Page 5 of An Heir Made In Hawaii (Hot Winter Escapes)

Nicholas glanced over to see a sandy-haired little boy excitedly tugging on his mother’s shirt as they headed for the door. The woman smiled down at her son.

“I hope so.”

“Or maybe a sea monster!”

Something in the boy’s hopeful expression stabbed straight into Nicholas’s gut. For a moment he saw David, sunny smile brightening his freckled face, his dark blond hair falling into his eyes because he’d refused to get it cut.

A smile extinguished in the span of a heartbeat by a careless driver who had missed a stop sign and changed his family’s life forever.

His fingers tightened around the pen. He’d accepted, after years of counseling, that the driver had been at fault. An acceptance that had lessened, but not fully removed, the guilt that lingered beneath the surface. He’d been the one to suggest riding bikes that day, the one who had been looking the other way when David had ridden out into the road.

Behind him, he heard the door close and the sound of the little boy’s chattering fade. The tightness in his chest eased a fraction. He finished scrawling his name.

“Thank you, Mr. Lassard.” The clerk gestured towards a corner decorated with plush, vibrant blue chairs and a flat-screen TV mounted on the wall. “We have one more guest on the way. As soon as they arrive, I’ll start the safety video.”

He moved to a bank of windows that overlooked the harbor. He had been to Hawaii before with his parents, but they’d visited Maui on that trip. In the first ten years after David’s death, the only time Nicholas and his parents had been happy was when they were on vacation. Thailand, Spain, Brazil, Alaska. They’d jetted all over the world, briefly escaping reality and indulging in adventure. As soon as they’d returned to their stately mansion in London overlooking Eaton Square gardens, his father had retreated to his office or flown off to take care of business somewhere else. His mother had crawled into bed and slept or taken pills to keep the grief at bay. They didn’t talk about David. Unless they were on vacation, they’d barely talked at all.

He shoved his hands in his pockets and watched a family move toward the dock. This past summer had marked the twentieth anniversary of David’s passing, and things had improved immensely in recent years. He didn’t know what had finally driven his parents into counseling. But they’d recovered, slowly climbing out of their depression and rejoining life. It had been about that time that Nicholas approached his father about becoming more involved with the Hotel Lassard brand. His father had agreed with the stipulation that Nicholas work his way up. He’d started with a maintenance crew for the chain’s flagship hotel in London on the weekends as he’d pursued his business degree at Oxford. He’d slowly but surely worked his way up to his current job as Director of Expansion.

Too bad that what had seemed like such a simple expansion, a way to achieve his vision for the Lake Bled hotel, had turned into such a chaotic mess.

Anika Pierce had caught his attention when he’d spoken to Bled’s local business owners nearly eighteen months ago. Unlike the majority of attendees who had responded with wide-eyed excitement to his presentation, she’d been polite but chilly, asking intelligent questions that had heightened his interest. So had her overall professional appearance, from her dark hair caught up in a twist on the back of her head to her black trousers and a loose white shirt with a tie around her slender neck. But her frosty attitude had rankled. He’d ensured that representatives from the Hotel Lassard had connected with all of the local hotel owners in the area, to reassure them that he would be working with, not against, their interests. Perhaps Anika just didn’t like having another hotel so close to her inn, even though his research and development team had assured him the inn and vacation rentals in the area were in an entirely different class than the Hotel Lassard.

Whatever the reason for Anika’s snooty attitude, he was used to a different type of response from most women. Her lack of one, combined with the grudge she seemed to hold, had made it easy to not think of her when he’d left.

Business had taken him back to London, then New York and finally Bilbao in northern Spain. When he’d returned to Slovenia in the spring to see the construction, he’d taken the long route around the lake past the centuries-old castle that stood guard on the clifftops. He’d also booked himself a ride on one of the gondolas that frequented the lake’s pristine waters. One of his father’s most important lessons as Nicholas had ventured deeper into the family business had been to experience what his guests would as much as possible.

It had been on that boat ride, as the gondola circled the southern end of the island, that he’d looked toward the upper levels of the Hotel Lassard emerging above the treetops and seen the Zvoncek Inn on the lakeshore. The simple beauty of it had hit him square in the chest, conjuring images of long-ago trips before David’s passing, to destinations like the beaches of England and Ireland instead of cities bursting at the seams. In that moment, he’d had a clear vision of the future: the main hotel to the east, with an exclusive mansion for guests wanting more privacy or a room on the lake just a short walk away. The pier could be redone, with a terrace for dining and a dock for boat rides to the island. Luxury combined with the natural beauty Lake Bled offered.

When he’d toured his property in person, reviewed the aerial photos of the surrounding area, he hadn’t even considered acquiring the inn. But once he’d seen it from the lake, nothing less than owning it would do. He hadn’t analyzed the obsession that had suddenly seized him. Whatever was pushing him was pushing him in the right direction.

He’d gotten back in his car and turned at the wooden sign that advertised the Zvoncek Inn. A small painting of the bell-shaped snowdrop flower the inn was named for had faded long ago, the white petals almost the same brown as the sign.

That had been his first clue of how the inn was doing. As he’d driven up the long drive, he’d given credit for whoever had planted the snowdrops blooming along the gravel, the simple charm further enhanced by the white lanterns marching up to the house.

The house itself had surprised him. Unlike the cottage style of so many buildings in the area, the three-story home reminded him more of Victorian-style houses he’d glimpsed on his trips to the Hamptons and Martha’s Vineyard. From the tower topped with a conical roof to the expansive porch trimmed with intricate wood spirals that reminded him of a gingerbread house, it was the definition of quaint.

Or had been. Whatever pale color the house had once been painted had long since faded to gray. The porch sagged. Shingles were missing from the roof.

But there was promise. Nicholas had achieved far more with far less.

He’d anticipated Anika being a harder sell than most. But he never would have guessed she would be a flat-out denial. Not with the inn falling apart around her.

He’d considered approaching Marija Novack, Anika’s grandmother. He’d met her a couple of times, including during the town’s annual Winter Fairy Tale market, where she’d been manning a booth draped in evergreens and selling the inn’s version of the traditional Bled cream cake. Aside from the tawny gold of her eyes, he hadn’t glimpsed a single trace of Anika in the woman’s deep smile or the feathery cap of silver hair on top of the narrow, slender face.

The sixth sense that had made him so successful, his ability to read people quickly and accurately, had noted the fatigue lurking in the crinkles by her eyes. The paleness of her skin. He might be resolute, tenacious, heavy-handed when the situation called for it. But he wasn’t cruel. He wasn’t going to press a woman who, at best, was getting on in years.

Unfortunately, his suspicions that something else was going on had been confirmed that summer. He’d backed off as Marija had neared the end of her life, had even sent flowers to her funeral and given Anika space to mourn her grandmother in private. He knew, better than most, how important it was to grieve. Especially when someone you loved so deeply was there one moment and then gone the next.

He turned away from the harbor and moved over to the table set up with fruit, coffee andmalasadas, thick, chewy doughnuts that were a breakfast favorite in the islands. He poured himself a cup of black coffee, savored the underlying flavor of molasses and focused on the slight burning on his tongue from drinking it before it had a chance to cool.

Better to focus on that than the past.

Especially when the present, and more importantly the future, demanded so much of his attention.

Including one stubborn, infuriating inn owner.

He’d given her time, nearly three months after Marija’s passing. But as the opening date of the Hotel Lassard had drawn nearer, he’d decided to press forward. When he’d heard that a tree had taken out the roof of one of the guest rooms during an autumn storm, he’d returned with an even higher offer and the opportunity for Anika to remain as the general manager of the property. It had been more than generous.

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