Seaview Inn (2 page)

“But we haven’t even started the list of renovations you want to do,” Hannah protested, feeling vaguely guilty for dampening her grandmother’s high spirits.

“You said it yourself. Tomorrow’s soon enough.”

Oddly reluctant to go inside and leave her grandmother alone, Hannah stood in the doorway for a few minutes.

As twilight fell and a breeze stirred, the streetlight on the corner came on, illuminating the porch and yard. That was when Hannah noticed the tears glistening on her grandmother’s cheeks.

“Mom, what on earth are you doing in Florida?” Kelsey demanded when she called Hannah’s cell phone later that night and woke Hannah out of a sound sleep. “I called your office earlier and your secretary told me you’d taken time off again to go to Seaview. I’ve been trying to call all day, but you must have had your phone turned off. When you didn’t return my calls, I got worried. Is Grandma Jenny okay?”

Hannah sat on the side of the bed, almost regretting that she’d remembered to turn the phone back on before going to sleep. There had been five increasingly impatient messages from her boss and three from Kelsey. For once, she’d ignored them all, grateful that it was too late to call the office and deciding she really didn’t want to discuss this situation with Kelsey just yet. Now she had no choice.

“You mean besides her delusion that I’m going to give up my career and move back here to run the inn?” she replied.

“Oh, boy,” Kelsey muttered. “Is she serious?”

“She spent an hour at dinner talking about how we need to spruce this place up and get it open again in two weeks,” Hannah said. “I’d say she’s serious.”

“But you’re not going to do it, are you? You hate Seaview Key and the inn.”

“Of course I’m not going to do it,” Hannah said em
phatically, then sighed. “Actually, I was thinking it might be a good idea to do a few renovations.”

“But why, if she’s not going to open the inn? You know she can’t manage it alone.”

Hannah hesitated. “I know,” she said at last.

Kelsey sucked in a breath. “You want her to sell it, don’t you? Mom, that will break her heart. You can’t do that to her.”

“What choice do I have?” Hannah asked defensively.

“None, I suppose,” Kelsey admitted, “but I hate this, Mom.”

“I know. So do I, but I can’t stay here. I just haven’t figured out how I’m going to explain that to your great-grandmother. You know how she is once she gets an idea into her head.”

“A lot like you,” Kelsey said.

“Yes, well, that is the problem, isn’t it?” she said wryly. Suddenly it occurred to her that there had to be a crisis of some kind for Kelsey to be calling from college in the middle of the week. “Enough about what’s going on here. I’ll figure out something. Tell me what’s up with you.”

Kelsey hesitated. “Maybe this isn’t a good time. We can talk about it when you’re back in New York after you get things straightened out down there.”

A sense of dread settled in the pit of Hannah’s stomach. “Isn’t a good time for what?” she prodded.

“You’re sure you don’t want to wait and talk about this another time?” Kelsey asked, sounding oddly hopeful.

“Now,” Hannah commanded.

“Okay, then. Remember how I told you at Christmas that school pretty much sucks?”

“And I said you were just going through a rough patch,” Hannah recalled.

“Well, it’s more than a rough patch, Mom. Don’t freak out, okay? I’ve really thought about this and it’s what I need to do right now. I’ve decided to quit college, come home to New York and get a job.”

Hannah’s grip on the cell phone tightened. “In your junior year?” she said, her voice rising despite her best attempt to remain calm. “Are you crazy?”

“I knew you wouldn’t understand,” Kelsey said petulantly, sounding like a spoiled child rather than the responsible young adult she normally was.

“No, I don’t understand. And unless you’ve got an explanation that includes full-time employment several steps above flipping burgers, I’m not likely to understand. We had a deal. If I went into debt to get you into Stanford, the school of your dreams, you would stick it out and get your degree in graphic design, no matter what. Remember that?”

“I remember,” Kelsey said meekly. “But, Mom—”

Hannah cut her off. “No, there is no
but, Mom.
You got into Stanford. I’ve paid for three years at Stanford, and you are finishing at Stanford. Period. You don’t get to back out of the deal now.”

“I can’t stay here.”

Years ago, after her divorce, Hannah had learned the value of being stern and unyielding. Otherwise, even as a toddler, her strong-willed daughter would have run roughshod over her. She called on that skill now.

