My inn was not an exact replica of the old mansion I’d lovingly remodeled. Instead, the architect and interior design by my brother and his firm had added more modern touches, including better plumbing and electrical. My brother had made sure every detail, from the stain of the hardwood floors to the soft gray of the wall and the white trim, was exactly what I’d wanted. Dark floors gleamed against white wainscoting just as I’d imagined it would when I described to them what I wanted. There were twelve rooms in total as well as the common area that served as a breakfast area and hosted the wine-and-cheese hours in the afternoons. Although it was not technically a bed-and-breakfast, in the mornings, I served pastries and muffins from Brandi’s bakery and rich, dark-brewed coffee.
The common area included a baby grand piano, which had been a gift from my friend Crystal. She was the widow of a tech billionaire and more than a little generous. In fact, she’d been instrumental in getting our little town back on track for tourism. As a ski town, we relied greatly on visitors. No one wanted to come to a place charred from a fire. She’d worked closely with my brother and his firm to rebuild as quickly as we could.
At the moment, a talented high school student named Gerald Fisher played Chopin, providing a nice backdrop to the chatting among guests. I found this particularly satisfying. Visitors exchanging information about where they were from and what they did for work and how many children they had filled me with joy. I’d already witnessed several couples who had become friendly with others, even exchanging information for when they left the sanctuary I’d created for them. My dreams had come true at last.
I’d just served my last guest a glass of red when one of my staff, Maisy, motioned to me from the doorway. Please, don’t let anything be broken, I thought. There was no time or money to fix anything. Although a hint of autumn in the air meant that tourist season would curtail before picking back up again when the snow fell and the ski mountain opened, I couldn’t afford anything to go wrong.
Maisy had been invaluable in the stressful weeks before the reopening. In her late forties, she’d recently sent her last child off to college. For the first time since she’d started having children, she was free to do as she pleased, she’d told me in the interview. And what pleased her? Working at a beautiful inn putting her hospitality degree to good use. “Finally,” Maisy had said, “I can do something besides taxi kids from one event to another.” Her husband was a physician, so I doubted they needed the money. I’d asked her in the interview if she would mind working for someone younger. I wasn’t yet thirty, after all. She’d joked that I was only a few years older than her oldest child, but yes, she would be fine taking instruction from me.
Thus far, she’d been even better than I’d hoped. Dressed in black slacks and a crisp white button-up blouse, Maisy looked impeccable. She always did. I don’t know how she managed to never crease her clothes, even after a long shift. I was a hot mess most days. Every day.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“You have a potential bride waiting in your office. She wants to book the inn for her wedding.” Maisy tugged on an earring that dangled just below her precision-cut bob. With silver hair and bright brown eyes, she was actually quite striking.
“Really?” My spirits lifted. Maybe I could pay the bills this month after all.
“And she wants to rent the entire inn out,” Maisy said. “Isn’t that wonderful? However, she said there’s a time factor. She wants to do it the first weekend of October.”
That was three weeks away.
Mentally, I ran through my list of booked rooms. If I recalled correctly, I didn’t have a single room rented that particular weekend. “This is great,” I whispered without hiding my glee at the possibilities before leaving Maisy to head for my office.
I found a tall woman with gleaming brown hair waiting for me in my small office just off the lobby. She stood as I entered and held out her hand. The first thing I noticed was the gigantic diamond on her wedding ring finger. I had no idea how many carats, but it was the width of a nickel and sparkled like the Christmas star. “I’m Arianna Bush. Are you Jamie?”
“I am. Pleased to meet you.” We shook hands before I went to sit behind the desk and encouraged her to have a seat as well. I darted a few quick glances her way. She looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place where I knew her from.
She crossed her long, tanned legs. Why was it rich people were so often good-looking? I smoothed my plain black skirt over my knees and scooted closer to the desk. “Maisy tells me you’re interested in booking the inn for your wedding?”
“Yes, for the ceremony. We’ll have some guests staying here and some at the lodge. But I just adore the intimate feel here at the inn. My fiancé wanted to marry at the lodge, but I’m not feeling it.”
“Were you thinking inside or outside?” I asked, taking out my notebook to jot down details.
“I have something very specific in mind, actually,” Arianna said. “You see, my parents married in this inn—or the one that burned down—thirty-five years ago.”
“But it wasn’t an inn then.” I knew that what had once been a mansion for the famous wedding dress designer, Annabelle Higgins, had not yet been turned into an inn thirty-five years ago. At the time of my arrival, it had sat empty for a few years. The structure had needed a lot of work, thus I was able to buy it for less than its true market value. I’d spent the better part of a year returning it to its formal glory, only to lose it in the fire after only being open a few weeks.
