Heroes
Are My Weakness
By: Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Releasing August 26th, 2014
Avon Romance
Synopsis
New York Times bestselling author Susan Elizabeth Phillips is back with a delightful novel filled with her sassy wit and dazzling charm
The dead of winter.
An isolated island off the coast of Maine.
A man.
A woman.
A sinister house looming over the sea ...
He's a reclusive writer whose macabre imagination creates chilling horror novels. She's a down-on-her-luck actress reduced to staging kids' puppet shows. He knows a dozen ways to kill with his bare hands. She knows a dozen ways to kill with laughs.
But she's not laughing now. When she was a teenager, he terrified her. Now they're trapped together on a snowy island off the coast of Maine. Is he the villain she remembers or has he changed? Her head says no. Her heart says yes.
It's going to be a long, hot winter.
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My Review
If you are a reader of romance, like me, then chances are you have probably heard of Susan Elizabeth Phillips, and not only you have heard of her, you have probably read and loved one of her books. While the writing is vintage SEP, this was so different from her previous releases.
Annie is a down on her luck struggling actress who's spending her winter in an isolated island off the coast of Maine as she contemplates her life choices. To supplement her non-existent acting career, Annie is also a ventriloquist. The cottage is a legacy of her mother who recently who told Annie that a fortune was waiting for her at the cottage. Now, the mother doesn't really specify what it was but Annie went there anyway.
Theo Harp was Annie's step-brother and former boyfriend. Their family owned a Gothic mansion on the island and the property where Annie's cottage stood. He's brooding horror novelist and Annie doesn't trust him especially after what happened to them that one fateful summer years ago.
As Annie struggles to make something of her life, she also struggled for her feelings for Theo. Theo is a very complex character and at the very beginning he's constantly pushing Annie away. The secrets he kept made him one of the darkest character I've ever read from SEP before. And while he did redeemed himself at the end, there were times where I struggled with the choices he made regarding the people in his life.
I empathized with Annie's struggle of gaining her mother's approval. Even though, her mother had already died, the damage she had done to Annie had long term effects, and it's prevalent throughout the book how her mother's rejection affected her.
What I struggled most about this book is the presence of Annie's puppets in her inner monologue. At first I was okay with it but then it just creepy because these puppets all have distinct personalities and they all have something to say. It grated on my nerves after a while.
I did love how SEP incorporated the island and its people into the story. The vivid description made it come alive for me as a reader. Even the house felt like another character which add another layer of complexity to the story.
So while the story failed to make to my SEP all-time fave list, I will say that this book is a must-read for any fan.
Rating: 3 Stars!
Excerpt
Excerpt (Chapter 1):
Annie didn’t usually talk to her suitcase, but she wasn’t
exactly herself these days. The high beams of her headlights could barely penetrate
the dark, swirling chaos of the winter blizzard, and the windshield wipers on
her ancient Kia were no match for the wrath of the storm that had hit the
island. “It’s only a little snow,” she told the oversize red suitcase wedged
into the passenger seat. “Just because it feels like the end of the world
doesn’t mean it is.”
You know I hate the cold, her
suitcase replied, in the annoying whine of a child who preferred making a point
by stamping her foot. How could you bring me to this awful place?
Because Annie had run out of options.
An icy blast rocked the car, and the branches of the old fir
trees hovering over the unpaved road whipped like witches’ hair. Annie decided
that anybody who believed in hell as a fiery furnace had it all wrong. Hell was
this bleak, hostile winter island.
You’ve never heard of Miami Beach? Crumpet,
the spoiled princess in the suitcase retorted. Instead you had to haul
us off to a deserted island in the middle of the North Atlantic where we’ll
probably get eaten by polar bears!
The gears ground as the Kia struggled up the narrow, slippery
island road. Annie’s head ached, her ribs hurt from coughing, and the simple
act of craning her neck to peer through a clear spot on the windshield made her
dizzy. She was alone in the world with only the imaginary voices of her
ventriloquist dummies anchoring her to reality. As sick as she was, she didn’t
miss the irony.
