To Have and To Fake (Marriages of Inconvenience #1)

1. Naina

Chapter One

NAINA

“You’re looking at about two hundred here.”

The words echoed in my mind as I walked around my family’s Inn. Around and around. Two hundred thousand to fix the crumbling ruins of my family’s legacy .

Stopping, I looked up at the large Inn. It used to be a house once upon a time. The white marble pillars had been carved on site. The marble floor in the lobby had been especially ordered from Italy back when that kind of thing was expensive and impressive. The Hollister House was a thing of beauty.

As the Windfield Inn, it was still a thing of beauty. From the outside. The inside was crumbling and falling, except for the three rooms that were still functional. And the restaurant, of course. If it weren’t for the restaurant, we would have closed down a long time ago.

“I have an idea.” My baby sister to came stand next to me. “We can say the Windfield is haunted.”

Somewhere off in the distance, I heard the chirping of cicadas and the crashing off waves. There was no denying the Windfield’s beauty. It was situated on a cliff in Carmel, California, and offered startling views of the Pacific Ocean. It was one of the best things about the Inn.

And now I owned it.

The Inn, not the ocean.

“I don’t think that’s going to work,” I said.

Samira looked up at me, her mouth twisted to the side. Her hair was pulled into a sloppy bun, and she was wearing shorts and a green t-shirt with The Windfield across it. She was working in the restaurant, since she was off from college for the summer.

“A bunch of masked men chasing people around? I think it will work.”

“Have you seen our main clientele?” I asked.

I smiled and waved at the Joneses, a now retired couple who had been coming to the Inn every year since they got married five decades ago. They represented our main clientele. Old and retired.

“In addition to the debt we already we have, we will be liable for lawsuits once the elderly start dropping dead.”

“We can change up our clientele.”

“Which all sounds good in theory except without the money to renovate the closed rooms and add in all the fancy facilities that the Evergreen has, changing our clientele won’t do us any good.”

The Evergreen was a resort a few miles away that offered all the best amenities, including a golf course, tennis courts, outdoor and indoor pools, an onsite spa, and more importantly, over four hundred rooms compared to our fifty.

Only the guests staying at the Evergreen could use their endless amenities, except for the restaurant which was open to everyone.

We didn’t have the money to renovate. We barely had the money to pay off the debt from the mortgage our father had taken out against the Windfield. His original plan was to renovate the Inn, but the money had disappeared almost as soon as it came in because there were endless repairs.

When Dad died, we inherited the Inn and the debt along with it. Until six months ago, I’d been in New York, contemplating the course of my life and what the hell I was doing with it, and then my sister called and said our father died. Just like that.

He went to sleep and didn’t wake up. Exhaustion, the hospital said. It was the first time I knew it was possible to die from exhaustion. He was stressed about the Inn. I used to beg him to sell it because I certainly never wanted to manage it.

Life had a cruel way of getting you to do the things you didn’t want to do. I’d barely had the time to mourn my father before I was given all this responsibility I never wanted. I would have done anything for my family, except come back to the place that still haunted my nightmares.

“What are we going to do then?” Sami pushed back a piece of errant hair. “Just go on as we always have?”

“I’m supposed to have the answer just because I’m the oldest?”

“Yes.”

Well, that was too bad because I didn’t have the answer. I was too busy sorting out my father’s office. He was the best man I knew, but organization was not his strong suit. That had been our mother. After she died, he let things get disorganized. Which meant I had ten years’ worth of vendor invoices and guest bills to sort through and make some sense of the financial ledgers.

I was drowning and it wasn’t a feeling I enjoyed.

“We can sell our underwear on the internet,” Sami suggested.

I made a face of disgust. “Ew, gross. Don’t make me restrict your internet privileges.”

She was eighteen, almost nineteen, and I couldn’t really restrict her anything. Where did she come up with these ideas?

I watched the gardener trim the hydrangea bushes. Mrs. Jones walked up to him and they chatted for a bit. Eli had been our gardener for almost as long as the Joneses had been coming to the Inn.

Sami gasped next to me and I looked down at her, startled.

“What is it?”

“I had the best idea. You can marry rich.”

I rolled my eyes. “Selling my underwear seems like a more viable option. Rich men don’t grow on trees.”

Sami’s brown eyes sparked.

“No, but there is one who comes in every week because he’s kinda obsessed with you.”

I climbed up to the porch to get out of the heat of the sun. The morning fog had burned away and the sun was shining brightly so it was getting a little hot under the sun. At least, that’s what I told myself was the reason for my burning cheeks.

“You need to stop reading those romance novels and read thrillers instead. You will quickly change your mind and consider him a serial killer marking his next victim.”

I straightened a bunch of magazines on the table and walked back into the Inn.

“I just think if you marry him it will solve all our problems.”

It might actually make our problems worse, but I didn’t say that to her. She was a teenager. It was best if she lived in her delusional, romantic world for a while longer.