From foes to friends to…forever?

Screenwriter Wyatt Taylor can’t let his dying father’s work on a book about century-old Ladera Inn by the Sea come to naught, even if fulfilling that promise means going toe-to-toe with the innkeeper’s spitfire daughter. His history with Alexandra Roman dates back to a competitive childhood rivalry, so he expects more of the same animosity. He must really be grieving to be caught off guard by Alex’s beauty and compassion.

For Alex’s part, working with Wyatt is unfamiliar territory. The sooner she helps him realize his father’s dream the sooner he’ll be on his way and she can get back to caring for her family. Yet all it takes is one unexpected kiss to teach her that sometimes change can be for the better. Much better.

“How about that? We must have set some kind of record.”

“A record?” he asked.

Alex nodded. “We’ve been talking for fifteen minutes and haven’t argued yet.”

Wyatt laughed, realizing she was right. “I’d better leave then, before the moment is ruined.” Amusement played along his lips.

“Good idea.”

“More agreement. This is some kind of record,” he marveled. He hesitated, overcome by bittersweet emotion before adding, “Too bad my dad’s not around to see it.”

Alex ached for his loss—and for her own. “Yes, too bad,” she echoed sadly.

Looking back, Wyatt wasn’t sure just what came over him. A wave of gratitude, no doubt. That and the devastating assaults of sorrow he was experiencing mingled together, temporarily taking away his ability to cope, to maintain a tight rein over himself.

It was as good an excuse as any.

Leaning forward, he placed his hand on her shoulder and then lightly brushed his lips against hers….

Dear Reader,

Welcome to a brand-new line and a brand-new family. I’m proud to be part of the launch of Harlequin Heartwarming originals.

This exciting new series inspired me to create the world of these four sisters helping their father run the inn that has been in their family for over 100 years.

I’ve often wondered what it might be like to run a bed-and-breakfast inn, something far more intimate than a hotel and a great deal more structured than, say, a frat house or hosting a group of relatives for the holidays. What sort of people would willingly do that? What kind of history would the inn that they’re running have? Would it be brand-new, entrenched in the history of the area, or—? I decided to arm myself with several books describing the various bed-and-breakfast inns of this country, then progressed to the internet for more recent photos of several of these places. What you have before you is the result, detailing life in one such inn for one such family. I hope you enjoy the result and that you all get a chance to someday take a little time and spend a weekend or so in a bed-and-breakfast inn—at the very least, having someone serve you a homemade breakfast and make your bed for you would be a pleasant change from your everyday life.

As always, I thank you for taking the time to read my book, and from the bottom of my heart I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

All the best,

Marie Ferrarella

Innkeeper’s Daughter

USA TODAY Bestselling Author

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARIE FERRARELLA

earned a master’s degree in Shakespearean comedy and, perhaps as a result, her writing is distinguished by humor and natural dialogue. This RITA® Award-winning author’s goal is to entertain and to make people laugh and feel good. She has written over 240 books for Harlequin/Silhouette, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide and have been translated into Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Polish, Japanese and Korean. As of January 2013, she has been published by Harlequin for thirty years.

To

Marsha Zinberg,

with

deep affection

and respect

Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

THE PATH FROM the back of the Ladera-by-the-Sea Inn to the small, private family cemetery seemed longer somehow today. Even though, as the inn’s current owner and head of the Roman family, he’d walked it countless times, especially in the twelve years since his Amy had been laid to rest. He came here whenever he wanted to share a moment or to just feel close to his late wife. To remember a time when he and Amy used to walk hand in hand here, content just to listen to the sound of the waves caressing the shore.

Today it was to share the news he’d just received by phone, and his heartache.

Richard stood in front of his wife’s tombstone the way he had so many countless times before, searching for a way to begin, to pour out what was in his heart without breaking down. He needed to hold himself together, to remain strong because he wasn’t the only one who mattered, here.

His daughters didn’t know yet, didn’t know that the man they had always known and loved as Uncle Dan was gone.

“I guess you know, don’t you?” Richard said to his wife, staring at her name on the tombstone, his voice throbbing with emotion though it was hardly above a whisper. “You’re going to have company soon. He’s finally gone.”

For a moment he was almost overwhelmed by the dark sadness he felt and had to pause before continuing.

“My best friend died last night at 10:05. I know it’s better this way, better for him, because he won’t be hurting anymore. I know it got pretty bad toward the end, even though he wouldn’t admit it. I should be happy for him, but he left this world far too soon and I feel so incredibly alone.

“Oh, I know, I know,” Richard continued, anticipating exactly what his wife would have said if she were the one right in front of him instead of her tombstone. “I’ve got the girls and I love them all dearly, but it’s just...not the same thing. They’re all fine, independent young women now and I don’t know what I’d do without them, but...I don’t share the same history with them as I did with Dan.” He pressed his lips together, taking a deep breath. “As I did with you.”

He sighed. Granted, sometimes he hadn’t seen Dan for months at a time because Dan’s work had taken him all over the world, but he’d always been able to reach his best friend by phone. Or at least almost always.

Dan was also the very last fragment he had left of Amy. He and Dan had known each other since childhood, which meant Dan had also become Amy’s friend long before Richard had married her.

In losing Dan, he’d lost another piece of Amy.

“Dan had this crazy idea....” A sad smile creased his lips. “You know how he always hoped that his Wyatt and our Alex would get married someday? And I told him it was never going to happen because those two would never stop locking horns long enough to fall in love? Well, he came up with a plan shortly after he was diagnosed with that awful disease. He didn’t live long enough to watch it bear fruit, but he made sure he launched it. Even in his weakened state, he managed to drive himself from Southern California north more than two hours to Hollywood last week—only a week before he died.... I don’t know how he did it.”

Richard shut his eyes, shook his head.

“Poor Wyatt thought his dad was coming to spend a few days with him—that he’d get to show him an insider’s view of Hollywood—before they both drove here for their annual vacation at the inn. Wyatt told me over the phone he was stunned when he saw Dan’s deterioriated condition. More stunned, he said, when his dad told him he was going to the hospital, that he was dying...and that he wanted to ask him for one last favor.”

Richard knew the disease had moved fast, but still, he couldn’t imagine how difficult it would be for a father to keep it from his only son until the week before he died.

A sad smile continued to play on his lips. “Dan left it up to me to stand on the sidelines like some sort of invisible puppeteer and see it through.” He laughed then, a small, aching laugh as he shook his head. “Dan could always get me to do anything he wanted. He had that way with people.”

Richard glanced over his shoulder at the inn that had been in his family for generations. “I’d better be getting back. Wyatt’s coming to tell me the news of his dad’s passing. He isn’t aware that I already know.”

He and Wyatt had spoken after Wyatt had helped Dan check into the hospital a few days ago. But it was Dan’s attending physician who had phoned Richard last night. At 10:05 precisely. Leaving nothing to chance, Dan had given the doctor instructions to alert Richard the moment he took his last breath.

“I’ll keep you posted, Amy,” Richard promised. Before turning to walk up to the inn, he added, “I love you.... And if you have any influence up there, get someone to help Alex open herself to the notion of doing something other than working. After Dan’s deathbed wish, we’re going to need all the help we can get down here. If his plan’s going to work.”

Taking another deep breath as he looked up toward the inn, Richard started back.

CHAPTER ONE

THE OLD VICTORIAN-STYLE bed-and-breakfast inn played a part in Alexandra Roman’s earliest memories.

Majestic and regal, the Wedgwood blue-and-white building had seen its share of history. A more compact version had been standing there long before she was born and, Alex had no doubt, the inn would continue to be there long after she was gone.

Unless, of course, it was torn down for having been transformed into a nauseating eyesore because her father, in one of his never-ending bouts of kindheartedness, had given the go-ahead to a fast-talking general contractor whose taste, she was more than certain, began and ended in his mouth.

Periodically, Ladera-by-the-Sea, the 119-year-old bed-and-breakfast Alex’s father owned and ran, underwent renovations. Those renovations either involved expansion—which took place when business was booming—or inevitable repairs as they became necessary.