She conjured up the more calming voice of Crumpet’s counterpart,
the practical Dilly, who was tucked away in the matching red suitcase in the
backseat. We’re not the middle of the Atlantic, sensible Dilly
said. We’re on an island ten miles off the New England coast, and the
last I heard, Maine doesn’t have polar bears. Besides, Peregrine Island isn’t
deserted.
It might as well be. If Crumpet had been on
Annie’s arm, she would have shot her small nose up in the air. People
barely survive here in the middle of the summer let alone winter. I bet they
eat their dead for food.
The car fishtailed ever so slightly. Annie corrected the skid,
gripping the wheel more tightly through her gloves. The heater barely worked,
but she’d begun to perspire under her jacket.
You mustn’t keep complaining, Crumpet, Dilly
admonished her peevish counterpart. Peregrine Island is a popular
summer resort.
It’s not summer! Crumpet countered. It’s
the first week of February, we just drove off a car ferry that made me seasick,
and there can’t be more than fifty people left here. Fifty stupid people!
You know Annie had no choice but to come here, Dilly
said.
Because she’s a big failure, an
unpleasant male voice sneered.
Leo had a bad habit of uttering Annie’s deepest fears, and it
was inevitable that he’d intrude into her thoughts. He was her least favorite
puppet, but every story needed a villain.
Very unkind, Leo, Dilly said. Even if it
is true.
The petulant Crumpet continued to complain. You’re the
heroine, Dilly, so everything always turns out fine for you. But not for the
rest of us. Not ever. We’re doomed! Doomed, I say! We’re forever¾
Annie’s cough cut off the internal histrionics of her puppet.
Sooner or later her body would heal from the lingering aftereffects of
pneumonia¾at least she hoped so¾but what about the rest of her? She’d lost
faith in herself, lost the sense that, at thirty-three, her best days still lay
ahead. She was physically weak, emotionally empty, and more than a little
terrified, hardly the best state for someone forced to spend the next two
months on an isolated Maine island.
That’s only sixty days, Dilly attempted to point
out. Besides, Annie, you don’t have anywhere else to go.
And there it was. The ugly truth. Annie had nowhere else to go.
Nothing else to do but search for the legacy her mother might or might not have
left her.
The Kia hit a snow-packed rut, and the seat belt seized up. The
pressure on Annie’s chest made her cough again. If only she could have stayed
in the village for the night, but the Island Inn was closed until May. Not that
she could have afforded it anyway.
The car barely crested the hill. She had years of practice
transporting her puppets through every kind of weather to perform all over the
state, but even a decent snow driver had limited control on a road like this,
especially in her Kia. There was a reason the residents of Peregrine Island
drove pickups.
Take it slow, another male voice
advised from the suitcase in the back. Slow and steady wins the race. Peter,
her hero puppet¾her knight in shining armor¾was a voice of encouragement,
unlike her former actor-boyfriend-slash-lover, who’d only encouraged himself.
Annie brought the car to a full stop then started her slow
descent. Halfway down, it happened.
The apparition came from nowhere.
A man clad in black flew across the bottom of the road on a
midnight horse. She’d always had a vivid imagination¾witness her internal
conversations with her puppets¾and she thought she was imagining this. But the
vision was real. Horse and rider racing through the snow, the man leaning
low over the horse’s mane streaming. They were demon creatures, a
nightmare horse and lunatic man galloping into the storm’s fury.
They disappeared as quickly as they’d appeared, but her foot
automatically hit the brake, and the car began to slide. It skidded across the
road and,with a sickening lurch, came to a stop in the snow-filled ditch.
You’re such a loser, Leo the villain sneered.
Tears of exhaustion filled her eyes. Her hands shook. Were the
man and horse indeed real or had she conjured them? She needed to
focus. She put the car into reverse and attempted to rock it out, but the tires
only spun deeper. Her head fell against the back of the seat. If she stayed
here long enough, someone would find her. But when? Only the cottage and the
main house lay at the end of this road.
