Chapter 14 #3
And after Sarah’s break, Caleb would go to Granddad’s suite and tell him the news. For now, he headed toward the reception desk and found Sarah trying to calm a man who wore rumpled jeans and a black “Sotally Tober” hat and held a small crying boy.
“Look at this.” The man pointed to a zigzagged line of bites on the boy’s arm. “Bedbugs did this.”
Caleb approached them and checked the boy’s arm. He glanced at Sarah. Surely she’d seen bedbug—jelly bean—bites before.
She gave one subtle nod.
Great. He held out his hand to the man. “I’m Caleb Kennedy, hotel manager and grandson of the owner.”
“Pete Rockwell.” The man looked at Caleb’s hand and stepped back. “Uh, no offense, but no thanks.”
Right. Caleb lowered his hand. “I learned of our problem just a minute ago. Did you see evidence of bugs in your room?”
“What evidence do you want besides this?” He held up the boy’s arm.
O-kay. “My staff is taking measures to prevent spreading and to notify the public. Can I do anything to help you now?” With the man’s focus on his son’s chewed-up arm, Caleb caught Sarah’s gaze and mouthed Like what?
“We’ll make sure the bugs are contained to one room,” Sarah said, saving Caleb. “I’ll give you a different room that doesn’t have bugs in our newly opened parlor wing. And we’ll wash and dry your clothes.”
“I just want my money back. We’re moving to the mainland.”
Honestly, Caleb didn’t blame him. “Sarah will give you a refund. If there’s anything else we can do—”
“Just get out of my way.”
Caleb stepped back as the man stomped across the lobby. Through the front windows, he saw him say something to a dark-haired woman waiting on the porch. Then they took the boy and their luggage down the front porch stairs and up the street.
In his office, he found Josie on the phone talking to an exterminator. She hung up as he sat at his desk.
“The K9 inspector is on the way.”
Caleb already had enough bedbug conversation to last him a while, but he had to ask. “What’s a K9 inspector?”
“A dog, usually a beagle, who sniffs out bedbugs.”
“A bug-sniffing beagle sounds like an iffy solution.”
Then again, “iffy” described this whole hotel as long as Caleb remained in charge.
Two hours later, he met with Ariel, Josie, the band, and the writers on the patio. Miss Dahlia attended via a video call.
“Throughout my life, I’ve stayed in all kinds of hotels and motels and little roadside flophouses so grimy you couldn’t even call them shacks,” Miss Dahlia said from what looked like a hospital waiting room. “I never saw a bedbug.”
“If the bugs haven’t spread, we can open again in a couple days. Until then, you can all stay in the parlor wing, if it passes inspection,” Caleb said. “Or you can go to the Grand.”
“What do y’all think?” Ariel asked, looking cute in one of those flowy dresses he liked, this one pink.
Earl, who’d been on the music scene too long to get shook about much of anything, raised one finger. “I don’t mean to talk bad about your boyfriend’s hotel, Ariel—”
“I don’t have a boyfriend.”
She must have felt strongly about that, since Caleb had never heard her interrupt anybody. That hurt a little. However, she told the truth, and the thought saddened him.
“Yeah, right.” Earl snorted and scratched his silver head with the eraser end of the mechanical pencil he always seemed to have in his hand. “You’re the only ones who haven’t realized it yet, little lady. Anyway, I’m not interested in getting eaten alive by little red bugs. I’ll go to the Grand.”
“I’ll stay wherever you do, Ariel,” Isaiah said with a protective glance toward her.
No surprise there.
“Me too.” Josie stood next to Ariel’s chair. “I can take care of the inn’s social media and yours from the Grand. And if Caleb needs to talk through anything, we can call or have a video chat.”
Might as well send Paxton and the rest of the musicians to the Grand too. “I’m treating the entire garden wing for bugs. So while I’m not exactly throwing you out…”
“You’re not throwing us out, but you actually are throwing us out,” Miss Dahlia said.
“Right. I’ll send your things to the Grand.”
