Innkeeper's Daughter

by Marie Ferrarella

  And then not.

  Wyatt had reacted quickly, grabbing her by her shoulders and holding her steady.

  Holding her close.

  He looked as surprised to see her as she was surprised by her sudden loss of balance.

  “Hi. Anything I can do for you?” he asked, then added, “Other than keeping you from falling on your face, that is?”

  The way he said it made her feel that he’d attached more meaning to the phrase he’d just used than she was happy about.

  “Thanks,” she murmured, the word all but burning a hole in her tongue.

  She hated being in his debt even over something so minor. In her mind, owing him took away the balance of power and it made her feel as if she was subservient to him.

  “You can let go of me now,” she prompted when Wyatt didn’t immediately withdraw his hands from her shoulders.

  “You’re sure now?” he asked, removing his hands, but holding them up so that he could grab her again in an instant. “You might just start to tip over again. Something liquid you had for dinner, perhaps?” he asked innocently.

  He was implying that she was tipsy. She struggled to bank a flare of temper.

  “Very funny. Does your girlfriend laugh at jokes like that? Because if she does, my guess is that you have a simpleton on your hands.”

  “Girlfriend?” he repeated. “You’re going to have to be a little more specific than that.”

  “Why? Do you have more than one stashed away?” she asked, surveying the immediate area. There was no one else here, but there was always the bathroom and since the renovations some years ago, this room now had a walk-in closet. Lots of room for someone to hide.

  Wyatt turned around to face her after closing the door. “The only woman in this room is you and unless you’ve decided to volunteer for the position of my girlfriend, I have no idea what you’re talking about. As usual.”

  Yeah, right, as if she believed that. “I heard a woman laughing, just now.”

  Ah, now he knew what she was so upset about. He did what he could to look somber. “Sure that wasn’t just your split personality whispering in your ear?”

  “It was coming out of this room,” Alex insisted through clenched teeth. “And I don’t have a split personality.”

  “The jury hasn’t come in on that one yet,” he told her matter-of-factly. “Since I got here, you’ve been alternating between being the same lovable, haughty pain in the posterior you’ve always been and the really nice person my father always kept telling me you were.”

  Alex threw up her hands in frustration. “Now I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,” she snapped back at him, even though she could feel her cheeks heating and betraying her. Why couldn’t she find a way to control that?

  “Oh, I think you do,” Wyatt contradicted, his eyes holding hers.

  The distance between them didn’t seem nearly wide enough for her to be able to take a full breath and she suddenly very much needed to do that.

  She forced herself to focus on why she was in his room. “Okay, where’s she hiding?” Alex pushed past him. “The woman I heard laughing just a few minutes ago, where is she?”

  “Alex, there is no—oh.”

  “Oh,” she repeated. “Care to elaborate on exactly what you mean by ‘oh’?” She turned around to face him, expecting to see a very guilty look crossing his handsome features. Instead, Wyatt barely managed to suppress his laughter.

  “What?” she demanded.

  “I think what you heard was this.” Wyatt crossed the room to a small desk.

  There was a tiny recording device on the desk. He picked it up and pressed Play with his thumb as he walked back to Alex.

  After a beat, the recorder in Wyatt’s hand began to play.

  “And then, my heart almost stopped when Clark Gable looked in my direction—and smiled. His wife, Carole Lombard, was definitely not smiling. She took him by the arm, said, ‘Take me to our room, Dutchman, you’ve got a lot to make up for.’ That was her nickname for him, you know. Not very flattering, but she was annoyed that he was paying attention to me. You have to remember, I was only a very young woman then, and much prettier than I am now.”

  “You’re still a lovely woman,” Alex heard Wyatt say. And then the sound of warm laughter filled the air.

  Alex looked at Wyatt, wide-eyed. “That’s Ms. Carlyle and you,” she said, recognizing the two voices instantly. The laughter she’d heard belonged to Ms. Carlyle. How had she missed that?

  “I was transcribing the session into the computer,” he explained just in case she was going to ask why he was sitting alone in his room, listening to Anne Carlyle.

  Alex wasn’t thinking about the recording. She was focused on her reaction to what she’d thought she’d heard. A woman in Wyatt’s room. And she’d been jealous, Alex reluctantly realized.

  It was difficult for her to admit, even to herself, to the unexpected emotion jealousy. After a beat she confessed, “I feel like an idiot.”

  Wyatt shrugged, dismissing the incident as trivial. In the old days, having her mistake his recording for a flesh-and-blood woman being in his room, well, it would have been something to crow about and hold over her head.

  That is, until she’d get even with him.

  But he wasn’t twelve anymore. “Easy mistake to make,” he told her. “Playback on this recorder is extremely clear. Through the door, it probably sounded exactly like a woman laughing in my room.”

  Since Wyatt was being so nice about it, it made her feel even worse. She’d had no right to jump to conclusions the way she had. “Sorry I barged in like the bed-and-breakfast police,” she mumbled.

  He laughed softly. “You didn’t ‘barge’ in. I opened the door and if anything, you fell in.”

  That wasn’t exactly an image she welcomed, but she let it pass. “Still, I must have come on like a prude to you.”