“Of course, you can stay. If your courses are too hard, if that’s what this is about, you can consider dropping one of them, but you’re not dropping out, and that’s final.” She told herself all her daughter needed was a pep talk. She’d probably gotten something below an A on a pop quiz and decided she was heading for failure. “Come on, kiddo. You
can do this. You’re smart. You’re more than halfway to getting your bachelor’s degree. You just need to park your butt in the library and do whatever amount of studying it takes to get out of there next year with a degree.”

“You don’t understand,” Kelsey said.

“Of course I do, sweetie. We all hit bumps in the road from time to time. We can’t let them throw us off course.”

“Mom, this isn’t that kind of bump in the road. I’m pregnant,” Kelsey blurted.

If Hannah hadn’t already been sitting down, she would have fainted dead away and probably cracked open her skull when she hit the floor. Apparently things
could
get worse. And now she knew how.

H
annah had a splitting headache by the time she finally made her way downstairs to the kitchen in the morning. She’d replayed the conversation with Kelsey in her head over and over for the rest of the night, but not even her best editing skills could change the fact that her daughter was going to have a baby.

Grandma Jenny looked up as she entered the kitchen. “I thought you were going to sleep the day away,” she commented, then took a closer look. “You don’t look so good. Are you sick?”

Sick at heart, Hannah thought, but she kept it to herself. There’d be time enough to tell her grandmother what was going on after Kelsey arrived in the next day or two, as soon as she could get a flight from California. Hannah had made her promise not to make any big decisions or do anything drastic until they had more time to talk things through.

“I didn’t sleep much,” she told her grandmother. “A cup of coffee should perk me up, though.”

“Good. Then we can get started with that list. I’ve got some help lined up, so we need to get ourselves organized.”

The pounding in Hannah’s head took on a more urgent
beat. “As soon as I’ve returned a few calls from my boss,” she promised, searching in a cupboard until she found a bottle of aspirin. She popped two of them. “He left a bunch of messages for me yesterday and I didn’t get them until it was too late to call back last night.”

A frown settled on Grandma Jenny’s face. “Why’s he bothering you? I thought you were quitting that job.”

“No, Gran, I didn’t quit,” Hannah explained patiently. “I’m just on vacation for a couple of weeks.”

“Well, you should give it up for good. This is where you belong. You’d be your own boss here.”

No, Hannah thought, she’d be answering to her grandmother, and as annoying as Dave Harrow could be from time to time, he was easier to deal with than Gran.

“Let’s not go there right now, okay?” Hannah pleaded. “I’m here for a couple of weeks and that’s it.”

Her grandmother waved off the explanation as if it were of no consequence. “But you’re still down here on your own time, am I right? Your boss shouldn’t be taking advantage of you like this. Anyone who works as hard as you do deserves to have a vacation that’s really a vacation. A boss who appreciates you would know that.”

“He’s not really taking advantage of me, Gran. I left without much notice. There are a lot of loose ends that need to be tied up. Look, the call shouldn’t take long. You start on that list of renovations and we’ll go over it when I come back inside. I can get better cell phone reception on the porch.”

“Well, you’d best hurry. Some of the things we’re going to need aren’t available on the island. We’ll need to catch the eleven o’clock ferry if we expect to go to the mainland today.”

Hannah grimaced. That was yet another reason not
to live in Seaview. It was too inconvenient. If they missed the eleven o’clock ferry, there wouldn’t be another one until four-thirty, too late to head over to the mainland to shop. In all there were only four ferries daily, these two, plus one that left at 6:00 a.m., mostly for people who worked on the mainland, and a final one at eight, which catered mostly to those who’d taken a day trip to Seaview Key, stayed for dinner and then wanted to head back.

“I’ll hurry,” she promised.

She took her cell phone and coffee out to the porch, choosing a comfortable wicker chair at the far end where the sun had created a pool of warmth on the chilly morning. She took a long sip of coffee, then turned her face up to the sun, wishing she didn’t have to make the call. It wasn’t going to go well. Dave hadn’t been happy about her asking for this unplanned vacation, especially after all the months when her schedule had been totally unpredictable because of her chemo treatments.

Reluctantly, she dialed the direct line to his office. “Hey, Melinda, it’s Hannah. Dave was trying to reach me yesterday, but I was traveling and had my phone off. Is he available now?”

“Yes,” his secretary said, then lowered her voice. “But I should tell you he’s on the warpath. Even though you briefed Carl before you left about the deadlines for the Parker account, he blew the very first one and Dave caught the fallout. Ron Parker was furious.”