“Right,” Arianna said. “My mother had known the people who lived here. When my father asked her to marry him, she insisted the wedding be held here. There was a gazebo then, and that’s where I want to marry Rob. Here, I have photos.” She rummaged in her designer handbag and pulled out several black-and-white photos.
I took a good look at them, anxious to see what it had been like thirty-five years ago. There was indeed a gazebo surrounded by roses. Standing just inside the gazebo were a bride and groom. “This is your parents?”
“Yes, on their wedding day.” She reached back to take the photographs, obviously wanting to keep them close. “It’s one of the only things I have left of my mother. She died when I was only five.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That’s terrible.”
“It was. My father remarried when I was ten to a nice woman, but she wasn’t my mother, you know. No one could replace her for me.”
“I see. You want to marry in the same location that they did? For sentimental reasons?” When talking with customers I kept my voice low and calm.
“Precisely. I want it to look just like this.” She tapped the photo to indicate the gazebo.
I had no gazebo and no rosebushes. “It doesn’t look like that any longer.” I explained about the fire and that the gazebo must have been removed long before I ever bought the place. “We have a lot of other pretty locations on the property. If there are none to your liking, we could have the ceremony and reception in our great room inside the inn.”
She was shaking her head and her mouth puckered as if she’d tasted something sour. “That’s just the thing. I want it to look exactly like it did back then. I want to stand under that same gazebo and marry the man I love just as my mother did thirty-five years ago. It will be on their anniversary. Or what would have been, anyway.”
“I’m sorry, but I couldn’t possibly build one in time.” My heart sank. I couldn’t do what she asked. In debt up to my neck, even with the insurance policy replacing most of what I’d lost, I couldn’t afford to build anything more. I’d bought the inn after saving every penny I could from the time I was fifteen until just two years ago. Regardless, I still had to take out a mortgage to finance my dream. Now I was looking at losing a very lucrative wedding weekend. What could I do, though? It wasn’t as if I could construct a gazebo and put in a stone patio in three weeks’ time. “Even if I had the money, which I don’t, three weeks isn’t enough time.” Why the hurry, I wondered? Why not next year instead? “Would you be able to postpone the wedding until next year?”
“No. Rob wants to marry now. He’s tired of waiting.” Arianna tossed her silky hair behind both shoulders and fixed her gaze on me. I felt a little as though we were playing chicken with our eyes. “I’ll pay you a hundred thousand dollars if you do it for me, on top of whatever it costs for the labor and materials.”
I almost did a double take, like a cartoon character. “Are you kidding me?”
“Money’s no object. I’m a very rich woman marrying an even richer man.”
“I see.” My mind was scrambling to keep up with her proposal. How would I find someone to build something so quickly? What about the materials? I’d need a good contractor, which was hard to find.
However, a hundred thousand dollars? I could pay down some of the mortgage with that money and actually buy a decent car and still have some to put in savings. “I could try to get it done quickly, but I’m not sure it’s possible.” Why didn’t she come up with this idea before now? How long had she been engaged?
“Can you do it for that?” Arianna asked. She was a woman used to getting what she wanted. That much was obvious.
I cleared my throat, uncomfortable.
“Well?” She stared at me, unblinking.
“I can do my best.” This was nearly impossible, but I had to make it happen.
She tapped the photo again. “It has to look just like this one.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Good. Well, I’ll go so you can get back to work. I’m in town until the wedding. Maisy just booked me a room for the next three weeks. That way I’ll be here to supervise.”
“What about your fiancé? Will he be here?”
She smiled for the first time. “Not until the week before the wedding. Rob’s the CEO of a software company and can’t take as much time off as I can.”
“What do you do?” I asked, curious. “Because you look very familiar to me.”
“I’m an influencer. Beauty products, that kind of thing.”
An influencer? Wasn’t everyone these days? But what did I care? If she could pay me a hundred grand for a gazebo, then I was in. “That must be it.” I held out my hand to shake hers. “I’ll let you know as soon as I find someone to do the work. I’m assuming you’ll want to see the proposal?”
“I’d appreciate it,” Arianna said.
I walked her out then and returned to my office. Where in the world was I going to find someone to do this work in a mere three weeks?
* * *
I returned to the wine-and-cheese hour in the common area and mingled with the guests, answering questions about where to dine and what activities were available this time of year, but my mind was elsewhere. Specifically, I silently churned on the subject of a certain gazebo. I knew because I’d just spent the better part of a year rebuilding my inn that carpenters and workers were in high demand here in a town still recovering from a forest fire that had taken out several of our businesses, including mine, and a dozen homes. My brother’s firm had agreed to do much of the work for a discount, but there were only so many of them to go around, especially since their home base was in Cliffside Bay, California, not here in Colorado.
