Innkeeper's Daughter

by Marie Ferrarella

Alex raised her chin. He recognized it as her defensive move. “I do not make snide comments and I certainly don’t make snarky ones.”

  “Yeah, you do,” he contradicted, his tone matter-of-fact rather than annoyed. “Let’s just both resolve to do better,” he proposed, putting his hand out to her.

  She looked at it for a long moment, then finally shook it—warily.

  Wyatt grinned as, after a significant beat, he dropped her hand. “Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  “What’s going to be hard is you toeing the line,” she told him.

  “We,” Wyatt corrected her. “We will be toeing the line.” As he said it, he wondered if she was going to argue with him about this, as well.

  Alex inclined her head and uttered, “We,” as if the word was a bitter-tasting, rotten piece of fruit, one step away from poisoning her. But at least she’d conceded the point, he thought. For her that was a giant leap forward.

  With that settled for now, Wyatt eyed her plate. She’d hardly touched her food. “You going to eat all that bacon?”

  Suppressing a sigh, she turned her plate approximately ninety degrees so that the side with the bacon slices faced him.

  “Help yourself.”

  Wyatt plucked one crispy strip from the stash, but before making it disappear into his mouth, he raised his eyes to hers and asked, “You don’t mind?”

  “Would it matter?” she countered.

  The old Wyatt would have retorted, “No.” But he’d shed that skin a long time ago. Except, old habits died hard—but they did die, he reminded himself.

  “Yes, it would matter. I don’t want to alienate you our first day working together.”

  “Too late,” she said dryly, then, realized that she had been flippant when she was supposed to be trying not to be. “Sorry,” she murmured. “This arrangement is going to take some getting used to for me.”

  “Ditto,” he agreed. “And for the record, I meant no disrespect earlier—”

  “Which earlier?” she asked in all sincerity. He’d already said a few things that she could have taken the wrong way.

  “When I said you were Cardinal Richelieu. What I meant by that was that I saw you as a very capable person, someone who could take over at a moment’s notice and keep things running smoothly.”

  Boy, talk about a spin doctor. She had to hand it to him. “The Cardinal,” she pointed out, “did it because he was power mad.”

  “Some say he did it because he wanted France to stay strong, be respected, do well. See the similarity?” he asked.

  “Put that way...okay,” she admitted, “you weren’t trying to be insulting.” She nodded at the bacon that was still on her plate. “You can have more if you want. Or just ask Cris to make up a plate for you. You can have whatever you want, you know.”

  Too late, Alex realized that she’d just given him far too much of a straight line to resist, even if he was on his best behavior.

  “I already have it,” he answered. “I like nibbling off your plate.”

  She moved the plate so that it was between the two of them. It struck her that there was something rather intimate about sharing breakfast this way—even if it was with Wyatt.

  Who are you kidding with that little coda? It feels intimate because it is with Wyatt, an annoying little voice in her head said before she could successfully block it out.

  “So, how are we going to do this?” she asked. “Are you going to ask me a set of questions, or do I just start talking?”

  The last part of the question made him grin. “You mean, you haven’t already?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” The defensive edge was back in her voice.

  “That was a joke. But to answer your question, what I mean to do is just follow you around, shadow your day exactly as it happens.”

  That wasn’t what she thought she had signed on for. “I thought you wanted to hear stories about the inn.”

  Maybe he needed to explain his concept of the project a little more fully. “This is a story about the inn, as it’s unfolding. Ms. Carlyle gave me a lot of good background, as did your dad—”

  Alex looked at him in obvious surprise. “When did you interview my dad?”

  “I didn’t,” he said. “My father did. It’s all there in his notes—and in the diary.”

  “What diary? This is the first mention of a diary that I’ve heard of.”

  Wyatt had a feeling that no one had known about the diary—except, perhaps, for Alex’s father. “The diary my father kept about his summers here. He started it as a journal right after he and my mother were divorced. He first showed it to me just before he died.”

  It was really difficult for him to talk about this, but he needed to be able to get past the sharp peaks of pain if he was going to keep the promise he’d made to his father. “He said he started it as a way to try to figure out just what went wrong, but it wound up being a diary of the all times he spent here with me. He told me that, after he...passed on, I should read it.”

  She knew that if it was her and her father had given her a diary like that, she would have had trouble reading the entries so soon after his death.

  Wyatt was stronger than she’d thought.

  “And did you?” she asked.

  He nodded, absently breaking off another piece of bacon and popping it in his mouth. “Took me a couple of weeks to work up my nerve, but yes, I finally read it a few days ago.”

  “And?” she prompted.

  “And, aside from a great many anecdotes about the inn, I discovered that my father and I shared a lot of the same values. He was only about eight years older than I was when he started keeping this diary or journal, whatever you want to call it. A lot of what he went through I can see myself reacting to the same way.”

  He smiled, more to himself than her, remembering a passage he’d read that struck home. “It makes me feel closer to him.” And then he looked at her, realizing the tactical error he’d just committed. He’d handed her something that she could use against him. “But you probably think that’s hokey.”

