Shore Lights Read Free Page B

over some surprisingly stiff competition from someone named FireGuy. You wouldn’t think there would be so much action over a dented teapot, but she’d had to raise her maximum bid twice in the last hour just to stay in the game.
    The computer screen went blank. The hard drive grumbled, then groaned. She held her breath until the screen refreshed itself and her new bid appeared.
    â€œOkay,” she said, grinning at her reflection. “That’s more like it.” Now all she had to do was ignore the fact that her mother was lurking in the hallway like your average peeping Tom and keep her mind on making sure that old samovar was waiting for Hannah under the tree on Christmas morning.
    Priscilla pawed at the door. She looked up at Maddy with limpid brown eyes, then yipped one of those high-pitched poodle yips capable of breaking juice glasses two towns over.
    â€œYes, I know she’s been standing out there for the last ten minutes, Priscilla, and no, I don’t know why.”
    The door swung open on cue.
    â€œVery funny,” Rose said, her cheeks stained bright red. “I was polishing the hall table, for your information.”
    â€œI polished it yesterday,” Maddy said, one eye locked onto her computer screen.
    â€œWe polish daily around here these days,” her mother said. The usual edge to her words was absent. “The paying customers expect it.”
    Maddy forced herself to relax. “I have a lot to learn about being an innkeeper. I bumped into the Loewensteins in the upper hallway last night and almost lost five years of my life.”
    â€œYou’ll get used to it.” Rose hesitated, then stepped into the room. She smelled like Pledge and Chanel No. 5, a combination that suited her mother down to the ground. “I don’t want to interrupt you if you’re working on the Web site.”
    Maddy reached for the mouse to click over to a different, safer screen, but she wasn’t quick enough. Her mother leaned over her shoulder and peered at the image and the accompanying information.
    â€œFor Hannah?” Rose asked.
    Maddy nodded, wishing she had faster fingers or a less curious mother. Asking for both might have been tempting the gods. “You know how she is about Aladdin. The second I saw this, I thought it would make a perfect magic lamp.”
    â€œI thought you’d finished Christmas shopping for Hannah.”
    â€œI thought so, too, but she came home bubbling about a magic lamp she saw in a coloring book at school and—well, it’s Christmas and she’s my only child.” She looked up at her mother. “You know how it is.” Didn’t you feel that way when I was little? Didn’t you want to gather up the stars and pour them into my Christmas stocking?
    â€œYou spoil that child.”
    â€œShe deserves a little spoiling. She’s had a tough year.”
    â€œThat teapot won’t change anything.”
    Maddy had the mouse in such a death grip that she was surprised it didn’t squeak in surrender. “I think I know what’s best for my child.” How could one five-foot-tall woman reduce her adult daughter to the emotional level of a sulky teenager just by breathing?
    â€œI thought she had forgotten all about Aladdin.”
    â€œI don’t know what gave you that idea.”
    â€œShe’s too old for this kind of make-believe.”
    â€œI suppose you would have advised Stephen King to get his head out of the clouds, too.”
    â€œWhat’s that supposed to mean?”
    Keep your mouth closed, Maddy. For once in your life, just shut up .
    She peered more closely at the computer screen in front of her and prayed Rose would take the hint. You spend three hours wrestling with cascading style sheets for the Inn’s new Web site and there was no sign of the boss lady, but the second you flip to Shoreline Auctions, she appeared like magic right over your shoulder.
    Well, there was