Innkeeper's Daughter

“Anyone ever tell you you make a great dictator?” Cris asked mildly.

Ordinarily that might have sparked an exchange that bordered on the lively, but right now, Alex paid no attention to her sister. She was focused on her father, to the exclusion of everything else.

“Do we get a hint, Dad? A glimmer of a coming attraction while we’re waiting for the two divas to show up?” she prompted.

“It’s not about me, I promise,” Richard told her with what she assumed was his attempt at a reassuring smile. It didn’t work.

“Or the inn?” Alex asked, watching her father’s face. Family was exceedingly important to her, but the inn was a close second.

The next moment she told herself that it couldn’t be about the inn. She handled all the accounts as well as the never-ending piles of paperwork that went along with running the place. She would have known if there was a lean on it or a second mortgage taken out—

Wouldn’t she?

She looked uncertainly at her father.

“Or the inn,” he assured her. Again, he qualified his answer a moment later. “At least, not in the way you mean it.”

“All right, just how does it concern the inn?” Cris demanded, clearly not able to take another moment of suspense.

Without meaning to, Richard sighed. He’d left Wyatt sitting in his office. The young man had arrived quietly just a few minutes ago, entering through the gardens and the back door that was always unlocked during daylight hours. Guests hardly ever made use of that entrance, but friends did. And Wyatt was a friend. More like a son, actually. He’d known him since the day the boy had been born.

“Wyatt has come to see me. He’s just arrived.”

“Wyatt?” Alex echoed.

The name brought with it a legion of memories that ran the expanse of two decades and more. Theirs was an ongoing, antagonistic relationship that seemed to be the very embodiment of the war between the sexes—even though he got on well enough with her sisters and they with him. Complicating this was the fact that her heart never failed to skip a couple of beats the first time she saw him each year. Her physical reaction never changed. It was only when her mind kicked in that her behavior returned to normal. Wyatt Taylor was an extremely handsome example of the male gender and it was her misfortune to be attracted to a man she was constantly at odds with the rest of the time he was at the inn.

“When?” Alex wanted to know. “I didn’t see him come in.”

She’d never seen her father’s smile look so incredibly sad. “He came in through the back.”

“Why?” Alex asked. Whatever was bothering her father was tied to Wyatt, she thought. It figured.

Her sisters got along with Wyatt. For the most part, he was like their big brother. The son her dad never got to have.... She refused to dwell on that.

Wyatt had been coming to the inn every summer with his father for years. She and the others all fondly thought of Wyatt’s father as Uncle Dan, even though Dan Taylor was no relation to either of their parents. He and their father had been best friends since elementary school.

Daniel Taylor was an independent journalist who’d traveled the world over, hunting down stories that proved to be too challenging, too elusive for the new breed of reporter. His erratic lifestyle had put a very real strain on his marriage until one summer, Dan found himself divorced and much too far away from the son he adored. So every summer, when he was granted a month’s precious custody, he would bring his son with him to the inn. He came here because his best friend was a single father, too, and was blessed with insight. He came because he wanted Wyatt to have fun with kids his own age, and she and her sisters qualified.

And above all else, he came to the inn because he practically lived out of his suitcase and had no real place to call home. So for four weeks each summer, Ladera-by-the-Sea Inn became home to Dan and his son. And, by extension, she and her sisters, as well as her father, became Dan’s missing family.

During the rest of the year, whenever he could, Dan would come to visit and stay a few days or a week—until another assignment would whisk him away. When they were younger, Dan brought gifts from the places he’d visited. As they grew older, Alex realized that the greatest gift the man had brought them was himself.

“Why isn’t Wyatt out here?” Alex asked.

Whatever was wrong, she was convinced it had to do with Wyatt. Although for the life of her, she couldn’t begin to guess what it could be.

“Because I told him to wait,” Richard answered quietly.

“Why isn’t Uncle Dan with him?” Cris asked suddenly.

And even as she asked the simple question, Alex knew the answer. She guessed by her sister’s expression that Cris must have known it, too. If they were right, Alex hoped the news didn’t take Cris back to the morning the chaplain and another soldier arrived on the inn’s doorstep to tell her that although Mike was coming home from his mission, it wasn’t the kind of homecoming they’d expected.

“This is about Uncle Dan, isn’t it?” Cris asked quietly.

After a beat, her father nodded his head. His eyes followed his two youngest daughters as they walked into the reception area. “Yes,” he said. “It is.”

CHAPTER THREE

“UH-OH, THIS HAS the looks of something serious,” Stephanie murmured to Andrea as they walked to the reception desk together. “You know what this is about?” she asked.

“When do I ever find out anything before you do?” Andy asked, lengthening her stride.

It was hard to miss the family resemblance, thought Alex, both the one to the other as well as to her and Cris, the older sisters. Approximately the same height, Stephanie and Andrea gave the impression of being tall and willowy, despite the fact that neither was more than five-six. Like her and Cris, both had straight, dark blond hair and captivating, magnetic blue eyes that seemed capable of looking into a person’s soul. At least that’s what everybody always told Alex.

“What did you do?” Andy asked Stevi.

“Me? Nothing. Why would you think it’s me?”

“Well, it’s not me,” Andy said in an impatient whisper. “You called, Queen Bee?” she added to Alex in a louder, cheerful tone.

Stevi poked her younger sister in the ribs. Alex would agree with Stevi’s silent message—this wasn’t the time to be flippant.

“What’s going on, Alex?” Andy asked. All traces of her flippant tone were gone.

“Dad, did something happen to Uncle Dan?” she asked. She wanted an answer, but she wanted to hear the right answer: that Daniel Taylor, the man who’d told her endless stories about places she knew she would never be able to visit, making them all seem so vivid and real to her, was all right. That the man who had just been here a few weeks ago wasn’t here now, the way he always was at the first stroke of summer, because he’d finally met someone special and was taking some well-earned time off with her.

But the look on her father’s face, the look of a man who was struggling to come to terms with losing part of himself, told her this had nothing to do with any newfound romance.

Afraid now, not for herself but for her father—and, although she’d never admit it out loud—for Wyatt, the boy she’d grown up with, she gently grasped her father’s arm.

“Dad?”

His eldest daughter’s tone said it all—“What is it?” “What happened?” and “How can I help?” all wrapped up in a single word.

“Pancreatic cancer,” was all Richard trusted himself to say.

A minute more and maybe he would get better control over his emotions, but right now, those were the only words he was able to utter without breaking down. Dan had told him the moment he’d received the prognosis from his doctor. Come to him and asked him not to tell anyone else, not his daughters, not Wyatt. He didn’t want to see pity marking his last few months, or however long he had. At the same time, he’d wanted an ally to help him maintain his facade—and he wanted his best friend to be prepared.

Dan’s last visit had been a struggle. His friend had only had a few weeks left to live and he’d looked pale, his step less sure. But it really had seemed as if he was only a little tired. A force like Dan just didn’t die.

The news of Dan’s death, when it finally came from the attending physician last night, had still managed to hit him with the force of a sledgehammer.

Richard heard someone gasp and looked up to see that it was Stevi. He reached out to hold her tightly. Of the four of them, she was the most sensitive, the one whose threshold for emotional pain was far too low for her to function well in stressful situations.

For the most part, they were probably all overprotective of her—even Andy—sometimes keeping things from her rather than subjecting Stevi to undue emotional distress. Stevi had been the one who’d cried for days when their pet hamster had died.

When their mother had suddenly been taken from them, Stevi had stopped talking for a month. She’d been ten at the time.