  Just exactly what did he think of her? Did he see her as some kind of malicious harpy? “No, why would I?”

  “Because you kind of...barrel through life, you know? Like a...like a...steamroller, and steamrollers aren’t exactly known for their sensitivity. Or rather their tolerance of sensitivity.”

  This was just getting better and better, she thought. “You see me as an insensitive steamroller?”

  Maybe he shouldn’t have said that—but it was too late to take the words back now. “Honestly?”

  Alex drew herself up where she sat. “That’s what I assume we’re supposed to be being.”

  Okay, he had no one to blame for this but himself. “Then yes, I do. But lately...”

  His voice trailed off, but he had really piqued her curiosity.

  “Lately?” Alex prompted, waiting for him to finish his thought and bracing herself just in case she didn’t like what he would say. And it hadn’t gotten off to a promising start, to put it mildly.

  “Lately I’ve been seeing glimmers of a much softer woman beneath the bravado. One who, although she talks about being independent and being her own person, I think also wants to share her life with someone else.”

  She didn’t like how close to the truth he’d gotten. That was a side of her she’d thought she’d kept successfully under wraps. A side that had reacted very badly to being made fun of by a little boy she’d had a crush on.

  Any bridges that he had begun constructing between them were in danger of crumbling now. “You never told me you took psych courses in college.”

  His eyes held hers and she felt as if he was looking into her very soul. And seeing secrets he shouldn’t.

  “Just something I picked up along the way.”

  “Along the way?” Was there some sort of double meaning to that?

  “Through life,” he replied. “Lessons all leave a deeper impression when they’re learned that wa
y.” He looked down at Alex’s plate and realized he had all but picked it clean. “Sorry,” he apologized. “I didn’t realize I’d eaten that much. Let me go and see if I can rustle up some more for you.”

  But as he started to get up, she stopped him. “No, don’t bother Cris. It’s okay.”

  “I wasn’t planning on bothering Cris.”

  But he just said he was going to bring her back another serving of breakfast. “Then what were you planning on doing?”

  The expression on his face said he would have thought she’d put two and two together by now. “Making it for you, if Cris doesn’t have any objections to another pair of hands in the kitchen.”

  Alex stared at him. “You’re telling me you can cook?”

  “Not enough for Julia Child to claim me as her long-lost grandson, but well enough to keep myself alive if need be.” As he left the table, Wyatt glanced at her over his shoulder and laughed. “Close your mouth, Alex. That’s not your most attractive look.”

  Embarrassed, Alex quickly closed her mouth and rose from the table. “This I’ve got to see,” she announced, following him.

  He took her skepticism in stride. “Sure. You can even pitch in if you want.”

  He probably thought he could get her to do it for him. She would have—if he hadn’t said that he was capable of doing it himself.

  “Oh, no, you’re on your own here,” she told him. “I just want to observe, and make sure you don’t burn down the kitchen.”

  It had been a long time since he had failed at something he set out to do and if she was waiting for that, she was going to be disappointed.

  “Haven’t done it yet,” he replied, “so I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.”

  “I’m not holding my breath,” she protested with just a touch of indignation.

  But he knew better. “Yes, you are. I think you really enjoy the thought of my falling on my face.”

  “Not falling—tripping a little, maybe,” she conceded, “but not a complete pratfall.”

  “You know, this new-leaf thing of yours is refreshing.” Although, he had to admit it took some getting used to after all those years of always being wary that she was setting him up for something.

  “Just remember you said that. You might not find it so refreshing after I tell you what I think of your cooking efforts,” she warned.

  Her comment didn’t faze him. Wyatt held the kitchen door open for her. “Prepare to be amazed.”

  “What I’m preparing for is to be amused.”

  He laughed.

  That odd, rippling sensation started up in her stomach.

  She was definitely going to have to watch her step, Alex cautioned herself, even as she followed him into the kitchen.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CRIS WAS AT her worktable when they opened the door into her domain.

  “Back again?” she asked before she realized that this time Alex wasn’t alone.

  “Interview over already?” Cris ventured as she shook her head. “This has to be some kind of record, even for you two.”

  “The interview hasn’t even begun yet,” Wyatt informed her.

  “Oh, then what can I do for you, Wyatt?” Cris asked, indicating the stove.

  Wyatt waved her back to her work.

  “Nothing,” he told her. “Just continue doing whatever you were doing. I’m going to make your sister a replacement breakfast. I got carried away out there and I seem to have eaten all of hers.”

  “Oh.” This time, Alex read the amusement in her sister’s expression. “Well, then, I can—”

  “No,” Wyatt interrupted before she could complete the offer. “I can. You’ve got more than enough to do, Cris. The inn is booked solid—again—and my guess, since you have the gift of making even shoe leather taste out of this world, is that they’ll all be coming down for their complimentary breakfast sometime between seven and ten, so you’d better get ready. Don’t worry,” he assured her, “I know my way around bacon, scrambled eggs and toast well enough not to get lost.”

  Alex saw Cris glance in her direction with this wide, know-it-all grin. She followed that up by looking at Wyatt next and giving him her blessings with a gesture that indicated he had the run of her kitchen for as long as he needed it.