Earl leaned forward and caught Ariel’s attention. “Before we leave, let me say you have one of the best voices Nashville ever heard. The truth will come out, and people will love you more than ever.”
“I couldn’t get along without my band family.” Ariel gave them her famous brilliant smile. She stayed seated on the patio while the others left, presumably to pack.
Alone with her now, Caleb figured he’d better take the opportunity to have a hard conversation.
“Ariel, I’m sorry about this morning and the bad press you’re getting,” he said, not even trying to ease into the topic. “I’m responsible for the whole situation. I came up with the idea for both the teen choir and the nasal-singing disaster.” He drained his coffee mug and shoved it away.
“You tried to help. I’m to blame because Aunt Dahlia put me in charge.”
“Ariel, the movie we watched—when Mortimer couldn’t go through with signing the marriage license…” Caleb stopped and ran his hand through his hair. He’d gotten used to the clean-cut look, but he’d never get used to life without Ariel.
He dreaded trying to start.
His breath came shakily as he framed the words in his mind, determined not to hurt her.
“Ariel, I love you more than I’ve loved anyone, and I’d marry you tomorrow. Today. But I can’t.”
She lowered her gaze to the table. “It’s your conflict about your careers.”
“It’s both of our band jobs, if Drake will take me back. Plus this hotel.” What could he say that would make sense to her when it didn’t make sense to him?
“You mean the fact that we tour with different bands.” Her voice lowered to a near-whisper, he strained to hear her words.
“That’s not the main issue.” He glanced around at the unpruned lilacs, the weedy gardens. “Look at this place. I don’t have an innkeeper’s heart. It doesn’t come naturally to me.”
“It comes naturally to other people. And some of them want a job as an innkeeper.”
Her voice sounded so infused with hope of making the inn work—hope of making them work—he could hardly form the words he had to say. “That would mean a Kennedy would no longer run the inn.”
Her confusion showed in her frown. “You don’t have to sell it. Just hire someone.”
But then the inn still wouldn’t have a Kennedy running it. She didn’t get it. At all.
“Last night, I decided where to hang the land grant. I’m putting it beside the front door, so everyone who visits the inn can see that my tenth great-grandmother risked her life to help our country earn its freedom. And received this land in return.”
“Caleb, why is this hotel so important to you that you’d give up your music career?” She hesitated, a tear gathering in her blue eyes. “That you’d give up love?”
How could he explain when he didn’t understand either? “It’s not that. I don’t know where I’ll work next week. Stay at the inn and fight the battle of the bugs? Go back to Drake and let this place either fall down or go bankrupt? Ask you to marry me and leave behind my family responsibilities?”
“I’m not sure you have as much family responsibility as you think.”
“Honestly, neither am I. But there’s a good chance I’ll always live here.” He spread out his hands, indicating the inn, the island. “Could you leave behind your music career and live as an innkeeper’s wife?”
Her faced paled, and he hated himself for laying it out so straightforwardly. But truth was truth.
“I don’t know. I’ve never known life outside the road, the studio.”
“So there’s no compromise? No way around this?”
At the sight of her damp, fast-blinking eyes, he stopped. Stopped the speculation. Stopped the debate. Pushed back his chair and stood, a stone landing in his heart. “The only thing I know is that I love you, and I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Caleb, it doesn’t matter that I love you too, because we’re ending up just like Aunt Dahlia and Mr. Augo.”
A better man would choose love and clean up the mess later.
Not Caleb. Because his choices—plus his inability to make actual choices—hurt people.
Wrong choice the day Granddad wanted his help with the inn’s big celebration eighteen years ago.
No choice when Stephanie wanted a commitment he couldn’t give.
Bad choice the night his parents died because Caleb couldn’t stand up for himself and tell Granddad he wanted a career in music.
Worst choice when Ariel stood and walked away.
Leaving him to sit alone, helpless, because, at the age of thirty, he had no more idea what to do with his life than he had the day of Granddad’s stroke.