three
Barnabas held his breath, willing Miss Woodward to choose sensibility over stubbornness.
Slowly, she unhooked her arm from around the porch column and straightened away from the railing. Lifting a hand to her glasses, she pushed them higher on the bridge of her nose, then met his gaze.
“Since my father sent you, he must believe you have something to offer.” Though her expression made it clear her verdict was still out. “And since my father is the one financing this endeavor, I suppose I should abide by his wishes. To an extent.” She stepped forward, closing the distance between them, the high neck of her lacy white blouse only accentuating the length of her throat as she jutted her chin upward. “It is still my inn, and I will have final say on every decision made. You will not order my workmen about, nor will you usurp my authority in any other matter. Is that clear?”
“Perfectly.” Barnabas nodded, rigidly regulating his features into an expression of professional aplomb, despite the fact that his lips begged to grin. Apparently the reserved Miss Woodward had a suffragette’s backbone beneath her bookish facade. “I am here in a consulting capacity only. All I ask is that you give my recommendations fair consideration.”
He glanced down at his feet for a moment before raising his head to meet her gaze. “I hope you don’t think me a braggart to say so, but I’m good at what I do, Miss Woodward. I understand the retail property market and have years of experience getting customers to open their pocketbooks and buy what I’m selling.” He pushed his coat behind his hip and slid his hand into his trouser pocket. “I want your inn to succeed.” No. He needed her inn to succeed. “And I promise you here and now that any suggestions I make will be solely motivated by the desire to achieve that end.
“I have nothing but respect for a woman striving to make a mark on the world. My mother did just that, all while rearing me on her own from the time I was four years of age. I admire her determination, fortitude, and creativity more than that of any other person I know. Including your father.”
Everything he’d learned about survival and making oneself indispensable to one’s employer came from his mother. Never once had they gone hungry. Never once had he gone without shoes. She stood tall beneath the shame others tried to heap on her after his perfidious father left them for a wealthy adventuress who enjoyed making lovers of other women’s husbands. His mother made Barnabas feel safe and loved even as she taught him the value of hard work. He was the man he was today because of her.
And if his mother were here, faced with the daunting task of making the Kissing Tree Inn a successful romantic retreat, she’d be rolling up her sleeves and getting to work.
“So,” Barnabas said, drawing his hand from his pocket and reaching for the hat he’d tossed aside earlier, “why don’t you show me your inn?”
It took her a moment to answer. Those dark eyes peered at him, weighing his words, his demeanor. His worth. Something he’d always measured by his achievements. Yet as much as he wanted to get busy achieving and proving his value, he forced himself to stand still beneath her perusal. She held the reins. Straining against the bit now would only sabotage his efforts.
“Very well, Mr. Ackerly.” Phoebe Woodward marched a half circle around him, closed her front door, then marched the same orbital path back to the edge of the porch steps. With a glance over her shoulder, she tossed him a look of challenge. “This way, if you please.”
Barnabas fit his fedora back onto his head and gave a sharp nod. “Yes, ma’am.”
He’d expected the inn to be in town. Most rooming houses were, after all. But once they’d left Oak Springs behind, he realized he needed to adjust his expectations. Again.
Private. Romantic. Secluded.
That was how he’d need to describe the place. Give the isolated location a positive slant. Convince the client the inn would suit all his wooing needs. Ad copy bounced through Barnabas’s mind as they walked, the swish of Phoebe’s dark red skirt adding a rhythm to his thoughts as well as his steps.
Elegant lodging nestled in the quiet countryside. Take a walk down a country lane, hand in hand. Picnic by a stream. Surely there was a stream somewhere. Woo your sweetheart beneath the branches of the world-famous Kissing Tree. All right, it wasn’t world-famous. It wasn’t even state-famous. Barnabas tilted his head, his gaze ignoring the freshly plowed field on his right in favor of examining his thoughts more closely. Beneath the branches of an ancient love tree? No, that was drivel. Beneath the arms of a chivalrous oaken knight? Even worse.
Sentiment was not his forte. Maybe he could ask Miss Woodward to write something. He’d have to give her tight parameters—ad copy was a different animal from narrative prose—but she obviously had literary skill. Lippincott’s wouldn’t have published her work otherwise.
A school bell rang nearby, bringing Barnabas out of his head long enough to take stock of his surroundings. A fortunate happenstance, as he nearly missed Miss Woodward turning down a narrow lane to their right. Barnabas lengthened his stride to make up for his lack of attention and nearly strode past his hostess when she slowed to gesture to something invisible on either side of the drive.
“I’m thinking of planting a pair of rosebushes here,” she said, speaking for the first time since they’d left her home in town. “One on either side of the drive. To serve as a landmark of sorts, as well as to set a romantic tone for the guests’ arrival to the inn.”
A touch of charm that served a practical purpose. Impressive. Perhaps this Inn of Smooching Shrubbery wouldn’t be the disaster he’d imagined. Barnabas grinned broadly. “I think that an excellent notion, Miss Woodward.”
She blinked for a moment before a truly genuine smile blossomed across her face. An odd tightness closed around Barnabas’s chest. That unguarded smile utterly changed her appearance. No longer was she the timid girl with downcast eyes who wished to be left alone to her reading. Nor did she resemble the feisty entrepreneur determined to protect her visionary masterpiece at all costs. This Phoebe Woodward was entirely new. Entirely . . . enchanting.