Sometimes both.

This time, they seemed to also involve a contractor who admittedly spoke only one language—English—but for some reason, did not seem to understand the word “no.” No matter how many times she repeated it.

Or how loudly.

When J. D. Clarke smiled, it always looked like a sneer to her—and he was smiling now. However, at this point, the smile—in any form—was wearing a little thin.

As thin as Alex’s patience.

Taking off the baseball cap that pledged his allegiance to the San Diego Padres, Clarke wiped his damp brow, then repositioned the cap on his completely hairless head.

“Look, trust me, honey, you’re gonna love the changes. All we need to do is knock out that wall...” He pointed vaguely in the direction of the load-bearing wall that separated the reception area from the dining room. “And then you’ll have—”

“What I’ll have is a huge gaping hole I not only will not ‘love’ but also definitely don’t want.” Alex narrowed her sharp blue eyes as she did her best not to glare at a man she found to be incredibly annoying. “Do you even realize that’s a load-bearing wall?” she questioned. Not leaving him time to answer, Alex continued her verbal assault to get him to back off. “You’re not knocking out anything. I am not your ‘honey.’ And I have no reason to trust you since you won’t listen to reason and seem to have only half the attention span of a mentally challenged striped shoelace.”

Clarke stared at her as he obviously attempted to untangle her last sentence so he could strike it down. But he failed. What he didn’t fail at was displaying his contempt for her and her opinion. His smile was now very much a sneer.

“Look, lady, your father told me to use my judgment—”

Alex cut him short before Clarke could get going. “That was when my father believed you had some, which, looking at those scribbles you showed me that you call ‘plans’—” she waved at the papers he had spread out on the reception desk “—you clearly do not.”

The smile/sneer completely vanished, replaced by an angry scowl. “I intended to show these to your father before you cornered me,” he accused her. “And if you think I’m just going to stand here and be insulted—”

“No,” she informed him sweetly. “What I think is that you and your oversize ego should be getting ready to leave now. I’m really hoping I’m right about that.”

There was neither patience nor friendliness in her voice. Those had become casualties in the last volley of words. It never ceased to amaze her how her father could see the good in everyone, including someone who was so obviously a con artist. Her father definitely belonged in a gentler, kinder era. Possibly the era that had seen the original construction of the building they were presently living in and running as an inn.

Her father also seemed to be preoccupied lately. Something was bothering him, which would account for why he’d agreed to contract this renovator without a more detailed quote and then approve his renovation plans after the fact. That meant it was up to her to make sure the contractor was reined in—or, in this case, sent packing.

She saw it as her job to protect her father. The way she had from the moment her mother had died.

His chunky legs spread wide apart, Clarke took a stance that fairly shouted, “I’m not going anywhere.” His words reinforced his body language.

“I take my orders from your father,” the contractor said haughtily, as if that was going to make her instantly retreat.

The smile that curved Alex’s mouth had no humor behind it. “That might be true. However, I’m the one who writes all the checks, Mr. Clarke. You want to get paid, you either agree to work with me—and I do not approve of this particular set of renovation plans—or you take your ‘helpers’—you can’t miss them, they’re the ones who have been doing an incredible imitation of ‘still life’ around the inn for the past week and a half—and your scribbled cartoons, and leave. Now.” Her smile, no more genuine than Clarke’s, returned. “The choice is yours.”

J. D. Clarke scowled at the tall, willowy blonde with the viper tongue, clearly weighing his options.

She could almost read his thoughts. She was the owner’s daughter, but she didn’t exactly pose a physical threat to him. For a moment, Alex suspected he might actually try to physically confront her. She almost welcomed the idea. Then she’d show him precisely what kind of physical threat she could prove to be. Bring it on, guy!

Before he could take a step, however, Dorothy came into the reception area. Alex saw the older woman at the same time the contractor did. Their head housekeeper was staring straight at the man and Dorothy didn’t look any friendlier than she must’ve. Dorothy, with her gray hair pulled back, could appear rather formidable when she wanted to. And she had the unquestioning loyalty of a German shepherd to the Roman family, even though, when it came to animals, she resembled a Saint Bernard a lot more than she did a German shepherd. A rather large Saint Bernard.

Her very body language announced just whose side, sight unseen, she was taking.

“Is there a problem, Miss Alex?” she asked, her deep gray eyes fixed on Clarke. She made no attempt to hide her contempt. Time and again, thought Alex, she had demonstrated she had no use for people who didn’t show the proper respect for her family.

She shook her head. “No, no problem, Dorothy. Right, Mr. Clarke?” she asked pointedly, sparing the man a quick glance.

“Right.” The contractor bit off and spat out the word as if it had been dipped in sardine oil that had gone bad months ago.

Muttering under his breath about having to deal with crazy women, Clarke collected his papers that illustrated the new—and pricey—“vision” he had for the inn, tucked them under his arm and marched toward the front door.

“I’m still sending you a bill,” he declared, tossing the words over his shoulder as he paused for a beat at the threshold to the inn.

“And I’ll be sure to look it over closely,” Alex informed him amiably.

“Your father should have had sons,” Clarke said as if he was uttering a curse. With that, he stomped out of the building.

He certainly wanted them, Alex couldn’t help thinking. Her expression remained unchanged, giving no hint to her thoughts or that the disgruntled contractor had managed, through sheer dumb luck, to hit her exactly where she lived. It was a sore spot for her.

Dorothy took a step forward, her shoulders tensed, braced. Everything about her declared that she intended to make the man literally eat his words or cough up a serious apology. But Alex put a hand out to stop the woman before Dorothy could go after the contractor.

Instead she shook her head at Dorothy and raised her voice to call after the departing man, “I’ll pass that along to him, Mr. Clarke. I’m sure my father will give your comment all the attention it deserves.”

Now out of sight, they could hear Clarke gathering his team as he stormed off.

Dorothy turned and studied her. The woman had watched her grow from a gangly, awkward preteen into the poised, self-confident young adult she hoped people saw her as now.... She sure worked hard enough to convey that image.

“Why did you stop me?” she asked. Alex knew that she and her three younger sisters were like daughters to Dorothy, who had no family to call her own. And since their mother’s death, they were even more glad to have Dorothy in their lives. “I just wanted five minutes alone with him.”

Alex laughed, shaking her head. She knew the offer came from the woman’s very large heart, but it was still better not to allow that sort of one-on-one “meeting” to take place.

“That’s four and a half minutes more than he could have handled, Dorothy,” Alex told her with a wink.

Though polite, Dorothy was clearly angry. “He had no right to talk to you like that. He deserved to be put in his place,” she said with feeling.

Alex flashed a smile at the older woman. This time there was absolutely nothing forced about it. Dorothy was one of the good ones. Like her father. “I appreciate you standing by me.”

Dorothy laughed softly, shrugging off the thanks. “Not that you needed it. You fight your own battles well enough. You always have.” Seemingly without realizing it, as she spoke she fisted her hands at her sides. “It’s just that seeing him trying to put you down made me so angry—that fool isn’t good enough to lick your boots.” Dorothy glanced down at her feet. “Or high heels, as the case might be. So he’s gone for good, right?” she asked, just to be certain that there was no need for her to hang around.

“Right,” Alex confirmed. “Seems Clarke had a totally different vision for where the inn should be going than what was established by the family years ago.”

Ladera-by-the-Sea Inn had begun as a modest little five-bedroom home, converted into an inn as an attempt by Ruth Roman, the original owner, to keep a roof over her children’s heads after her husband was brought down by a stray bullet fired during a heated dispute between two other men.

Over the years, as different generations came to helm the inn, more rooms were added. Slowly, more rooms turned into wings, then modest guest houses until the inn seemed to become its own miniature village, but always with a single, distinguished Victorian motif. A motif that Clarke was obviously determined to change, turning the inn into a hodgepodge of old and modern, that would have resembled nothing specific and been part fish, part fowl and all very off-putting.