  “Okay, Wyatt, have at it,” she said.

  Alex had the distinct feeling that her sister wasn’t just referring to the kitchen when she said “it,” but that somehow she was being included in that grouping.

  Wasn’t anyone on her side?

  * * *

  FOR THE NEXT five weeks—for Alex—it felt as if every day began and ended with Wyatt.

  He was there, shadowing her, sometimes to ask questions, sometimes just to observe her going through the paces of her day. Within a few days it quickly got to the point that if Wyatt wasn’t with her, she’d catch herself looking around, waiting for him to pop up.

  He really did drive her crazy at times, but just when his questions delved too deep and she was on the verge of telling him that she wasn’t going to put up with his burrowing into her life anymore, he’d back off. It was as if he could actually sense what she was thinking.

  She wasn’t the only one Wyatt talked to. All three of her sisters were observed, as was her father. But from what Alex could tell, the time Wyatt spent questioning her family seemed to be minimal while the time he spent questioning her seemed to go on and on.

  And on.

  While she tried to act as if she resented the constant and never-ending intrusion on her time, Alex had to admit in the privacy of her own mind that she had grown accustomed to it in a remarkably short amount of time.

  The most incredible thing about her reversal of attitude toward him was that when she remembered an incident—or she’d seen a photograph in his father’s private album that subsequently triggered a memory—she actually went looking for Wyatt so she could tell him about it.

  And somewhere around the fourth week it occurred to her, although she tried to bury the thought, that she was going to miss Wyatt. She’d miss talking to him when he finally accumulated what he needed to do justice to the inn’s history—and left.

  Because Labor Day was almost here, Alex had a feeling that the day of Wyatt’s departure wasn’t that far away.

  She tried to brace herself for it, but even as she did, she wondered if perhaps this was a losing proposition.

  * * *

  “YOU KNOW,” ALEX said one evening after dinner as she and Wyatt sat on the veranda in the oversize white wicker chairs. “I didn’t even know your dad had an album like that. All those photographs he’d taken of us and the inn.”

  She remembered Uncle Dan snapping a camera every so often, but she had never once seen any of the photographs he’d taken.

  The evening air was almost silky, and Wyatt took his time answering her. “He didn’t.”

  That didn’t make any sense. “But you showed me the album,” she protested. If it hadn’t belonged to his father, then whose was it?

  “What my dad had was a large box full of pictures.”

  “Now that I think of it, that sounds more like him,” she said with a fond laugh. “But if he hadn’t put those photos into the album you showed me, then who—?”

  “I did. When I found that box of pictures, I decided to surprise my father with the album.”

  He had stayed up all night doing it, knowing he was racing the clock because his father had told him he was dying.

  “The one good thing he did—other than take the photographs—was write the date on the back of each and every one of them, so I was able to put it in chronological order.

  “I finished it two days before he...” Wyatt cleared his throat and attempted to finish his sentence again, but he failed a second time.

  Moved by the emotion Wyatt was trying to ignore, Alex covered his hand with her own. “I know,” she said quietly. There was no need to say anything further, no reason to call death by its name. “That was a really nice thing for you
to do for him.” She paused for a moment, then added, “So is finishing this book.”

  Wyatt could relive the scene when his father had asked him to do it at the drop of a hat. “He was really adamant about that. Held on to my hand until I promised him that I would finish the book. He smiled at me after I said it and really looked at peace for the first time since he’d told me about his diagnosis. As gruesome as it sounds, it was as if I’d just given him permission to die.”

  Alex thought about that for a moment. “Maybe, in a way, you did. Uncle Dan always finished his assignments, lived up to his commitments, brought in an article before deadline. He took pride in those things. Knowing the book he was contracted to write would be sent to his publisher after his death meant that he was keeping his side of the bargain.”

  Wyatt laughed shortly. The expression on his face made him appear to be a million miles away. And maybe he was, Alex thought. “You’re probably right. Funny thing was, when I called his publisher to see if he still wanted the book, the guy told me my father had already spoken to him and pitched me as a replacement author weeks prior to my call. He was completely on board.”

  Wyatt paused, taking a deep breath, as if to clear his head.

  What he was really looking to do was change the subject. “You know, you never told me why you came back to the inn after college.”

  “What do you mean, why did I come back? Because this is my home.”

  That wasn’t really enough. “You were twenty-two with degrees in business administration and accounting. You could have gone anywhere with them. Your friend Stacy did,” Wyatt pointed out.

  “My dad was still having health problems at the time, but he wouldn’t take it easy,” she confided. “I couldn’t just go off, looking to have some big adventure, not when he needed me. Besides,” she added with a shrug, “I’d be spending all my time worrying about him and flunk all my interviews. Nobody would hire someone who was preoccupied to help run their business.”

  “Rothchild and Saunders wanted to hire you, as did Eleventh Hour,” Wyatt said, mentioning the names of two high-end, exclusive companies.

  The pleasant evening talk they had been having immediately took a nosedive.