by Mary Blayney
“Man,” I sighed.
“Right–o! Then you might have been in love with me!”
“Yeah, that’s probably what would have happened.”
He started to laugh, then hiccupped, smacking his lips together afterward. “Huh. Sorry. Italian sub comin’ back on me.”
I made a disgusted face.
“Okay, so. You befriend Miss Princess, Miss Prin–t–the–invitations–cuz–I–got–him, Miss Prin—“
“Stop that.” My voice snapped.
He straightened up, looked impressed. “HO–kay, then. So, you’re friends with Prin. You two are tight, you’re always together. How’s old Coop gonna fall for her with you right there? Never leaving them alone? Never letting him get a private word?”
“That’s it? That’s your plan? That’s a terrible plan. For one thing, if he only sees me next to her, won’t that just emphasize the differences between us?”
“Exactly.” He nodded once.
I gaped at him. “Like, she’s tall and gorgeous, while I’m short and … not gorgeous? Like she’s got gobs of ‘raven hair’ and I’ve got a bob of mouse brown?” I flipped a lock with one hand. “Like she’s probably got a college degree and the best I can do is take accounting at the local CC? Like she has a voice that’s melted honey and I sound like one of the chipmunks?”
“More like Marilyn Monroe on helium. You got a kinda breathy quality…”
I stood up and turned for the door. “This is ridiculous.”
“Wait, girly.”
I turned, because he’d put a little steel in the word. I wanted to be defiant, but the best I could do was sulky. “What for?”
“Just do this one thing. The next time lover–boy asks what you think, tell him, and tell him honestly. Even if you think it’s not what he wants to hear, or it’s not what you want to say. Just do that for me, will ya? You’ll see.”
“That’s no help. I’m always honest with Cooper.”
He snorted. “Yeah, right.”
And then he was gone. Winked out like a pinprick star that you could see one minute and was gone the next.
I felt a little sick.
Roger popped his head around the door frame and said my name.
I jumped, then faced him, inhaling slowly.
“Jeez. Tense much?” Roger looked at me quizzically. I wondered if he’d heard anything, but he didn’t look around me for anyone else, and he didn’t ask who I’d been talking to. “Coop’s looking for you. Hazel too. Meeting in the dining room, ASAP. Some shit’s hitting the fan. You’ll have to tell me about it after.”
#
“Of course I hired her. She’s a gem.” Hazel pulled a napkin out of the pile and began folding it. “The competition is two weeks away and we’re short a sommelier. Besides, I think she’s going to turn this place around.”
“What in the world makes you say that?” Cooper’s voice was all protest. His arms were crossed over his chest in classic defensive posture. “How could you possibly know that? She only just got here this morning. Have you even called her references?”
I cast a surreptitious eye around the room, searching for fairies, but saw none. Which didn’t mean much; he was small enough to hide pretty effectively behind a chair leg. And there were a lot of chairs in the dining room.
Hazel shook out another napkin from the pile, snapping it like a sail in a brisk wind, before folding it. “The agency sent her, they’ve called her references. Besides, all you have to do is spend ten minutes talking to her and you’ll know she’s the one for the job. Really, Coop, go talk to her.”
“I will, of course,” he said coolly. “I just thought the hiring decisions were shared. Now I find out you’ve hired someone unilaterally.”
Hazel stopped what she was doing and eyed him. “You make it sound like I’ve staged a coup.”
He pursed his lips (the dimples showing), gaze steady on his mother.
Hazel blinked first, bringing her attention back to the napkin in her hands. “Fine. If you don’t like her, you can fire her.”
“Not. The same. Thing.” He glanced at me.
I agreed with him, but was not about to say so. Hazel could be scary when crossed. I hoped he could see my solidarity on my face.
“Don’t put her in the middle of this,” Hazel said.
I grabbed a napkin and began folding.
“Look,” Hazel continued, “we shouldn’t be bickering about this anyway. Kim is getting uncomfortable.”
