Marlie's Mystery Man. Doris Rangel
wished he’d had time for a cup of coffee, but Durig would give him one.
Two hours later Caid was back at the hotel, dismayed, disbelieving and totally disturbed. No one had given him a cup of coffee.
Hell, no one had given him the time of day.
Marlie had breakfast at The Drugstore, the oddly named restaurant across from the hotel, then shopped a little before returning to her room to change into hiking boots. The state park three miles out of town had a couple of good hiking trails, she’d been told.
Driving to the park, admiring the mountain scenery and shallow, sun-sparkled Limpia Creek running beside the highway, Marlie did her best to forget the last semester of school where she was counselor at Martinez High in San Antonio. And since hiking was right up there with sweaty necks on Nicholas’s hate list, she managed to keep him out of her thinking, too.
That evening when she walked into the lobby of the hotel, she was pleasantly tired and pleasantly full, having had dinner and watched the sun set at the restaurant in the park.
Ann smiled at her in greeting. “Good evening, Ms. Simms. How was your day?”
“Wonderful, thanks. This is a beautiful area.”
“It is, and I say it as one who’s lived here all my life. Is everything all right in your room?”
“Everything’s fine. It took me a while to get used to the thin walls, but I suppose that’s a minor price to pay for the hotel’s history. The man in the next room kept me awake for a while with his moaning and sneezing. Sounds like he’s coming down with a cold.”
“I’m sorry,” Ann apologized. “We’ve never had anyone complain about noise through the walls before. Actually, they’re pretty thick. I’m even more surprised because there are two maiden ladies in the room next to yours, both probably in their seventies.”
“One of the sweet things has a sneeze like a water buffalo,” Marlie replied with a grin. “But once I knew where the sound came from, I had no problem sleeping through it.”
She glanced around the deserted lobby. “After the crowd this morning, it’s certainly quiet now. Where is everyone?”
“Out looking at the stars. Most of them won’t be in till the wee hours.”
“Then would anyone mind if I browse the hotel bookshelves and read for a while in the parlor?”
“Not at all. We want our guests to feel at home.”
“Be right back,” Marlie said as she headed up the old-fashioned staircase to pull off her hiking boots.
When Caid heard a key rattle in the lock, he turned away from the window and his perusal of the street below to deliberately step toward the center of the room.
The door swung open and a woman entered, switching on the overhead light as she did so. His roomie, apparently.
Somewhere between mid-to late-twenties, she had short tousled brown hair, a snub nose with a dusting of freckles across it, a generous mouth, and eyes that he couldn’t tell the color of but which were bordered with thick lashes the same shade as her hair. She was a little on the short side perhaps, but feisty with it, he could tell.
The woman was just plain cute, he thought, the kind of cute that in a puppy would make him want to take her home.
She also completely ignored him. A strange man stood in the middle of her hotel room and she didn’t so much as back up a step.
Caid rubbed a tired hand over his mouth and jaw. He’d been getting the same reaction all day…or lack of it. People he’d known all his life looked through him as if he wasn’t there. He’d gotten right in Durig’s face at the bank and yelled at him, but Durig hadn’t even blinked.
After failing to get anyone at the bank to notice him, Caid went to The Drugstore to buy aspirin and get a cup of coffee. Though he sat at the counter right in front of the kid behind it, no one waited on him. He finally dropped change by the cash register, took a bottle of aspirin off the shelf and left to walk to the garage where they’d towed his truck.
The vehicle was a mess and certainly not drivable, but when Caid tried to talk to Jimmy to get the lowdown on repairs, the garage owner ignored him, too. An oil stain had better conversation.
Totally frustrated and even more totally bewildered, Caid used a public telephone to call the ranch. He didn’t like what happened then, either.
“This is the Rollin’ M,” Waldo snarled, his usual way of answering the phone.
“Waldo, it’s Caid. I need you to drive into town and pick me—” Caid began.
“Hello? Hello?”
“It’s me,” Caid said loudly. “Turn up your hearing aid, dammit. I need you to…”
But he was speaking to a dead phone. Swearing, Caid dug into his jeans for more change and punched in the ranch number again.
“Rollin’ M, and buster, you better have somethin’ to say. I ain’t got time for this,” Waldo spat.
“It’s Caid. Can you hear me? I need—”
The response was an earful of profanity that would make a stevedore blush.
“It’s me!” Caid yelled at the top of his lungs. “Listen up, Waldo. I need—”
Dial tone.
Defeated, Caid replaced the receiver.
Next he tried to hitch a ride to the ranch with the owners of the property adjacent to his, but the Hendersons looked right through him and turned a deaf ear.
Not knowing what else to do, he at last walked back to the hotel, snagged a cup of coffee from the complimentary carafe in the deserted lobby and climbed the stairs to his room. His head felt like a mission bell at the noon hour and all he wanted at the moment was a handful of aspirin and a bed. He’d deal with the rest later.
Well, it was later, and even after a restless nap, he still didn’t know how to deal with it.
People just weren’t seeing him. He felt like the Invisible Man, except that guy could at least be heard.
The woman sat down on the side of the bed opposite the one he slept in and bent to untie the laces of her hiking boots. He’d like to ask just why the heck she’d commandeered his room, but knew it was probably a lost cause. No one else today had listened to him.
She’d tugged the second boot off when she paused, still holding it in her hand, and gazed for a long moment in front of her. Then she frowned.
Following her gaze, Caid looked to see what had captured her attention. All he saw was the bed he’d spent the afternoon in. The rumpled unmade bed.
“Bad housekeeping,” she finally muttered disapprovingly, then stripped off her socks and walked barefoot into the bathroom.
When she returned, she rummaged in a dresser drawer, came up with a clean pair of socks, picked up a bottle of lotion from the top of the bureau and sat down in the chair near the window, brushing by Caid in the process, actually touching his shirtsleeve—well, her shirtsleeve—without so much as breaking stride.
What she did next had Caid groaning inwardly. The woman poured a generous dollop of lotion into her palm and proceeded to massage her cute little feet.
As soon as the peppery smell of lavender filled the room, Caid sneezed.
The woman jumped a mile.
She’d heard him! But before Caid could say anything, he sneezed again. This time, however, she paid no attention, just went on slathering lotion.
Caid sneezed again. And again.
Finally, eyes streaming, he walked to the open window behind her chair and took a deep whiff of clean, unscented mountain air. By keeping his nose pressed to the screen, he managed to keep from sneezing