She tried to think. Her single contact on the island was the man
who took care of the main house and the cottage, but she’d only had an e-mail
address to let him know she was arriving and ask him to turn on the cottage’s
utilities. Even if she had his phone number¾Will Shaw¾that was his name¾she
doubted she could get cell reception out here.
Loser. Leo never spoke in an ordinary voice. He only sneered.
Annie grabbed a tissue from a crumpled pack, but instead of
thinking about her dilemma, she thought about the horse and rider. What kind of
a crazy took an animal out in this weather? She squeezed her eyes shut and
fought a wave of nausea. If only she could curl up and go to sleep. Would it be
so terrible to admit that life had gotten the best of her?
Stop it right now, sensible Dilly said.
Annie’s head pounded. She had to find Shaw and get him to pull
out the car.
Never mind Shaw, Peter the hero declared. I’ll
do it myself.
Buy Peter¾like her ex-boyfriend¾was only good in a fictional
crisis.
The cottage was about a mile away, an easy distance for a
healthy person in decent weather. But the weather was horrible, and nothing
about her was healthy.
Give up, Leo sneered. You
know you want to.
Stop being such a douche, Leo. This
voice came from Scamp, Dilly’s best friend and Annie’s alter ego. Even though
Scamp was responsible for many of the scrapes the puppets got into¾scrapes
heroine Dilly and hero Peter had to sort out¾Annie loved her courage and big
heart.
Pull yourself together, Scamp ordered. Get
out of the car.
Annie wanted to tell her to go to hell, but what was the point?
She pushed her flyaway hair inside the collar of her quilted jacket and zipped
it. Her knit gloves had a hole in the thumb, and the door handle was icy
against her exposed skin. She made herself open it.
The cold slapped her in the face and stole her breath. She had
to force her legs out. Her beat-up brown suede city boots sank into the snow,
and her jeans were no match for the weather. Ducking her head into the wind,
she made her way to the rear of the car to get her heavy coat, only to see that
the trunk was wedged so tightly into the hillside that she couldn’t open it.
Why should she be surprised? Nothing had gone her way in so long that she’d
forgotten what good fortune felt like.
She returned to the driver’s side. Her puppets should be safe in
the car overnight, but what if they weren’t? She needed them. They were all she
had left, and if she lost them, she might disappear altogether.
Pathetic, Leo sneered.
She wanted to rip him apart.
Babe… You need me more than I need you, he
reminded her. Without me, you don’t have a show.
She shut him out. Breathing hard, she pulled the suitcases from
the car, retrieved her keys, snapped off the headlights, and closed the door.
She was immediately plunged into thick, swirling darkness. Panic
clawed at her chest.
I will rescue you! Peter declared.
Annie gripped the suitcase handles tighter, trying not to let
her panic paralyze her.
I can’t see anything! Crumpet squealed. I
hate the dark!
Annie had no handy flashlight app on her ancient cell phone, but
she did have… She set a suitcase in the snow and dug in her pocket for her car
keys and the small LED light attached to the ring. She hadn’t tried to use the
light in months, and she didn’t know if it still worked. With her heart in her
throat, she turned it on.
A sliver of bright blue light cut a tiny path through the snow,
a path so narrow she could easily wander off the road.
Get a grip, Scamp ordered.
Give up, Leo sneered.
Annie took her first steps into the snow. The wind cut through
her thin jacket and tore at her hair, whipping the curly
strands onto her face. Snow slapped the back of her neck, and she
started to cough. Pain compressed her ribs, and the suitcases banged against
her legs. Much too soon, she had to set them down to rest her arms.
She hunched into her jacket collar, trying to protect her lungs
from the icy air. Her fingers burned from the cold, and as she moved forward
again, she called on her puppets’ imaginary voices to keep her company.
Crumpet: If you drop me and ruin my sparkly lavender
dress, I’ll sue.
Peter: I’m the bravest! The strongest! I’ll help you.
Leo: (sneering) Do you know how to do anything right?