Clarke had seen it as making a statement. And who knows? Maybe he might even have convinced her father, who didn’t have a strong sense of design. That would have been criminal. Of course, Alex would have been able to convince her dad of that. In her emotional reaction to seeing Clarke’s plans first, she’d just skipped that step.

As far as Alex was concerned, her statement said, “Your services are no longer needed,” in a loud, clear voice.

“That kind always think they know best,” Dorothy sniffed, shaking her head as she looked off in the direction that Clarke had taken. “You can do much better than the likes of him.” She sighed. “Your father’s just too kindhearted, giving anyone work who shows up on his doorstep with a sad story.”

The woman pressed her lips together. She had to know how that sounded. But Alex knew Dorothy hadn’t meant to be critical of her dad, the man she looked up to and respected more than anyone else. “Of course, I shouldn’t talk. If it wasn’t for that wonderful man, heaven only knows where I’d be right now.”

Alex didn’t want Dorothy to dwell on the past, or what had initially brought her, destitute and desperate, to the inn.

“Well, all I know is we’d be lost without you, so there’s no use in speculating about a state of affairs that mercifully never came about.” She squeezed the woman’s hand. “We all love you, Dorothy. You mean the world to us.”

The other woman blushed.

Dorothea O’Hara had been a guest at the inn some twelve years ago. Down on her luck, abandoned by the man she’d given her heart—and her savings—to, she had checked into the inn, wanting to spend one final night somewhere warm and inviting. Before she ended her emotional suffering by taking sleeping pills. After the fact, Dorothy had been quite frank about her intentions, much to the upset of the Romans.

Years later Richard told his daughters he must have subconsciously sensed how unhappy Dorothy had been because something had prompted him to knock on her door that evening and engage her in a conversation that went on for hours.

Newly widowed, he’d talked about his four daughters, about the adjustments all five of them had had to make because of his wife’s sudden passing, about how strange life had seemed to him at first without the woman he loved by his side.

He’d talked about everything and anything until the first rays of the morning sun came into Dorothy’s room.

For Dorothy, dawn had brought with it a realization that she was still alive—and still without options. She confessed to the man she’d been talking to all night that she wasn’t going to be able to pay for her stay.

Embarrassed, she’d offered to work off her tab.

It hadn’t taken long for her to work off the debt. Once she had, Richard told her that if she didn’t have anywhere else to go, he would consider it a personal favor if she stayed on at the inn.

She’d quickly become family. As had some of the other guests at the inn who were initially only passing through.

The inn, Alex firmly believed, was the richer for it.

But there were times, few and far between, when her father made a mistake, a bad judgment call. This latest contractor had been one of those calls.

Christina Roman MacDonald walked in, munching on an apple. Alex knew her sister would have preferred a breakfast pastry—one of her specialties as the inn’s resident chef and one of the most requested items on the breakfast menu. But she was trying to instill healthy eating habits in Ricky, her four-year-old son, and that meant apples rather than pastries.

Swallowing what she’d been chewing, she said, “Hey, I just saw J.D. and his motley crew climbing into that beat-up truck of his. The guy almost ran right over me to get to it.” It wasn’t a complaint, just an observation. “Fastest I’ve seen the lot of them moving since they got here last week.” Cris nodded in the direction of the rear of the inn. “What’s up?”

“Miss Alex’s temper,” Dorothy told her. There was no small note of pride in the woman’s voice. “She finally got fed up with that so-called contractor’s grand plans.”

Leaning forward, the heavyset woman confided in as close to a whisper as she could manage, which meant it could undoubtedly be heard in the center of the closest San Diego shopping center, “No disrespect intended, Miss Alex, but it certainly took you long enough. The man was charging you for breathing—times five, since he was also padding the bill to pay for those five ‘helpers’ of his.”

“Now,” Cris pointed out, “they did work sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Dorothy snorted, “every time your father walked by.”

“Well, the main thing is that they’re gone and we won’t have to put up with them any longer,” Alex said, trying to put an end to the matter. Of course, they still had to deal with the contract her father had signed, but in it her father had outlined specific things he’d wanted done. Clarke’s plans strayed dramatically from the contract. The fact that he’d backed down so easily—without first speaking to her father—clearly told her that she was right.

“Yeah.” Cris nodded, regarding what was left of her apple as if she was seeking the answers to the mysteries of the universe. “Now all you have to do is explain all this to Dad.”

Dorothy waved her hand at the problem, dismissing it. “Mr. Roman’s a saint,” she proclaimed with feeling. “He’ll understand that you were just looking out for him, Miss Alex.”

“Or overriding him,” Cris chimed in with a barely suppressed grin.

“It’s not like that,” Alex protested. “I wasn’t overriding him. If Dad was just a little bit tougher, I wouldn’t have to be so vigilant.” It wasn’t that her father was a pushover or easily hoodwinked, it was just that he saw the best in everyone, even in those who didn’t seem to have a decent bone in their bodies. “There are times when I think that he could just give the inn away if it wasn’t for us.”

“For you,” Cris corrected her pointedly. They all knew that Alex was the fighter, the one who led the cavalry charge if a charge needed to be led. “The rest of us would just let Dad be Dad. I guess what I’m saying is, thanks for handling all that so we don’t have to.” And then she nodded. “He really is just too darn nice for his own good.”

“Who is?” Richard inquired, walking into the reception area and crossing over to join his two eldest daughters. He nodded at the housekeeper. “Morning, Dorothy.”

She could have tried to bury it in rhetoric, but what was the point? Alex thought. She believed in being honest.

“You,” Alex told her father without any hesitation.

He knew that look. For a moment he allowed himself to be sidetracked. What he’d come in to tell his daughters could wait a few minutes. It didn’t change anything, but keeping the news from them even a moment longer was a moment they were spared from dealing with what he had to tell them.

“Why do I get the feeling that my eldest daughter is about to sit me down for a lecture?” he asked with a smile.

Alex shook her head. “No, no lecture, Dad.”

“But she does have some news to pass on,” Cris informed their father when Alex said nothing to follow up her simple denial.

“Oh?” Richard turned to his eldest child. There were times she was so much like her mother, it gave him both pleasure and pain to look at her. Pleasure to remember all the good times they had shared together and pain because the time he had to remember was so very short in comparison to the rest of his life.

He spared Dorothy a glance as he waited for Alex to enlighten him. The housekeeper’s face was an open book and if there was something he really needed to know, he would be able to see it in her expression.

When the woman who never failed to let him know that he had saved her life that night they’d talked until dawn averted her face so he couldn’t look into it, Richard knew the news couldn’t be good.

Did they already know?

No, Richard decided. What he saw in his daughters’ faces was discomfort, not sorrow or despair.

Looking at Alex, he said, “I’m listening.”

CHAPTER TWO

ALEX COULD FEEL three pairs of eyes on her, waiting expectantly. Dorothy and Cris obviously already knew what she had to say and were there to hear her father’s reaction. Her father didn’t know what was coming, although, she now noticed, he seemed really sad.

Maybe she shouldn’t have jumped the gun this way, firing Clarke like she had. In all her twenty-eight years, Alex couldn’t remember a single instance when her father made her doubt herself, or gave her reason to believe he was disappointed in her. She had a degree in accounting, as well as one in hotel management. There was no reason in the world for her to even hesitate answering his question for a moment.

And yet, she did.

Her eyes never leaving his, she took a deep breath, released it slowly and said, “I fired J. D. Clarke, Dad.”

Richard seemed only mildly surprised by the news.

He was a little taken aback. He’d been consumed by his grief, but even if he hadn’t been, he wouldn’t have expected his daughter to override his decisions. Ordinarily, Alex would have consulted him before taking any sort of final action like this.

