LITMIR.BIZ

      KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

       http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

      For Stephen, who makes sure we’re

       never out of fudge marble ice cream.

      And for Barb, Deb, Mica, Kris, Chris,

       Molly, and Carol, who absolutely get it.

      Contents

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Chapter 18

      Chapter 19

      Chapter 20

      Chapter 21

      Chapter 1

      Olivia Callender was fed up with Monday even before she stepped outside her family’s hundred-year-old hotel and found the brass nameplate above the door listing to one side like a drunken sailor. From now on, she thought to herself as she frowned at the tarnished sign, Monday was on notice.

      What she needed was a time machine. Really, it was sort of amazing that no one had invented one yet when you could watch TV on your cell phone and your refrigerator could talk to you. At any rate, a time machine would certainly solve a lot of her problems.

      If she had one, she mused as she backed away from the hotel’s revolving door, she could skip today altogether and avoid lunch with her uncle. She could spend the crisp September day walking around Manhattan instead. She bit back a smile as two businessmen strode by like a pair of matched horses in their gray suits and black briefcases. If she had a time machine, she could spend the day walking around the Manhattan—or the hotel—of her childhood.

      Poor old thing, she thought as she tilted her head to glance up at the building’s eleven sturdy red brick floors, and the gabled windows on the top story. She was no Eloise, and Callender House certainly wasn’t the Plaza, but this hotel was home, and had been since Olivia was born.

      It wasn’t the hotel’s fault it had begun to resemble a faded old dowager whose stockings were bagging around her ankles and who had lipstick on her teeth.

      She patted the rough brick beside the revolving door fondly. And it wasn’t the hotel’s fault the nameplate had come loose on one side. The thing had to be nearly as old as the hotel. Still, she wished it hadn’t come loose today. Maintenance would fix it, but whether or not it would get done before Uncle Stuart arrived for lunch wasn’t what she would call a sure thing.

      What was certain was that he would notice it, and remark on it, and roll his eyes, and exude condescension the way some men left a cloud of aftershave in their wake. And she would have to soldier through it, the way she always did, until he’d reached his quota of criticisms and taken off again.

      A time machine was looking better and better.

      She didn’t understand why he insisted on seeing her in the first place. For the first twenty years of her life he’d barely acknowledged her existence. But now that her father was dead, he called like clockwork, every six months, to schedule lunch with her right there in the hotel restaurant.

      Family loyalty was out, and so was affection. Olivia couldn’t remember the last time he’d even hugged her, and if he tried it she’d have to make a superhuman effort to keep from shrinking away from him. Stuart Callender was about as snuggly as a rattlesnake. With a porcupine hide.

      As for loyalty …Well, Olivia’s father was the one who inherited Callender House, not Stuart. Apparently even her grandfather hadn’t much liked his younger son. Then again, Stuart had always made it clear that the hotel business was not for him.

      Which made these twice-yearly lunches as difficult to understand as they were to sit through. Especially when Stuart’s primary aim seemed to be pointing out every one of what he believed were Callender House’s flaws.

      The lobby, for instance. Every time he stepped through the door he had something to say about the faded marble floor, the circular red velvet banquette, and the dark leather settees. “Scratched,” he’d say, pointing to a tear in the leather. “Stained,” he’d say, raising his eyebrows at the banquette. “And the ferns? It’s the twenty-first century, Olivia. This isn’t Casablanca.”

      Well, she liked the ferns. There were a lot of them, true, and they were a little bit old-fashioned, yes, but they were part of the lobby’s charm. There had always been ferns in the hotel’s lobby, and she had hidden behind the extravagant green fronds more than once when she was a kid.

      The ferns weren’t going anywhere, she thought to herself as she ambled away from the building. Her father had entrusted Callender House to her, and she intended to preserve it just the way he had when he inherited it from his father. Callender House was a New York institution. Just like hot dogs, and Central Park, and traffic.

      She frowned at that thought. Okay, traffic wasn’t exactly a good institution, but New Yorkers were used to it. Without traffic they would have one less excuse for being late to work.

      “Morning, Ms. Callender.”

      As if on cue, Declan Sweeney arrived, nearly—Olivia glanced at her watch—two hours late for work as the daytime doorman. At least he was always charming about it.

      She’d hired him mostly because of the pure Ireland in his voice. His face didn’t hurt, either. He had the dark hair and blue eyes of the black Irish, and he’d come to the States only this spring to be an actor. Or was it to paint? No, to study photography. That was it. She was almost sure, anyway. Not that it mattered. He was only twenty-four—or was it twenty-two? He’d probably change his mind about his career a dozen times in the coming year.

      “You’re late again,” she informed him, but she couldn’t hold back a smile.

      “I’m in love, I am,” he announced happily, pausing to stare with fondness into middle distance. “Althea’s her name. I’m doomed.”

      How this explained him being late to work, Olivia wasn’t sure she wanted to examine. And since Herb, the night doorman, had left hours ago, she urged Declan inside for his uniform with a wave of her hand.

      “Sign’s crooked, you know,” he said with a cheery smile, and pushed through the revolving door.

      She frowned at his back.

      So the sign was crooked. It wasn’t a tragedy. It wasn’t a crisis. It required a ladder and possibly a screwdriver. Or a drill. She wasn’t sure about that part, but she was sure that the lopsided nameplate hadn’t required an urgent call from Angel, the head of maintenance, before she’d even had her first cup of coffee.

      The same went for all of the discussions about replacing the carpet upstairs. Olivia liked that carpet, even if it was getting a bit worn. Okay, threadbare. Still, you couldn’t find carpet like that anymore.

      “And I don’t know why you’d want to,” Josie Gallo, her guest services manager, had responded to that with raised eyebrows. “There are no avocado-colored flowers like that in nature. It’s mutant foliage carpet. It’s awful.”

      It was sort of awful, but it had been

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