Dilly: Don’t listen to Leo. Keep moving. We’ll get
there.
And Scamp, her useless alter ego: A woman carrying a
suitcase walks into a bar…
Icy tears weighed down her eyelashes, blurring what vision she
had. Wind caught the suitcases, threatening to snatch them away. They were too
big, too heavy. Pulling her arms from their sockets. Stupid to have brought
them with her. Stupid, stupid, stupid. But she couldn’t leave her puppets.
Each step felt like a mile, and she’d never been so cold. Here
she’d thought her luck had begun to change, all because she’d been able to
catch the car ferry over from the mainland. It only ran sporadically, unlike
the converted lobster boat that provided the island with weekly service. But
the farther the ferry traveled from the Maine coastline, the worse the storm
had become.
She trudged on, dragging one foot through the snow after the
other, arms screaming, lungs burning as she tried not to succumb to another
coughing fit. Why hadn’t she put her warm down coat in the car instead of
locking it in the trunk? Why hadn’t she done so many things? Find a stable
occupation. Be more circumspect with her money. Date decent men.
So much time had passed since she’d been on the island. The
road used to stop at the turnoff that led to the cottage and to Harp House. But
what if she missed it? Who knew what might have changed since then?
She stumbled and fell to her knees. The keys slipped from her
hand and the light went out. She grabbed one of the suitcases for support. She
was frozen. Burning up. She gasped for air and frantically felt around in the
snow. If she lost her light…
Her fingers were so numb she nearly missed it. When she finally
had the flashlight back in her grasp, she turned it on and saw the stand of
trees that had always marked the road’s end. She moved the beam to the
right, where it fell on the big granite boulder at the turnoff.
She hoisted herself back to her feet, lifted the suitcases, and stumbled
through the drifts.
Her temporary relief at having found the turnoff faded.
Centuries of harsh Maine weather had stripped this terrain of all but the
hardiest of spruce, and without a windbreak, the blasts roaring in from the
ocean caught the suitcases like spinnakers. She managed to turn her back to the
wind’s force without losing either one. She sank one foot and then another,
struggling through the tall snowdrifts, dragging the suitcases, and fighting
the urge to lie down and let the cold do what it wanted with her.
She’d bowed so far into the wind that she nearly missed it. Only
as the corner of a suitcase bumped against a low snow-shrouded
stone wall did she realize that she’d reached Moonraker Cottage.
The small, gray-shingled house was nothing more than an
amorphous shape beneath the snow. No shoveled pathway, no welcoming lights. The
last time she’d been here, the door had been painted cranberry red, but now it
was a cold, periwinkle blue. An unnatural mound of snow under the front window
covered a pair of old wooden lobster traps, a nod to the house’s origins as a
fisherman’s cottage. She hauled herself through the drifts to the door and set
the suitcases down. She fumbled with the key in the lock only to remember that
island people seldom locked up.
The door blew open. She dragged the suitcases inside and, with
the last of her strength, wrestled it shut again. The air wheezed in her lungs.
She collapsed on the closest suitcase, her gasps for breath more like sobs.
Eventually she grew conscious of the musty smell of the icy
room. Pressing her nose to her sleeve, she fumbled for the light switch.
Nothing happened. Either the caretaker hadn’t gotten her e-mail asking him to
have the generator working and the small furnace fired up or he’d ignored it.
Every frozen part of her throbbed. She dropped her snow-crusted gloves on the
small canvas rug that lay just inside the door but didn’t bother to shake the
snow from the wild tangle of her hair. Her jeans were frozen to her legs, but
she’d have to pull off her boots to remove them, and she was too cold to do
that.
But no matter how miserable she was, she had to get her puppets
out of their snow-caked suitcases. She located one of the assorted flashlights
her mother always kept near the door. Before school and library budgets were
slashed, her puppets had provided a steadier livelihood than her failed acting
career or her part-time jobs walking dogs and serving drinks at Coffee, Coffee.