At least, he would have assumed that she would consult with him since, now that he thought about it, Alex had never fired anyone before. Oh, there had been times when she had complained at length about one person or another currently working at the inn, but those matters were always ultimately dealt with and straightened out. Most of the time, a simple one-on-one conversation resolved the problem. No one had ever been fired. The high employee turnaround was a result of their needs being seasonal. Most of the extra people who worked at the inn were there because they were down on their luck and he had taken them on until they were back on their feet again.

While all his daughters worked at the inn in some capacity, Alex was his second in charge and she took running the inn very seriously.

In fact, sometimes, he felt that she took her job too seriously. That was a real source of guilt for him because those were the times when he felt that he had stolen a very important part of his daughter’s life from her.

The part where she got to enjoy herself without all these responsibilities hemming her in and making demands on her. It was his fault that things had arranged themselves this way. His health hadn’t always been the best. After Amy had died, it was all he could do to pull himself together and do what needed to be done to take care of the girls.

Alex had been all of sixteen when—his health poor at the time—she appointed herself acting head of the family.

The problem was, she never really unappointed herself acting head of the family and had just continued in that position from then on. She had even given up plans to attend an out-of-state college, electing, instead, to attend U.C. San Diego, living at home and juggling her studies with her duties on the home front.

There were times during this hectic interlude in her life that Richard had doubted his eldest daughter even slept. But she’d managed to do it all, help run the inn and graduate with honors despite all the demands on her time, which, among other things, included a double major.

These days, Alex’s life was no less hectic. She continued to concern herself with the hundred and one minute, day-to-day details that went with running the inn. There was very little time for Alex to concern herself with just being Alex.

And that’s why he had to hope that his friend Dan’s little plan might stand a chance.

Richard studied her now, wondering what had set her off enough to make her actually fire someone. Whatever it was, he knew without being told that it was justified. But while he had tremendous faith in his daughter, he still needed to know the circumstances. And why she hadn’t included him in the decision.

So, for a moment longer, he put off being the bearer of sad news and asked Alex, “Is there a particular reason why you fired him?”

Alex nodded her head, possibly a bit too emphatically.

“A very particular reason,” she told him. There wasn’t a sliver of uncertainty in her tone. He knew there were times she’d find herself second-guessing a situation, but not in this case. In this case, she was absolutely certain she’d done the right thing.

“Clarke was going to butcher the inn,” Alex replied.

The general contractor had come to him with several letters of referral as well as half-a-dozen photographs of his work. All in all, the man had come across as a competent general contractor. Not to mention that Clarke had talked about being a family man, something Richard found to be rather important.

A family man who needed to provide for that family. For Richard, it had been a very important deciding factor in hiring the man.

He remembered as a boy listening to his own father tell him stories about his great-great-grandmother, Ruth, and how she’d converted her home into an inn to keep from losing it, as well as a way to provide for her five children.

Keeping those stories foremost in his mind was what had kept Richard from ever turning away a single person who needed a place to stay.

“And just how did J.D. intend to ‘butcher’ the inn?” he asked Alex.

“He didn’t intend to do it,” Alex corrected her father. “But that would have been the end result of what he was going to do to the inn.”

Richard glanced at his other daughter and then at Dorothy, but there was no enlightenment from either quarter. “I don’t think I understand.”

To Alex, the inn was like a living, breathing entity. Something to watch over and protect so that it would be here, just as her ancestor had intended, for many, many years to come. J. D. Clarke, she was certain, had ideas that would’ve dramatically changed the direction the inn had been going for more than a hundred years. And his staff sure hadn’t given her any confidence that they could do good work that would stand the test of time.

“You’d hired him to make additions to the inn. He took it upon himself to go in a whole different direction. He showed me these really awful sketches he planned on ‘bringing to life,’ as he put it. When I said they would clash with what was already here, he told me I’d change my mind once they were completed. I think he felt I was challenging his judgment and he wouldn’t budge. So I fired him. He left me no choice.”

Alex took the folded piece of paper she’d slipped under the sign-in ledger she kept on the desk and placed it in front of her father as exhibit A. It was the only one of Clarke’s sketches he had left behind.

“It looked more like a growth than an addition,” she said indignantly, stabbing a finger at the drawing. “And it’s modern.” Alex all but spat the word out, as if it was a new strain of a fatal disease.

She watched her father glance over the sketch. By his expression, she could tell that he couldn’t quite understand the problem.

“Dad, you can’t just slap something that looks like it vacationed in the Museum of Modern Art onto a Victorian house. The two décors clash horribly and at the very least it would make us look...indecisive,” she finally declared for lack of a better word, “to our guests.”

“Indecisive?” Cris asked, puzzled. She pulled over the sketch to look at it herself.

Alex wanted support from her sister, not a challenge. “Shouldn’t you be back in the kitchen, getting ready for the guests coming in for lunch?” she prompted.

“Got it covered,” Cris told her cheerfully. “Go on, you were saying?” It was obvious that she wanted to see how far Alex was going to go with this.

Alex turned her attention back to her father, stating the rest of her case. “All the other additions over the years always retained that original Victorian flavor. It’s what the guests who come here expect. Not to mention he was intending to knock down that wall. That wall,” she emphasized, pointing to it. “That’s load-bearing, isn’t it? And if it isn’t and I’m wrong about that, well, he sure didn’t argue. Because he didn’t know better. The guy didn’t have a clue what he was doing. Besides,” she added in a quieter but no less firm voice, “Clarke acted as if he thought he knew what was best for the inn.”

“When we all know that you are the one who knows what’s best for the inn,” Cris declared solemnly, suppressing a grin.

Richard looked from one daughter to the other. He had devoted his life to raising his girls and was experienced enough to know that there was a confrontation in the making. His daughters loved one another, but that didn’t keep them from going at it heatedly.

He headed the confrontation off before it could get under way.

Kissing Alex’s forehead, he told her, “I trust you to make the right decisions. Of course, this means we’re going to have to find another general contractor.” He sighed, reminding her that the contractor had originally been called in to make some much needed repairs. Repairs that as of yet hadn’t happened. “If we don’t, then with the first big rain of the season we’ll have an indoor pool in the kitchen, thanks to the fact that the roof has seen much better days.”

“Why don’t we use the one we had the last time?” Cris proposed. “Mr. Phelps was really nice,” she added.

Alex looked at her. “Do you remember when the last time was?”

Thinking for a moment, Cris shrugged. Richard was only too aware that a great deal of life had happened to Cris since then so she couldn’t really be expected to know the answer to that question. “Five, seven years ago?”

Alex shook her head. “Try ten.”

“Okay, ten,” Cris acknowledged. “So? What’s the problem?”

Alex looked at her sister for a long moment. Didn’t Cris think she would have gone back to the other man if that had actually been an option? “Other than the fact that he’s dead, nothing.”

“Dead?” Cris echoed in surprise. “When did that happen?”

“Around the same time he stopped breathing, I imagine. Give or take,” Alex replied in the calm voice she used when she was trying to remove herself from a situation. Situations that usually only involved her sisters and came from being one of four kids. Growing up fighting to get an edge over the other three.

She expected her father to say something to rein her in, but he didn’t. She found that a little odd.

“Very funny,” Cris retorted, her expression indicating that was exactly what she didn’t think it was.

Alex ignored her. “Don’t worry, Dad, I’ll find us another general contractor. One who listens to what the inn is trying to say.”

Richard laughed shortly, but there was no humor in the sound. Alex picked up on it instantly.

“I’d settle for a contractor who doesn’t charge an arm and a leg,” her father said.

“No body limbs, just reasonable rates. Got it,” Alex promised with a wink.

Cris glanced at the oversize watch on her wrist. It was large and bulky and made her seem even smaller and more fragile than she was. The only time she ever took it off was when she showered.

The watch chastened Alex and she regretted what she’d said to Cris. The watch had belonged to Mike. It was the last thing he’d given her before he’d left, saying that every time she looked at it, she should think of him and know that he was that much closer to coming home.

Except that he wasn’t and he didn’t.

Mike’s unit had been called up and, just like that, he had been deployed to Iraq. He’d been there less than a week when a roadside bomb took him away from her permanently.