“Kim agrees with me. Managing the restaurant – let alone the competition – is a big position, and we should have taken more time. Together.”
Hazel’s hands dropped and she sighed, exasperated. “We don’t have more time, Coop. But go talk to Ms. Bella, if you’re that worried about my decision making. She’s in room eleven. If you don’t like her we’ll tell her we’ve made a mistake.”
I turned startled eyes to Hazel. Room eleven was one of our special rooms. It had the best furniture, the heirloom rugs, and the tallest, softest feather bed I’d ever seen in my life.
Plus it was the room Hazel had shared with Cooper’s father when they’d stayed here the first time twenty–nine years ago. It was the room she and her husband stayed in every year on their anniversary, and the reason she and Cooper had bought the inn three years ago, a year after his father had died. Hazel had confided to me that Cooper had been conceived in that room, though she told me I didn’t need to mention that to him.
“She’s staying here too? Where does she live?”
“Honestly, Coop, I don’t know what your problem is. Don’t you trust me? Just go talk to her.”
He shook his head, arms still resolutely crossed. He looked at me. “I’m sorry, Kim. You should have been consulted too.”
“What? Oh no...” I pulled my head back so far I had multiple chins. If I’d been a turtle my head would have disappeared completely. I hoped Hazel didn’t think I’d expressed any sense of ownership to Coop.
I knew why he’d said it, but it wasn’t true. I didn’t own even a piece of the inn, though I’d lived in the place my whole life. You see, my parents had been the owners who’d sold it to Hazel and Coop. It had been their life’s work. But then my mother had gotten sick and keeping up with an inn, and a restaurant with a world–class wine list and tasting room had gotten to be too much.
They were on the opposite coast now, in Florida, living in Naples in a community where my mother’s increasingly crippling rheumatoid arthritis could be attended to by a cadre of doctors who specialized in such things.
So no, I might have grown up here, but my parents had sold it for the money to take care of my mother and that was that.
“I’m not going to let you wave this off, Kimmy. You know more about this place, not to mention wine, than any of us. You should have been consulted.” Cooper’s voice was growing heated. I squirmed in my seat, wishing I were in the office, placing orders.
Except the office was where I’d seen Harry. Or rather, where I’d had a bizarre hallucination, one I had been trying to pass off to myself as a dream, like I might have drifted off into a nap without realizing it.
I said, tentatively, “I’m sure she’s—”
“We don’t know what she is,” Cooper insisted, “apart from possibly a magician, convincing the owner of a reputable establishment – an establishment whose goal is to improve an already impressive reputation with a significant wine competition – to hire her on the spot without even calling one reference. You do realize that bad management can sink a place in less time than you can say we’re sorry about the food poisoning?”
Hazel bristled. “Don’t be silly. The chef—”
“Did you or did you not, Mother, call three references on the last busboy we hired?”
Hazel glared. “I did. Because he struck me as shady.”
“Because of the tattoo?”
“Of course not. I don’t hold such shallow prejudices. I just had a feeling—”
“The way you
had a feeling about Ms. Bella?”
“Well, yes—”
“And the busboy, Justin, has been great. So what does that tell you about your instincts?”
“Cooper,” I said, feeling as if he’d gotten onto an unnecessary roll. “Just meet her, okay? I got a feeling about her too.”
Hazel beamed at me.
Unfortunately my feeling had been about my romantic doom, but it wasn’t because I thought Prin was unsuitable for the job. Quite the contrary. She exuded competence.
Coop exhaled, looking at me helplessly. Had my comment been a betrayal? He looked back at his mother. “Okay. Do me a favor, Mother, and tell her I want to talk to her when she comes down. I’ll be in the office.”
He turned for the door.
“I will,” Hazel said, then raised her voice. “But there’s one last thing you should know.”
Cooper paused in the doorway, one hand on his hip. The gleam in Hazel’s eye told me she had something up her sleeve.
“She has promised William Walker.”
“She what?”
