Chapter 43

Part Three: Wet Heat
The Story Ends

Peyton Gerard signed her name to the lease agreement and accepted the key ring the real estate secretary handed to her.
"Do you need a map or anything?" the woman asked. She had introduced herself as Willa Getchell. "Directions to where you're going?"
"No." Peyton smiled. "I know exactly where I'm going. My family used to summer here."
"Oh, how nice." Her smile was immediately replaced by a look of distress. "I'm really sorry Eileen isn't here. She always likes to handle these things herself."
"I'm positive it will be fine with her," Peyton reassured her. "She probably just got held up on her last appointment."
"She must be out of cell range." Willa twisted her hands nervously. "I called and texted her, but she didn't answer me."
"She'll be happy you were able to help me."
"Yes, well, I hope so." The woman frowned. "She usually leaves these things on my desk in cases like this. I don't know why she didn't this time. I wasn't very comfortable just taking it out of her office."
"Like I said, I'm sure she'll be relieved." Peyton handed over the check she'd written earlier. "One month's rent, as we agreed."
Willa took it as if it was a stinging wasp. "I just hope she won't be upset with me."
Peyton thought Eileen would be more upset if a client had to hang around indefinitely waiting for her to get back, but what did she know, right?
"I'll give her a call later. Everything will be fine. Thank you very much."
She made her escape before the woman could snatch the key back from her and hurried to her car. She was anxious to get to her destination as soon as she could. Outside the office on the street, she stopped and looked around before getting into her car.
The town of Newport, Maine, had changed a lot since the summers she and her family spent here, yet not so much it lost its small town Maine charm. Many of the places on Main Street were still there although with an obvious face lift. The gracious old Newport Inn still sat surrounded by velvet-green grass with a welcoming look, but now there was also Clark's Motel. A Chinese restaurant had opened as well. Peyton remembered when people had to drive all the way to Waterville for Chinese food.
She missed some of the old buildings, part of what was now the historic downtown. When she'd decided to come here, she'd done her research and learned two boys, eight and nine years old, had started a fire that burned down half of the buildings. The thought of it made her want to cry. She had chosen to come here because she had so many happy memories. She hated that someone had cast a pall over them.
I'll wipe it from my mind. This is a place of my happy years. I came here to heal.
Ha! She just hoped that was possible. Maybe at the same time she could find a brain that would help her make better choices where men were concerned. She certainly had a really bad track record.
"You know your problem?" her editor, Grace Valasco, had asked. Grace was the editor who had accepted her first book, and they'd been together ever since.
"I can hardly wait to find out," Peyton grumbled.
"You don't take enough time to find out what's beneath the surface when you meet these guys."
"So you're saying it's my fault because I choose badly?" Peyton demanded.
"There's no fault here, sweetie. It's just a fact. You write wonderful heroes in your books. Your readers fall in love with them, flaws and all. But I get the feeling you leave them on the pages of your book."
"I don't understand." Peyton frowned at her.
"I'm saying take as much time checking out your flesh-and-blood guys as you do creating the make-believe ones." Grace gave her a sympathetic smile. "I get the feeling sometimes you think it's so important for a romance author to have the perfect guy that you don't spend enough time looking below the surface."
Was the woman right? Was she so desperate to show the world she had a guy better than the ones she created that she leaped before she looked? Well, that was a depressing thought.
Grace probably wasn't far from wrong, though. Being a plain chubby admin didn't get you in the front line with the hot gorgeous guys, a situation she'd suffered from for most of her adult life. And, actually, chubby was being kind. She had started writing to create her own fantasies and been totally shocked at the success she achieved. With success, she'd become a different person. She'd figured she'd always be slightly chubby - Grace kept trying to tell her the word was lush - but she'd had her makeover, lost weight, and plunged into the real dating world.
And what a catastrophe that was proving to be.
Her track record didn't lie. Three disastrous relationships in a row, each one worse than the one before. Okay, so a lot of it was her fault. She'd just been so desperate, she made poor choices. That didn't mean it hurt any less. Her sexual experience prior to her first relationship had been minimal. Not many people were running to get the "chubby" girl into bed. The few who did were as inept as she was. She still had so little confidence in herself she was easy prey for selfish sharks like Chase. Now she'd not only hit a wall in the romance department, she seemed to have developed a bad case of writer's block. Really bad. How was she supposed to keep writing about love when her own romances came to such shattering ends? How did she give people a happy ending when she no longer believed in one herself?
She had been so sure Chase, a good looking, sexy, successful high energy investment counselor, was the one. A man who swept her off her feet, coddled her, and catered to her. Made incredible love to her. Promised her a golden future. Told her he loved her "curves."
She'd always believed the old adage that third time's the charm. But Chase had been her third attempt at a meaningful relationship, and it had all turned to shit.
Scant weeks after he'd given up the condo he was renting and moved in with her, the solid foundation she'd thought they were building began to crumble. He lost his job and weeks went by with all prospects fading to nothing. They were all wrong for him, he kept telling her. The truth was, it seemed he wasn't the hot commodity he thought he was. The easygoing man who told her jokes, was a wild man in bed, and praised her writing success, turned into a hostile, angry, unpleasant person. He didn't handle adversity well. It also brought out his incredible need to be admired and catered to. He complained about everything from her skills in bed to the amount of time she spent at the computer.