He’d died before he’d ever been able to hold his newborn son in his arms.

“Looks like I’m out of time,” Cris murmured. She raised her deep blue eyes to look at Alex. “Looks like you get your wish, big sister. I’m out of here.”

“No, wait.” Richard held up his hand like an old-fashioned policeman charged with directing the flow of traffic.

“Sure,” Cris answered after exchanging a look with Alex. Alex saw by her sister’s expression that Cris had no more of a clue what was going on than she did. “Carlos can watch Ricky a few more minutes,” she said, referring to the busboy who also helped out in the kitchen when things got a little too hectic at the inn. “What’s up, Dad?”

“I came in to tell you girls that...” Richard hesitated and Alex could see that whatever was on his mind was not a subject he found easy to talk about.

“Well, I’ve got beds to make,” Dorothy said to no one in particular, turning to leave the reception area. She clearly assumed that whatever their dad had to say was intended only for his family.

But she’d assumed wrong.

“Stay, please, Dorothy,” Richard requested. “This concerns you, too.”

“Of course, sir,” Dorothy said politely, staying where she was.

An uneasy feeling feathered through Alex. “Okay, now you’re scaring me, Dad,” she told him.

This was the way she’d discovered her father was ill all those years ago. Fortunately his lung cancer was still in the early stages when it had been detected and she had done the research to find an excellent physician who was able to halt the progression of the disease and eventually get her father back on his feet.

“What’s wrong?” Alex pressed, wanting him to get the information out now.

“Are you ill, Mr. Roman?” Dorothy asked, in concern and compassion.

“Dad?” Cris only uttered the single word, obviously too fearful to say any more. Probably, thought Alex, too afraid that if she said anything more out loud, it would come into being.

Apparently realizing how his request for their attention must have sounded to them, Richard was quick to set their minds at ease, at least about this one point.

“Oh, no, this doesn’t have anything to do with me. At least, not in the way you might think. Although...”

As long as her father’s cancer hadn’t returned, she could handle anything else, Alex thought. Rolling her eyes dramatically, she said, “Dad, you are really, really bad at breaking news to people, you know that?” She shook her head. “C’mon, out with it.”

He suddenly turned to Cris and asked, “Are Stephanie and Andrea around? If it’s all the same with you, I’d really rather only have to say this once.”

“Okay, back to being scared,” Alex announced, trying to keep the situation light even though she was filled with a sense of foreboding and dread.

“I’ll go find them,” Dorothy volunteered.

But Alex was already on the inn’s conference line, calling both her younger sisters’ cell phones—something neither girl was ever without except, possibly, in the shower and not always then. She was convinced that Andy was hermetically sealed to hers.

“Stevi, Andy, Dad wants to see us at the reception desk. Now.” It wasn’t a request, it was an order, issued with an undercurrent of fear.

“Anyone ever tell you you make a great dictator?” Cris asked mildly.

Ordinarily that might have sparked an exchange that bordered on the lively, but right now, Alex paid no attention to her sister. She was focused on her father, to the exclusion of everything else.

“Do we get a hint, Dad? A glimmer of a coming attraction while we’re waiting for the two divas to show up?” she prompted.

“It’s not about me, I promise,” Richard told her with what she assumed was his attempt at a reassuring smile. It didn’t work.

“Or the inn?” Alex asked, watching her father’s face. Family was exceedingly important to her, but the inn was a close second.

The next moment she told herself that it couldn’t be about the inn. She handled all the accounts as well as the never-ending piles of paperwork that went along with running the place. She would have known if there was a lean on it or a second mortgage taken out—

Wouldn’t she?

She looked uncertainly at her father.

“Or the inn,” he assured her. Again, he qualified his answer a moment later. “At least, not in the way you mean it.”

“All right, just how does it concern the inn?” Cris demanded, clearly not able to take another moment of suspense.

Without meaning to, Richard sighed. He’d left Wyatt sitting in his office. The young man had arrived quietly just a few minutes ago, entering through the gardens and the back door that was always unlocked during daylight hours. Guests hardly ever made use of that entrance, but friends did. And Wyatt was a friend. More like a son, actually. He’d known him since the day the boy had been born.

“Wyatt has come to see me. He’s just arrived.”

“Wyatt?” Alex echoed.

The name brought with it a legion of memories that ran the expanse of two decades and more. Theirs was an ongoing, antagonistic relationship that seemed to be the very embodiment of the war between the sexes—even though he got on well enough with her sisters and they with him. Complicating this was the fact that her heart never failed to skip a couple of beats the first time she saw him each year. Her physical reaction never changed. It was only when her mind kicked in that her behavior returned to normal. Wyatt Taylor was an extremely handsome example of the male gender and it was her misfortune to be attracted to a man she was constantly at odds with the rest of the time he was at the inn.

“When?” Alex wanted to know. “I didn’t see him come in.”

She’d never seen her father’s smile look so incredibly sad. “He came in through the back.”

“Why?” Alex asked. Whatever was bothering her father was tied to Wyatt, she thought. It figured.

Her sisters got along with Wyatt. For the most part, he was like their big brother. The son her dad never got to have.... She refused to dwell on that.

Wyatt had been coming to the inn every summer with his father for years. She and the others all fondly thought of Wyatt’s father as Uncle Dan, even though Dan Taylor was no relation to either of their parents. He and their father had been best friends since elementary school.

Daniel Taylor was an independent journalist who’d traveled the world over, hunting down stories that proved to be too challenging, too elusive for the new breed of reporter. His erratic lifestyle had put a very real strain on his marriage until one summer, Dan found himself divorced and much too far away from the son he adored. So every summer, when he was granted a month’s precious custody, he would bring his son with him to the inn. He came here because his best friend was a single father, too, and was blessed with insight. He came because he wanted Wyatt to have fun with kids his own age, and she and her sisters qualified.

And above all else, he came to the inn because he practically lived out of his suitcase and had no real place to call home. So for four weeks each summer, Ladera-by-the-Sea Inn became home to Dan and his son. And, by extension, she and her sisters, as well as her father, became Dan’s missing family.

During the rest of the year, whenever he could, Dan would come to visit and stay a few days or a week—until another assignment would whisk him away. When they were younger, Dan brought gifts from the places he’d visited. As they grew older, Alex realized that the greatest gift the man had brought them was himself.

“Why isn’t Wyatt out here?” Alex asked.

Whatever was wrong, she was convinced it had to do with Wyatt. Although for the life of her, she couldn’t begin to guess what it could be.

“Because I told him to wait,” Richard answered quietly.

“Why isn’t Uncle Dan with him?” Cris asked suddenly.

And even as she asked the simple question, Alex knew the answer. She guessed by her sister’s expression that Cris must have known it, too. If they were right, Alex hoped the news didn’t take Cris back to the morning the chaplain and another soldier arrived on the inn’s doorstep to tell her that although Mike was coming home from his mission, it wasn’t the kind of homecoming they’d expected.

“This is about Uncle Dan, isn’t it?” Cris asked quietly.

After a beat, her father nodded his head. His eyes followed his two youngest daughters as they walked into the reception area. “Yes,” he said. “It is.”

CHAPTER THREE

“UH-OH, THIS HAS the looks of something serious,” Stephanie murmured to Andrea as they walked to the reception desk together. “You know what this is about?” she asked.

“When do I ever find out anything before you do?” Andy asked, lengthening her stride.

It was hard to miss the family resemblance, thought Alex, both the one to the other as well as to her and Cris, the older sisters. Approximately the same height, Stephanie and Andrea gave the impression of being tall and willowy, despite the fact that neither was more than five-six. Like her and Cris, both had straight, dark blond hair and captivating, magnetic blue eyes that seemed capable of looking into a person’s soul. At least that’s what everybody always told Alex.

“What did you do?” Andy asked Stevi.

“Me? Nothing. Why would you think it’s me?”

“Well, it’s not me,” Andy said in an impatient whisper. “You called, Queen Bee?” she added to Alex in a louder, cheerful tone.