After the guests had all wandered off to finish the rest of their evenings, I cleaned up the glasses and almost-empty trays of cheese and crackers. Tiff, Stormi, Crystal, and Brandi were on their way over to enjoy a happy hour of our own. Since reopening, I’d been too busy to see any of my friends. Stormi, who had been busy herself running our new art gallery and taking pictures for our local newspaper as well as being the town’s primary wedding photographer, had come up with the idea of a gathering at the inn for wine and dinner. Brandi, who owned The Sugar Queen bakery, had promised to bring sandwiches left over from her lunch offerings. Crystal said she’d bring wine from her cellar. A treat, as her wine collection was substantially better than anything I offered my guests.
I hadn’t known a soul in Emerson Pass when I purchased the old Higgins mansion several years before. That I had a friend group still amazed me. Back home in San Diego, I’d had several close friends and had missed their easy companionship when I’d moved away. However, the relationships I’d built with the women here had lessened my homesickness considerably. In fact, I couldn’t remember when I’d felt more blessed and full. These women had become like family to me, which I desperately needed. My father and I hadn’t spoken since the divorce. When I left Cliffside Bay, my mother had decided to travel the world to get over being left by him for a woman my age. Midlife crises were real. I’d witnessed it with my own eyes.
I still had my brother Trey, though. That would never change. He was as loyal and steady as the rising sun. His wife, Autumn, had just given birth to their second child—another little girl to go with her adorable sister. I hoped they would all come visit soon, but the demands of two careers and two babies kept them busy out in California. I’d moved out here so hopeful about my new life, only to have that dashed with the fire. There had been more than a few times I’d thought of packing it all in and going back to the West Coast. But to where? My mother had sold the home I grew up in. Dear old Daddy was busy with whatever her name was. This was my home now. For better or worse, I was tied to it as long as I owned the inn. The small-town culture I’d craved all my life was more than enough, I told myself on the lonely nights.
My friends arrived around half past six. I’d sent Gerald home by then to eat his supper with his family. He was only seventeen and still pink-cheeked and dewy-eyed and expected home for dinner every night. I envied the simple but loving family he had. Growing up in a wealthy suburb in San Diego hadn’t been as wholesome as one might predict.
I took in a deep breath, hoping to rid myself of thoughts of the past. I was here now with my best friends. Being present with them was a gift. One I didn’t plan on ever taking for granted.
We were seated on the soft, all-enveloping chairs and love seats my brother had chosen as I told them about the request from my potential new client.
“Wait a minute,” Stormi said, fluffing her dark bangs that hung just above her almond-shaped green eyes. “This woman offered you how much?” She looked her usual arty self—dressed in jeans with holes in the knees and a tight black tank that clung to her slender frame.
I reiterated the financial details once more.
“Incredible. I’ve never heard of such a thing.” Brandi poured another slug of wine into our glasses without spilling a drop. She could make a sandwich and brew a double espresso while taking money from a customer all at the same time. I’d never met anyone as competent in my life. She could do anything, including caring for a baby and running one of the most successful businesses in Emerson Pass without breaking a sweat.
“Sentimentality will cause you to do a lot of things that might not seem rational to other people.” Crystal crossed her long legs. She wore designer jeans and a silky blouse, both of which probably cost more than my car. Before she’d attended culinary school, she’d modeled on the runways of Milan to pay the bills. This was long before she’d married one of the richest men on the planet, only to lose him in an accident. She was now happily married to Garth and the mother of a sweet baby boy named Huckleberry.
“You know who has mad carpentry skills?” Stormi asked.
“Yes.” Tiffany nodded solemnly. Her brown hair was piled on top of her head tonight, making her light blue eyes stand out from her fair skin. “He would be perfect.”
“He?” I asked.
“He’s looking for extra work,” Brandi said. “So he can buy a house and replace his car.”
“Who are we talking about?” I asked.
When I saw them all exchange humorous glances, I knew. They meant Darby. My cheeks flamed with heat.
“No way,” I said. “Not Darby.”
“He built a patio for us,” Tiffany said in her soft voice. “He’s detail-oriented, which we both appreciated.”
I had to admit, their deck had turned out well. Would it be possible? Or would it be too weird? I mean, we were friends now, so maybe it was fine. “I guess I could ask him.”
Again, they exchanged glances, apparently still amused by my embarrassment. “More wine, anyone?” I asked.
“That means she’s going to ask him,” Tiffany said.
“This is awesome,” Stormi said. “You’ll be thrown together all the time.”
“You ladies should mind your own business,” I said, laughing.
“That’s not how we roll,” Stormi said.
That was the truth.