Crazy in Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

popped with roses on either side. Flynn white-knuckled the dashboard and stared. She couldn ’t do this. There was no way she could do this. She didn’t know anything about history or hotels or management or anything. She’d had at least fourteen jobs in the last eight years, and while she could flip pizza dough and announce the weather on the radio and hand out flyers in a chicken suit, none of those skills prepared her for this. Places like this were run by uptight people in expensive suits who could pull off being condescending to snooty travelers wanting to sleep in the same bed as George Washington, not unemployed dilettantes like her who couldn’t keep track of a job unless her daddy safety-pinned it to her shirt.
    Flynn was so immersed in her panic that she hadn ’t even noticed Jake Tucker hop out and grab her luggage from the bed of the truck until he was there before her, suitcase in hand, opening the passenger side door.
    “ Wow,” she said, barely able to take her eyes off the grand, disapproving columns that banked either side of the dark French doors at the mouth of this great behemoth of an inn. A bead of sweat trickled down the small of her back.
    “ Welcome home.” His voice was softer than it had been at the train station, and Flynn had to look to make sure it was still the same guy standing there. It was. His expression was less condescending now, though, almost... sympathetic, like he could tell how panicked she was, and was making an effort to be kind. Not that she was going to let her guard down with him just yet, but she allowed the possibility that he might not be a total asshole. Only time would tell.
    “ Oh, and...” He reached into his pocket, withdrawing a set of keys. “Here. These are yours.”
    She glanced down. They were the keys to the truck. She looked back up at him. “Why are you giving me these?”
    “ The truck’s yours. A small gesture of independence, from the inn to you.”
    She laughed out loud. “You’re kidding, right?”
    “ Not at the moment. Why?”
    “ You don’t actually expect me to drive that thing, do you?”
    His eyes darkened, and the condescension returned. “Sorry, Ms. Hilton. Limo’s in the shop. You’ll have to slum it for a while.”
    Flynn clutched the keys tightly in her hands and looked up at him, anger coursing through her. She was leaning back toward total asshole. “Excuse me?”
    His eyes met hers, and they weren ’t apologetic in the least. “Esther didn’t drive, and this is the extra truck from maintenance. You want a town car and a driver, you’re gonna have to make your own arrangements.”
    “ That’s not it,” she said tightly. “I just...” She held the keys out to him. “I don’t drive.”
    He blinked, the shock clear on his face. “You’re thirty years old and you don’t know how to drive?”
    “ Twenty-nine.” She hopped out of the truck. “And I grew up in Boston. Anywhere I needed to go, it was either cab, T, or walk.”
    A smidge of contrition crossed his face, and Flynn figured that was as close to an apology as she was likely to get from this guy.
    “Well, that’s not the way it is here,” he said. “There are a few basic things within walking distance, but sooner or later, you’re gonna want the truck.”
    She released a breath, and stuffed the keys in her purse. “Fine. Thank you.”
    He nodded, hitched up her suitcase, and started down the sidewalk, away from the inn.
    “We’re not going inside?” Flynn asked, shuffling to keep up with his pace.
    “ You’ll be staying at the cottage,” he said, leading her onto a cobblestone path that curled around to one side of the inn. “It’s where Esther lived. It’s just around past the east wing here—”
    “ The east wing ?” Flynn said, realizing as they walked that the east wing stretched a good thirty yards back. Hadn’t Freya said it was a little inn?
    “ There’s an east wing and a west wing. Three floors, thirty rooms, and two suites