Adrienne didn’t answer right away. She read Brandon as trying to do his own part to help without being overly solicitous toward his wife and annoying her—a balancing act he hadn’t always succeeded at maintaining, apparently. But Maggie smiled, setting her water glass on the table. “Don’t worry, Adrienne. You won’t get between Brandon and me. He’s got a point.” She shot him a look. “This time.”
Brandon grinned at Adam. “Did you hear that? First time since fifth grade Maggie admits I have a point.”
Adam held up a hand. “Adrienne isn’t walking into that trap.”
“I like staying busy and having a bunch of different things going on,” Maggie said. “But I have a pounding headache just from doing a few things here. I don’t want to end up back in the ER for overdoing it.”
Brandon brushed a hand on his wife’s pale cheek. “You’re doing great, Maggie. It’s easy for any of us to crank ourselves into overdrive.”
“Sometimes I don’t think I have a pause button, never mind an off button.”
Neither Sloan brother responded. Adrienne had worked as a solo entrepreneur enough to appreciate Maggie’s drive and her sense of responsibility to clients and guests. She wanted the women arriving next weekend to have a wonderful time. If anything went wrong, let it not involve the food, the accommodations or the service. Maggie was good at so much but catering was her vein of gold. Having an innkeeper—even an inexperienced one—would help her concentrate on what she did best. Olivia loved design, color, painting and strategizing. Leaving the day-to-day operations of Carriage Hill to someone else made sense for both of them.
Adrienne glanced out at the flowers and herbs, a perk, for sure, for guests. “Eight women who’ve been friends since college meeting at an out-of-the-way country inn for a weekend. I have friends from my college days but not eight.” She spoke lightly, but it was true. She doubted she could round up eight women friends, period, for a weekend get-together. “Maybe I’ll have enough friends for a weekend get-together by the time I turn forty.”
“You’ve been on the go since college,” Maggie said. “You probably have friends all over the world.”
“I try to make friends wherever I drop my anchor.” Why had she gone there? She got up from the table. “I have a few things I should get to. Give me a shout if you need anything.”
Maggie watched her head to the mudroom door. “It’s an adjustment being out here on your own. If you’d like someone to stay here until you get your feet under you, we can arrange it.”
“Thanks, but I’m fine. I love the quiet. Listening to the birds.” Adrienne deliberately avoided glancing at Adam, standing by the table, drinking his water. “I’m not nervous on my own here.”
“Excellent,” Maggie said.
Brandon helped her up. She admitted she was dragging and not up to driving. They decided to take her van and get Adam or Dylan to drive his truck back to the village. Maggie turned to Adrienne. “Adam will be here for a while. Let him know if you need anything. Thanks for going with me to the cellar hole. It was good for me.”
“Same here,” Adrienne said. “I was focused on the boys yesterday. It was good to get another look at it.”
“I needed to do it for peace of mind. I’m sure I freaked out more than I would have because I took that tumble. I realized in the middle of the night that I really thought someone had pushed me...” Maggie stopped, her turquoise eyes narrowed with obvious pain. “But no one did.”
She and Brandon left through the kitchen. Adrienne decided not to go straight inside after all and instead gathered the dishes from the terrace table. Adam helped carry them inside. She pointed vaguely toward the sink. “I’ll clean up. Thanks.”
“Need a hand?”
“That’s okay. I’ve kept you from your work long enough.”
“No problem.” He went into the mudroom for Buster’s water bowl. He filled it at the sink and set it back in the mudroom. Violet dived into it. “You’d think she went on our walk instead of lazed around here,” he said, returning to the kitchen.
“Thirsty dog.”
He picked up a dish towel. “Maggie and Olivia enjoy the work here, but it’s good they recognized they needed more help and someone to figure it all out. How are you faring as an innkeeper?”
