That caught his attention. Just who the hell did this Kristina Fortune think she was? He didn’t particularly want the inn, but he didn’t want to see it destroyed, either. It was part of his childhood. The best part, if he didn’t count John and Sylvia.
Covering the receiver, he turned to Paul. “Would you mind if I left you with all this for a few hours?”
Paul grinned as if he’d just hit the mother lode. “Hell, no, I was just wondering how to get rid of you. I love playing boss man.”
Max knew Paul meant it. He took his hand off the mouthpiece. “I’ll be there as soon as I can, June.” He cut the connection.
“Must be great to have a piece of so many different enterprises,” Paul joked. When Max didn’t return his grin, he asked, “What’s up?”
I don’t need this, Max thought. He liked things uncomplicated and this was probably the worse possible time to have problems rear their pointy heads. “Seems that the new partner at the inn has some fancy ideas about what to do with the place.”
Paul poured himself another cup of coffee. “New partner?”
Max nodded, hanging up his hard hat. “Kate Fortune owned the inn with my foster parents. She was killed in a plane crash a while back. June just called to say her ‘heir’ arrived. She thinks I’d better get over there immediately.”
“Doesn’t sound like June.”
Max pulled his jacket on. “She was quoting Kristina Fortune.”
“Oh.” He got the picture. “Better you than me, pal.” Paul saluted Max and then walked out of the trailer, back to the construction site.
“Yeah.” Max bit off the word as he strode out. He wasn’t looking forward to this.
Two
I t had possibilities.
Stepping away from the taxi she had taken from the airport, Kristina had slowly approached the inn. It had no real style to speak of. The photographs she had seen in the brochure had turned out to be flattering and too kind. Still, the inn was rustic and charming, in its own quaint way. But it was definitely run-down. It reminded Kristina of a woman who was past her prime and had decided that comfort was far more important to her than upkeep, but it did have definite possibilities.
With a good, solid effort, and an amenable, competent contractor working with her, who understood what she had in mind, the inn could readily be transformed into a moneymaker.
The forerunner of several more.
Kristina had seized the thought as soon as it occurred to her, and begun to develop it. Her mind had raced, making plans, putting the cart not only before the horse, but before the whole damn stable.
The horse was just going to have to catch up, she had thought with a smile as she walked up the stairs to the porch.
Kristina had done her homework and boned up on the subject. She liked the idea a great deal. Why just one bed-and-breakfast inn? Why not a chain? A chain that catered to the romantic in everyone. If she could make it work here, she could continue acquiring small, quaint inns throughout the country and transform them, until there was a whole string of Honeymoon Hideaways.
Her mood had altered abruptly as she stumbled, catching the handrail at the last moment. Her three-inch heel had gotten caught in a crack in the wooden floor. Kristina had frowned as she freed her heel. Someone should have fixed that.
Fixed was the operative word, as she’d discovered when she went on to examine the rest of the ground floor, finally returning to the front room, where she had begun. The woman who had introduced herself as June had remained with her almost the entire time. She wasn’t much of a sounding board, preferring to point out the inn’s “charm.” It seemed that around here “neglect” was synonymous with “charm.”
Having seen more than enough, Kristina turned now in a complete circle to get a panoramic feel for the room. Ideas were breeding in her mind like fertile rabbits.
Her eyes came to rest on the large brick fireplace. It was dormant at the moment, but she could easily envision a warm, roaring fire within it.
“Fireplaces.”
“Excuse me?” June looked at her uncertainly.
Kristina turned to look at her. “Fireplaces,” she repeated. “The other rooms are going to have to have fireplaces. I’m going to turn this into a place where newlyweds are going to be clamoring to spend the first idyllic days of their life together.”
She ignored the dubious look on the other woman’s face. She made a quick mental note as she continued to scan the room. The coffee table was going to have to go.
June pointed out the obvious. “But there’s no room for any fireplaces.”
“There will be, once a few walls are knocked down and the extra bathrooms are put in,” Kristina responded, doing a few mental calculations.
Placing her escalating ideas on temporary hold, Kristina looked at the woman behind the counter. She’d had one of her assistants obtain information from June’s personnel file before she flew out. She had a thumbnail bio on everyone who worked at the inn.
June had been here for over twenty years. She looked very comfortable in her position. Too comfortable. From the way she talked, June probably would resist change, and that meant she was going to have to go. It would be better to have young, vibrant people working at the inn, anyway. Young, like the idea of eternal love.
The success that loomed just on the horizon excited Kristina.
“I need a telephone book,” she told June suddenly. No time like the present to get started getting estimates. “The classifieds.”
June had a really bad feeling about all this. Kristina Fortune had announced her presence with all the subtlety of a hurricane. The very few, very leading questions that the woman had asked made June believe that the inn was in danger of being torn apart, piece by piece, staff member by staff member. She liked her job and the people she worked with, the people she had come to regard as her extended family. She felt very protective of them, and of Max.
She wondered what was keeping him. She’d called him nearly an hour ago.
Kristina noticed that June gave her a long, penetrating look before bending down behind the front desk to retrieve the telephone book.
It only reinforced Kristina’s intention to replace her. June Cunningham moved like molasses that had been frozen onto a plate all winter.
No wonder this place was falling apart. Everyone moved in slow motion. The gardener she had passed on her way in looked as if he had fallen asleep propped up against a juniper bush.
And there was supposed to be a maid on the premises to take care of the sixteen rooms. If there was one, Kristina certainly hadn’t seen her since she arrived.
June placed the yellow pages on the counter with a resounding thud. “Planning on calling a taxi?” she asked hopefully.
The sentiment wasn’t lost on Kristina. Don’t you wish.
It wouldn’t be the first time she had run into employee displeasure. If she was in the business of trying to make friends with everyone, it would have bothered her. But Kristina had learned a long time ago that most people were jealous of her position in life. Jealous of the money that surrounded her. It had them making up their minds about her before she ever had a chance to say a word. So Kristina ignored the opinions so blatantly written across their faces and did what she had to do. She wasn’t out to make friends, only a reputation.
Kristina frowned as she flipped through the pages, looking for the proper section. She wondered where she could get her hands on an L.A. directory. This one was relatively small. There weren’t many companies to choose from.
“No, a contractor.” She spared June a cool