Page 6 of The Magical Bed & Breakfast

“Of course, forgive me. Let me just go get those pamphlets for you. I’ll be right back.” Kate left the door open because shutting it in the woman’s face would be rude and hospitality was everything, but she prayed the woman would not follow her inside. She stepped back toward the kitchen and grabbed the pamphlets off the counter. As she rounded the doorframe to the hallway, she almost bumped into the woman. “Oh!”

The blonde stepped back, frowning, even as she peered around Kate to get a peek at the kitchen. Kate stepped forward. Step by step she moved her pushy visitor back to the foyer. The woman kept glancing around, peering first into the dining room and then the parlor, trying to see as much as she could. But she wouldn’t see any furniture. That was yet to come, and Kate was glad not to be caught in a lie. She kept up her relentless forward motion to herd the woman back to the front steps.

Once there, she handed her the pamphlets. “Here you go. Thank you for thinking of us,” she said brightly and then, all hospitality aside, shut the door in the woman’s face.

Kate leaned her back against the door and took a breath. She slipped over to a window and watched the woman tug her luggage down the walkway to the curb, where she looked to be requesting an Uber on her phone. Good luck with that! Hazard didn’t have much in the way of Lyft or Uber drivers. There wasn’t enough money in it, so it would be a long wait. In annoyance, the woman tromped across the street and over to the bench next to the statue of the town’s founder. Certain she’d be okay even if she had to wait, Kate continued to watch her from the window and thought about her reaction to the woman.

Kate frowned. Maybe she wasn’t cut out for the hospitality business. That had been just one maddening person, and she’d had an immediately negative response. How was she going to handle real guests who turned out to be truly annoying? Or demanding and infuriating? Had this career move been a good idea? Kate loved the idea of owning a B&B, but would the reality of dealing with strangers—and possibly really aggravating strangers—dim her enthusiasm?

What about creepy guests?

Kate shivered. Her dad’s words rolled through her brain. “You have zero experience with this. If you don’t like it, where will you go? You can’t leave them and go home. You’ll be in your home. It’s not like you can afford to hire enough staff to give you time off. You’ll be sleeping where your guests are sleeping.” He’d let out a disparaging snort.

Kate had held her tongue. His negativity came from his life’s experience as a fixer for celebrities. Kate had worked for him for several years and hated it. But he was one to talk.Allof his clientele were annoying. And demanding. And maddening. And rich.

Would her clientele be so different?

Yes, of course, she would host honeymooners and couples on vacation. Maybe, occasionally, a family, although her rooms were mostly on the smaller side. If she was really lucky, she might host a wedding party. Her gaze turned wistful as she imagined a wedding in her courtyard. She sighed in happiness at her little daydream.

An inn would be so much easier than repairing scandalous celebrityfaux pas. Wouldn’t it?

His father’s philosophy of “stick with what you know” had always grated on Kate. If you stuck only with what you knew, you never got to experience anything better. And she wanted better. She’d wasted too many years working for her father, solving all kinds of problems that were only brought on by absurdly bad choices. She hated spending her days embroiled in other people’s problems. Yes, it was a service, and yes, it paid ridiculously well—which is how she could afford the inn to begin with—but the constant spinning of actions that landed rich clients in scalding hot water…well, most of them deserved the scandals they found themselves in. Fixing everything for them didn’t help them learn their lessons. Clearly not, because most of her dad’s clientele were repeat customers.

After eight years of working for her father, Kate hated celebrities. She hated their arrogance and their preening. She hated their privileged expectations and, especially, their disrespect. She was so over fixing their mistakes.

Chapter Five

Rory rolled intoHazard in a nondescript black rental sedan…on purpose. He didn’t want to attract any attention, so he had left his classic restored Chevy Cordair in storage. As he pulled onto Main Street in the town he had once called home, he glanced around. Yep, place looked the same. He took a spin around the town green, the leaves on the maples in the square beginning to turn myriad shades from bright yellow to vibrant red to crispy brown.

He did love autumn. And his bandmates were right—this was the season when he wrote most of their new songs. But a love ballad was the last choice he would make right now. Stalker-girl had him turned off at any idea of romance.