  His eyes held hers for a moment. “Actually, the thought never crossed my mind.”

  She knew for a fact that the temperature couldn’t have gone up by ten degrees just now, which meant it had to be her. It was time to retreat. “I’ll leave you to your work.”

  She didn’t even get to take two steps. Wyatt caught her by the arm, holding her in place. “Listen, since you are here, why don’t we discuss your schedule?”

  “My schedule?” she queried.

  “Well, for one thing, so that I don’t wind up interfering with your day job. Or did you have a change of heart about letting me interview you?”

  “You’re finished with Ms. Carlyle? After only two weeks?”

  Wyatt almost said that she made it sound as if the other woman was a tissue that had served its purpose and he no longer had any use for, but he refrained, knowing Alex well enough to realize that would set off a round of sharp-tongued banter. And while entertaining, right now it might ruin the delicate balance he was interested in achieving with her.

  “For now I think she’s told me all the stories she can remember. In some cases,” he added with a smile, “she told them twice. If anything she’s forgotten comes to her, I’ll certainly take the time to listen, but I don’t want Ms. Carlyle to feel that I’m squeezing her dry.

  “In the meanwhile, I’d like to ask you and your sisters what it was like growing up with an ever-changing array of guests coming and going.” Even Dorothy and Carlos, the assistant cook, had been little more than transients with the price of one night’s lodging in their pockets—or less, in Dorothy’s case. Both were hired on when there was little work to be had because outright charity would have been insulting. Richard Roman was a man who knew how important a sense of pride was to maintaining a person’s dignity. “Did you like it? Or did you feel as if you were being invaded?”

  He wasn’t telling her about the sort of questions he had on his agenda, he was actually asking her, she realized.

  “I liked it,” she responded without hesitation.

  “Really?” He seemed genuinely surprised. “Be
cause I always had the impression you felt as if you were being invaded.”

  Now it made sense. “That wasn’t because of any of the inn’s guests,” she told him. “That was only because of you.”

  “Me?” he asked. It wasn’t as if he’d deliberately picked the place she called home. His father had chosen it, not him. “If having strangers come and go was acceptable, why would you feel that I was invading your home?”

  “Because you were,” she answered simply. “The other guests were always friendly, like visiting relatives on their best behavior because they’d be gone soon. But you were here for the first four weeks of every summer and I knew you’d just take over if I let you. So I didn’t let you.” It sounded uncomplicated when she said it that way, but they both knew that what had gone on between them had been far from simple.

  In other words, he thought, listening to her explanation, what she’d done came under the heading of a preemptive strike. “So that was why you were always in my face.”

  Alex inclined her head. A coin had two sides. “Because you were always in mine.”

  Although, looking back, she realized now that it was all a matter of perception. She felt he was in her face, he felt she was in his. In reality, it was a little bit of both because somehow, they wound up sharing the same space, summer after summer.

  The rivalry they shared had actually served him well. He wouldn’t be where he was now if not for her. If not for wanting to show her up. “I suppose I should thank you.”

  That was not what she’d expected to hear Wyatt say. Not only that, but she didn’t understand what he was talking about.

  “Why would you want to thank me?”

  “Because if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have learned to become so competitive. You became someone I wanted to put in her place, to beat seven ways from sundown, so to speak.” His desire to compete drove him to study harder, bone up on facts, try to become smarter. And there was also something else. “You’re also the reason I started working out.”

  Now he was just making things up. “How did I do that?” she challenged.

  He wondered if she really didn’t know, or was just pretending. “Do you remember the first time we all went down to the beach together?”

  Alex thought for a moment, then shook her head. She drew a blank.

  “Sorry. No.”

  He still wasn’t sure if he believed her. It had been such a life-changing moment for him.

  “Well, I do. Vividly. I was eleven.” And so insecure, it was almost terminal. “We all had our bathing suits on under our clothes and when we got to the beach, your dad said we could go swimming before lunch. When I took off my shirt, you started laughing so hard, I thought you were going to fall down. You said I was so skinny, your dad had matches for the fireplace that had more of a body than I did.”

  The remark, and her laughter, had really stung and had haunted him for months on end. Until he’d decided to do something about it.

  Alex still didn’t really remember the incident. “That was a bratty thing to say and I apologize.”

  “Don’t,” he told her. “If you hadn’t made fun of me, I wouldn’t have started working out as if I were possessed. And that, in turn, helped me build myself up. So in a very real sense, I have you to thank for this.” The next moment, as she watched in mesmerized disbelief, Wyatt stripped off his T-shirt in one fluid motion.

  And then her jaw dropped.

  Thinking back now, she realized that the last time she had seen him without his shirt on was roughly around the time of the story he was telling. If he had been eleven, that made her nine, breathing down the neck of ten. What she recalled now was that he had been pale, skinny and flatter than an ironing board.

  He was none of those things now.

  It took her a moment to get her bearings and more than just a couple more to carefully reengage her all-but-numb tongue.

  “Well, unless you’re planning on going for another swim now, I think it might be a good idea if you put your shirt back on.”

