Amazing Gracie. Sherryl Woods

when video games weren’t the entertainment of choice. Surely there were families that sought out low-key vacations far from the crowds at Disney World.

      She tested the steps and found them solid enough, but to her regret the windows were too filthy to permit a halfway decent view of the interior.

      “It doesn’t matter,” she told herself sternly. It was only a pipedream, after all. It wasn’t as if she were going to buy the place and settle down here to run it. She had a job waiting for her in France…if she wanted to go back. She could land another position with another hotel chain at the drop of a hat…if she chose. The sleepy town of Seagull Point, Virginia, was not what she needed, not in the long run. It was a temporary balm for her soul, no more.

      Even so, she found herself spreading the paint chips out on the kitchen table when she got home, playing with combinations of color until she had two that she liked, a third that was a possibility. When the phone rang, she guiltily shoved them all back into a pile as she answered it.

      “Hello, Max,” she said, anticipating who would be on the other end of the line. Max was the only person she’d told where she was going. Even though she’d given him the entire state to choose from, Max was apparently every bit as good at narrowing down possibilities as he was at spotting a discrepancy of a few francs in the Worldwide books. It had taken him less than a week to find her.

      “Bored yet?” he inquired.

      “Of course not.”

      “What are you doing with yourself?”

      “Nothing, Max. That’s the whole point of a vacation.”

      “A vacation?” His voice brightened perceptibly. “Then that is all that this is? You will be back?”

      “No, Max. I will not be back.”

      “The staff misses you,” he said, trying a different tack.

      “I miss them,” she said. She had felt vaguely guilty about abandoning them to Max’s puritanical fiscal whims. André in particular would not fare so well without her as a buffer between him and Max.

      “Guests have asked about you.”

      She did brighten at that. “Really?” She’d hoped that the regulars would notice her absence, but hadn’t really expected Max to tell her.

      “Actually, they have mentioned missing the floral arrangements you put in the lobby.”

      A twinge of panic fluttered in her stomach. “Where are the flowers, Max?”

      “The florist and I had a slight disagreement,” he admitted. “He prefers dealing only with you.”

      Gracie laughed as she thought of gentle Paul Chevalier standing up to Max and refusing to deliver flowers to the hotel. He must have been incredibly insulted to have taken such a stance.

      “Would you like me to call him?” she offered. “I can smooth things over.”

      “Would you?” he asked, sounding relieved, perhaps a bit too smug.

      “Of course. But Max, you’re going to have to start dealing with these little crises yourself or else bring in a new manager.”

      “I can’t do that, not when I’m holding the job for you. In the meantime, the rest of us will do the best we can. The hotel will not fall apart overnight.”

      “Overnight? Max, I’ve told you not to hold the job.”

      “Allow me my fantasies, ma chérie.”

      “Max!”

      “Au revoir.”

      Gracie sighed as she hung up. A moment later she placed the international call to the florist. Even though it would be evening in France, she knew she would find Paul Chevalier in his shop, tidying up after a hectic day, checking his orders, planning his trip to the flower market at the crack of dawn. Sure enough, he answered on the first ring, sounding distracted and rushed as he always did.

      “Bonsoir, Paul.”

      “Ah, mademoiselle, bonsoir,” he said, his voice brightening. “Comment allez-vous?”

      “Très bien. And you, Paul? How are you? I understand Monsieur Devereaux has upset you.”

      “The man is an imbecile,” he declared.

      “What has he done?”

      “He has asked me to pluck out only the dead flowers and replace them. He does not seem to understand that each arrangement is a piece of art, unique, magnificent in its own right.”

      “Definitely an imbecile,” Gracie agreed. “But, Paul, think of the guests. They appreciate your arrangements. They have told Monsieur Devereaux that they miss them. S’il vous plait, Paul, for me. Will you try to work with him?”

      “You are coming back soon?”

      “No, I’m afraid not.”

      “You have abandoned us, then, left us to this imbecile?”

      “Max is okay. Just be patient with him. He will learn.”

      Paul sighed dramatically. “For you, mademoiselle, but only for you.”

      “Thank you, Paul. You are a treasure.”

      “You are sure you will not be back?”

      “Very sure. Not to the hotel, anyway. But I will come back to visit, Paul. I promise.”

      “Very good, mademoiselle. Au revoir.”

      Dealing with that one little detail reminded her that she was only postponing the inevitable. She loved handling the day-in day-out crises that went with running a hotel. If Paul’s ego required careful handling, it was nothing compared to those of the chefs. More than once she had walked into a hotel kitchen to find the chef and the sous-chef squared off in a battle that shook the pots and pans. One terrible night she had ended up putting the final touches on elaborate desserts under the watchful gaze of the artistic, temperamental pastry chef after his own assistant had quit in a huff.

      In truth, there was very little she hadn’t pitched in and done at one time or another to keep the hotel operating smoothly. Which meant, she concluded thoughtfully, that surely she could run a small little bed-and-breakfast in Virginia on her own. It would be an investment in her future, to say nothing of a home, something she hadn’t had since she’d sold off her family’s property, such as it was, in a long-dead Pennsylvania coal mining town.

      There had been nothing charming or quaint about the place where she’d grown up. It had fallen to ruin years before, leaving behind citizens who were every bit as depressed as the local economy. She had been all too eager to see the last of it. She had known when she left after her mother’s funeral, less than six months after her father’s, that she would never go back there.

      Seagull Point, Virginia, however, had promise. In only a few days she had seen that. There was hope in the burgeoning business district and in the freshly painted and recently renovated homes along the river. The people were friendly and upbeat. They were rooted, not in misery as her old neighbors had been, but in life. Gracie had seen evidence of prosperity in the packed seafood restaurants and actual traffic jams at the town’s main intersections on weekends.

      There weren’t enough hotel rooms, either. She’d stayed in the only national chain hotel in the entire area. The others were all small, family-owned motels with a very limited number of rooms. A bed-and-breakfast, especially one in a house with historic charm and architecture, would fit right in. She didn’t have to make one of her notorious lists to add up the pluses and minuses. Fiscally the decision was sound. Emotionally, well, in the last couple of days she had developed a surprising longing for roots, sparked by that surprising and devastating discovery back in Cannes that she had no real ties in the world.

      It wouldn’t hurt to ask a few questions, check on the property’s availability. Gathering facts wasn’t the same as making an impulsive offer.