Stevi poked her younger sister in the ribs. Alex would agree with Stevi’s silent message—this wasn’t the time to be flippant.

“What’s going on, Alex?” Andy asked. All traces of her flippant tone were gone.

“Dad, did something happen to Uncle Dan?” she asked. She wanted an answer, but she wanted to hear the right answer: that Daniel Taylor, the man who’d told her endless stories about places she knew she would never be able to visit, making them all seem so vivid and real to her, was all right. That the man who had just been here a few weeks ago wasn’t here now, the way he always was at the first stroke of summer, because he’d finally met someone special and was taking some well-earned time off with her.

But the look on her father’s face, the look of a man who was struggling to come to terms with losing part of himself, told her this had nothing to do with any newfound romance.

Afraid now, not for herself but for her father—and, although she’d never admit it out loud—for Wyatt, the boy she’d grown up with, she gently grasped her father’s arm.

“Dad?”

His eldest daughter’s tone said it all—“What is it?” “What happened?” and “How can I help?” all wrapped up in a single word.

“Pancreatic cancer,” was all Richard trusted himself to say.

A minute more and maybe he would get better control over his emotions, but right now, those were the only words he was able to utter without breaking down. Dan had told him the moment he’d received the prognosis from his doctor. Come to him and asked him not to tell anyone else, not his daughters, not Wyatt. He didn’t want to see pity marking his last few months, or however long he had. At the same time, he’d wanted an ally to help him maintain his facade—and he wanted his best friend to be prepared.

Dan’s last visit had been a struggle. His friend had only had a few weeks left to live and he’d looked pale, his step less sure. But it really had seemed as if he was only a little tired. A force like Dan just didn’t die.

The news of Dan’s death, when it finally came from the attending physician last night, had still managed to hit him with the force of a sledgehammer.

Richard heard someone gasp and looked up to see that it was Stevi. He reached out to hold her tightly. Of the four of them, she was the most sensitive, the one whose threshold for emotional pain was far too low for her to function well in stressful situations.

For the most part, they were probably all overprotective of her—even Andy—sometimes keeping things from her rather than subjecting Stevi to undue emotional distress. Stevi had been the one who’d cried for days when their pet hamster had died.

When their mother had suddenly been taken from them, Stevi had stopped talking for a month. She’d been ten at the time.

He stepped back, gripped Stevi by the shoulders and studied her to make sure she’d be all right. Then he let her go as he took in the others, coming at last to Alex.

Alex’s eyes had never left her father’s stricken expression—how could she not have seen that? How could she have missed that pain, that sorrow? It was right there for her to see, she berated herself. What was she, blind?

“Is he—?”

Alex couldn’t get herself to finish the sentence. She could feel her throat closing up, not just in sympathy for her father, but because she really, really loved Uncle Dan. They all did.

When she’d been very young, she’d had a crush on the man, daydreaming about going off with him to exotic parts unknown. It seemed hopelessly romantic to her to follow stories to wherever they might lead, no matter what the danger. As long as they had each other to lean on for support, things would work out.

It had irked her at the time that Wyatt looked so much like his father, especially since she and the younger Taylor got along like the proverbial cat and dog. Granted it had been mostly her doing, but that didn’t change the outcome of antagonism. All those summers that Wyatt had spent at the inn, she’d found new and unique ways to torment him so that, somewhere along the line, Wyatt wouldn’t usurp her in her father’s eyes, becoming the son she felt certain he had always secretly longed for.

Once upon a time, she’d accidentally overheard her father talking to Uncle Dan about having a son. The exact words that had all but burned themselves into her brain had been, You don’t know how very lucky you are to have a son to share things with. To her, there had been longing and a touch of envy in her father’s voice. It said, in effect, that she could never measure up to his having a son. But it didn’t keep her from trying, anyway.

Her less-than-easygoing past with Wyatt notwithstanding, she knew what it was like to lose a parent, knew the awful pain that caused, and she felt for Wyatt.

But predominantly she felt for her father.

Especially now, as she watched him grimly nod his head in response to the question she couldn’t bring herself to complete.

“Yes,” her father said hoarsely, “he’s gone.”

“But he was just here,” Andy protested. “How could he die when he was just here?”

It was Dorothy who draped her arm comfortingly around the twenty-year-old’s slim shoulders and murmured softly, “These things happen.”

Alex shared a look with Cris, who bit her lower lip. Uncle Dan had been there for her sister when her husband had died halfway around the world. Although she and the rest of the family had done their best to be supportive of Cris, Dan had been able to supply something the others couldn’t. He had actually been in the region where Mike had died and could by that very fact somehow connect her to the place where Mike had been permanently taken away from her.

It had meant a lot. They’d all recognized that.

After a moment Cris was able to ask her question. “When?”

“Very suddenly,” her father answered in a hushed, hoarse voice, unable to take a deep breath because of the tremendous weight he felt pressing down on his chest. “Yesterday.”

“Yesterday?” Stevi cried.

Dan was supposed to have arrived at the inn yesterday with Wyatt. When he hadn’t, they had chalked it up to the fact that there were times when Dan Taylor was not one of the most punctual people.

“Where was he when...when it happened? Why didn’t he come to us? Why didn’t he tell us? He must have known.”

Stevi’s questions tumbled out in rapid-fire succession. Even so, they found no target, scattering to the corners of the room, searching for any answers that made a smattering of sense.

As her sisters closed ranks around their father, alternating between asking questions and offering mutual comfort, Alex quietly took a step back.

And then another.

And another, until she’d managed to unobtrusively detach herself from the inner circle. Once certain that her sisters and Dorothy had surrounded their father with their love and overwhelming sympathy, Alex turned on her heel and quickly made her way to her father’s small office at the back of the first floor.

About to knock lightly on the door before entering, she decided against it.

Instead she slowly pushed open the door, as if she was opening a portal to another world, a world currently filled to overflowing with grief.

Or so she imagined.

She found Wyatt standing at the window with his back to the door.

His body was rigid, as if he was attempting to shoulder something that was far too heavy for him to actually manage. A burden that threatened to bring him to his knees if he took as much as a step in any direction.

A minor tug-of-war took place inside Alex and then she decided to back out of the room, to wait until Wyatt was better equipped to deal with the offer of sympathy from others—especially her.

But as she placed her hand on the doorknob again, preparing to ease the door shut, she saw Wyatt raise his head just a fraction.

“Hello, Alex,” he said in a quiet voice that sounded barely human.

Hearing him speak startled her. She stared at the back of his head. “How did you—?”

“Your reflection,” he answered, anticipating the rest of her question.

He still hadn’t turned around to face her. He was trying his best to get himself under control before he did that. There were times, less now than before, when facing Alex was not an easy thing to do, even under the best of circumstances.

This was definitely not the best of circumstances. Men weren’t supposed to cry. It wasn’t anything that had been drummed into him; it was just something that he felt. Most of all, he didn’t want Alex to see him with tears in his eyes. So he struggled to get control over himself.

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

The words came to her lips automatically—and sounded incredibly tinny and hollow to her ear, even though they were filled to capacity and then some with the truth. She meant them from the bottom of her heart.

“I’m sorry for ours, too,” she added in a voice that was even smaller than when she’d begun. “Your father was a wonderful, wonderful man and we’re all going to miss him terribly. Especially me.”

Wyatt turned from the window then, his face a rigid mask of control. Only the sunlight shining on the slight telltale dampness on his cheek belied the control he was attempting to project.

“You’re kidding,” he said in disbelief.

Alex had no idea what he was referring to. Had his grief caused him to temporarily take leave of his senses? “What?”

“You’re actually engaging in one-upmanship? Now?” he asked her incredulously.

“What?” Alex repeated, thoroughly confused. Then his words sank in and she stared at him, horrified. How could he even think that? “No. I only meant that I was going to miss your father a great deal.”

