Are you really on vacation?
Leave it to her mom to get right to the point. No “How are you, darling?” or “Have you been sleeping okay?” Not even the quintessential mother question: “Have you been eating?” Then again, Paige’s mother wasn’t like most moms. She didn’t fill her days worrying about whether her kids got a good night’s sleep or if they ate three square meals. She was far too busy worrying about her own life to spend much time worrying about the lives of her two adult children. Except of course when her Beetlejuice/Spidey senses started to tingle. Then she was laser-focused.
Paige’s mother had been the first woman in her family to go to college, let alone law school. But she’d no sooner accepted a job with a big New York firm than she met the love of her life, a man who thought the Chicago suburbs would be a far better place to raise a family than the Big Apple. So Janice Parker said no to her dream job and followed the man she loved to a sleepy commuter town where he rode the train to work and she stayed home with the kids. The decision had been mutual, yet Paige always had the feeling that her mother was haunted by the life not lived. So much so that she was nearly manic about making the most of the path she’d chosen instead.
At first, that mania was focused on Paige and her brother. But as she and Martin grew older and there was less for her mom to do, she became almost obsessed with making sure her two children were happy, independently functioning adults. Marty was married and living in California, where he owned his own home and had two kids and a dog, so Janice had been able to check the proverbial box next to his name. She’d nearly been able to mark Paige “sorted” as well. Until her fiancé decide to sleep with her boss, messing up Janice’s motherhood completion timeline.
It was as though marriage was the ultimate graduation from childhood, although whether it was Paige graduating or her mother, she was never fully sure. Either way, her mom’s plan to join her father in early retirement had been derailed by a loser who couldn’t keep it in his pants. Her mother had been so upset, you’d have thought she was the one who’d been cheated on, not Paige. But not in the way you’d expect. “Don’t you think you could give him another chance?” Most moms would have wanted to claw the guy’s eyes out, but not Janice Parker. Not when she’d been this close to having both of her kids married off, happily or not.
That was when Paige made two important decisions. First, when it came to her mom, everything in life was going to be absolutely fine. At least on the surface. The woman had given her and Marty the prime of her life. If she needed the second act to herself, then far be it from Paige to stand in the way of that. It was ridiculous, really. Having a husband wasn’t some magical fix-all for life, but to Janice it meant that she didn’t have to worry about her daughter. And while it was doubtful a walk down the aisle would be happening for Paige anytime soon, she could still give her mom the peace of mind that everything was right in her world.
The second decision Paige made was more of a promise to herself. She would never change her life plans over a man. Ever.
Her phone vibrated in her hand. This time all that was sent was a question mark. It was her mother’s not-so-subtle way of nudging her for a reply.
Yes, Paige replied. Then added, How did you know that?
She knew the answer even before the little bubbles of her mother’s typing filled the screen. “Sammy,” Paige said out loud just as his name popped up on the screen. Two seconds later, her phone rang in her hand.
“I just hate texting,” her mom said. “I can talk so much faster.”
“Everything is fine, Mom.” They were the same words she said every Monday when her mom called for her weekly check-in.
“Well, you hadn’t mentioned anything about a trip last week, so when Samuel picked up your office line…”
“Sorry, it was all so last minute.” Paige kicked herself for not thinking to text her mom over the weekend, which would have avoided all this. “But like I said, everything is fine. I just decided to treat myself to some R and R.”
Her mother sighed in relief. “Thank goodness. For a moment, I was worried maybe you’d gone to rehab and your assistant was covering for you.”
Paige’s jaw fell open. Rehab? Her mother might have tried to bury her head in the sand for life’s day-to-day stresses, but when she surfaced, she took the art of worrying to a new high. “I promise, everything is absolutely perfect. I will even send you a photo of the adorable little inn I’m staying at.”
“Great. Have fun.”
And then she was gone.
Paige opened her phone’s browser to grab a photo from the inn’s website to send to her mother. An actual picture would have revealed a pigsty engulfed in a monsoon, and that would have given her poor mother a coronary. Just like Paige’s life, everything about the inn had to be absolutely fine as well.
She paced the length of the porch. There really wasn’t much to do indoors when you weren’t allowed to work.
She thought about calling Sammy back, but if she did, she would no doubt end up spilling her guts about everything she’d seen on her house tour—okay, okay, snoop fest—and everything that had been said (and unsaid) during her morning conversation with Lucas, who was well within earshot. Plus, it had barely been an hour since her last call. She didn’t want to seem totally inept at this whole vacation thing. So instead of calling her assistant, she shoved her phone back in her pocket and stared at the gray horizon through rain-splattered windows.
A few moments later, Lucas served her a quite respectable omelet and a more-than-respectable cup of coffee. She ate her breakfast alone on the glass porch, which was also where she spent the better part of the day. Her host had told her to help herself to any of the books stored inside the wicker cabinet. So after rearranging the inn’s small library by the color of the books’ spines, she did exactly what she told Sammy she was going to do: curled up in a rocking chair with a comfy pillow and a cozy throw and read a steamy novel. She couldn’t help but wonder if the woman who’d slept in the now-dusty bedroom had selected the reading material for the inn, or if maybe it had come with the house when they bought it. Either way, she doubted Lucas had selected a book called Scoundrel of the Manor.
Unlike breakfast, dinner was served in the formal dining room. It was a surprisingly delicious lasagna made with zucchini and mushrooms, which Paige scarfed down in record time since breakfast had apparently been lunch as well. Lucas ate his meal in the kitchen, or so she presumed, which meant Paige once again dined alone. It shouldn’t have felt so odd really. She dined alone nearly every night at home. But there she had her cat—who, while not much of a conversationalist, was at least a warm body in the room—and a constant stream of HGTV. At the inn, there was nothing but an eerie silence, broken only by the sound of the storm or the occasional clank of pots and pans. Plus, at her apartment there wasn’t another person who was also eating alone in the next room. The whole thing was beyond strange.