the market, they were the first family in the neighborhood to have one in their home. She’d al-ways believed that Jack was taking care of the future since he was the one who handled the bills. It turned out that he wasn’t, and she’d had to take a part-time job at the local library. Though she wasn’t so worried about her or the children, she was scared for her father.
A year after the divorce, her father had had a stroke, then three more in rapid succession. Now he needed around-the-clock care. The nursing home she’d found for him was excellent, but as an only child, she bore the re-sponsibility of paying for it. She had enough left over from the settlement to cover another year, but after that, she didn’t know what she would do. She was already spending everything she earned at the part-time job she’d taken at the library. When Jean had first asked if Adrienne would mind watching the Inn while she was out of town, she had suspected that Adrienne was struggling financially and had left far more money than was necessary for the gro-ceries. The note she’d left had told Adrienne to keep the remainder as payment for her help. Adrienne appreciated that, but charity from friends hurt her pride.
Money, though, was only part of her worries about her father. She sometimes felt he was the only person who was always on her side, and she needed her father, especially now. Spending time with him was an escape of sorts for her, and she dreaded the thought that their hours together might end because of something she did or didn’t do.
What would become of him? What would become of her?
Adrienne shook her head, forcing those questions away. She didn’t want to think about any of this, especially now. J can had said it would be slow—only one reservation was in the books—and she’d hoped that coming here would clear her mind. She wanted to walk the beach or read a couple of novels that had been sitting on her bedstand for months; she wanted to put her feet up and watch the por-poises playing in the waves. She had hoped to find relief, but as she stood on the porch at the sea-worn Inn at Ro-danthe awaiting the oncoming storm, she felt the world bearing down hard, She was middle-aged and alone, over-worked and soft around the middle. Her kids were strug-gling, her father was sick, and she wasn’t sure how she’d be able to keep going.
That was when she started to cry, and minutes later, when she heard footsteps on the porch, she turned her head and saw Paul Flanner for the first time.
Paul had seen people cry before, thousands of times, he would guess, but it had usually been within the sterile con-fines of a hospital waiting room, when he was fresh from an operation and still wearing scrubs. For him, the scrubs had served as a type of shield against the personal and emotional nature of his work. Never once had he cried with those he’d spoken with, nor could he remember any of the faces of those who had once looked to him for an-swers. It wasn’t something that he was proud to admit, but it was the person he had once been.
But at this moment, as he looked into the red-rimmed eyes of the woman on the porch, he felt like an intruder on unfamiliar ground. His first instinct was to throw up the old defenses. Yet there was something about the way she looked that made doing so impossible. It might have been the setting or the fact that she was alone; either way, the surge of empathy was a foreign sensation, one that caught him completely off guard.
Not having expected him to arrive until later, Adrienne tried to overcome her embarrassment at being caught in such a state. Forcing a smile, she dabbed at her tears, try-ing to pretend the wind had caused them to moisten.
As she turned to face him, however, she couldn’t help but stare.
It was his eyes, she thought, that did it. They were light blue, so light they seemed almost translucent, but there was an intensity in them that she’d never seen before in anyone else.
He knows me, she suddenly thought. Or could know me if I gave him a chance.
As quickly as those thoughts came, she dismissed them, thinking them ridiculous. No, she decided, there was nothing unusual about the man standing before her. He was simply the guest Jean had told her about, and since she hadn’t been at the desk, he’d come looking for her; that was all. As a result, she found herself evaluating him in the way strangers often do.
Though he wasn’t as tall as Jack had been, maybe five ten or so, he was lean and fit, like someone who exercised daily. The sweater he was wearing was expensive and didn’t match his faded jeans, but somehow he made it look as if it did. His face was angular, marked by lines in his forehead that spoke of years of forced concentration. His gray hair was trimmed short, and there were patches of white near his ears; she guessed he was in his fifties, but couldn’t pin it down any more than that.
Just then, Paul seemed to realize he was staring at her and dropped his gaze. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, “I didn’t mean to interrupt.” He motioned over his shoulder. “I’ll wait for you inside. Take your time.”
Adrienne shook her head, trying to put him at ease. “It’s okay. I was planning on coming in anyway.”
When she looked at him, she caught his eyes a second time. They were softer now, laced with a hint of memory, as though he were thinking of something sad but trying to hide it. She reached for her coffee cup, using it as an ex-cuse to turn away.
When Paul held open the door, she nodded for him to go ahead. As he walked ahead of her through the kitchen toward the reception area, Adrienne caught herself eyeing his athletic physique, and she flushed slightly, wondering what on earth had gotten into her. Chiding herself, she moved behind the desk. She checked the name in the reservation hook and glanced up.
“Paul Flanner, right? “you’re staying five nights, and checking out Tuesday morning?”
“Yes.” He hesitated. “Is it possible to get a room with a view of the ocean?”
Adrienne pulled out the registration form, “Sure. Actu-ally, you could have any of the rooms upstairs. You’re the only guest scheduled this weekend.”
“Which would you recommend?”
“They’re all nice, but if I were you, I’d take the blue room.”
“The blue room?”
“It’s got the darkest curtains. If you sleep in the yellow or white rooms, you’ll be up at the crack of dawn. The shutters don’t help all that much, and the sun comes up pretty early. The windows in those rooms face east.” Adri-enne slid the form toward him and set the pen beside it. “Could you sign here?”
“Sure.”
Adrienne watched as Paul scrawled his name, thinking as he signed that his hands matched his face. The bones of his knuckles were prominent, like those of an older man, but his movements were precise and measured. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, she saw—not that it mattered.
Paul set aside the pen and she reached for the form, making sure he’d filled it out correctly. His address was listed in care of an attorney in Raleigh. From the pegboard off to the side, she retrieved a room key, hesitated, then se-lected two more.
“Okay, we’re all set here,” she said. “You ready to see your
room ?“
“Please.”
Paul stepped back as she made her way around the desk, toward the stairs. He grabbed his duffel bags, then started after her. When she reached the steps, she paused, letting him catch up. She motioned toward the sitting room.
“I have coffee and some cookies right over there. I made the pot an hour ago, so it should still he fresh for a while.”
“I saw it when I came in. Thank you.”
At the top of the steps, Adrienne turned, her hand still resting on the balustrade. There were four rooms upstairs: one near the front of the house and three that faced the ocean. On the doors Paul saw nameplates, not numbers:
Bodie, Hatteras, and Cape Lookout, and he recognized them as the names of lighthouses along the Outer Banks.
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