Love Me Sweet (Bell Harbor, #3) by Tracy Brogan
Chapter 1
FOR A SUN-KISSED CALIFORNIA GIRL like Delaney Masterson, frostbitten Bell Harbor was a ridiculous place to hide, which—naturally—made it the perfect place to hide. No one would look for her here. Not in this off-the-beaten-path lakeside town tucked somewhere between Central Nowheresville and Eastern Neverbeentheresburg. Certainly not in this teetering, tottering Victorian house with its lavender siding and crooked roof. Especially in the dead of winter.
It was January, after all.
In Michigan.
Seriously, in all her life she’d never seen so much snow. No wonder the whole damn state was shaped like a mitten.
“I’ll take it,” Delaney said, peering down at the fluffy-haired blonde by her side. Donna Beckett—her new landlord, as of that very instant.
The two of them were standing inside a sparsely furnished living room, having spent the last twenty minutes looking around eight hundred square feet of uninspired, shag-carpeted rental property. This was no plush palace. No urban loft. The ad on craigslist had been overly generous when listing the amenities, but it did have two bedrooms upstairs, a functional—if dangerously outdated—kitchen, a few pieces of plaid furniture, and it at least appeared to be clean. Clean-ish. Better than the last six places Delaney had looked at. None of those other houses were remotely acceptable—unless she’d been looking for something run-down, too small, or possibly haunted, which she wasn’t.
Here the smells of bleach and deodorizer mingled in the air, possibly masking an underlying aroma of crud, but the weather outside was frightful, like swirling, twirling snownado kind of frightful, and she was tired of looking for a place to live. The Bell Harbor Hotel was too expensive. She was on a strict budget now, and her money would only last for so long. And besides that, the hotel was crowded with far too many people who might recognize her. This house would have to be fine. It needed to be fine.
“Do you offer a month-to-month lease?” Delaney asked, adjusting the temples of her black-framed reading glasses. They were too big and kept slipping down her nose. She should have tried them on before buying them, but she’d been in a hurry at the store and grabbed the thickest, ugliest ones she could find. She’d grabbed a baseball hat and a box of hair color too. L’Oreal’s Utterly Forgettable Brown, #257. It wasn’t much of a disguise, but she’d worry about that later. So far Mrs. Beckett hadn’t shown any signs of recognizing her, which was a relief. Maybe this town was so small they didn’t have Internet.
Or cable.
Or tabloid magazines.
Or any sort of social media whatsoever, because Delaney’s face had been plastered all over the place recently. Impossible to miss.
Rotten paparazzi.
The petite landlady ran both palms down the front of her well-worn gray sweatshirt. It had the image of some kind of aquatic mammal on it. A walrus? Or a manatee? It was hard to see thanks to the thick reading glasses, but whatever it was, it wasn’t attractive. Delaney knew fashion, but it didn’t take an expert stylist to know that big, old shirts with big, old blobs on the front were not flattering in any way, on any shape or form.
“I’d prefer a twelve-month lease,” Mrs. Beckett answered, tugging at the banded hem of the sweatshirt and making the manatee shimmy a little. “But I suppose we could shorten it to six. Would six months work for you?”
Six months. Delaney wasn’t certain she’d be staying six weeks, much less half the year. Given her current set of circumstances, she couldn’t plan that far ahead, but she suspected a month-to-month place would be hard to find in the middle of Snowmageddon, and this little shack did have a certain charm to it. Maybe it was the lacy scrolled woodwork in the corner of the doorways or the thick crown molding. It was cute and cozy in its own antiquated way. And Lord knew Delaney Masterson could use a little cute and cozy right about now, because she knew opulent and extravagant came with a huge emotional price tag.
“Six months is OK, I guess.” She adjusted her fake glasses once more.
The landlady nodded. “Excellent. I have the leasing papers in my car. I’ll just need your driver’s license, a security deposit, and the first month’s rent.”
Driver’s license? Delaney’s heart plummeted faster than the sales of her dad’s last CD. She didn’t want to show her driver’s license to Donna Beckett. She didn’t want to show it to anyone. She pressed a thumbnail against her bottom lip, stalling for time.