“So far, so good, but it’s only been six days.” Watching him dry his hands was proving to be ridiculously distracting. She tugged open the dishwasher. “I’ve learned the hard way I’m at my best when I focus on the things only I can do. It’s not always possible, but it’s a good place to start when deciding what to delegate. In other words, I know how to wash sheets and towels, but it’s not the best use of my time.”
“Makes sense.” Adam placed the towel on the counter. “Going to straighten things out here and move on? You could be the Mary Poppins of innkeeping.”
“At least she’d been a governess before taking on the Banks kids.”
“Imagine those two confronting a bull moose.” Adam worked his injured hand a bit, as if it was stiff. His bruise from yesterday had turned into a mix of purples and blues. “It’s your first job as an innkeeper, but you’re the type who likes to keep things fresh.”
“A restless soul,” she said with a smile.
He lowered his hand. “An unconventional innkeeper for an unconventional inn.”
She loaded glasses into the top rack of the empty dishwasher. “You’re a steady type, aren’t you? That must be a plus with your work. What do you think about while you haul rock and such?”
He leaned against the counter. “Hauling rock and such.”
“I suppose a wandering mind can be dangerous for a stonemason.”
“Not always.”
She felt his gaze on her as she rinsed off plates and added them to the dishwasher. “Do you think about your hopes and dreams? You know. Places you want to visit. Things you want to do. Do you keep a someday/maybe list or something similar?”
“Why wouldn’t I just visit the places I want to visit and do the things I want to do?”
“Time, budget, work, family commitments.” She shut the dishwasher. “Maybe you want to go to Paris and San Francisco. You can’t be in two places at the same time. Maybe you want to build a house on Echo Lake but don’t have the funds saved.”
“So I’m supposed to keep a list of everything I might want to do someday?”
“Or might want to learn. Learning Spanish is on my someday/maybe list, for instance.”
“Was becoming an innkeeper on it?”
He hadn’t missed a beat. Adrienne sighed and grabbed the towel he’d used, noticed where it was damp from his hands. She didn’t know why that felt sexy to her but it did. “Spending time with Vic was on it. Having a someday/maybe list helps. Seriously. Your mind isn’t always at you, whispering Paris in your ear. It knows you’re not going to forget. Your energy goes into where you need to have your focus, and things start to fall into place in your life—”
“And next thing I’m in Paris?”
She ignored his sardonic tone. “Something like that.”
“I’m not making fun of you,” he said.
“It’s new territory for you.”
He stood straight. “What else is on your someday/maybe list?”
“It’s so long, I divided it into categories. Travel, purchases, experiences, learning. I go through them regularly and ditch what no longer interests me. It works that way, too. Writing something down makes it more concrete without taking action, and you look at it and go—nah, I don’t really want a new car.”
“You don’t want a new car?”
“I wasn’t being literal,” she said.
She saw the slightest smile and spark in those blue eyes. “I know,” he said.
She grinned at him. “You’re teasing me. Well, as a matter of fact, I do want a new car, or at least a good used one. Vic�
��s loaner isn’t going to last.”
“That car has a lot of miles left in it.”
“You’re a waste not, want not Knights Bridge Sloan,” Adrienne said. “Do you make any lists?”
“Groceries and supplies.”
“What about tasks?”
“We keep track of jobs on the company computer. You’re into lists?”
“I love lists. I have list templates. My generic packing list, for instance. I don’t have to come up with a new list every time I drag out my suitcase—not that I’ll be going anywhere anytime soon with this job.” She looked around the kitchen for something else that needed her attention. “What would you like to do if you took a trip?”
“Go someplace I could do a lot of walking and dig into the history and sights.”
“Paris is great for that,” she said. “It’s a fantastic walking city and there’s loads to see.”
“Sounds good. I’ll set up a savings account for Paris.”
Adrienne eyed him. “You’re not serious.”
“Sure I am. Who doesn’t want to see Paris? Jess Flanagan wanted to go to Paris for ages. She finally got Mark to go with her last fall. You know who they are, right?”
