Her Savannah Surprise (The Savannah Sisters Book 3)

by Nancy Robards Thompson

  Kate shook the thought from her head. It wasn’t going to happen. They would look into an annulment as soon as they got home. In the meantime, she could slowly disengage from Aidan’s life.

  Well, except for the fact that her sister Elle was married to Aidan’s brother. That made Elle Chloe’s aunt. Since Daniel and Aidan didn’t have other extended family, that meant Aidan and Chloe would be included in all the family gatherings because in Gigi’s mind the holiday—be it birthday or Thanksgiving or Christmas or Groundhog’s Day—wasn’t celebrated to the fullest without a houseful of family.

  Could this get any more awkward?

  The server came and took their order.

  When Kate asked for toast and more hot tea, Aidan leaned in. “I’m sorry you’re still not feeling well. If you get hungry later, we can get you something. Or if you change your mind, you can share my huevos rancheros.”

  The mere mention of the spicy dish made Kate’s stomach heave. She quickly lifted her teacup to her lips and sipped until the feeling subsided.

  “He’s so good to you, Kate,” Elle cooed.

  Kate hadn’t been aware that her sister was watching them until now.

  “You know, now that Jane and I are married, Gigi is going to zero in on you two,” Elle said. “Be prepared.”

  Both Kate and Aidan laughed. Kate wondered if it sounded as nervous to Elle and Daniel as it did to her own ears.

  “Did attending a romantic wedding make the two of you start thinking about taking your relationship to the next level?”

  “Elle, don’t,” Kate said.

  Kate couldn’t look at Aidan, but out of her peripheral vision, she saw him shift in his chair.

  “Honey,” Daniel said. “Don’t put them on the spot like that. I know you’re happy and you want everyone to be happy, but I’m sure you’ll be among the first to know, right?”

  Kate couldn’t even form words. All she could manage was a nervous squeak.

  “Aidan, since my sister is impossible, I’m going to talk to you,” Elle continued. She’d always had a determined, one-track mind when she latched on to an idea. “I think that if anyone could tame my sister, you could. It is obvious that the two of you are in love. Why don’t you just do it? Why don’t you just bite the bullet and get married?”

  No one said a word. Elle took that as an opportunity to expand on her thoughts. “What time is it?”

  She looked at her phone. “It is not even noon and our plane doesn’t leave until eight o’clock. Let’s go to one of those cute little wedding chapels and get you two hitched.”

  Kate wasn’t sure if it was her sister’s suggestion or the smell of the food wafting over from the table next to them, but suddenly she couldn’t sit at that table another second more.

  “I—I need to get some air,” she said as she scooted back from the table and bolted for the exit.

  Chapter Two

  The next morning, Kate stood at her dressing table in her bedroom, holding her thin gold wedding band. It glinted in the ray of sunshine streaming in through her bedroom window.

  She turned the ring from side to side, letting the smooth metal slide between her fingers as she stared at it. Now that she was home and had gotten a sound night’s sleep, she still hadn’t been able to mentally stitch together the pieces of her wedding that she remembered.

  Memories of the night were like images from a blurry film. She remembered dancing with Aidan, and maybe even getting a little emotional over Gigi and Charles’s wedding. She had a vague recollection of picking out the rings with Aidan. He had wanted her to get the diamond-encrusted band. She remembered that. He had been so generous, the way he had insisted. But she had maintained it was too expensive and questioned how they could prove the diamonds were real and not just a cubic zirconia rip-off. That had been a real sticking point for her. She had been such a judicious ring shopper. Where had all that good sense gone when it came time to say I do?

  The rest was fuzzy and strange, as if she was watching a movie in her mind where two actors who were playing them in a zany rom-com had purchased the rings and gotten hitched by an Elvis impersonator.

