The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales by Arthur Conan Doyle (books for 7th graders .txt) 📕

one of the glasses, and then swallowed half the contents before topping it off.

Shedding his slacks and dress shirt, he traded them for a pair of gym shorts and a white T-shirt, then wandered over to the French doors on the other side of the room and pulled them open. A blast of fresh, non-city air greeted him. It was warm, not surprising given it was June, but it wasn’t sticky or uncomfortably hot.

His room was on the second floor of an old farmhouse that overlooked gently rolling hills lined with grapevines. Beyond the greenery, he could see Grand Traverse Bay. As it was after dark, the water appeared pitch black, but he knew, during the daytime, it sparkled and shimmered like it was made of blue diamonds.

He had planned to rent a boat, tool around the lake for the day with his newly minted wife. Hmm, he needed to decide whether to carry through with that plan, now that he was alone.

Leo had never vacationed solo before. There had always been a companion, whether he wanted to be with that person or not.

Funny that he wasn’t even upset that he was, for the first time in his adult life, alone.

He glanced down, into a courtyard filled with flowers and bushes and discrete landscape lighting, and a lovely dark-haired woman who sat alone at a wrought iron table, a cheese platter and a bottle of wine laid out before her. Her hair was in a ponytail, and she had huge hater-blocker sunglasses hiding half her face, despite the fact that it was almost eleven o’clock in the evening and the sun had set a while ago.

She wore a loose-fitting dress that looked like it was made of T-shirt material, and had a pair of flip-flops adorned with fake gems on her feet. At least, he assumed they were fake, although maybe she was a movie star with money to burn and they were real. Who the hell knew?

The pleasantly plump lady who had checked him in a short time ago stepped out of the building and walked over to the brunette. They chatted for a few moments, and then the inn’s proprietor disappeared again.

He watched for a while, finishing his second glass of sparkling wine, but no one joined the pretty woman. Was it possible she was here alone as well? What were the odds?

Hell, for all he knew, they were excellent odds. Outside of business dealings, Leo was bad about paying attention to the world around him. If he had been more focused, he surely would have realized his fiancée had been fucking his errant brother’s best friend.

He was certainly embarrassed, but he wasn’t about to spend this impromptu solo vacation moping and feeling sorry for himself.

Also, why should it be solo? He was beholden to no one; after walking in on Bridgette bent over a table in the bride’s room at the church, getting pounded by some guy who wasn’t her soon-to-be husband, Leo had every right to head downstairs and make friends with the beautiful and enticingly casual brunette.

He filled his glass again, then snagged the bottle and the other flute and headed downstairs.

“Oh, hello, Mr. Beneventi,” Maureen, the owner of the B&B, greeted him as he strode through the dining room toward the courtyard. “How is your room? Everything to your liking?”

Except for the absence of another body to warm the bed, but honestly, that wasn’t a bad thing. Bridgette had been something of a dead fish fuck anyway. Although, after witnessing how animated she was with Davit, it was obvious the woman simply hadn’t been attracted to Leo. If he gave a shit what other people thought, he might be embarrassed over that.

He was an attractive guy, and he liked to think he had a fun personality. And if that weren’t enough, he was pretty fucking wealthy, although that wasn’t something he liked to throw around because it attracted people like, well, Bridgette.

What he wasn’t was a bad boy, which was Bridgette’s excuse for taking it up the ass from a guy who wasn’t her betrothed, in the church, during her wedding rehearsal.

“The flower petals and champagne were a nice touch,” he said, tongue-in-cheek, and then winced when his hostess’s face practically collapsed.

“I’m so sorry. I simply adjusted the reservation date, not the notes, and my housekeeper had already—”

He waved the bottle, cutting off her apology. “It’s fine, Maureen, seriously. Besides, this sparkling wine more than makes up for it. Is it local?”

She nodded, her cheeks pinking. “It’s one of our best sellers.”

“As it should be. Tell me, that absolutely lovely woman out there, is she here alone too?”

Maureen glanced out the glass door and nodded. “She is. And she really is quite lovely. Seems sad, though.” She turned back to him, her eyes shining. “Maybe you can change that.”

Leo chuckled. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I was supposed to be here with my new wife, remember? The last thing I need is to jump into another relationship right now. I was just thinking in terms of someone to help me finish this bottle.”

“Go. Offer to share.” Maureen made a shooing motion with her hands. “I’ll cut up some fruit, find a little chocolate and bring it out to you.”

Fruit and chocolate? Did she miss the part about not being interested in starting up another relationship? Shaking his head, Leo went outside.

The brunette glanced up, but it was hard to judge her reaction to him standing there under the drooping branches of a willow tree, because those glasses legitimately covered half her face. As she started to turn her head back to her table, he gave the bottle a little shake.

“Care to share?”

She didn’t react. She just sat there, unmoving. It was unnerving, to say the least. Luckily, Leo wasn’t afraid of rejection, and he’d