Page 29 of The Accidental Innkeeper

“I am panicking.” Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!

The ringing cut through me like a siren.

I set my coffee down, suddenly aware that my hands were shaking. “What if they ask questions? What if they want dates? Or prices? Or rooms that aren’t ready yet?” Damnit. I didn’t even know where the damn books were or the list of prices.

Dottie patted my arm. “I’ll show you. You’ll find everything at the front desk. You’ll do fine.”

The phone rang again. This was it.

This was the moment my aunt had been waiting for. The moment I either proved her right… or very, very wrong.

I stared at the kitchen. The coffee. The empty plate. The women who had apparently decided my life for me. Somehow, impossibly, against all odds, I was considering it.

Dottie beamed like she’d just won bingo.

Lola lifted an imaginary glass. “To new beginnings.”

“Okay,” I told them, but mostly myself. “Let’s do this.” I straightened my spine, took a breath, and marched toward the sound of the ringing phone.

Behind me, Lola called out, far too pleased, “Welcome to hospitality, darling.”

The phone rang one last time before I picked it up.

“Hello, Hartwell Inn, how can I help you?”

And just like that.

The inn had officially reopened.

7

ALEX

“The new owners can paint it whatever color they want once it’s theirs,” I told Tim, my site foreman on the Harbor Lane flip. “Tell the painters to use the colors I specified.”

“Got it,” answered Tim, already adjusting his tool belt as he headed back outside to the crew waiting on the lawn.

I stayed where I was, my hands on my hips, taking in the living room—new windows, bare drywall, clean lines, good bones. This place would sell fast.

Women were better with the design and color stuff. That wasn’t an insult. It was a fact. To be safe, I always went neutral. Soft whites. Warm grays. Nothing that scared buyers or locked them into someone else’s taste. Trends came and went. Classic sold.

If the new owners wanted a red wall or navy or whatever the hell was popular this year, they could deal with it themselves.

I didn’t do bold colors. Definitely not pink.

The Hartwell Inn cut into my thoughts uninvited. That ridiculous pink thing sat perched on the cliff like it was picking a fight with the whole damn town. I fucking hated that color.

I pushed the thought away. Focus.

And then, because my brain was apparently broken, I thought of New York.

Her face. Those blue eyes that looked like they were always mid-argument with the universe. That thick dark hair she kept shoving back like it was in her way. The way her hips moved when she walked, confident without trying, like she didn’t realize anyone might be watching.

I liked watching a curvy woman walk, always had.

Damnit. I frowned and scrubbed a hand over my jaw. Not relevant.

I wondered if she’d slept at the inn or bailed and found a hotel. Not that Hartwell had many options. We had bed-and-breakfasts and two inns—one of which was hers now.