  If it wasn’t so heartbreaking, she might’ve laughed at the ridiculousness of it. Her heart ached as she returned the gold band to the red velvet-lined box it came in and snapped the lid shut. As she tucked it inside her jewelry box, she felt as if she was hiding away Pandora’s box. Because that was what it would be if her family found out—a source of a whole lot of trouble.

  After they got over the shock, her family would want her to stay married. They loved Aidan. Everyone loved Aidan. Because what was not to love about him?

  They would not understand that this had been a colossal mistake.

  Her heart ached again. Aidan had been uncharacteristically stoic on their flight home last night. After they had landed, he had gone through all the Aidan motions while making minimal small talk—helping her with her bags and holding doors—but there had been a disconnect. Especially after he had deposited her luggage just inside the door. He had left her with the most paralyzingly platonic peck on the cheek, murmured good-night and walked away, leaving her standing at the door.

  What had she expected him to do?

  On the ride home from the airport, they had decided to meet the next evening to talk about the fate of their marriage. That was hardly cause for celebration or a toe-curling kiss.

  Contemplating his cool demeanor and their talk later that evening, Kate felt nervous as a game show contestant. It felt like if she chose the wrong briefcase or gave the wrong answer, she stood to lose everything. And wasn’t that telling? Was she really fit to commit if she equated this huge life decision with being a contestant on Deal or No Deal? Didn’t that analogy speak volumes?

  Her phone rang, making her jump and jarring her out of her morose thoughts. A photo of her sister Elle’s beautiful smiling face flashed on the screen. Kate was supposed to meet her for tea at the Forsyth Galloway Inn, their family’s inn, which was located near Forsyth Park.

  It would be a quick meeting before Kate’s first appointment at the hair salon. Elle and their mom, Zelda, wanted to talk about plans for a special post-honeymoon homecoming celebration for Gigi and Charles.

  Kate blinked at the time. Ugh, she was late, which meant Elle was calling to prod her along. Kate let the call go to voice mail and texted On my way. Be there soon. Now she had to get a move on so she didn’t have to add lying to her list of transgressions—right below regretting her marriage.

  Nothing like hitting the ground running on her first day back. Kate sighed. Better to stay busy than to dwell on the discussion that was coming later that evening.

  Even so, Kate just didn’t feel like making excuses for her tardiness. What was she supposed to say? She had gotten off to a slow start this morning because she felt flu-ish and exhausted again. She gave herself one last look in the vanity mirror. She looked tired. She undid the top button on the pink-and-red Kate Spade bubble-dot smocked dress, fluffed her curls and pursed her lips. Maybe the neutral pink lipstick was washing her out. She plucked a tube out of her makeup bag and colored her lips with the brightest red lipstick she owned.

  If that didn’t distract from the dark circles under her eyes, nothing would.

  What was wrong with her? She was only twenty-six years old, too young to be sidelined by a virus or jet lag from a trip to Vegas. Stress really was a killer. She and Aidan had been married less than forty-eight hours and the honeymoon was already over.

  Okay, so that wasn’t exactly fair. Theirs wasn’t exactly a typical wedding and they hadn’t even taken a honeymoon. So, if there had been no honeymoon, it couldn’t be over before it even started.

  Unlike the marriage.

  Keep talking, Kate. Keep thinking and talking and trying to explain it all away.

  The bottom line was that she was not fit for marriag
e. Proof was...coming home from Vegas and having absolutely no idea what she was going to eat this week. Zero. Nada. Her cupboards were bare. If she didn’t feel like grocery shopping after work, she didn’t have to, since she was single. If she wanted to eat a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream for dinner—which happened to be the only thing in her freezer right now—she need not answer to anyone but herself...and her bathroom scale.

  Being single allowed her to fly off for the weekend at a moment’s notice... That was exactly what she should be doing right now. Though she hadn’t been that spontaneous since she and Aidan had gotten back together.