Shaking with cold, she cursed the caretaker, who apparently
had no qualms about riding a horse through a storm but couldn’t summon the
effort to do his real job. It had to have been Shaw riding the horse. No one
else lived at this end of the island during the winter. She unzipped the suitcases
and pulled out the five dummies. Leaving them in their protective plastic bags,
she stowed them temporarily on the sofa, then, flashlight in hand, stumbled
across the frigid wood floor.
The interior of Moonraker Cottage bore no resemblance to
anyone’s idea of a traditional New England fishing cottage. Instead her
mother’s eccentric stamp was everywhere¾from a creepy bowl of small animal
skulls to a silver-gilded Louis XIV chest bearing the words pile driver that Mariah had
spray-painted across it in black graffiti. Annie preferred a cozier space, but
during Mariah’s glory days, when she’d inspired fashion designers and a
generation of young artists, both this cottage and her mother’s Manhattan
apartment had been featured in upscale decorating magazines.
Those days had ended years ago when Mariah had fallen out of
favor in Manhattan’s increasingly younger artistic circles. Wealthy New Yorkers
had begun asking others for help compiling their private art collections, and
Mariah had been forced to sell off her valuables to support her lifestyle. By
the time she’d gotten sick, everything was gone. Everything except something in
this cottage¾something that was supposed to be Annie’s mysterious “legacy.”
“It’s at the cottage. You’ll have… Plenty of money…” Mariah
had said those words in the final hours before she’d died, a period in which
she’d been barely lucid.
There isn’t any legacy, Leo sneered. Your
mother exaggerated everything.
Maybe if Annie had spent more time on the island she’d know
whether Mariah had been telling the truth, but she’d hated it here and hadn’t
been back since her twenty-second birthday, eleven years ago.
She shone the flashlight around her mother’s bedroom. A
life-size mounted photograph of an elaborately carved Italian wooden headboard
served as the actual headboard for the double bed. A pair of wall hangings made
of boiled wool and what looked like remnants from a hardware store hung next to
the closet door. The closet still smelled of her mother’s signature fragrance,
a little-known Japanese men’s cologne that had cost a fortune to import. As
Annie breathed in the scent, she wished she could feel the grief a daughter
should experience following the loss of a parent only five weeks earlier, but
she merely felt depleted.
She waited until she’d located Mariah’s old
scarlet woolen cloak and a pair of heavy socks before she got rid of
her own clothes. After she’d piled every blanket she could find on her mother’s
bed, she climbed under the musty sheets, turned out the flashlight, and went to
sleep.
***
Annie hadn’t thought she’d ever be warm again, but she was
sweating when a coughing fit awakened her sometime around two in the morning.
Her ribs felt as if they’d been crushed, her head pounded, and her throat was
raw. She also had to pee, another setback in a house with no water. When the
coughing finally eased, she struggled out from under the blankets. Wrapped in
the scarlet cloak, she turned on the flashlight and, grabbing the wall to
support herself, made her way to the bathroom.
She kept the flashlight pointed down so she couldn’t see her
reflection in the mirror that hung over the old-fashioned sink. She knew what
she’d see. A long, pale face shadowed by illness; a sharply pointed chin;
big, hazel eyes; and a runaway mane of light brown hair that kinked and curled
wherever it wanted. She had a face children liked, but that most men found
quirky instead of seductive. Her hair and face came from her unknown father¾“A
married man. He wanted nothing to do with you. Dead now, thank God.” Her
shape came from Mariah: tall, thin, with knobby wrists and elbows, big feet,
and long-fingered hands.
“To be a successful actress, you need to be either exceptionally
beautiful or exceptionally talented,” Mariah had said. “You’re
pretty enough, Antoinette, and you’re a talented mimic, but we have to be
realistic…”
Your mother wasn’t exactly your cheerleader. Dilly
stated the obvious.
I’ll be your cheerleader, Peter
proclaimed. I’ll take care of you and love you forever.
Peter’s heroic proclamations usually made Annie smile, but
tonight she could think only of the emotional chasm between the men she’d
chosen to give her heart to and the fictional heroes she loved. And the
other chasm¾the one between the life she’d imagined for herself and the one she
was living.