  Before I have no kneecaps left whatsoever.

  “Sorry. You’re right. I get a little carried away sometimes. But all this,” he paused to flex his muscles and just for a moment, part of him looked as if it was forged out of rock, “is thanks to you. So if you think I’m here to settle any old grudges between us, you can stop worrying.”

  “I’m not worrying,” she informed him as he put the shirt back on. “Besides, you got your revenge years ago.”

  He had no idea what she was referring to. “And how did I do that?”

  “That time when you kissed me. It was my first kiss and for exactly thirty seconds, my whole world lit up. And then you told me you kissed me because someone dared you to.”

  He hadn’t realized that something he’d said as a kid had hurt her as much as she’d hurt him.

  Since they were being honest with each other, he saw no reason to continue keeping this from her. “There was no dare,” he admitted. “I only said that because I didn’t want you to know how much I wanted to kiss you. I figured if you knew, I’d never have heard the end of it.”

  She was too stunned to say anything except, “Oh.” That changed everything.

  “I think that maybe,” Wyatt began, choosing each word slowly, “we should both turn over a new leaf and start over.”

  “Okay,” she finally replied. Her mouth had suddenly turned incredibly dry on her, as if she’d gargled with sand.

  A new leaf. Why did she feel as if she’d just been put on notice?

  And why did she feel as if she wasn’t up to whatever was coming her way? She’d always been more than a match before. Whether it came to dealing with Wyatt or slowly taking over the running of the inn, she had always dug deep and come up with the inner resources to do what needed to be done.

  He’d wanted to kiss me.

  That changed everything.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  IT WAS A LITTLE AFTER six-thirty the next morning and although there was a part of Alex that would have loved to sleep in, she valued solitude more.

  At this hour of the morning, she knew she’d have the dining room to herself. She’d be able to eat and think in peace before the day, with all its unique details and problems, could launch itself at her.

  Cris was already up and working in the kitchen, preparing to make breakfast for the guests. But her other two sisters, as well as her father, were still in their rooms, sound asleep. This small island of time was perfect to her.

  Or it was supposed to have been.

  She carefully made her way out the kitchen doors, balancing her plate of bacon, eggs and cheese—along with white toast, orange juice and creamy coffee—on a tray.

  “Is it self-serve this early in the morning?” Wyatt asked from the table she usually claimed as her own.

  For a second, Alex debated setting her tray down at another table, but that would seem petulant and she didn’t really want to start out on the wrong foot with him this morning. Quite frankly, after what he’d told her last night, she wasn’t altogether certain how to react to him. Part of her wanted to continue as usual, the other part pointed out that there no longer was an “as usual” to revert to.

  So she put her tray down and slid onto a seat at the table where Wyatt had already made himself right at home.

  “No,” she answered. “I’m just saving Cris the trouble of having to come out and serve me. She’s got enough on her hands with guests’ breakfasts.”

  “So Cris is up, too.” He made a mental note of that. At this point, every detail associated with the inn was relevant until he sorted through them and decided what to use and what to discard. “Anyone else?”

  “What is this, a bed check?” she asked defensively.

  Way to go, Alex. Great way to start. Snap his head off why don’t you?

  She pressed her lips together, forcing herself to relax. “Sorry,” she murmured.

  “I’m just trying to orient myself as to how the inn operates,�
�� he explained, letting her apology slide.

  “You grew up here,” Alex said, mystified. “Didn’t you notice anything in all that time?”

  “I did,” he replied, “but it was different, then. A kid who has to travel halfway around the continent to spend summers with his father is already busy trying to acclimate to the change of command as well as the change of scenery and time zone. But most important, back then, your father ran the inn—”

  “He still does.” Alex was quick to set him straight. “I just help.”

  A knowing smile played on his lips, as if she’d just protested too hard. “You’re Cardinal Richelieu to his Louis the XIII.”

  Alex’s blue eyes narrowed considerably. Had they been laser beams, Wyatt had no doubt he would have been cut in two. “History regarded Richelieu as a despicable person and Louis XIII was considered an idiot.”

  He freely backed away. The last thing he wanted was to get into an argument with her in the first hour of the first day of them starting over.

  “Okay, sorry, bad comparison,” he apologized. “But if your father is still the king, as you say, you are definitely the power behind the throne.”

  “I make things easy for him,” she corrected with a shrug. Maybe she’d been too quick to absolve Wyatt of his sins, she thought now. “Look, if this is going to work, you’re going to have to stop being so critical.”

  That hadn’t been his intent when he’d said that she was the one who made things happen at the inn. “Did you ever think that you perceive it as being critical when it’s not intended that way?”

  “No,” she said flatly.

  Could she really be so certain? he wondered. “Well, at least you’re honest.” It was a start, he supposed. “As for my part, I’ll try not to sound as if I’m being critical. I’ll try to behave.”

  Alex pretended to roll her eyes. “One can only hope.”

  “And you,” he pointed out, “are going to have to stop that.”

  Alex struggled to tamp down a wave of defensiveness. New game rules, remember? “Stop what?”

  As if she didn’t know. “Those little snide, snarky comments.”