Hannah muttered a few choice words. Carl Mason was useless, but Dave kept giving him second chances. He’d insisted that Hannah turn her accounts over to him while she was away. It was his fault that things had gone wrong, but she was going to have to bail them all out.

“Look, don’t put me through now. I’m going to call Ron and see if I can smooth things over. Then I’ll call back to speak to Dave.”

“Sure, hon,” Melinda said, but before they could sever the connection Hannah heard Dave in the background.

“Is that Hannah? Put her through right this minute,” he commanded.

“Sorry,” Melinda murmured.

“Not your fault.” She waited for Dave to pick up, then tried to do a preemptive strike. “Melinda filled me in on the problems with the Parker account. I was about to call Ron myself.”

“There wouldn’t be a problem with that account if you’d been handling it yourself,” he grumbled.

Hannah barely resisted the urge to correct him and say there wouldn’t have been a problem if Dave had assigned someone competent to fill in for her. She’d have been wasting her breath.

“Ron’s not going to be pacified with a phone call,” he told her. “You need to get back up here and do your job.”

“You know I can’t do that. There’s a family crisis and I need to handle it.”

“You’ve had a lot of crises lately,” Dave said. “Maybe this job isn’t as important to you as it once was.”

Hannah gasped at his insensitivity. “Do you honestly think I chose to have breast cancer just so I could inconvenience you? Do you think I wanted my mom to die or my grandmother to have difficulty coping with that, so I could take more time off?”

He backed down at once. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have phrased it that way. I know you’ve been through hell, but you’re the best person on this team. When you’re out of the office, it has an impact.”

“Nice save,” she said dryly. “Look, it’s only for a couple of weeks. I gave Carl notes on every single thing that needs to be done, along with the deadlines. Maybe you need to look over his shoulder for the next couple of weeks and make sure he follows through. If that doesn’t work, then I’m not the one to blame.”

Dave sighed. “I know he’s not pulling his weight around here. That’s why I assigned him to work with you. I thought maybe your organizational skills would rub off on him.”

“You always were a dreamer,” she said lightly. It was one of the reasons they’d always worked well together. She’d been his first hire after he and Lou Morgan had opened the firm fifteen years ago. He was a genius when it came to thinking up unique PR campaigns for their clients, but Hannah was the one who kept the projects on schedule, pacified nervous actors and authors and contributed her own share of creative ideas. He also counted on her not to mince words, so she didn’t now. “Dave, you’ve given Carl more than enough chances. Maybe it’s time to think about cutting your losses and letting him go. Get someone in that position who can cut it.”

“You’re probably right,” he admitted with obvious reluctance. “If I hadn’t promised my wife that I’d give the guy a break, I’d have fired him months ago. He’s her nephew and she adores him. Do you know the kind of grief I’m going to get if I let him go?”

“Compare that to the grief you’re already taking from clients like Ron Parker,” she said. “Look, I’ll call Ron now and fix this mess, but there can’t be a next time, Dave. You know that.”

“Yeah, I know it. Hurry back, okay?”

“Two weeks,” she reminded him. “You’ll hardly notice I’m gone.”

“That’s a joke. You weren’t out the door two minutes when we had our first crisis.”

“Careful,” she warned. “I’ll start to think I’m indispensable and you’ll have to give me a raise.”

She hung up slowly, then spent several minutes tamping down her annoyance over Carl’s screwup before calling Ron Parker and apologizing profusely. Fortunately, he was a reasonable guy, and the promise of a few perks on his next PR campaign calmed him down.

“I’m sorry Dave bothered you on your vacation,” he told her. “I was still angry when I spoke to him, so I was blowing off steam. I was never going to take my business elsewhere. You’re the best, Hannah. So is Dave.”

“And we love working with you. We’ll get together for lunch as soon as I’m back in town. You pick the place and it’s on me.”

“It ought to be on that idiot Carl Mason,” he said. “Enjoy your vacation and don’t worry about any of this, okay?”

“Thanks for understanding.”

When she finally got off the phone, she felt drained. Her head was still pounding, though the caffeine and aspirin were starting to kick in. One more cup of coffee and she might be able to cope with Grandma Jenny and whatever she had in store to destroy her peace of mind today.