  But she should be having fun, not planning meals and grocery shopping. She should be taking trips and enjoying her life. She worked hard at the salon and had built a steady clientele. She certainly wasn’t rich, but she was making enough money that she had been able to buy a house without help from anyone, and she had even saved a respectable amount, adding yearly to her 401(k). If she wanted to use the rest of her hard-earned money to travel the world while she was young and unencumbered, she was entirely free to do so.

  She grabbed the last bottle of water from the refrigerator and scooped up her keys and purse off the entryway table before letting herself out the front door. All the while, she tried to ignore the voice inside her that pointed out that even before the surprise wedding, she hadn’t really been free and unencumbered. She had gotten pretty involved with Aidan...and his sweet daughter, Chloe.

  It hadn’t felt like she was shackled to Aidan until now. In fact, they had been doing so well. But true to form, in all of her matters of the heart, one day things were going well and the next...they were over.

  A few minutes later, Kate had pointed her car in the direction of Forsyth Park. The short drive gave her time to let her mind squirrels run rampant, time to get out the raw emotion that was sitting on the surface and bury the rest of these strange feelings where she didn’t have to deal with them. At least not right now. Not in front of Elle and her mother.

  By the time she arrived at the inn, she had her game face firmly in place. She parked her red vintage Thunderbird in a space next to the inn’s kitchen door. The sprawling butter yellow Victorian mansion turned bed-and-breakfast on Whitaker Street had been in her family for more than one hundred fifty years and had been a thriving business since 1874.

  Kate and her sisters had grown up in the big old house with its ornate ironwork and creaking mahogany floors. Of course, each of them had moved on, pursuing her own dreams and identity separate from the inn. But all three of the Clark sisters loved to come home.

  As Kate sat there behind the wheel of her car, she realized she felt like a fugitive. She and her mom and sisters had spent countless hours in the inn’s kitchen dishing gossip and sharing their secrets. But today, Kate couldn’t even seek the counsel of the women she trusted most.

  She couldn’t tell them that she was married, but try as she might, she didn’t love Aidan the way she wished she could—not the way her sisters loved their husbands. Not the way a wife should. Not the way he deserved to be loved. For the rest of his life.

  It occurred to her that maybe her lack of love for him might be self-preservation. Was it? He had never said he loved her. Instead, he proclaimed that talk was cheap when it came to saying the three words that most people used as the basis for getting married.

  The thought of tying herself to a loveless marriage made her stomach feel hollow and her throat ache with unshed tears.

  She wished they loved each other. Why couldn’t they love each other? Because she cared about him so much. But that probably wasn’t enough. If this marriage of inconvenience hadn’t happened, they probably would have broken up sometime. Kate felt the elusive tears that had escaped her earlier well in her eyes. Tears of frustration. Tears of anger—how could she have been so stupid to let this happen? Tears of sorrow because she didn’t want to hurt Aidan...again.

  She let the tears flow for a minute.

  Then she blew her nose and fixed her makeup.

  To buy herself a couple of extra minutes, she walked around to the front of the inn rather than using the kitchen doors, and climbed the steps to the stately wraparound veranda and let herself inside.

  She mustered her best smile for a group of guests who were lingering in the lobby. Since Gigi’s retirement, Kate hadn’t been as involved with the inn as her mother and sisters, even though Zelda had a plan to draw all three of her girls into the family business, allowing each of them to continue doing what they loved, only doing it from the inn.

  For Elle, it was art; the middle Clark sister, now Mrs. Daniel Quindlin, was in charge of art classes that were based at the inn. A graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design, Elle also facilitated art and architecture tours around the city. She had temporarily shelved her talent as an artist when she moved to Atlanta to teach elementary school art, after her longtime boyfriend had left her at the altar. As fate would have it, that breakup had led her to her true soul mate, Daniel, whom she had previously blamed for causing her fiancé to change his mind.

  Elle’s classes and tours were drawing a lot of new business to the inn. They were nearly booked solid four months out.