“For the competition. She’s promised to get William Walker.”
Cooper was struck dumb, his mouth hanging open. After one blank moment his eyes narrowed. “Exactly what do you mean get William Walker?”
“As a judge.” She couldn’t restrain her gloat. “Cooper, it’ll put us on the map. Our California Pinot Competition could become the premier pinot noir tasting event of the entire west coast. She also implied she could get Justin Jones.”
I felt the air leave the room. William Walker was the most famous wine critic in the country. Maybe the world. You could argue his relevance, you could disagree with his reviews, you could dispute his point system, but every winery, shop, magazine, blog, and review site in the country cited his ratings. Adding well–known wine journalist Justin Jones would just be the icing on the cake.
Coop shut his mouth with a click of his teeth. “Well,” he said after a long moment. “Well. I’ll believe that when I see it, I guess.”
A timid knock sounded at the door. We all looked at each other a moment before Cooper turned and opened it.
“Uh, yeah, hi,” Roger said, absorbing the tension in the room like a dry sponge in a wet sink. “That woman who’s staying in room eleven? She asked if we could send someone to help her. She’s got some kind of problem with the bed. I’d have gone but…”
I nearly leapt out of my seat. “I’ll go.”
Hazel had already dropped her napkin and taken a step toward the door.
“Let Kim go.” Cooper held a hand out to his mother.
She stopped and give him a peeved look.
“I’ll be right back,” I said, hoping whatever it was Prin needed took longer than the rest of this meeting. I have a hard time with discord, especially when I’m not on the side of the person I care most about. But Cooper and Hazel clashed often enough that I was sure they could handle this disagreement just fine without me writhing in the wings.
Chapter Three
What’s going on?” Roger stage whispered to me as I squeezed out one side of the huge mahogany double doors.
I took a deep breath. “Hazel hired the woman in eleven to manage the restaurant, and the competition, without consulting Cooper.”
As Roger and I headed for the front entry and the wide, curving staircase to the guest rooms, I heard Hazel’s voice rise in the dining room behind us.
“Is that all?” Roger is only slightly taller than me – and I’m not tall – but he was barrel–chested with muscular arms that swung far from his body, so his hand brushed mine as we walked. I used to think this was intentional but I’ve come to believe he genuinely doesn’t know how much space he takes up.
“The agency sent her but Hazel pretty much hired her on the spot.” I stopped at the base of the stairs, one hand on the railing. “But don’t—”
My eye was caught by a moving shape at the top step, partially obscured by the carved balusters but heading toward the upstairs hall. It was small and pot–bellied, and dread dropped into my stomach. I even thought I saw a miniature smoke ring in its wake.
“Don’t what?” Roger asked.
I jerked my eyes back to him. “What?”
“Jeez, Kim, what’s going on with you? You got that deer in the headlights look again.”
I focused on his broad face, the stubbled cheeks, the thick sideburns. “Again?”
“Yeah, you had it in the office too. I don’t get what the big deal is. As soon as Coop meets the new woman he’ll love her. She’s obviously the one for the job.”
I studied him. No doubt showed on his face, which was odd in and of itself. How had we all come to this same conclusion in so short a time? Roger wasn’t the most astute judge of character, but he did tend toward cynicism. For him to be positive about anything was unusual.
Then again, Prin was drop–dead gorgeous, and Roger was, after all, a guy. Oftentimes a delusional guy, at that.
“Do you really think so?”
He gave a facial shrug. “Sure.”
I turned to him fully. “Why?”
He looked startled.
“No, really, I mean it,” I continued. “It’s not that I don’t agree with you, I do. I just wonder why you feel she’s right for the job.”
He brought one thick–fingered hand to his chin and rubbed it down his unshaven neck thoughtfully. “Well…she…”
“Hello?” The voice was light, the tone pleasant. I looked up to see the lady in question standing uncertainly at the top of the stairs. She wore black skinny jeans and a clingy gold top, her hair in a long braid hanging over one shoulder. Her dark eyes glittered and her red lips were curved into a smile. “I’m so sorry to interrupt. Kim, isn’t it? I wonder if you could help me a moment?”