Despite Mariah’s objections, Annie had gotten her degree in
theater arts and spent the next ten years plodding to auditions. She’d done
showcases, community theater, and even landed a few character roles in off-off
Broadway plays. Too few. Over the past summer, she’d finally faced the truth
that Mariah was right. Annie was a better ventriloquist than she’d ever be an
actress. Which left her absolutely nowhere.
She found a bottle of ginseng-flavored water that had somehow
escaped freezing. It hurt to swallow even a sip. Taking the water with her, she
made her way back into the living room.
Mariah hadn’t been to the cottage since summer, just before her
cancer diagnosis, but Annie didn’t see a lot of dust. The caretaker must have
done at least part of his job. If only he’d done the rest.
Her dummies lay on the hot pink Victorian sofa. The puppets and
her car were all she had left.
Not quite all, Dilly said.
Right. There was the staggering load of debt Annie had no way of
repaying, the debt she’d picked up in the last six months of her mother’s life
by trying to satisfy Mariah’s every need.
And finally get Mummy’s approval, Leo
sneered.
She began removing the puppets’ protective plastic. Each figure
was about two and a half feet long, with moveable eyes and mouth
and detachable legs. She picked up Peter and slipped her hand under his
T-shirt.
“How beautiful you are, my darling Dilly,” he said
in his most manly voice. “The woman of my dreams.”
“And you are the best of men.” Dilly sighed. “Brave
and fearless.”
“Only in Annie’s imagination,” Scamp
said with uncharacteristic rancor. “Otherwise, you’re as useless as her
exes.”
“There are only two exes, Scamp,” Dilly
admonished her friend. “And you really mustn’t take out your bitterness
against men on Peter. I’m sure you don’t mean to, but you’re starting to sound
like a bully, and you know how we feel about bullies.”
Annie specialized in issue-oriented puppet shows, several of
which focused on bullying. She set Peter down and moved Leo off by
himself, where he whispered his sneer inside her head. You’re
still afraid of me.
Sometimes it felt as if the puppets had minds of their own.
Pulling the scarlet cloak tighter around her, she wandered to
the front bay window. The storm had eased and moonlight shone through
the panes. She looked out at the stark winter landscape¾the inky
shadows of spruce, the bleak sheet of marsh. Then she lifted her gaze.
Harp House loomed above her in the distance, sitting at the very
top of a barren cliff. The murky light of a half moon outlined its angular
roofs and dramatic turret. Except for a faint yellow light visible from a room
high in the turret, the house was dark. The scene reminded her of the covers on
the old paperback gothic novels she could still sometimes find in used
bookstores. It didn’t take much imagination for her to envision a barefoot
heroine fleeing that ghostly house in nothing more than a filmy negligee, the
menacing turret light glowing behind her. Those books were quaint compared to
today’s erotically charged vampires, werewolves, and shape-shifters, but she’d
always loved them. They’d nourished her daydreams.
Above the jagged roofline of Harp House, storm clouds raced
across the moon, their journey as wild as the flight of the horse and rider
who’d charged across the road. Her skin turned to gooseflesh, not from the cold
but from her own imagination. She turned away from the window and glanced over
at Leo.
Heavy lidded eyes… Thin-lipped sneer… The perfect villain. She
could have avoided so much pain if she hadn’t romanticized those brooding men
she’d fallen in love with, imagining them as fantasy heroes instead of
realizing one was a cheater and the other a narcissist. Leo, however, was a
different story. She’d created him herself out of cloth and yarn. She
controlled him.
That’s what you think, he whispered.
She shivered and retreated to the bedroom. But even as she
slipped back under the covers, she couldn’t shake off the dark vision of the
house on the cliff.