“That’s not what you said,” Wyatt pointed out. “You said ‘especially me.’ That means that out of everyone who is grieving—including me—you are the one who is grieving the most. You, who only saw him for a month in the summer and a couple of times during the year, you’re going to miss him more than I am.”

She refrained from pointing out that he only saw his father the same amount she did. But that would be nit-picking and this was not the time for that.

“That’s not what I meant. I mean—oh, damn it, Wyatt,” she cried in frustration, “I’m trying my best to be nice, here.”

“Something you obviously don’t have much practice at because you’re not succeeding,” he told her.

She pulled back, hurt and confused.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Maybe I’m being unreasonable, but I just don’t see you making an effort. My dad died last night, and all I see is Alex being...Alex. At my expense.”

The next moment, any possible escalation of a verbal exchange between Alex and Dan’s son was interrupted as people came flooding into the small office, filling it to capacity.

Cris, Stevi and Andy surrounded Wyatt, offering their condolences in what came across as a cacophony of sympathy and kind words tripping over one another.

Only her father noticed Alex retreating from the room, moving back to the threshold.

“Everything all right?” he asked her.

“No,” she answered, forcing herself to tear her eyes away from Wyatt and her sisters. Their comfort was easing his pain. She was glad for him, really glad—but she had tried to do the same thing, she really had. And he had just railed at her. “Uncle Dan’s gone,” she added in response to what she knew was going to be her father’s next question. “How can anything be all right at this moment?”

“I meant between you and Wyatt,” her father clarified.

“No,” she told him honestly. “But then,” she added, “it never was.” Alex shrugged the matter off. “That’s not important right now.” She focused on something she could help with. “If Uncle Dan just died yesterday, then there hasn’t been a funeral yet.”

“No, there hasn’t,” Wyatt said, speaking up. Despite having three women talking to him at once, he had still managed to hone in on what Alex had said to her father.

“That’s part of the reason Wyatt’s here,” her father told her.

Alex was still contemplating ducking out, but with everyone watching that seemed too much like running and it wasn’t the kind of message she was looking to send. When she came right down to it, she wasn’t sure exactly what kind of message she was trying to send.

“To carry out Dan’s last wishes,” her father was saying. “Dan wanted to be buried here, in the family cemetery. These past twenty years, Ladera-by-the-Sea was really the only place he called home. His summers here with Wyatt and you girls were his haven, it was what he considered both his goal and his reward for a year well lived.”

“And Uncle Dan actually said he wanted this to be his final resting place?” Alex asked her father.

Before her father could answer, Wyatt did. “That was what he told me.”

That sounded right and fitting somehow, Alex thought. His visits had been the highlight of the summer when she was younger. When he’d suddenly turn up at other times of the year, it always felt like Christmas.

Who was she kidding? Dan and Wyatt’s visits were both the highlight of her summers, although admittedly for different reasons. Reasons she wasn’t about to pick apart right now because she wasn’t up to it.

And might never be.

“So we’ll hold the services here?” Cris asked her father.

“That’s the general idea,” Richard replied. He looked at his daughters, each precious to him in her own way. He could see that they were all deeply affected by this. “I think that might help us to say one final goodbye to him.”

As usual, Alex instantly began to take charge.

It wasn’t so much that she had a need to be in control. It was more that she felt that by picking up the reins, she was allowing everyone else the freedom of doing what they needed to do without having to concern themselves with the bigger-picture details.

“Okay, first off, I’ll need a list of people to contact about the funeral services,” Alex said to her father.

She knew that the list would be coming from Wyatt, not her father, and this was her way of letting Wyatt know she would be taking care of the arrangements. At this point, she was certain that his state of mind was a shambles. He had trouble accepting what she said during the best of times.

Wyatt surprised her by saying crisply, “Already done.”

Wyatt had never been what she had thought of as organized. But then, maybe he hadn’t put the list together. Maybe he had one of those movie starlets she’d seen hanging off his arm each time he attended a premiere of one of the movies he wrote. None of them looked as if she had an IQ rivaling that of a peacock, but obviously one of them probably knew how to write.

“Okay, moving on,” Alex announced, shifting her attention to Wyatt. “What date were these people told? For the services that were being held?” she elaborated when she received no answer.

“Day after tomorrow,” he finally replied.

Well, that was really quick, she couldn’t help thinking. “Pretty confident my father would say yes,” Alex said, her eyes locking on to his.

“Why wouldn’t he?” he replied, treating her as if she’d just accused him of something. That’s not why she’d said it. Something just didn’t seem to make sense in this two-day timeline.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Her father asked the same question Wyatt had.

“No reason, but the inn could have been booked solid, making holding the funeral service rather difficult,” she pointed out. “Besides, even though the inn isn’t booked solid, it would have still been nice to have the details nailed down on our end before alerting—how many people were alerted?” she asked, realizing she still didn’t have a number to work with.

“My father made friends with the immediate world,” Wyatt told her.

“The immediate world,” she repeated. “That’s going to make for pretty difficult seating arrangements. I’m not sure if we have enough folding chairs for everyone.”

“But I cut it down to a hundred,” Wyatt continued as if she hadn’t said anything. “Is that all right?” he asked, looking at his father’s oldest friend.

“Any number you come up with is fine, Wyatt,” Richard assured him with feeling. “No matter how many people you want attending the service, we’ll find a way to accommodate everyone, so feel free to increase your list if you want to.”

But Wyatt shook his head. “No, a hundred’s good. But thanks for the offer.”

“Well, at least we’ll be saving on folding chairs,” Alex said, doing her best to keep the situation as light as she could.

If she didn’t, Alex was fairly certain she was going to break down in tears herself.

CHAPTER FOUR

“YOU WERE KIND OF sharp with Wyatt back there,” Cris commented as she and Alex headed back toward the front of the inn. There was an underlying note of disapproval in her voice. “You could have gone a little easier on him, Alex. After all, the man just lost his father.”

“I know. I was there when Dad told us, remember?” Alex said impatiently. “And if I’d suddenly changed and gone completely soft and sweet on him, tiptoeing around his feelings—” she forced a smile to her lips and nodded as they passed one of the inn’s recurring guests, Mrs. Rafferty “—Wyatt might have let his guard down—and then who knows what would have happened? This way, he’s got his guard up, he knows what to expect and he’s too busy trying to block my next barb to let all that pain flatten him.”

Cris looked at her older sister, clearly impressed. “So this was actually a ‘humanitarian’ act on your part?” she asked, trying but failing not to laugh.

Alex could only agree with her: this had to be the most creative excuse for verbally sparring with Wyatt she’d ever come up with.

“Something like that,” Alex admitted with a vague, dismissive shrug. She didn’t want to harp on the subject, but the truth was, if she’d treated him with kid gloves, Wyatt wouldn’t have had the sparring partner he was accustomed to and right now, she had a feeling he needed that. He needed that touch of the familiar to help steady him. “Let’s just say that’s what I would have wanted if I was in his place.”

“Still,” Cris pointed out, “a few kind words wouldn’t have killed you.”

She and Wyatt didn’t have that sort of a relationship. Maybe the rules would change sometime down the road—although she really doubted it—but what she did know was that this wasn’t the time for change. He needed someone to vent at and right now, for better or worse, that was her.

She cocked her head, as if she was trying to make out something. “I think I hear Ricky calling for his mommy.”

Cris shook her head. She had superhearing when it came to her son. “You’re impossible, you know that?”

“I’m also older,” Alex reminded her with a smile that said she was the one who got to make the rules.

“Next time around, I get to be the older one,” Cris declared.

“We’ll talk,” Alex promised. Rounding the desk, she got back to work.

Alex heard her sister muttering under her breath as she made her way to the kitchen.

The kitchen had, at Cris’s insistence, already been updated, upgraded and expanded so she could have elbow room. That included a couple of extra elbows, as well, during their busy season. Elbows attached to people who knew how to take orders and work together when preparing meals became a marathon event rather than the laid-back endeavor it had initially been when Cris had slowly eased herself into the position of the inn’s chef.

