Page 63 of Meet Me at the Grand

“Ah yes, she told me you’d be hard at work yesterday and today. Hopefully the extra time gives you a bit more flexibility in your schedule so you can really dazzle us with your presentation.”

“Hopefully.” Liam tried to infuse confidence in his tone, but judging by the scrutiny in Seb’s look, he’d failed.

“Are things not going well? She told me this morning you had come up with a plan.”

“We did, but…” Liam pressed his thumb along the Ziploc’s seal. “Something about it just isn’t jibing. It feels off.”

“How so?”

“We’re trying really hard to compromise our visions, and the way we went about doing that was to take turns selecting features we wanted to keep from our individual plans—or in Dani’s case, the way the hotel used to be.”

“Ah.” Seb stroked his chin. “And that didn’t go well?”

“It went fine in terms of us getting along and making decisions. But I think it feels off because it will create a really disjointed experience for guests. They’ll arrive to a nineteenth-century building painted the wrong color and then walk inside to find a dazzling modern lobby. Then they’ll go up to their rooms, which will have this vintage design but a sleek bathroom that doesn’t match the charm.”

“That sounds confusing.”

“I know.” Liam groaned. “But I honestly don’t know how else to compromise.”

“Let me tell you something I’ve learned after thirty-plus years of marriage, son. Compromise isn’t just about picking and choosing things from your two individual visions of what life should be. It’s about teamwork and blending your ideas so you create something new—together.”

Liam straightened. Seb’s words…they struck a chord. “That’s where we’ve gone wrong. Seb, you’re a genius.”

Seb laughed. “I’m glad someone around here finally realizes it.” Then he winked. “Now, go create something amazing with my niece.”

Liam frowned. “We’re just talking about the hotel, right?”

“Of course.” Seb grinned. “What else would we be talking about?”

Ugh, not Seb too. “Thanks for the advice. I’ve gotta go.” Liam walked toward Dani, who looked up from talking with Mia.

“Liam, hi.” Her smile was fake—he knew her real one enough to recognize the counterfeit, and it still ate at him. “Are you ready to go?”

“If you are.”

“I’ll see you later.” Mia gave Dani a hug. “Bye, Liam.” She flashed him a meaningful look before leaving.

Without another word, he and Dani walked out the front, people waving bye and letting them know they were praying for them to work miracles on the hotel.

When they were finally out of earshot and on the road toward the Tourism Bureau, Liam spoke. “So I was talking to Seb, and something he said really sparked a thought in me.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“I don’t know about you, but the plans we came up with last night?—”

“They don’t feel right, do they?”

He stopped, turned to face her. “You don’t think so either?”

A breeze picked up the ends of her hair and blew them around her face. She swatted them away. “No. But I don’t know how to make it better.”

“I think I might.”

“Really? How?”

“By creating something entirely new, something that’s borne of the old, inspired by the old, but that brings the hotel into the twenty-first century.”

Dani cocked her head. “And how do we do that?”

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