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again…
***
She wasn’t hungry when she awakened the next morning, but she
made herself eat a handful of stale granola. The cottage was frigid, the day
gloomy, and all she wanted to do was go back to bed. But she couldn’t live in
the cottage without heat or running water, and the more she thought about her
absent caretaker, the angrier she grew. She dug out the only phone number she
had, one for the island’s combination town hall, post office, and library, but
although her phone was charged, she couldn’t get a signal. She sank down on the
pink velvet couch and dropped her head in her hands. She had to go after Will
Shaw herself, and that meant making the climb to Harp House. Back to the place
she’d sworn she’d never again go near.
She pulled on as many layers of warm clothes as she could find,
then wrapped herself in her mother’s red cloak and knotted an
ancient Hermès scarf under her chin. Summoning all her energy and
willpower, she set out. The day was as gray as her future, the salt air frigid,
and the distance between the cottage and the house at the top of the cliff
insurmountable.
I’ll carry you every step of the way, Peter
announced.
Scamp blew him a raspberry.
It was low tide, but the icy rocks along the shoreline were too
hazardous to walk along at this time of year, so she had to take the longer
route around the saltwater marsh. But it wasn’t just the distance that filled
her with dread.
Dilly tried to give her courage. It’s been eighteen
years since you made the climb to Harp House. The ghosts and goblins are long
gone.
Annie pressed the edge of the cloak over her nose and mouth.
Don’t worry, Peter said. I’ll watch out for
you.
Peter and Dilly were doing their jobs. They were the ones
responsible for untangling Scamp’s scrapes and stepping in when Leo
bullied. They were the ones who delivered antidrug messages, reminded kids to
eat their vegetables, take care of their teeth, and not let anyone touch their
private parts.
But it’ll feel so good, Leo sneered, then
snickered.
Sometimes she wished she’d never created him, but he was such a
perfect villain. He was the bully, the drug pusher, the junk food king,
and the stranger who tried to lure children away from playgrounds.
Come with me, little kiddies, and I’ll give you all the candy
you want.
Stop it, Annie, Dilly said. No one
in the Harp family ever comes to the island until summer. Only the caretaker
lives there.
Leo refused to leave Annie alone. I have Skittles,
M&M’s, Twizzlers…and reminders of all your failures. How’s that precious
acting career working out?
She hunched into her shoulders. She needed to start meditating
or practicing yoga, doing something that would teach her to discipline her mind
instead of letting it wander wherever it wanted¾or didn’t want¾to go. So what
if her acting dreams hadn’t worked out the way she’d wanted. Kids loved
her puppet shows
Her boots crunched in the show. Dead cattails and hollowed reeds
poked their battered heads through the frozen crust of the sleeping marsh. In
summer, the marsh teemed with life, but now all was bleak, gray, and as
quiet as her hopes.
She stopped to rest once again as she neared the bottom of the
freshly plowed gravel drive that led up the cliff to Harp House. If Shaw could
plow, he could get her car out. She dragged herself on. Before the pneumonia,
she could have charged uphill, but by the time she finally reached the top, her
lungs were on fire and she’d started to wheeze. Far below, the cottage looked
like a neglected toy left to fend for itself against the pounding sea and
rugged Maine cliffs. Dragging more fire into her lungs, she made herself lift
her head.
Harp House rose before her, silhouetted against the pewter sky.
Rooted in granite, exposed to summer squalls and winter gales, it dared the
elements to take it down. The island’s other summer homes had been built on the
more protected eastern side of the island, but Harp House scorned the easy way.
Instead it grew from the rocky western headlands far above the sea, a
shingle-sided, forbidding brown wooden fortress with an unwelcoming turret at
one end.
Everything was sharp angles: the peaked roofs, shadowed eaves,
and foreboding gables. How she’d loved this Gothic gloom when she’d come
to live here the summer her mother had married Elliott Harp. She’d imagined
herself clad in a mousy gray dress and clutching a portmanteau¾gently born, but
penniless and desperate, forced to take the humble position of governess. Chin
up and shoulders back, she’d confront the brutish (but exceptionally handsome)
master of the house with so much courage that he would eventually fall
hopelessly in love with her. They’d marry, and then she’d redecorate.