It’s too bad, thought Alex, the contractor who did the kitchen had proved unavailable for their expansion needs. Oh well, she’d find somebody.

With Cris in the kitchen, Dorothy upstairs tending to the bedrooms and their attached baths and her father, Andy and Stevi still back in his office with Wyatt—doing what they could to comfort him in their own way—that left her at the front desk. She was used to holding down the fort but not this ambush of emotions. Wave after wave of sadness kept washing over her, stealing away her heart.

Alex tried to remember the last time she’d seen the man who would soon be laid to eternal rest on the inn’s property. It had only been a little more than two weeks ago. She tried to think if she’d actually looked at him when they’d talked, or if she’d merely spoken to the image of the man she carried around in her brain.

But as closely as she could recall, Uncle Dan had seemed perfectly healthy at the time. Oh, maybe he’d seemed a little less robust, but he was all gung ho about what he’d referred to as his next project. She’d thought it strange at the time because he usually referred to his work as assignments, not projects, but she hadn’t asked him about it.

Now she wished she had. She wished she’d asked him more questions about his work, spent more time with him. She’d just assumed he’d go on forever, that he had a charmed life. He’d never been so much as wounded in all the years he’d spent covering stories in some of the world’s most dangerous hot spots.

Alex remembered one particular postcard he’d sent several years ago. Not to her, exclusively, but to all of them. It was a generic card with his byline logo on the front, and on the back Dan had written, “Miss you all, but don’t wish you were here. No one sleeps. Everyone’s waiting for the next attack to come. Gotta be a better way to earn a living. Love to you all, Uncle Dan.”

That was the way he saw himself, she thought. As their Uncle Dan. It wasn’t just a term affixed to parental friends and used strictly by small children. She and her sisters had no other relatives, so she had nothing to compare Dan Taylor to, but if they had had an uncle, she knew without hesitation that she would have wanted him to be exactly like the man who had taken to the honorary title without hesitation. Her father had also selected Dan to be her godfather.

They made for strange best friends, her father and Dan. Dan was as vital, as outgoing, as her father was soft-spoken and introverted.

She still couldn’t believe that she wouldn’t be seeing Dan walk through the inn’s tall front doors, bringing in sunlight and blue skies with him.

Alex felt a tear run down her cheek and looked around for something to wipe her eyes with. The box of pop-up tissues on the desk was very pretty and had been chosen because it matched the inn’s décor.

It was also very empty.

Frustrated, she tossed the box into the wastebasket behind the desk and used the back of her hand to wipe the tear away.

As soon as she did, another one slid down her cheek. Followed by a third.

This time, instead of her knuckles, Alex used the heel of her hand. She didn’t want to be seen crying by guests.

Besides, this was a private matter and she was a very private person. At bottom, she always had been.

“Why are things never the way they’re supposed to be?” she muttered, annoyed over the lack of tissues when she needed them. It was displacement and she knew it, but she used the excuse anyway.

“I don’t know, why aren’t they?”

Startled—because she’d believed herself to be alone—Alex gasped and swung around.

As she did so, she managed to knock the sign-in ledger onto the floor.

Wyatt bent to pick it up for her and placed the ledger back on the desk.

“You still sneak up on people,” Alex accused him, her eyebrows pulling together into a single, exasperated line.

Because it annoyed her—and he desperately needed the diversion—he smiled. “I still have that gift,” he confirmed. Seeing the trail of tears on her cheek for the first time, Wyatt reached into his pocket, pulled out a handkerchief and held it out to her. “Here.”

She hesitated for a moment, then took the handkerchief gingerly and critically looked over the small, white square.

“Don’t worry,” Wyatt said, “I only wiped down one bathroom sink with it.”

She raised her eyes to his. Oh, come on. She had to know he was being sarcastic. Or, at least he assumed she had to know that. Still, she folded the handkerchief so that it was tiny, then used the surface she’d left exposed to slide quickly along her cheeks, drying them.

“Thanks,” Alex said, holding the handkerchief out to him again.

“Keep it,” he told her, pushing her hand back. “You might need it again.”

“No, I won’t,” she told him firmly. He still made no move to take the handkerchief back. Finally, Alex placed it on the counter and slid it along until it was directly in front of him. She never could let him have the final word.

“So, you figure you’ve used up your allotted amount of tears and won’t be needing that anymore?” he asked, unable to clamp down on his sarcasm.

“No tears,” she contradicted him, “just perspiration. And no, I won’t be needing it again.”

“Suit yourself.” Reaching into his inside pocket, Wyatt pulled out the handwritten list he’d put together and placed it in front of her. “These are the people I notified about the funeral service. And it’s okay to cry, you know,” he added out of the blue. “It doesn’t make you any less of a person. It might even make you stronger.”

Alex laughed dismissively. “That sounds like something you got out of a fortune cookie. You sure you’re Uncle Dan’s son? He had a fantastic way with words, with creating pictures out of them and getting right to the heart of matters. He put a person right into the thick of the action.”

“We have—had...” Wyatt corrected himself, still struggling to think of his father in anything but the present tense. “We had completely different styles.”

Because his father hadn’t been around much of the time he’d been growing up, it seemed natural not to see him. Natural to expect to encounter him sometime down the road, but not necessarily right now. Even before the divorce, his father would be gone for weeks, sometimes even a couple of months, at a time. And after the divorce, there were only summers with occasional quick visits in between.

And now, there would be no more visits at all. It wasn’t an easy thing to accept. He could feel his heart start to ache all over again. He struggled to rein himself in.

“Dad went to the heart of the action as it was happening. I prefer to study the history of the action and take it apart. Analyze it and find out what led to it. That’s why his last project really took me by surprise.”

There was that word again. Project. It occurred to Alex that she had no idea what Dan had been working on when he died. She just assumed—incorrectly it seemed—that it was another piece of war journalism.

“His last project?” she asked Wyatt now, waiting to be enlightened.

Wyatt nodded. “The one he was working on when...when he stopped working.”

It was a nice, antiseptic way to say it, wrapping the finality of death in words that implied a temporary break.

It wasn’t until Wyatt had said it that way that she realized that was the way she would prefer to deal with Uncle Dan’s passing, too. Antiseptically. The other word, the D-word, was far too raw and final for her to utter right now.

Pushing ahead, Alex focused on what Wyatt had begun to say. “What was he working on?”

Wyatt’s smile made her feel a little uneasy, although she couldn’t have explained why.

“My father was writing a history of the inn.”

That wasn’t the kind of story Dan usually worked on, she couldn’t help thinking. He wrote things that wound up on the front page, or of late, in a blog and sometimes in front of a camera. This sounded as if he was working on a book.

“What inn?” she asked, confused.

Was she serious? Wyatt wondered. So, she hadn’t known, either. That seemed rather strange. But then, his father had only told him last week—just before he’d extracted that promise from him.

“This inn.”

Alex stared at him. “This isn’t some practical joke, is it? Uncle Dan was just here a few weeks ago. He never mentioned this to me.... You’re serious?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because I didn’t know anything about it,” she snapped.

Ah, he thought. So that’s it. She’s upset because she knew everything that was going on at the inn at any given time.

And she hadn’t known about this.

Of course that would bother her almost as much as his surprising her with a funeral here without any advance warning. No matter what he did and for what reason, he upset her. Always had, and he didn’t see a way around it.

“He got all sorts of notes from your father when he got started,” Wyatt said, proving just how committed his father had been to the project. “Letters, files, photographs, copies of old ledgers...”

Her jaw dropped.

He hesitated before adding, “If you didn’t know about it, maybe it was supposed to be a surprise.” All he knew was that his father had asked him to finish it for him, and he’d said the publisher had given him a deadline, which he was to try to keep to.

“A surprise? For whom?” she asked incredulously.

Wyatt said the first thing that occurred to him. “For the rest of you. You and your sisters. I think he envisioned it as a sort of commemorative book on the bed-and-breakfast’s 120th anniversary next year.”

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