“I do. Jess is Olivia’s younger sister who works for their family millworks. Mark’s a local architect. He designed the addition here as well as Olivia and Dylan’s new house and barn.” Adrienne smiled. “Vic did a cheat sheet for me.”
“Why am I not surprised? Another way to procrastinate writing his memoirs.” Adam smiled, reaching down to pet Violet as she wandered in from the mudroom. “Jess and Mark’s wedding was the first big event here.”
And now they were expecting their first child, a boy, due not long after Olivia’s baby girl.
Adrienne chose an apple from a bowl and polished it on her shirt, just to have something to do with herself. Adam didn’t show any indication he was affected by the romantic changes among his family and friends. The man was steady, she thought. Definitely steady.
“Up for another winter in Knights Bridge?” he asked her.
“I haven’t thought that far ahead. Last winter I was caught up in sorting out my relationship with Vic—if I even wanted one. I managed not to get arrested, but I can’t say I enjoyed my first winter here.”
“Hard to discover things weren’t what you thought they were.”
“And that my mother knew all along and didn’t tell my dad or Vic.”
“Vic’s cool, though. It wasn’t like she had a fling with some hapless jerk.”
“That’s true.”
“Yeah.” Adam left it there and stood straight. “I’ll be by in the morning to work on the wall.”
“Okay. I might stop by the lake later to see Vic.”
“Sure thing.”
He snapped his fingers at Violet. She hesitated, as if she wouldn’t mind hanging out in the kitchen for a while longer, but she followed him out the front door.
A strong, patient man and his dog, Adrienne thought with a smile. She went out to the terrace. Maggie and Brandon had forgotten Tyler and Aidan’s gorgosaurus. Adrienne picked it up. It was a fierce-looking fellow. “You can be my guard dinosaur for the night. Scare off any critters.”
She set the figure on the table. She’d get it back to its owners tomorrow. In the meantime, she’d work on plans for the upcoming fall events at the inn. That, after all, was what she was being paid to do.
Nine
Instead of going to Vic’s that evening, Adrienne indulged in a bath in her suite’s new tub, sprinkled with Carriage Hill’s goat’s milk bath salts, and collapsed into bed early. She dreamed about bears and moose turning into dinosaurs and awoke in a sweat, heart pounding as she realized... I’m okay. I’m in a quaint New England inn on a beautiful late-summer morning.
Five thirty on said beautiful morning.
She moaned. “Ugh.”
Couldn’t she have dreamed about the Sloan brothers? Why not the good-looking stonemason brother? Muscular, blue-eyed, capable. Played with dinosaurs as a kid.
Dreaming about Adam wouldn’t have been a nightmare, but that didn’t mean getting carried away with her attraction to him wouldn’t turn into a real-life nightmare. Dinosaurs were scary in a dream, but they were extinct in real life. Adam Sloan was not extinct. He was real, and he and his family were interwoven into Knights Bridge—into Vic’s new life.
All of which made a certain sense at the crack of dawn.
She wasn’t going back to sleep. She was wide awake now that she’d started thinking about Adam.
“You’d be better off having another nightmare about dinosaurs.”
Muttering to herself, she threw back the duvet and rolled out of bed.
Best just to get up and on with her day.
The windows had insulated shades rather than drapes, but that was fine with her. She’d left them raised the first couple of nights since the windows looked out on the backyard and there were no neighbors. Who’d peek in on her, an owl? Bats? She wasn’t worried. But she’d pulled them since Adam had turned up to work on the stone wall. What if she overslept? Wandered in from the bathroom and he was right there, hauling rocks and such? She’d decided she’d sleep better with the shades pulled.
She raised the shades and looked out at the yard in the early-morning light. Adam had made progress on the wall but probably not as much as he’d intended given yesterday’s jaunt to the cellar hole. She pictured him working patiently, deliberately. What would happen if he became impatient, a bit less deliberate?
