CHAPTER ONE
The time had come to face the facts. Caleb was in over his head.
He stood at the top of the old circular staircase of Island House Inn and scanned the early evening crowd below.
For the first time in years, the spacious, slightly shabby lobby of Granddad’s vintage hotel—make that Caleb’s now—felt alive.
Felt viable. Felt profitable, with forty or fifty people milling around with various degrees of patience while waiting for their accommodations.
Which would have been great if most of the guests hadn’t come here against their will. More accurately, against their preference.
It should have been his moment to shine.
As it was, he sped down the stairs toward the timeworn mahogany reception desk, having delivered a cartload of clean towels and washcloths to each vacant second-floor room.
“We’ve filled all the first-floor rooms and half of the second, and the lobby’s still packed with guests waiting to check in.
Plus you have two more carriages coming up the street.
” Pushing a loaded luggage cart, Caleb’s great-uncle Augo Kennedy, in his late sixties with short white hair and an impressive mustache, approached him on the way to the elevator.
His little dachshund, Lucy, followed at his heels.
With those powerful forearms and biceps bulging under his green Island House Inn Henley, Uncle Augo could easily have carried the suitcases and tote bags to the third floor if he wanted.
“Where am I supposed to put all these people?”
“You’re the boss now.” His uncle’s basso voice reverberated in the high-ceilinged room. “Better figure it out before the rest of the Grand crowd arrives.”
It would’ve helped if the nearby Grand Sullivan Hotel of Jonathon Island, Michigan, had given them more than thirty minutes’ notice to come up with a plan. And if Caleb had more than six employees, not counting the restaurant staff.
However, nobody could have predicted the water break that flooded the sole renovated, occupied section of the Grand—the only other hotel open after the fire that had all but shut down the island eleven years ago.
The lobby’s front door creaked open. A gray-haired couple stepped inside, their wooden canes tapping the pine floor, and took in the lackluster lobby.
Frowning, the woman shook her head and whispered in the man’s ear.
He nodded, and they turned and walked out.
“In my third week as full-time hotel manager.”
“Hospitality industry’s fickle,” Uncle Augo said over his shoulder as he punched the elevator call button.
Well, his uncle should know.
Any other innkeeper would consider today a win, with more guests pouring into his northern Michigan harbor-view hotel than they had in years.
However, those innkeepers would have had training.
Filling in for his grandfather for a while last year, back when Granddad had his first stroke, didn’t count.
“We can’t use the third floor. We haven’t aired it out since last fall, let alone spring cleaning.” And they couldn’t even consider the old parlor wing, the one Granddad had locked twelve years ago and vowed never to reopen.
Caleb raised his voice over the din of a few dozen couples waiting for rooms, soft jazz playing over the sound system, and children running on the wood floors. “There’s nowhere else for them to stay, so we have to figure out something. Got any suggestions?”
“Not unless you can fix the Grand’s broken water pipes and dry up their guest rooms real quick.”
The flooding of the Grand Hotel and the horde of unhappy guests detouring here this evening had confirmed his suspicions. Truth was, Caleb Kennedy had run from Island House Inn—his run-down, six-generation, seventy-eight-room legacy—too long to bring it back from the brink of failure.
At the moment, the hotel didn’t look remotely like a legacy. It felt familiar, comfortable, a little worse for wear, and homey—the faded glory of his childhood. But its legacy aspect, its lasting significance for future generations? That part didn’t resonate. At all.
And since his boss had given him six weeks to decide whether to come back to the job he loved or save this tired, worn-out inn, Caleb seriously needed to turn the fuzziness into clarity. Fast.
For now, duty bound him to Island House Inn—his childhood home, the family relic. And the setting of his deepest grief.
He cast a quick glance out the wide front windows down to the harbor, its waters a deep Caribbean blue in the Jonathon Island summer.
He still thought the pink flowers lining the half-circle drive and crowding the front lawn, along with the deep, still waters of the northern Michigan straits and the Port Joseph shoreline in the distance, held the best view on the island.
A view he’d wished never to see again.
A view he wished he didn’t have to see now.
“Look over there.” Uncle Augo tilted his head, gesturing toward a family of five at the reception desk. “Keep your eye on the guy in the orange shirt.”
