Innkeeper's Daughter. Marie Ferrarella

the inn, but those matters were always ultimately dealt with and straightened out. Most of the time, a simple one-on-one conversation resolved the problem. No one had ever been fired. The high employee turnaround was a result of their needs being seasonal. Most of the extra people who worked at the inn were there because they were down on their luck and he had taken them on until they were back on their feet again.

      While all his daughters worked at the inn in some capacity, Alex was his second in charge and she took running the inn very seriously.

      In fact, sometimes, he felt that she took her job too seriously. That was a real source of guilt for him because those were the times when he felt that he had stolen a very important part of his daughter’s life from her.

      The part where she got to enjoy herself without all these responsibilities hemming her in and making demands on her. It was his fault that things had arranged themselves this way. His health hadn’t always been the best. After Amy had died, it was all he could do to pull himself together and do what needed to be done to take care of the girls.

      Alex had been all of sixteen when—his health poor at the time—she appointed herself acting head of the family.

      The problem was, she never really unappointed herself acting head of the family and had just continued in that position from then on. She had even given up plans to attend an out-of-state college, electing, instead, to attend U.C. San Diego, living at home and juggling her studies with her duties on the home front.

      There were times during this hectic interlude in her life that Richard had doubted his eldest daughter even slept. But she’d managed to do it all, help run the inn and graduate with honors despite all the demands on her time, which, among other things, included a double major.

      These days, Alex’s life was no less hectic. She continued to concern herself with the hundred and one minute, day-to-day details that went with running the inn. There was very little time for Alex to concern herself with just being Alex.

      And that’s why he had to hope that his friend Dan’s little plan might stand a chance.

      Richard studied her now, wondering what had set her off enough to make her actually fire someone. Whatever it was, he knew without being told that it was justified. But while he had tremendous faith in his daughter, he still needed to know the circumstances. And why she hadn’t included him in the decision.

      So, for a moment longer, he put off being the bearer of sad news and asked Alex, “Is there a particular reason why you fired him?”

      Alex nodded her head, possibly a bit too emphatically.

      “A very particular reason,” she told him. There wasn’t a sliver of uncertainty in her tone. He knew there were times she’d find herself second-guessing a situation, but not in this case. In this case, she was absolutely certain she’d done the right thing.

      “Clarke was going to butcher the inn,” Alex replied.

      The general contractor had come to him with several letters of referral as well as half-a-dozen photographs of his work. All in all, the man had come across as a competent general contractor. Not to mention that Clarke had talked about being a family man, something Richard found to be rather important.

      A family man who needed to provide for that family. For Richard, it had been a very important deciding factor in hiring the man.

      He remembered as a boy listening to his own father tell him stories about his great-great-grandmother, Ruth, and how she’d converted her home into an inn to keep from losing it, as well as a way to provide for her five children.

      Keeping those stories foremost in his mind was what had kept Richard from ever turning away a single person who needed a place to stay.

      “And just how did J.D. intend to ‘butcher’ the inn?” he asked Alex.

      “He didn’t intend to do it,” Alex corrected her father. “But that would have been the end result of what he was going to do to the inn.”

      Richard glanced at his other daughter and then at Dorothy, but there was no enlightenment from either quarter. “I don’t think I understand.”

      To Alex, the inn was like a living, breathing entity. Something to watch over and protect so that it would be here, just as her ancestor had intended, for many, many years to come. J. D. Clarke, she was certain, had ideas that would’ve dramatically changed the direction the inn had been going for more than a hundred years. And his staff sure hadn’t given her any confidence that they could do good work that would stand the test of time.

      “You’d hired him to make additions to the inn. He took it upon himself to go in a whole different direction. He showed me these really awful sketches he planned on ‘bringing to life,’ as he put it. When I said they would clash with what was already here, he told me I’d change my mind once they were completed. I think he felt I was challenging his judgment and he wouldn’t budge. So I fired him. He left me no choice.”

      Alex took the folded piece of paper she’d slipped under the sign-in ledger she kept on the desk and placed it in front of her father as exhibit A. It was the only one of Clarke’s sketches he had left behind.

      “It looked more like a growth than an addition,” she said indignantly, stabbing a finger at the drawing. “And it’s modern.” Alex all but spat the word out, as if it was a new strain of a fatal disease.

      She watched her father glance over the sketch. By his expression, she could tell that he couldn’t quite understand the problem.

      “Dad, you can’t just slap something that looks like it vacationed in the Museum of Modern Art onto a Victorian house. The two décors clash horribly and at the very least it would make us look...indecisive,” she finally declared for lack of a better word, “to our guests.”

      “Indecisive?” Cris asked, puzzled. She pulled over the sketch to look at it herself.

      Alex wanted support from her sister, not a challenge. “Shouldn’t you be back in the kitchen, getting ready for the guests coming in for lunch?” she prompted.

      “Got it covered,” Cris told her cheerfully. “Go on, you were saying?” It was obvious that she wanted to see how far Alex was going to go with this.

      Alex turned her attention back to her father, stating the rest of her case. “All the other additions over the years always retained that original Victorian flavor. It’s what the guests who come here expect. Not to mention he was intending to knock down that wall. That wall,” she emphasized, pointing to it. “That’s load-bearing, isn’t it? And if it isn’t and I’m wrong about that, well, he sure didn’t argue. Because he didn’t know better. The guy didn’t have a clue what he was doing. Besides,” she added in a quieter but no less firm voice, “Clarke acted as if he thought he knew what was best for the inn.”

      “When we all know that you are the one who knows what’s best for the inn,” Cris declared solemnly, suppressing a grin.

      Richard looked from one daughter to the other. He had devoted his life to raising his girls and was experienced enough to know that there was a confrontation in the making. His daughters loved one another, but that didn’t keep them from going at it heatedly.

      He headed the confrontation off before it could get under way.

      Kissing Alex’s forehead, he told her, “I trust you to make the right decisions. Of course, this means we’re going to have to find another general contractor.” He sighed, reminding her that the contractor had originally been called in to make some much needed repairs. Repairs that as of yet hadn’t happened. “If we don’t, then with the first big rain of the season we’ll have an indoor pool in the kitchen, thanks to the fact that the roof has seen much better days.”

      “Why don’t we use the one we had the last time?” Cris proposed. “Mr. Phelps was really nice,” she added.

      Alex looked at her. “Do you remember when the last time was?”

      Thinking for a moment, Cris