Page 14 of Bed and Breakup (Dial Delights #15)

Robin

My alarm goes off bright and early on Tuesday morning.

Now that I’ve got a workable cooking space set up, I actually have something to wake up for.

The savory stuffed crêpes I made yesterday turned out pretty great, once I got the hang of the heat settings on the portable cooktop.

So what if I’m not menu planning for a new restaurant?

Maybe I’ll get a guest spot on a TV series soon.

Or perhaps I can sell a recipe to The New York Times . The sky’s the limit.

And if me bustling around in my makeshift kitchen at dawn annoys Molly? Even better. She didn’t say a word about it yesterday evening. That’s how I know I really got to her. There’s something delicious about pissing her off again after all these years.

I roll out of bed, my head foggy. When I lived in the inn before, I was always up and at ’em before the sun.

Serving gourmet breakfasts was my whole purpose in life.

Or at least it was once we had staff to deal with guest check-ins and room cleaning and whatnot.

My schedule didn’t change much when I opened Robin’s Egg in Portland afterward; I had to be in the kitchen by four a.m. to get dough rising and pastries baking.

Being a morning person worked out with my TV appearances too, since call time was often absurdly early.

But when I opened Kindling, it was the first time in years I had the chance to sleep in.

I embraced nightlife. If I was up at four a.m. , it was because I was still out unwinding after the dinner shift.

Maybe eventually I’ll get back in the habit of waking up early.

But right now, I feel like a slug. I practically crawl to the en suite bathroom and pee without turning on the lights.

After ripping off my undies and the old, oversize Toad Suck Daze tee I use as a sleep shirt, I pull back the shower curtain to turn on the water and gasp.

I whip it right back into place. Surely I didn’t just see what I thought I saw. There’s no way. It’s my half-asleep brain playing tricks on me.

I turn on the light, my heart racing, and blink a few times to focus my eyes. Chill, Robin, I tell myself silently. Nothing is there.

Gathering my courage, I push the curtain back again, then let out a terrified yelp, jumping several inches off the ground.

Covering my eyes with one hand and my boobs with the other (since everything is scarier when you’re naked), I try to logic my way out of this.

It’s a toy, I think. It’s not haunted by the ghost of a Victorian child.

It’s just some porcelain and fabric and creepy glass eyeballs and fake hair. God, I hope it’s fake hair.

I peek through my fingers, hoping the doll has somehow disappeared during my inner pep talk.

But no, it’s still there, perched eerily on the ledge of the tub against the wall.

It’s got a faded, lacy green dress, a mass of blond ringlets topped with a white bonnet, and big, unblinking blue eyes that, although of course I know better, appear to be staring right into my very soul and thinking about sucking it out of me.

Its head is at a jaunty angle and, oh god, is that a crack across its cheek that’s been glued back together?

Unable to survive its cold stare for another moment, I draw the shower curtain and back out of the bathroom slowly.

My rational brain knows that this has to be Molly’s doing.

She’s the only person who knows about my phobia, and I always had a lurking suspicion that she didn’t actually take the decorations from Miss Addy’s doll room to the antique store like I asked, considering she was in the middle of retiling all the bathrooms. She also happens to have a motive for trying to scare me off.

My irrational brain, meanwhile, is saying, That doll is going to cast a dark magic spell to make you trade bodies and then throw the porcelain version of you out the window so your very real brain is smashed on the sidewalk. Run. Run as fast as you can.

I tell my irrational brain to get the fuck out of here and refocus my adrenaline rush on Molly. How dare she take advantage of my most secret fear? I need to disrupt her REM cycle immediately.

I pull my shirt and a fresh pair of underwear on and stomp to the hallway.

I rip open the door, ready to give Molly a piece of my mind, and hoooooly shit there’s another one right there, sitting on the hardwood floor of the hallway outside of my room like it was waiting for me.

It’s wearing a striped nautical outfit, and its shiny brown hair starts disturbingly far back, making it somehow look like a balding middle-aged man trapped in a young girl’s body.

Before I can think about what I’m doing, I kick it out of the way like it’s a ticking time bomb, then run in the other direction, taking the stairs to the third floor two at a time, my fury and fear reaching an all-time high.

I’m preparing to yell Molly’s name when an unearthly screech leaves my mouth.

They’re… everywhere. The whole landing is covered with dolls. A clown-faced one. Another in a rain jacket with an umbrella. A matching cowgirl-and-cowboy set. There are at least a dozen, all turned to face the top of the stairs like a highly attentive audience of demons who feed off my fear.

I’m blurting out a string of curse words, some of which I might have just invented, when Molly cracks open the door to the Snapdragon Room with a mischievous glint in her eye.