Adrienne groaned at the intrusive thoughts and forced them aside. She got cleaned up, pulled on clothes—black jeans, black top, sandals—and headed to the kitchen. She made coffee, poured a mug and took it upstairs. She immediately felt the soothing effect of Olivia’s blend of contemporary and traditional furnishings coupled with the wide-board floors and other original features of the early-nineteenth-century house. Given her experience as a graphic designer, Olivia had a great sense of color, but she also had a natural instinct for how to make a room homey and inviting and yet feel unplanned. The previous owners had renovated the house with its becoming a bed-and-breakfast in mind, so the guest rooms all had private bathrooms, featuring, of course, Olivia and Maggie’s goat’s milk bath products.
As she sipped her coffee and shook off the last of her nightmares, she peeked into each of the guest rooms. She looked for anything she might want to bring up in her planning session with Felicity MacGregor later that morning. All the rooms were attractive, decorated with prints of herbs and New England wildflowers, embroidered pillows, painted furniture and Olivia’s collection of antique linens. Two had fireplaces. Adrienne would happily spend a few nights in any of them.
She started back to the stairs but paused at a series of simply framed black-and-white photographs of old stone bridges and stone walls. They were beautiful, even haunting. A small typewritten note at a bottom corner of each frame identified the photos as spots in Knights Bridge. Along Cider Brook. The Sloan Farm. Out to Carriage Hill. Echo Lake.
She recognized the cellar hole where the boys had hidden from the moose. The image captured the sense of history she’d felt there. It wasn’t signed, but the notes indicated all the photographs were the work of Adam Sloan.
“No kidding,” Adrienne said aloud, in complete surprise.
Well, then. That sure was something to wrap her head around, wasn’t it? Adam was not only into photography but very good at it. Not that she was an expert.
But maybe she shouldn’t be so surprised. He was a stonemason. He probably knew all the old stonework in the area, never mind just Knights Bridge, and given the nature of his work, he would have the patience to pull off such great photographs. She could see him getting together the proper photography equipment, figuring out the perfect angle, waiting for the right light—the time, the conditions, the moment. Then doi
ng any necessary touch-ups on the resulting shots and choosing only the best ones to show to anyone.
But these stone walls...these stone bridges...
Looking at the photographs, Adrienne wanted to visit each place and touch the stones, the moss and lichens and leaves—to breathe in the smells of the New England fields, woods, lakes and streams.
Her own photography skills began and ended with her smartphone. Ninety percent of her shots were spontaneous and not worth saving or retouching. She seldom took the time to delete them. They just piled up in her cloud storage. If any were frame-worthy, it would be the result of serendipity, not patience or skill.
She returned to the kitchen and finished her coffee while she scrambled a couple of eggs with herbs from the garden. She made fresh coffee and took her breakfast out to the terrace. It was a glorious morning with no sign of unwanted or unexpected two-legged or four-legged guests, just bees humming in the flowers.
Adam didn’t show up early.
Just as well, Adrienne thought as she got on with her day.
When Felicity MacGregor arrived a few minutes before ten, they decided to meet on the terrace. Felicity was an expert event planner with her own business in Knights Bridge—a definite plus for a new destination inn, entrepreneurial boot camp and adventure travel business.
Fifteen minutes into their meeting, Adam came around from the front of the house and headed to the rock wall with a quick wave of his free hand. “Don’t let him fool you,” Felicity said, her laptop open on the table in front of her. She was around Adrienne’s age, a professional comfortable in her own skin. “Adam’s as rough and tumble as his brothers. He just gets on with things. Don’t think he’s a pushover because he doesn’t have a lot to say.”
Adrienne smiled. “A word of warning?”
“An observation. Gabe and the Sloans have stayed friends since we were kids. The Sloans are a tight-knit crew.” Felicity paused and grinned at Adrienne. “You have no clue who Gabe is, do you? Gabe Flanagan. Mark’s younger brother. Mark is Olivia’s brother-in-law—”
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