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“Take what you said back,” I demanded.

“No.”

“Where’s my ring?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. You clearly have it out for Charles, so it makes sense you’d try to sabotage our wedding by—”

“I’ve had enough,” he spat, popping to his feet. “Call me when you come to your senses. C’mon, Mutt.”

Paisley looked at me with wide, shimmering eyes.

“Go,” I said. “Keep him out of trouble.”

She wasted no time scampering after him as Charles crossed the room and opened the sliding door, allowing both animals to disappear into the night.

“It’s really not here, is it?” I said, staring hatefully at my bare ring finger. How had I lived with it like this for so long? Darn it, I never should have taken that ring off.

“Let’s go check in with reception,” Charles suggested, moving toward the wooden door on the other side of our room. At least it was easy to open from the inside. “I saw Millicent was still up when I came through that way.”

Sure enough, Millicent sat in her chair with her book. At this point, I had to question whether our proprietress was, indeed, an art installation and not a businesswoman.

“Excuse me?” I said, stopping in front of her.

She held up a finger and continued reading for at least a minute before she finally raised her eyes to meet mine.“Yes?” Her eyes were wide, her expression mostly blank.

“Has anyone turned in a ring for the lost and found?”

“We don’t have a lost and found,” she replied with no follow-up questions and no hint of apology.

The fluffy orange cat hopped up onto a nearby windowsill to glare at me and Charles. Maybe all my time with Octo-Cat had made me cynical, or maybe I was still miffed about him bullying little Paisley, but something seemed off about him.

“Oh. Well, I have a lost item. A pretty important one at that.”

“I’ll let you know if anything turns up,” Millicent said, tucking an orange curl behind her ear and revealing an earring I hadn’t noticed her wearing before—a big dangly one with a little gemmed tassel.

The Persian’s eyes zoomed toward the gaudy piece of costume jewelry, and he wiggled his behind as if to attack.

“Not now, Louis,” the lady told him. He growled and ran across the room to hide. Poor cat must’ve been starved for stimulation if he got so worked up over earrings.

“Yeah, well, thanks for your help,” I mumbled, wondering if Millicent would even remember having our conversation.

“Oh, while we have you,” Charles interjected, waving his hand in front of her.

Millicent groaned and tore her eyes from the book a second time.“What is it now?”

“There seems to be a problem with the door to our room.”

She bobbed her head and shifted her jaw.“Uh-huh. Which one?”

“Both, actually,” he said with a chuckle. “One doesn’t open, and the other doesn’t close.”

“Oh, right. I put you in the Shoreline suite. The locksmith should be here early next week to fix both of them. I wasn’t going to book anyone in until that was taken care of, but then you two showed up with your little problem, and well, I had to do something to set it right.”

Charles’s brow furrowed. I could see he was about to go into full-on lawyer mode if I didn’t do something fast. “But—”

“Yup! Okay, thanks,” I said, grabbing him by the hand and leading him back around outside.

“I don’t think she likes us very much,” he said once we were both outdoors and out of earshot.

“Who would?” a nasty voice spat.

I looked around and found the big, orange Persian from earlier slinking by. Louis, that was the little scamp’s name.

I tamped down my urge to scold him like I would whenever Octo-Cat took up an attitude with me and refocused my attention on Charles.

“Care for a moonlight walk on the beach?” he said, waggling his brows.

“I thought you’d never ask,” I said, falling into step beside him as we strolled outside and headed for the water.

“This would have probably been a better proposal than the RV, huh?”

“I liked your proposal,” I said, stretching up to give him a quick kiss.

“If you liked that, you’ll really like this. I’m pretty sure I found your grandmother.”

I gasped.“Really? Where?” It’s not that this news surprised me. It just made me so, so happy.

“Oh, no no no,” he tsked playfully. “You don’t get to jump to the end of the journey after sending me on that seagull chase.”

He moved to regale me with tales of his heroic exploits as he tooled all around the Katahdin area, trying to make heads and tails of Bravo’s directions. “I may have had to sample a few different fries to help me determine which were the good ones. Well, according to a seagull, anyway.”

“Eww, you ate out of the dumpster?”

He fixed me with a wounded expression.“Drive-thru, but thanks for assuming that.”

We both laughed for a good long while as we slowly moved along the beach, hand in hand beneath the night sky.

Everything would be okay. I knew it then. I’m pretty sure I’d known it this whole time, but it was easy to forget when my nerves got the best of me.

With Charles at my side, I could conquer anything. We’d meet my grandmother and find my ring.

We just had to take one thing at a time.