“I don’t understand why you’re going to Florida,” Jeff told Kelsey as she packed her suitcase. “This is no time to go running off when we have so many things that need to be settled.”

“Things
are
settled, Jeff. No matter what you say, I am not going to marry you, and that’s final.”

“But we’re having a baby!” he said, as if she needed reminding.

“I’m the one having it,” she retorted. “Not you. I’m the one whose entire life has to go on hold because we were stupid one night and had sex without a condom.”

Jeff paled. “And that’s my fault. I accept that. It was stupid, but no matter how many times I say I’m sorry, it won’t change anything. Now we have to deal with where we are. I love you. I want to marry you. I want us to be a family. I wanted that before you got pregnant and I want it now.”

“And I’ve told you that I’m not ready to get married,” she said.

They’d been arguing like this for two solid weeks now, ever since she’d seen a doctor and told Jeff about the baby. Sometimes she wished she’d kept the news to herself, but she’d known how unfair that would be. What she hadn’t realized was how pressured she’d feel now that Jeff wanted to do what he saw as the right thing.

For him, the baby was only a tiny blip on a road he’d apparently mapped out when they’d first started dating last year. For her it changed everything. It took away her options and backed her into a corner. It wasn’t that she didn’t love him or that she didn’t envision them having a future together…eventually. It was about being forced into making a premature decision, one far too important to be made in haste.

She was a child of divorce, and while her mother had done everything in her power to see that Kelsey never wanted for anything, Kelsey had never stopped wishing that she’d come from a two-parent home. She and her dad barely had any relationship at all beyond an occasional check at Christmas or for her birthday and even rarer
phone calls. In the beginning she’d seen him at least occasionally, but then he’d remarried, had more kids and the kind of family life she’d always wanted.

Now, here she was, willing to deny her own child what she’d missed most during her own childhood. She understood the irony in that, but so far she hadn’t been able to talk herself into backing down. She was convinced that if she rushed into marriage with Jeff because of the baby, they’d never have a real chance to make it work. She doubted she’d be able to hide her resentment, and that would poison their relationship.

Sighing, she sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled Jeff down beside her. Sitting thigh to thigh, even under these circumstances, she could feel the chemistry between them, chemistry that had been there from the time they’d first met. He wasn’t like the preppy guys she’d always dated. He was offbeat, a little bit of a nerd. His dark brown hair was almost always in need of a cut, not out of rebellion, but simply because he forgot about it.

It was his eyes, though, that had drawn her in. They were like melted chocolate, and when they were focused on her, their intensity made her pulse scramble.

His wardrobe, while not totally atypical of that of all the kids around them, was a horror—faded jeans, T-shirts and ancient sneakers. It offended Kelsey’s fashion sense, developed by associating with some of her mom’s designer clients, but she’d seen beyond the clothes to the really good person he was. Only after they’d been dating for months had she learned that he was from a wealthy San Francisco family and that he was somewhat of a computer genius, who’d already amassed a small fortune himself with software he’d designed.

Sitting beside him now, she stared straight ahead,
afraid that if she looked into his eyes, she’d give in and agree to marry him. It was the simplest solution to her predicament, but one she was determined to resist.

“You know that I’m not saying no because I don’t love you, right?” she asked softly.

“You’re saying no because you’re stubborn,” he countered. “We’ve been talking about marriage for months now. All this changes is the timetable.”

“Exactly. We had that timetable for a reason. I wanted to graduate, to get established in a career before we took the next step in our relationship. I wanted to figure out who I am.”

“I already know who you are, but I suppose that doesn’t count,” Jeff countered. “But you can still do all that. We’ll hire a nanny. Or I’ll take care of the baby while you’re in school.”

“You have classes, too,” she reminded him.

He regarded her with an impatient expression. “Come on, Kelsey, we’ve been over this. I get what you’re saying and why you’re scared, but nothing has to change. If we didn’t have a cent to our names, maybe there would be sacrifices, but trust me, we can afford a place to live and all the help we need. You’ll have all the time and space you want to decide who you are and figure out what you want. In fact, it’ll be easier because you won’t be forced to take some nothing job just to pay bills. You can take your time after graduation and find the perfect job.”

She heard the sincerity in his voice and she wanted desperately to believe things would be that simple, but she just couldn’t. First thing she knew, she’d be Mrs. Jeff Hampton, a wife and a mother. She was scared to death that Kelsey Matthews-Ryan would get lost.