Caleb shifted toward a thirtyish man leaning against the reservations desk and wearing knee-length denim shorts and flip-flops, his “Great Minds Drink Alike” T-shirt stretched tight across his ample abdomen.
Other than the bad T-shirt slogan, he looked like an ordinary dad. However, knowing Uncle Augo’s sense of discernment and his lifestyle prior to his ministry calling, Caleb watched the guy anyway.
The woman with him had a grip on two small, squirming redheaded boys and yelled to another child who ran across the room. Her high-pitched voice bounced off the high ceiling and echoed through the lobby, making Caleb wince.
“If my payment to the Grand was refundable or anyplace else was open,” the man bellowed at plump, fortyish reservations manager Sarah Beasley, “we wouldn’t stay in this dump.” He moved too close to her for Caleb’s comfort.
Yep, his uncle had been right as usual. “I need to get in the middle of that. As much as Sarah has done to help Granddad hold this inn together the past fifteen years, I’m not letting him intimidate her.”
He left Uncle Augo as the elevator opened, then he quick-walked to the reception desk and eyed the guy. “Sarah, need some help?”
“You could get some cookies for these little cuties.” Her uplifting voice and unwavering gaze on him silently spoke of her expertise in dealing with problem guests.
Glancing at the orange-shirt man every few moments anyway, Caleb reached over to the bakery box at the other end of the desk, snatched five chocolate chip cookies, and handed them to him.
When the family headed toward the elevator, he leaned toward Sarah and whispered, “I’ll bet those kids won’t taste a single cookie. ”
“Then we’ll give them more later.” She pushed back a strand of her straight blonde hair. “Glad he stopped yelling once you came over.”
“He said only what everybody else thought. Each time the lobby door opens, I brace myself for disappointment in the guests’ eyes.”
The look he’d seen too often today, whenever a would-be Grand Hotel occupant crossed his wide, time-mellowed threshold.
“Not your fault.” Sarah spoke in low tones. “Nobody could turn this place around in the two weeks you’ve been here.”
Maybe, but at least none of the guests had recognized him.
He ran his fingers through his fresh, short haircut as he scanned the lobby.
He’d intended his new, clean-cut image to make him look more respectable.
So far, no one had asked why the lead guitar in one of the country’s biggest Christian bands spent the summer—or longer—in a stuck-in-the-past hotel.
He could always grow back his long hair and beard if he failed at this career and went back to his old one.
Make that when he failed.
Caleb grabbed the last four still-warm, napkin-wrapped chocolate chip cookies and a box of fudge, the remnants of his earlier panicked requests to the Fudge Shop on the Corner and Hudson Bakery.
He handed the goodies to another mother of two boys as her husband checked in, although his sweets offerings wouldn’t make up for the serious downgrade in accommodations.
“A carriage just pulled in with two more families.”
He recognized the strong Bostonian accent and light flower perfume before he saw Tara Chamberlain, the fiftysomething, silver-blonde-haired town council member and pastor’s wife.
And the woman who always seemed to show up when any business in town desperately needed help.
Not to mention saving his sanity at the moment.
Tara had apparently slipped in the side door.
Wearing a straight, knee-length blue dress and carrying another bakery box, she strode to the reception desk as if on a mission, her low-heeled sandals clicking on the floor.
When she opened the box, the aroma of fresh-baked cookies wafted out and somehow made this whole disaster a little more bearable.
“The town is buzzing with bigger news than the flooded Grand,” she said. “Annabelle texted me and said Miss Dahlia Denton and Ariel Sullivan’s private jet just landed at the airport.”
Trust his spinster great-aunt Annabelle Kennedy to know everything that happened on this island.
And in this hotel, since she’d lived here all her life except her college years.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll fly back to the mainland for a room.
” Because the one thing Caleb did not want to do tonight was apologize to Nashville’s most popular country music stars for his chintzy rooms.
The preacher’s wife gave him that big, unconditional-acceptance grin of hers. The one that always reminded him of his mother. Sometimes it made the old guilt rise up in him so strong he could barely breathe.
“No, they’ll stay on island as they promised. Miss Dahlia would turn in her wigs and sequins before she’d go back on her word.”
True. “We still have a chance. The Grand’s assistant manager said he didn’t know yet whether the presidential suite had flooded.”