It had started innocently enough, with her sending him love letters like she was a teenager with a crush. Then, she had sent him letters that were, well, a bit more suggestive—so obviously not a teenager—and then the letters got just plain weird. She knew stuff about his life that she shouldn’t know, like how he frequented the noodle place around the corner from his apartment and the location of the parking garage where he paid to store his car. That was not stuff she should have been able to figure out. Not unless she was living in New York, in his neighborhood, and was seriously devoted to watching him.

At first, he had tried to figure out if it was one of his neighbors. He’d quit going to the noodle shop and started studying everyone in line when he picked up coffee in the morning. He didn’t look the same as he did on stage. He wore rock star black leather with stylishly ripped plain black T-shirts on stage. In real life, he wore blue jeans and graphic tees. And who really looked at the keyboardist in the band? Nolan had a point.

Stalker-girl had materialized out of nowhere. First just a regular fan, asking for an autographed picture. How she managed to reach out to him directly hadn’t been an immediate red flag. It just happened. He’d directed her to Nolan to handle. He had staff to deal with that nonsense. And if it made the fans happy, so be it. He preferred fans who appreciated his music, his art—not his appearance. He’d never considered himself much to look at anyway. He’d spent most of his childhood here in Hazard on the sidelines. Staying indoors taking the piano lessons his mother had insisted on. She was old school in that respect, believing musical training would improve his school grades.

It had. His mom had that right, up until the day she’d deserted his dad and him and taken off with an aging concert pianist to Vienna. She’d never come back. And even though Rory associated his hated piano lessons with his mom, right after she left everything had clicked, turning the lessons he’d detested into his favorite escape.

Those lessons had quickly transformed into a way to avoid his unhappiness and the cruelty of schoolmates. Red hair had made him different, and different was bad. Plus, he’d been gangly and not good at sports until he reached his twenties. A late bloomer, he guessed. He’d spent his youth on the outside looking in. He’d started working at the hardware store at sixteen and saved his money. By nineteen, he’d scrambled his way out of this podunk nowhere town.

So what was he doing back here?

He turned from Main to Worthy, to Endeavor to Hazard. All still looked the same, mostly. His granddad’s grocery was on Worthy Street next to the thrift store. Across the way, it looked as if someone had taken the Hazard Inn on as a project. It was freshly painted a soft yellow, with amber trim, and…wow. Beautiful. Its tiny half circle of brick steps invited unwary guests to enter.

That was an improvement. In high school, it had been a dare to stay the night in the haunted inn. The three-story colonial had been downright weird. Rumors abounded of strange noises, creaking and groaning and moaning, like the voice of a wind god announcing displeasure at being disturbed.

“Oh, it’s just the breeze,” the adults had said, but he’d known better. The old inn had a seriously eerie vibe. It had creeped him out and nearly destroyed him.

Had someone from the community actually sought to bring the place back to life? It seemed unlikely. The spooky stories had been too prevalent. It was probably an unsuspecting dupe from out of the area tricked into purchasing the inn with dreams of grandeur. Well, good luck with that.

Rory hit the gas and headed out to visit his granddad at his fancy mansion, Agate Point, soon to be open for tours.

When it rose into view just past the gazebo in Cliffside Park, he stopped the car and let it idle. He gazed out at the impressive mansion. Built in 1920 at the end of the Beaux-Arts era of architecture, it was a typical specimen of art deco. He had spent afternoons there growing up. That was where the honest-to-goodness full-sized grand piano was, where his lessons had been. His fingers twitched at the thought of running them over those ivory and ebony keys again. The sound that came from the Steinway & Sons instrument was exquisite. He could still hear it in his mind. Not like his electric keyboard. But Rory would choose rock over classical music any day. The time for that era was long gone, and belonged with his mom and her paramour. They could have it.

Still, Rory eased the car up the long sweeping drive, past the stone flamingos at the steps to the entrance. He parked by the oversized circular fountain, water gushing and splashing while tiny finches and hummingbirds swooped in and around to catch a drink.

He grabbed his duffle and took the stone steps two at a time, then let himself in. Of course the door was unlocked. Ridiculous, but so like his granddad to have no worries about intruders. It was how Rory had grown up, but he had since learned caution.

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