The Red Door Inn Read Online Free PDF

buildings grew closer together, businesses and tourist shops lining the road. At an odd three-way stop, traffic picked up, and North Rustico started looking more like a town and less like a village onthe harbor. Passing a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, she turned where Jack had told her to.
    But twenty minutes later, the same pasture and same brown-eyed cow loomed before her.
    Looking over her shoulder, she squinted hard enough to make out the outline of Jack’s house. She hadn’t passed it again. She was sure. Almost.
    So how had she gotten back to these same cows, which had graciously given her a wide berth this time? Maybe she should go back to the house and ask for directions again. But she’d heard Jack drive away while she was still curled in her blanket, which meant Seth was the only one there.
    She’d rather have breakfast with these cows than ask Seth for help.
    As Marie started her second attempt to find the store, the wind picked up, tilting the tops of the pine trees and sending a shiver from her head to her toes. She snuggled as deep as she could into her lightweight jacket, but temperatures hadn’t been quite this cold when she’d left Boston. Now she longed for her faux fur-lined parka. Or at least a scarf and gloves. Shoving her hands into the deepest corners of her pockets, she leaned into the wind, which blew a blanket of gray across the sun.
    By the time she reached the three-way stop again, the tip of her nose could have held an icicle. She needed to find a place out of the wind to warm up, but this early in the morning the restaurants were still closed. Besides, she only had the money that Jack had given her for the quilts. She couldn’t spend it on anything else—even breakfast—without giving him a reason to kick her out.
    Then her eye caught a blue sign on a white house on theopposite corner. A bakery. She hurried around a car, stalked up to the wooden deck, and reached for the door handle. Before it even cracked open, the smell of heaven surrounded her. Inside, the aromas of cinnamon and sugar mixed with apples and peaches and ginger, each complementing and accentuating the one before.
    The bell on the door jingled as Marie’s skin tingled with the warmth of the cozy room, every nook lined with shelves laden with breads and rolls and packages of mouth-watering brownies.
    â€œBe right there!”
    Marie jumped at the voice coming from around a corner behind the cash register. First a cow—a fenced-in one at that—and now a disembodied voice sent her out of her own skin.
    â€œGet it together,” she chided herself as the body to the voice appeared.
    She was the type of girl who would have been shunned by Marie’s childhood friends in Boston. She wouldn’t have been invited to the cotillion in high school or had a date for prom. The boys at her elite private school hadn’t dated girls who looked like they enjoyed a meal. Even at Wharton the student body had snubbed the girls who didn’t and couldn’t wear designer clothes.
    They also missed out on smiles like this one.
    The young woman’s grin—punctuated by dimples on either side—filled the entire bakery, as sweet as the spicy scent lingering in the air. Hands tucked into the pockets of her white apron, she leaned against the counter next to the cash register. “Hi there. What can I get you?”
    The smile that Marie offered was an involuntary responseto the other woman’s kindness, and it felt strange, like she’d forgotten how to use those muscles. The grin dropped away quickly, replaced by a feeling of chagrin. At the same time she said, “I was just looking for directions,” her stomach growled violently, betraying the fact that she hadn’t eaten anything before leaving the house that morning. It just hadn’t felt right, eating without asking Jack first.
    An alarm chimed in the background, and the woman waved her hand before