It hadn’t taken long before the romantic dreams of a homely
fifteen-year-old who read too much and experienced too little had met a harsher
reality.
Now, the swimming pool was an eerie, empty
maw, and the simple sets of wooden stairs that led to the back and
side entrances had been replaced with stone steps guarded by gargoyles.
She passed the stable and followed a roughly shoveled path to
the back door. Shaw had better be here instead of galloping off on one of
Elliott Harp’s horses. She pressed the bell but couldn’t hear it ring inside.
The house was too big. She waited, then rang again, but no one answered. The
doormat looked as though it had been recently used to stamp off snow. She
rapped hard.
The door creaked open.
She was so cold that she stepped into the mudroom without
hesitating. Miscellaneous pieces of outerwear, along with assorted mops and
brooms, hung from a set of hooks. She rounded the corner that opened into the
main kitchen and stopped.
Everything was different. The kitchen no longer held the walnut
cabinets and stainless steel appliances she remembered from eighteen years ago.
Instead the place looked as though it had been squeezed back through a time
warp to the nineteenth century.
The wall between the kitchen and what had once been a breakfast
room was gone, leaving the space twice as large as it had once been. High,
horizontal windows let in light, but since the windows were now set at least
six feet from the floor, only the tallest person could see through them. Rough
plaster covered the top half of the walls, while the bottom was faced with
four-inch-square once-white tiles, some chipped at the corners, others cracked
with age. The floor was old stone, the fireplace a sooty cavern large enough to
roast a wild boar…or a man unwise enough to have been caught poaching on his
master’s land.
Instead of kitchen cabinets, rough shelves held stoneware bowls
and crocks. Tall, freestanding dark wood cupboards rose on each side of a dull
black industrial-size AGA stove. A stone farmhouse sink held a messy
stack of dirty dishes. Copper stockpots and saucepans¾not shiny and polished,
but dented and worn¾hung above a long, scarred wooden prep table designed to
chop off chicken heads, butcher mutton chops, or whip up a syllabub for his
lordship’s dinner.
The kitchen had to be a renovation, but what kind of renovation
regressed two centuries. And why?
Run! Crumpet shrieked. Something’s very wrong here!
Whenever Crumpet got hysterical, Annie counted on Dilly’s
no-nonsense manner to provide perspective, but Dilly remained silent, and not
even Scamp could come up with a wisecrack.
“Mr. Shaw?” Annie’s voice lacked its normal powers of
projection.
When there was no reply, she moved deeper into the kitchen,
leaving wet tracks on the stone floor. But no way was she taking off her boots.
If she had to run, she wasn’t doing it in socks. “Will?”
Not a sound.
She passed the pantry, crossed a narrow back hallway, detoured
around the dining room, and stepped through the arched entry into the foyer.
Only the dimmest gray light penetrated the six square panes above the front
door. The heavy mahogany staircase still led to a landing with a murky
stained-glass window, but the staircase carpet was now a depressing maroon
instead of the multicolored floral from the past. The furniture bore a dusty
film, and a cobweb hung in the corner. The walls had been paneled over in
heavy, dark wood, and the seascape paintings had been replaced with gloomy oil
portraits of prosperous men and women in nineteenth-century dress, none of whom
could possibly have been Elliott Harp’s Irish peasant ancestors. All that was
missing to make the entryway even more depressing was a suit of armor and a
stuffed raven.
She heard footsteps above her and moved closer to the staircase.
“Mr. Shaw? It’s Annie Hewitt. The door was open, so I let myself in.” She
looked up. “I’m going to need¾” The words died on her tongue.
The master of the house stood at the top of the stairs.
Author Info
Susan Elizabeth
Phillips soars onto the New York Times bestseller list with every new
publication. She’s the only four-time recipient of the Romance Writers of
America’s prestigious Favorite Book of the Year Award. Susan delights fans by
touching hearts as well as funny bones with her wonderfully whimsical and
modern fairy tales. A resident of the Chicago suburbs, she is also a wife, and
mother of two grown sons.