I straightened and started up the stairs. “Of course.” A second later I remembered Roger and turned back to him. He gazed up at Prin as if encountering the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel for the first time.
“And hello Roger,” she added. I wouldn’t say she beamed, exactly, but Roger suddenly seemed to be basking in the glow of an unclouded sun.
“Good afternoon, Miss Bella.” Roger wore a smile I’d never seen on him before, one untwisted by skepticism. It was a smile borne of pure delight.
My nose caught the scent of a tiny cigarette. I whipped my head back to see a curl of smoke around Prin’s knees. I bounded up the stairs.
“Please don’t rush.” She held out a graceful hand, even as she led the way back to her room. “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything … private?”
She didn’t exactly have an accent, I noticed, but she radiated exoticism, making it seem as if she had just the faintest Italian twirl at the end of each sentence.
My eyes, scanning the carpet for tiny men, shifted to her face. “Private? Oh no.” Then, as her meaning dawned, “With Roger? Oh no. No, no. We’re just – uh, that was nothing. Just business.”
Her finely arched brows rose fractionally. “Oh? Something I should know?”
Should I warn her that Cooper was upset? I shook myself. Of course not. My loyalty was to Cooper, and besides, he was very professional. He wouldn’t let on to her that he was angry she was hired. In fact, he’d probably fall for her like the rest of us as soon as they talked.
For a second I wondered again how that had happened, what it was we were all getting from Principessa Bella that made us so sure she would be good at the job, when I spotted Harry the Fairy leaning against the jamb of Prin’s open door.
I glanced at her to find her looking at me. “You’re so lovely,” she said, her tone so musical the compliment seemed completely natural. “Such glowing skin, and your eyes! Well, surely you get compliments on your eyes all the time.”
“Me? Oh. Thank you. But no. Not compliments, really. Sometimes people, uh, comment on them, I guess.” It was true, sometimes people did say I had nice eyes. They’re big and round, and very light gray. But they’re more startling than beautiful. The
y take people by surprise, and that’s why they think they have to say something.
“Do you ever wear makeup?” She guided me around the doorframe into her room. “They would be simply devastating with some liner and a good mascara.”
I blushed. I was wearing makeup. Evidently not enough, or the right kind, or something.
“I have a little—”
“Here.” She moved into her bathroom, the largest in the inn with a huge copper tub, separate shower with multiple jets, a bidet toilet and huge granite counter with a vessel sink and bronze fixtures. The stone floor was even heated.
She pulled a tube of mascara and an eye pencil from a bag on the counter and handed them to me. Both Chanel. “Take these. Line just here.” She pointed a slim finger to her lash line. “And right under the lashes here. You will be irresistible.”
Irresistible. Well. We’d see about that.
I gripped the tools in one hand, too tightly. “Thank you. Uh. There was something–?”
“Ah. Yes. I am so sorry, but I have a very temperamental back.” She gave a delicate wince and placed a hand on the back of her slender hip. “And this bed, while so very lovely, I’m afraid I might need another mattress. Just one on top of this one, very firm. I am spoiled, you see, and like to be up high.”
She smiled down at me from her minimum five–foot–eight–inch height.
“I can see that.” I laughed.
Her eyes crinkled with her smile, and I had that glowy feeling of making a friend.
“There’s a room at the end of the hall that’s going to be painted. We’ll have to move the bed anyway, so I’ll just ask Roger to put that mattress on top of this one. I think it’s pretty firm. You sure it won’t be too high?”
“It will be perfect. Thank you, Kim.” She put a hand on my forearm. “I knew you’d be the one to solve the problem with a minimum of fuss. I believe you might be the glue that holds this place together.” She winked at me.
She had no way of knowing anything about me or this place or what might or might not be holding it together, but the compliment went straight to that place in me that needed it.