Tantalizing Temptations (Inn Love 1 - England)

Chapter 2

Samantha woke with a start, clawing at the tangled sheet and blinking in disorientation.

It took her a long moment to realize that she was neither at the dingy room in London nor at her parents' overly organized place.

Gentle sunlight filtered through heavy curtains frayed and faded with time, patterned in flowers of indiscernible color. She could hear a bird's trilling call, a second bird answered it from farther away. When she sat up in the queen-size bed, she was surrounded by the soapy smell of clean linen. In the corner stood a sturdy wardrobe that looked as if it had weathered at least two centuries, and the other corner held a dressing table with a gilded mirror and a claw-footed stool with a seat of scuffed satin.

She smiled tentatively, still not sure whether she hadn't just slithered from one dream into another.

But when she dipped a foot out of the bed, the wood felt cool and real enough beneath her bare toes. She turned to the left and looked at her baby. Annie was sleeping on her stomach, Mister Meow clutched tightly in one arm, the other arm close to her face with her thumb barely an inch away from her mouth.

Overcome with feelings, Samantha reached out and smoothed some hair away from her daughter's angelic face. She would treasure every single peaceful moment, she vowed to herself. This was her new life, and she'd do right by it, by herself, by her child. No more floundering and half-baked solutions. If there was a problem, she'd attack at the root. And she'd make sure she never took anything for granted again.

A glance at the old-fashioned clock on the bedside table told her she'd slept longer than she'd planned, but it was barely eight.

Inhaling the clean air with hints of dust and flowers, she got out of bed and padded to the window. Drawing back the curtain, she stared at miles and miles of green stretching out until they seemed to melt right into the white-blue of the sky.

Samantha knew that the Lake District—sometimes called the Lakeland or simply the Lakes—was one of England's most beautiful vacation destinations. With its mountains called 'fells', its name-giving lakes and pristine forests, the region within the county of Cumbria contained England's highest mountain as well as its longest and deepest bodies of water. She had read that it encompassed an area of more than 900 square miles and was popular as a hiking destination. With moorland and woodlands, animals such as fell ponies, deer and red kites, as well as quaint villages and fertile valleys, the Lake District appealed to people from all walks of life—and she could see why even without having explored it much yet. Yearly, up to twelve million visitors found their way here, and some of them would hopefully consider booking this bed & breakfast once it was up and running. Especially cultural tourism was thought to be on the rise—which wasn't a surprise, given the Lakeland's links to various artists and writers. Williams Wordsworth's Guide to the Lake was something many were familiar with, Samantha included.

She smiled. What a difference this was to the posh modern apartment complexes she'd seen out of her window for the past five years. She looked her fill of the rolling meadows interrupted only by trees and the occasional farmhouse, remembered snatches of a dream where she'd been running through one of these fields, wearing something loose and summery and threading her hands through the waist-high grass. She'd dreamed of other things too, she recalled now. A basket full of white, fluffy kittens. Every time she'd picked one of the wriggling cuties up to cuddle it, another one had poked its head out and meowed. And there'd been a man with eyes bluer than blue and huge yet gentle hands, beckoning her to dance in the rain with him.

Samantha shook herself. Why dwell on dreams? Most of the time, they held no meaning anyway. And dreaming—at night and during the day—had brought her nothing but misery so far.