The two dogs, who’d been dozing on their beds near the woodstove, hopped up and followed at her heel, their golden tails wagging.
Conrad watched as the three of them made their way out the back gate, amazed by the turn of fate that had brought them into his life.
Yeah, he was a lucky man.
Lexi Taylor lockedthe front door to her office, an old Victorian cottage she’d remodeled, and walked to her silver Lexus IS convertible to pick up her three-year-old daughter, Emily, from the Inn. Emily was in a half-day preschool program that gave Lexi time in the morning to meet with clients, but today’s meeting with Marley, the owner of Nature’s Meds, a marijuana dispensary, had gone on longer than usual. Lexi had had no choice but to call her dad and step-mom and ask them to pick up Emily and feed her lunch, something they were happy to do.
“What do you think I am—her grandpa or something?” her dad had joked.
The drive to the Forest Creek Inn took only a couple of minutes. She turned onto First Street to find her father standing with Rose in the middle of the street, both of them looking west. They must be talking about the fire. Lexi could just make out the pillar of smoke.
Austin had said it was a small blaze, but he’d been asked to shut down county trails and campgrounds just in case. Unfortunately, some people didn’t appreciate the effort the county was making to keep them safe and had taken their anger out on Austin. As a park ranger, he was used to it, but it wasn’t his favorite part of the job.
Lexi pulled into the long driveway that led to the family parking area in back. Her father had just had the Inn repainted, its walls a bright, lemony yellow, the Victorian fretwork a crisp white again. The place had been in Lexi’s family since the first days of Scarlet Springs and was the only building in town to have survived the big fire of 1878. Though she’d sworn as a teenager not to have anything to do with the Inn when she grew up, it would belong to her and her younger sister Britta one day, and she hoped to pass it on to Emily.
She parked, walked to the back door, and knocked.
Kendra opened it. “Your mommy’s here, Emily.”
Lexi stepped inside the air-conditioned coolness to find Emily eating orange sherbet.
“Hey, Emily. That looks yummy. Can Mommy have some?”
Emily, mouth full, held out her spoon with the innocent generosity of a child.
“Thank you, sweetie, but it’s yours. You can finish it.”
“She ate all of her peanut butter sandwich and her carrot sticks, so I gave her a treat. I hope that’s okay.”
“Of course.”
Kendra had married Lexi’s father after her mother had been killed in a car accident. Lexi had been four, while Britta, who lived in California now, had been only three. But Kendra had never wanted to be a mother, and her relationship with Lexi and her sister had been rocky at best until recently. But whatever her failings as a stepmom, Kendra was a wonderful grandma. She adored Emily—and spoiled her rotten.
“Why are Dad and Rose standing in the middle of the street?”
“I think they’re watching the fire.”
“There’s not much to see.”
“Thank God for that.” Kendra took Emily’s empty dish to the sink. “You know your father. If he thinks the Inn is at risk, he can’t quit worrying.”
“It’s not like staring at the fire will put it out.”
“Maybe you could explain that to him.”
Lexi left Emily with Kendra and went out the front door to find her father, wearing shorts, sandals and a Hawaiian shirt he hadn’t buttoned, arguing with Rose, owner of Rose’s New Age Emporium, which sat across the street from the Inn.
“If you keep coming out here to look at it, you’re going to draw the fire to us,” Rose said, her long silver hair tied up in a messy bun.
“What the hell kind of bullshit is that? My eyeballs aren’t magic.”
“It’s the law of attraction. Whatever you fear, you bring about.”
Lexi’s father snorted, rubbed his protruding beer belly. “Like I said—bullshit.”
He and Rose had known each other all their lives and lived across the street from each other for the better part of fifty years. They bickered the way siblings might. Both were stubborn, and both were experts on everything—at least in their own minds.
“Hey, Dad, Rose. What’s going on?”