Barnabas’s starched collar seemed to shrink against his throat. He swallowed roughly, forcing the sudden excess of saliva down his gullet as he jerked his attention away from the pretty blush that had scattered his focus. Well, that wasn’t true. His focus was as sharp as ever, just aimed at the wrong target. His job was to attract customers to the Kissing Tree Inn, not to imagine kissing the attractive innkeeper beneath the nearest tree.
“You’ll be able to see the inn and the Kissing Tree itself once we get past this line of trees.” Her voice had lost its defensive edge, bubbling with excitement instead.
His own anticipation swelled in reaction.
“I have to admit, it still takes my breath away when it bursts into view,” she said.
Barnabas smiled, intending to make a suitably polite statement about the value of dramatic impact, but the words prancing so smartly on his tongue did an abrupt about-face the moment he cleared the trees. They scrambled down his windpipe with astonishing speed, choking him in their hurry to disappear.
“Isn’t it lovely?” she asked.
Barnabas stumbled to a halt.
Good heavens. It wasn’t as bad as he’d imagined.
It was worse.
The Inn of Osculating Topiaries jutted up from the earth thirty yards down the lane—horrendously, garishly . . . pink.
Phoebe’s heart pattered as if little cherub wings beat within her breast. As soon as the first coat of Valentine Pink had been applied earlier this week, she’d known at once it would be perfect. Nothing said romance like lacy, delicate valentines. And while the color was a bit bolder than Comstock’s Modern House Painting recommended, she’d decided to be daring. It was important to create a memorable impression, after all.
“I selected a lighter fern-green shade for the gingerbread trim,” she explained, waving her hand toward the inn as if holding a paintbrush herself. “The painter I hired assures me the result will be stunning.”
“I’m stunned, all right.”
Phoebe tore her gaze from her beloved inn to stare at the gaping man beside her. His gaping didn’t appear to stem from enraptured delight as hers did, however. This gaping was more of the fish-out-of-water-in-the-last-throes-of-death variety.
The prickles so recently soothed by his praise of her rosebush idea sprang back to thorny attention.
She folded her arms over her middle. “You’re not the romantic sort, are you, Mr. Ackerly?”
The stuffy fellow didn’t look a bit abashed by her accusation. “No, Miss Woodward. I am not. But I do recognize the role emotions play in the customer experience. My preference is not what matters.”
Amen! Phoebe couldn’t agree more.
Mr. Ackerly looked her directly in the eye, one brow raising slightly. “Just as your preference is not what matters.”
Her preference? Of course her preference mattered. This was her inn.
“What truly matters,” he continued, “is the customer’s preference.”
Phoebe’s mouth, open to refute his claim about the insignificance of her opinion, snapped shut at his third pronouncement. Horsefeathers. He had a point.
But who was to say her preferences wouldn’t match those of her customers? That cheerful thought returned a bit of starch to her spine. She was a romantic at heart. She’d been observing courting couples around the Kissing Tree since she was a child. Studying the carvings left in the bark. Dreaming up tales that delighted readers all over the country. She might be a spinster with little personal experience in romantic love, but she’d cultivated a base of knowledge that made her far more of an expert on the matter than Mr. Persnickety over there.
“I daresay my customers will have more in common with my sensibilities than with yours, sir. After all, the people who wish to reserve a room at the Kissing Tree Inn will be those looking for an atmosphere of love and romanticism. An atmosphere I intend to provide with or without your approval.”
“You are, of course, correct. I am quite lacking in romantic sensibilities.” Mr. Ackerly dipped his head in a shallow bow, yet his gaze was anything but conciliatory. “However, that doesn’t mean I don’t have other areas of expertise that could be of value. You might understand the intricacies of the heart, but I understand the intricacies of business. Both are necessary if this enterprise is to succeed.”
She wanted to passionately defend her dream against the cold, unfeeling logic oozing from the man before her, but she knew instinctively that railing at him would change nothing. It would only make her look childish and histrionic. A man as stiff and stodgy as Barnabas Ackerly would not respect theatrics. Such behavior would simply lower his opinion of her.
An outcome, strangely enough, she found she wished to avoid, despite the fact that she found him rather irksome at the moment.
“Perhaps the interior will be more to your liking,” she said, her jaw only partially clamped as she strode forward.
He fell into step beside her. “I look forward to seeing it.”
“The furnishings are on order, so the building is empty, but that gives the paperers more space to work.”
“You’ve already ordered wallpaper?”
Why did he sound like a man before a firing squad, asking if the bullets had been loaded?
“Samples.” Phoebe took him around to the back of the inn and waved to the workman on a ladder who was brushing that beautiful pink paint along the second-story siding. “I intend to use a different pattern in each of the bedrooms, though I’m considering keeping things more consistent in the common areas downstairs.”
She marched up the steps and let herself in through the back door.
“This is the kitchen.” Sure to be his favorite room, with so many practical items on display. Cabinets. Stove. Sink. No irrational sentiment anywhere to be found. But that was all about to change.
Phoebe pushed through the swinging door into the dining room, where a pair of workmen were pasting sheets of wallpaper above the cherrywood wainscoting to help her envision which patterns she liked best. The blue-and-white one being affixed to the outside wall consisted of grapevines and frolicking cupids. The second sample, on the wall shared with the kitchen, offered subtle green and pink shades with lush floral bouquets and adorable little birds looking on from their garden perches.
A rough worktable in the middle of the room held a half dozen additional options, all handpicked for their fanciful designs and romantic overtones. Making a selection was going to be difficult, but once she could see them all on the wall, she knew the choice would become clear.
Mr. Ackerly crossed to the worktable in four strides, passed a quick glance over her painstakingly pared-down samples, then swept the entire collection into his arms, turned, and strode from the room.