  For Jane, it was creating beautiful pastries and delicious baked goods. She was the pastry chef for the tearoom at the inn, which they had opened last spring. She was creating quite a stir with her unique confections. Recently, she had won the Oscar Hurd Foundation award, a prestigious award that celebrated upcoming talent and those in the culinary business who were making a difference.

  Now that her mother had implemented two thirds of her plan, she was determined to move into the final phase and build a small building in the inn’s garden, which would house a spa. She wanted Kate to run it. With that, all three of her daughters would have their own unique place in the family business.

  The only problem was, Kate already had a business of her own. She worked hard doing hair and had built a steady, loyal client base. She didn’t own a salon but rented a chair from Kerrigan Karol, one of Savannah’s premiere salons. As far as she was concerned, she had the best possible life as a hairdresser. The money was good. She loved what she did, and cherished her independence. She could set her own schedule. Such as today, when she didn’t have to arrive until just before her first client’s appointment. She loved not having to answer to anyone but her clients. When the salon drama got too thick, she could remove herself and let Kerrigan handle the mediation and the soothing of fragile egos.

  Even if she didn’t own the “walls” or the chair, she had built this business on her own. Nothing had been handed to her.

  She didn’t have to worry with the day-to-day operations of a brick-and-mortar building. No leases or rent or mortgage. No going in early to open the doors or locking up at night. No fretting about filling unrented chairs. No worrying about appeasing the clients of other stylists when those stylists decided to stay home nursing a hangover after a night of partying. With all those artistic personalities, it happened more frequently than the uninitiated might think.

  Now Zelda was strong-arming Kate to give up her chair at Kerrigan Karol and take on all of the additional responsibility Kate didn’t want. Zelda saw it as the ultimate gift that she could give her daughter. She couldn’t understand Kate’s apprehension—no matter how many times or how plainly Kate tried to explain it to her.

  Because the spa meant so much to her mother, Kate had examined the possibility of running it from every angle. She could move her clientele from the current Kerrigan Karol Salon location to the inn, but she also would have to hire additional stylists. It would be frowned upon if she tried to poach her coworkers from Kerrigan. That meant she would need to run ads and take in hairdressers she didn’t know.

  Not only that, they would have to bring in licensed therapists and estheticians for massages, facials, manicures, pedicures and all the other traditiona
l spa services, to accommodate a transient clientele. She would need to have stylists who could work guests into the schedule at a moment’s notice. As it stood, most of her clients booked a year’s worth of appointments in advance. She rarely had flexibility to work in walk-ins.

  Then, there was the financial end of it. She hadn’t had the heart to bring up finances with Zelda—as in who was paying for and installing the equipment needed to open a place like this. Since she had made the decision to skip college and go to beauty school, she had prided herself on supporting herself. She hadn’t asked anyone for a single cent to make ends meet, not even in the early days when she was building her business. She might be financially independent now, but that “independence” fit within the realm of her budget. She wasn’t in a position to take on the added expense of opening a place she didn’t even want.

  What if she gave up everything she had worked so hard to build—the lifestyle, the clientele, the independence—and then the spa at the inn tanked? That was a very real possibility because the dynamic would be completely different from what she was doing now.

  But the Forsyth Galloway Inn was so special to her. It held so much family history. Shouldn’t she do her part? Or at least care about leaving her imprint on the business, which was supposed to continue on for limitless future generations?

  The prospect of tying herself to the inn made her itch the same way that the thought of being married for the rest of her life did.

  What the hell was wrong with her?

  She paused to look around. She had walked through the front doors so many times, usually in a hurry to get in and out, and now she realized it had been a long time since she had stopped and really looked at the place.

  It was heartwarmingly familiar, but at the same time, it all looked new.

  Next to the front door, a tall, galvanized metal container held an assortment of umbrellas. Its companion, a leaning coat rack, stood sentry on the opposite side of the door. A grandfather clock ticked rhythmically from the corner. The impressive staircase dominated the center of the room.