“Wurdaflockarjoosinty,” I spit out, not even sure what I was trying to say but shaking so hard the floor under me is creaking, my eyes jumping from doll to doll, my pulse pounding in my ears.

Realizing I’m on the verge of a full-blown panic attack, Molly’s expression turns from glee to concern. “Jesus, Rob,” she says as Marmalade appears behind her, stretching and then walking toward me through the crowd of dolls. “Breathe. They’re just toys.”

I’ve backed myself all the way against the wall, not on purpose. Pressing my palms against my eyes, I say, “Make them stop looking at me like that with their soul-sucking eyes and their gremlin smiles.”

“I will, one sec.” I hear Molly’s footsteps, but I can’t look. That sight is already going to haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life.

“Okay, you’re good,” she says after a moment, but how can I trust her? Closer now, Molly’s voice says, “It’s just me.” I feel her fingers brush against my wrists, then gently pull my hands from my face. “They’re covered, see?”

I cautiously look to see that Molly has pulled a sheet from her bed and thrown it over the dolls.

That’s a little better, although irrational brain is screeching that the monsters are still there, even if I can’t see them.

My body doesn’t know what to do with all this adrenaline, so as I accept the fact that the dolls aren’t a threat, my fear does a quick pivot into rage.

“What the fuck, Molly?” I say, pulling away from her grasp. Even though I can tell she’s trying to help me now, I wouldn’t need comforting if it weren’t for her prank. “I know you don’t want me to be here, but are you trying to kill me?”

Molly steps back. “It was supposed to be a joke.”

“A joke?” I say. “You know how much dolls freak me out. This is straight-up cruel.”

“I said I’m sorry, okay?” Molly says, her tone switching from soothing to defensive. “I get it. I went too far. Kind of like you took it too far by taking over the whole first floor without asking me.”

“Which I wouldn’t have had to do if you’d stayed out of my kitchen,” I fire back. “And that’s not even close to deliberately triggering my worst fears.”

“They’re just dolls, Rob!” she yells. “Not rattlesnakes!”

“Get rid of them. Right now,” I demand.

Molly puts her hands on her hips. “Only if you get rid of all the cooking stuff in the dining room.”

Both of us narrow our eyes, daring the other to fold first. And then, at the same moment, our gazes shift to look below each other’s faces and we realize we’re half naked.

I’m in my sleep shirt and neon green briefs.

She’s wearing a short robe with navy pinstripes that falls barely below her hips, hanging open to reveal a black sports bra and bikini-cut underwear.

Even as I try to avoid looking at her, I get caught on a colorful set of flowers painted across her chest beneath her clavicle, a tattoo I don’t recognize.

She must have gotten it after I left for Portland.

I spot some bees and honeycomb partially showing over the top of her panties.

Her upper thighs are ringed with a stained-glass pattern.

I have the bizarre urge to peel off her robe and find out what other art is hiding under there.

I glance up toward her face to see she’s just as distracted by my body, her eyes taking in the screen-printed logo across my breasts, trailing down to my bare thighs.

Suddenly self-conscious, I tug down the hem of my shirt. The motion seems to snap Molly out of it too, because she pulls her robe together in the front and crosses her arms.

“I want the dolls out of the house,” I demand again, trying to forget about all of Molly’s skin, right there in front of me, almost within reach.

“Then move your kitchen setup to the penthouse.”

“The…penthouse?” I say, surprised by the idea.

“It has a sink,” she says. “And a small fridge and oven. It makes way more sense than the middle of the main floor.”

I’d completely forgotten about the kitchenette in our old apartment.

Or maybe I hadn’t so much forgotten it as intentionally pushed it out of mind.

From the moment I returned to the Hummingbird, I put mental Caution, Do Not Enter tape around that whole floor, assuming the air up there was still toxic from all the fighting Molly and I did before I left.

Or, even worse, that seeing it could trigger a flood of memories about the good days.

And seeing Molly like this, half-dressed with pillow creases on her cheek and teal-streaked hair in a frizzy bird’s nest atop her head, already has me hella confused.

“I’ll think about it,” I concede. “But only if the dolls disappear, like, right now.”

“Fine.” Molly shifts from one bare foot to the other.

It seems like she’s waiting for me to go downstairs first, but I haven’t forgotten about that creepy sailor doll outside my door.

No way am I going near that thing again.

Recognizing my refusal to budge, Molly rolls her eyes and bends down to gather up the dolls in the bundle of sheets.

Her robe shifts up, and before I can avert my eyes from possibly seeing the demon toys as she knots the sheet into a bundle, my gaze snags on the stained-glass tattoos at the top of her thighs.

God, I’m even more drawn to her body at thirty-five than when we met at twenty-two.

But I won’t let my distraction keep me from getting back at Molly for the doll thing—which is easier to say once I’m on the second floor and she’s out of sight. This was an act of war.