Forgotten Honeymoon

He held up the portable telephone and waved it above his head, in case Max couldn’t hear what he was saying.

Max Cooper turned toward the trailer. He’d thought he heard his name being called. The rest of the men were too far away for him to hear one of them. Then he saw his partner waving the telephone receiver.

With a sigh, he took off his hard hat and ran his hand through his unruly dark brown hair. He sincerely hoped that this wasn’t from someone calling about yet another delay. The construction of the new housing development was already behind schedule. The December mudslides had set them all back at least a month. He had his people and the subcontractors working double shifts to try to catch up. The last thing he wanted was to pay the penalty for bringing the project in late.

Every time the phone rang, he mentally winced, anticipating another disaster in the making. Nature didn’t use a telephone, but errant suppliers and subcontractors did, and they could wreak almost the same amount of havoc Mother Nature could.

Replacing his hard hat, he waved at Paul. The latter retreated into the trailer that, at the moment, housed their entire operation. Max followed.

He made his way into the cluttered space, hoping that by the next job they could see about getting something larger. Right now, a new trailer was the least of their priorities.

Paul, a tall, wiry man, was as thin-framed as Max was muscular. He pressed himself against the wall to allow Max access to the telephone.

“We’ve built closets larger than this,” he muttered, still holding the telephone aloft.

Max indicated the receiver. “Who?” he mouthed.

Paul knew who it was, but he thought he’d string Max along for a minute. It appealed to his sense of humor, which hadn’t been getting much of a workout lately.

“She said it was personal,” he whispered.

He was between “personals” right now, Max thought as he took the receiver from Paul. He and Rita had come to a mutual agreement to go their separate ways. Actually, the word agreement was stretching it a little. She’d been screaming something about his “freaking fear of commitment” at the time. Those had been her parting words to him, ending what had otherwise been a rather pleasant, albeit short, interlude.

Warily Max put the receiver to his ear, wondering if Rita had decided to try to make another go of it. He hoped not. He’d kept his relationships short and predominantly sweet—the former fact being responsible for the latter—ever since Alexis.

But then, no one had touched him, or hurt him, like Alexis. And no one ever would.

“Hello?”

“Max? It’s June,” the voice on the other end of the line said. Normally pleasant, June’s voice was anxious and uncertain. “I hate bothering you at work, but I think you’d better come out here. You’re going to want to see this.”

June Cunningham, sixtyish, even-tempered and efficient, was the receptionist at the Dew Drop Inn, the small bed-and-breakfast inn that Max had found himself the unwilling half owner of. He would have sold his share in it long ago, if it wouldn’t have hurt his foster parents’ feelings. John and Sylvia Murphy were the only parents he had ever known, taking in a scared, cocky thirteen-year-old and turning him into a man, when everyone else had elected to pass on him. He owed them more than he could ever hope to repay.

So if they wanted him to take over their half of the inn, he couldn’t very well toss the gift they offered back at them. He left the management in June’s hands and stopped by on Fridays after six to look in on everything. Right now, knee-deep in construction hassles, the inn was the last thing on his mind. When he thought of it at all, it was in terms of it being an albatross about his neck.

He couldn’t imagine anything that would prompt the unflappable June to telephone him here, of all places, and request his presence at the inn. She’d never asked him to come by. What the hell was wrong?

“This?” he repeated. “Exactly what do you mean by ‘this’?”

“Ms. Fortune.”

It was a minute before he reacted. “Kate? She’s dead. She’s been gone for nearly two years.” He remembered seeing an article in the paper saying that the woman’s plane had gone down in some isolated part of Africa or South America, someplace like that. Her lawyer, Sterling Foster, had sent him a letter saying probate would take a long time, considering the size of Kate’s estate, so he should just continue to run it as always. But now it seemed there would be some changes.

“Not Kate,” June quickly corrected. “Her heir. Kristina Fortune.”

This was all news to him, although he had to admit that he’d been rather lax as far as things at the inn were concerned. It hadn’t even occurred to him, when he read about Kate, that whoever inherited her half would be coming by to look the place over.

“She’s there?”

“She’s here, all right.” He heard June stifle a sigh. “And she wants to meet with you. Immediately.”

June took everything in stride. He couldn’t remember ever seeing her hurry. “Immediately?” It was a strange word for her to use. “Immediately?”

There was no humor in the small, dry laugh. June lowered her voice, as if she were afraid of being overheard. “Her word, not mine. But I really think you should get here, Max. I heard her murmuring something to herself about knocking walls out.”

That caught his attention. Just who the hell did this Kristina Fortune think she was? He didn’t particularly want the inn, but he didn’t want to see it destroyed, either. It was part of his childhood. The best part, if he didn’t count John and Sylvia.

Covering the receiver, he turned to Paul. “Would you mind if I left you with all this for a few hours?”

Paul grinned as if he’d just hit the mother lode. “Hell, no, I was just wondering how to get rid of you. I love playing boss man.”

Max knew Paul meant it. He took his hand off the mouthpiece. “I’ll be there as soon as I can, June.” He cut the connection.

“Must be great to have a piece of so many different enterprises,” Paul joked. When Max didn’t return his grin, he asked, “What’s up?”

I don’t need this, Max thought. He liked things uncomplicated and this was probably the worse possible time to have problems rear their pointy heads. “Seems that the new partner at the inn has some fancy ideas about what to do with the place.”

Paul poured himself another cup of coffee. “New partner?”

Max nodded, hanging up his hard hat. “Kate Fortune owned the inn with my foster parents. She was killed in a plane crash a while back. June just called to say her ‘heir’ arrived. She thinks I’d better get over there immediately.”

“Doesn’t sound like June.”

Max pulled his jacket on. “She was quoting Kristina Fortune.”

“Oh.” He got the picture. “Better you than me, pal.” Paul saluted Max and then walked out of the trailer, back to the construction site.

“Yeah.” Max bit off the word as he strode out. He wasn’t looking forward to this.

Two

I t had possibilities.

Stepping away from the taxi she had taken from the airport, Kristina had slowly approached the inn. It had no real style to speak of. The photographs she had seen in the brochure had turned out to be flattering and too kind. Still, the inn was rustic and charming, in its own quaint way. But it was definitely run-down. It reminded Kristina of a woman who was past her prime and had decided that comfort was far more important to her than upkeep, but it did have definite possibilities.

With a good, solid effort, and an amenable, competent contractor working with her, who understood what she had in mind, the inn could readily be transformed into a moneymaker.

The forerunner of several more.

Kristina had seized the thought as soon as it occurred to her, and begun to develop it. Her mind had raced, making plans, putting the cart not only before the horse, but before the whole damn stable.

The horse was just going to have to catch up, she had thought with a smile as she walked up the stairs to the porch.

Kristina had done her homework and boned up on the subject. She liked the idea a great deal. Why just one bed-and-breakfast inn? Why not a chain? A chain that catered to the romantic in everyone. If she could make it work here, she could continue acquiring small, quaint inns throughout the country and transform them, until there was a whole string of Honeymoon Hideaways.

Her mood had altered abruptly as she stumbled, catching the handrail at the last moment. Her three-inch heel had gotten caught in a crack in the wooden floor. Kristina had frowned as she freed her heel. Someone should have fixed that.

Fixed was the operative word, as she’d discovered when she went on to examine the rest of the ground floor, finally returning to the front room, where she had begun. The woman who had introduced herself as June had remained with her almost the entire time. She wasn’t much of a sounding board, preferring to point out the inn’s “charm.” It seemed that around here “neglect” was synonymous with “charm.”