LITMIR.BIZ

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sitting, it seems like I turned your world upside down for no apparent reason.” His gaze touched the side of her face, all set jaw and flared nostrils. “But, honey, from the minute you were born, your life became mine. And in many ways, it still is. Sometimes, though, an opportunity comes along…”

      His hand flexed on the wheel. “Look, I hadn’t planned on buying this or any other inn now, because I didn’t think there was any way I could swing it. But suddenly, there it was, within my reach, and I knew if I let fear or doubt make me second-guess myself, I’d regret it for the rest of my life.”

      “So what I think doesn’t matter?”

      “I didn’t say that. Of course what you think matters. But you gotta give this a chance, Stace. Give me a chance. Longer than two days.”

      Silence. “How long?”

      “A year.”

      “A year? Are you serious?”

      “That’s right. And if it doesn’t work out,” Rudy said, mentally crossing his fingers, “I’ll sell up and we’ll move back to Springfield.”

      The sun played peekaboo through the tree branches for several seconds as they drove. One of Stacey’s booted feet found its way onto the dash. “You promise?”

      “I swear. And put your foot back where it belongs.” When, accompanied by a weighty sigh, the foot dropped, Rudy said, “So. We have a deal?”

      “Yeah,” she said on another exhalation, “I guess.”

      “Good. Now about Violet,” Rudy said, and Stacey’s head fell back against the headrest. “She’s not gonna be sharing your closet, for God’s sake. And I’ll need a cook.” He glanced over. “Unless you wanna get up at six and make breakfast for the guests?” Her horrified gaze shot to his. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

      “But she has kids, Dad,” Stacey said, as though the problem with this was self-evident.

      “Yeah, she has kids. So?” She rolled her eyes. Boy, was she using everything in her arsenal today or what? “Okay, Stace. For one thing, she hasn’t said yes yet, I’m only telling ya as a courtesy at this point. And for another…since when don’t you like kids?”

      That got a what-planet-are-you-from? look. “Whatever gave you the idea I did?”

      Rudy told his good mood to hang on, be patient, another ten, fifteen minutes and it could come out of hiding again. “You always seemed to get along with your cousins okay.”

      “Yeah, well, they’re my cousins. I have to like them.”

      “Don’t give me that—you love the twerps and you know it. And you were crazy about little Haley when you met her at Thanksgiving.” Not that everyone else in the family wasn’t, too, when his sister Mia brought the little girl who was now about to become her stepdaughter— as well as the man who became her fiancé—home for the holiday. The four-year-old was bona fide wrap-around-your-little-finger adorable. Like Stace used to be, in fact, before the hormones from hell plundered her body. “In fact, you played with her most of the day.”

      “That was different,” Stacey said, pushing her shiny, just-washed hair (amazing what a determined female can accomplish with a wood-burning stove, water and a kettle) behind her ear. A red-rimmed, undoubtedly freezing ear with a brand-new, dangly pierced earring—a Christmas present from the aforementioned Mia. When Rudy suggested Stace might want to wear a hat because, you know, it was ten degrees outside, she’d looked at him like he’d proposed snake charming as a career. “Haley’s a girl.”

      “What’s her being a girl got to do with it?”

      “Little girls are cute. Little boys…” She shuddered.

      “I didn’t see anybody exactly twisting your arm to take Zeke to the bathroom the other night, when we were at the diner.”

      “That doesn’t mean I want to live with him! And anyway, in case you missed it, Violet’s got serious issues.”

      “Most of which probably stem from the fact that she thought she was going to inherit the house.”

      A school bus in front of them turned off the road, heading for a large, squat, sixties-vintage redbrick building surrounded by fifty-foot conifers. “Right,” Stacey said, her eyes narrowed as she scouted out this part of her new world. “So how exactly is offering her a job in the house she thought was going to be hers going to work? Uh, Dad?” she said as Rudy thought, This kid is too damn smart.

      “Yeah?”

      “This can’t possibly be the right school. Look at all the little kids!”

      Rudy berthed the Bronco in a visitor parking space, cut the engine. “It’s not the wrong school,” he said quietly. “It goes from kindergarten through eighth grade.”

      Again, her eyes arrowed to his. “I have to go to school with the babies?”

      Please God, Rudy thought as he opened his door. If you could just see your way clear to fast forward us both through the next six years or so…

      Desperately trying to tune out Stacey’s mutterings about how half her new schoolmates probably weren’t even potty-trained yet, Rudy herded her toward the office. Not until they’d gotten inside, however, and the secretary—a seemingly normal human being, Rudy noted—had traded him registration forms for Stacey’s shot record and birth certificate and records from her old school, did his daughter’s comment about Violet finally sink in.

      Because, well, Stacey had a point—how was Violet’s working for him, living in a house that she’d once believed would be hers, going to make her happy? Yeah, okay, she’d said she’d only intended to sell it, then use the proceeds to start over somewhere else, but…

      “Here you go,” the secretary—Johnnie, according to her desk plaque—said with a smile as she handed him back the shot record and birth certificate. Rudy checked over the forms to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, then gave them to her. He tossed a smile over at Stacey, slumped in a molded plastic chair by the door, gnawing on a hangnail and looking like she’d just been told iPods had been declared illegal. “No family physician?” the secretary asked.

      “We literally just moved here,” Rudy said. “So, no. Not yet.”

      The gray-haired lady smiled up at him, eyes crinkling. No horns or antennae or anything that he could tell. “I can give you a list of doctors and dentists in the area, if you like.”

      “Thanks, that would be very helpful—”

      “Oh!” she said, looking up. “You’re the guy who bought the Hicks Inn?”

      “That’s me.”

      Johnnie straightened, folding her arms across a boxy plaid jumper, a sappy expression crossing her face. “That used to be such a nice place. Back when both of them were still alive, I mean. It went downhill after Creighton—Doris’s husband—got sick. Doris just couldn’t keep it up by herself. Time was, though, people had to make reservations a year in advance. I know we’re a bit off the beaten track, but there’s lots to do around here, the battlefields and museums, and that arts festival in the summer. You have to go up north for the skiing, of course, but there’s cross-country trails all over the place…”

      She laughed. “Listen to me, I sound like a one-woman chamber of commerce. But it would certainly be wonderful to see it come back from the ashes. Like the phoenix.”

      “Gonna give it my best shot,” Rudy said, smiling.

      “Okay, Stacey,” Johnnie said, gesturing for her to stand, “let’s go see the assistant principal. She’ll get you all set up.”

      Stace struggled to her feet, the picture of the condemned woman, and Rudy thought, I sheltered this kid way too

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