Sara looked around. “Ah. Hanging on the hook on the back of the door.”
She opened the dresser and haphazardly filled the suitcase with nightgowns, underwear and socks, because Miss Greer’s feet were always cold, even in summer. Reece, the fake alligator purse clutched between his large hands, watched her.
“What?” she said. “You think I’m doing it wrong?”
“She might like her clothes folded.”
“You think I should fold Miss Greer’s underwear?”
“She obviously likes things neat. Maybe you should pack a robe, too. And a toothbrush.”
“You want to do this?” she asked Reece, who seemed not entirely comfortable amid all the accoutrements of an old lady. He looked excruciatingly out of place surrounded by cabbage roses, lace doilies and the faint scent of violet water.
“No, no. I guess you’re doing fine.”
Apparently not, given his suggestions. “Why don’t you check on Miss Greer? I’ll be done in a minute.”
She did not need help packing-she did it all the time. Her best friend, Allie, teased Sara that she could live for six months in the Amazon with only what she could stuff into her backpack.
When Sara finished cramming the overnight case with everything she thought might come in handy, she returned to the kitchen, but she paused in the doorway to watch Reece and Miss Greer. He brushed flour off the elderly woman’s face using a handkerchief and a gentle touch. Sara couldn’t hear what he said to her, but his voice was low and soothing.
Miss Greer watched him with obvious adoration on her face. She reached up to pat his cheek, and he squeezed her bony hand, sandwiching it between his and holding it there, looking comfortable with the display of affection.
The slight irritation she’d felt toward Reece vanished. Any man who could show kindness and affection to an old lady who wasn’t even a blood relative-and look at ease doing so-was okay in her book.
Miss Greer treated him like a favorite grandson, and Reece sometimes even made the gruff old woman smile.
Sara strode into the kitchen. “Here’s your overnight bag. Can I do anything else? Do you want something to eat?” Nothing was hopeless if you had a big bowl of spicy tortilla soup in front of you, along with a thick slice of homemade bread and real butter.
“Thank you, dear,” Miss Greer said, “but I can’t eat right now. What am I going to do? A broken hip is serious business. I’ll be out of commission for weeks, and who’s going to run the B and B, I ask you, if I’m in the hospital? I have guests arriving today-six people!”
“Don’t worry about that,” Sara said. “I can handle things until you’re back on your feet.”
“What about your trip to California?” Miss Greer asked. “Anyway, the B and B is a full-time job and I can’t afford to pay you a salary. You do more than your fair share, given that I’m only paying you room and board.”
Sara did need money to live on, which meant she had to work other jobs sometimes, like the temporary gig providing meals at an independent movie shoot in California.
“That job has been postponed,” she said breezily.
“But what about the business end?” Miss Greer asked, a note of desperation creeping into her voice. “Sure, you can clean, and the customers seem to like the breakfasts you’ve cooked, but you’re a disaster with finances.”
Sara tried not to take offense at the blunt comment. She knew this wasn’t an indictment of her trustworthiness, but confirmation of the fact that she was dreadful when it came to managing money. Everybody knew that. If there was such a thing as numbers dyslexia, she had it.
“Please try not to worry,” Sara said. “We’ll work something out. Hey, I know. Reece could handle the money side.”
“Excuse me?” Reece said, giving her a panicked look.
“He’s here anyway,” Sara continued as if he hadn’t objected, “and he’s a CPA, so you can be sure he’s competent. He’s doing all the bookkeeping for Remington Charters, and you know Allie wouldn’t allow that if he wasn’t good with money.”
“Oh, would you, Reece?” Miss Greer asked. “You’re such a good guest, and I hate to impose when you and your cousins have been so nice, but I would rest easy knowing…knowing Sara doesn’t have to handle everything.”
Reece removed his glasses and rubbed one eye before answering. “Well…sure, I can do that for you. But I’ll be going back to New York next week. If I don’t return soon, I’ll lose my job.”
Next week?
“I thought your family owned the company,” Sara said. “Isn’t your boss your father? He wouldn’t fire you.”
“You obviously don’t know my father.”
“Don’t you still have lots of vacation left?” she asked him. Cooper, Reece’s cousin, had said this was Reece’s first vacation in eight years. Eight years! How did he stand it, the same job, crunching numbers day after day after day?
“I hadn’t planned to use it all,” he said. “But don’t worry, Miss Greer. I’ll stay for at least a few more days, and if you need to be in the hospital longer than that, we’ll work something out.”
The doorbell rang.
“That must be the paramedics,” Sara said as she went to answer it.
Reece tried not to feel annoyed that Sara had volunteered him for a job before consulting him, knowing he couldn’t refuse in front of a woman lying on the floor with a broken hip.
“Just promise me you won’t leave the finances to Sara,” Miss Greer whispered. “Don’t get me wrong, she’s a lovely girl, sweet and generous to a fault and a hard worker. But she doesn’t have a head for business. Have you ever seen her checkbook? It’s the stuff of my nightmares.”
Reece couldn’t help it, he actually shuddered. He’d caught a glimpse of Sara’s checkbook when she’d brought it out to pay one of her hippie-artist friends for a handmade ceramic teapot-an entirely useless item in his opinion, but Sara had been in raptures about it. The checkbook register was written in five different colors of ink and had more cross-outs than a third-grader’s book report.
“I know exactly what you mean,” Reece whispered back.
“You can’t let her touch the B and B’s checkbook-or the calendar. She’ll write down the wrong dates.”
“I’ll handle it, promise,” Reece said. “You focus on getting well.”
Miss Greer pinched his cheek. He hadn’t let anyone get away with pinching his cheek since he was eight years old. “You’re a good boy, and so handsome, too. How is it no woman has caught you?”
A few had tried, especially after a radio station had named him one of the top-twenty bachelors in Manhattan. But he suspected most of them had been more entranced with the cachet of the Remington family name than with Reece himself.
The truth was, he liked living alone. He liked having everything just so, and the one time he’d gotten close enough to a woman that she’d halfway moved in with him, it had driven him crazy.
“She’s in here.” Sara directed the paramedics into the kitchen, where they had Miss Greer on a stretcher in no time. The older woman didn’t complain, but Reece could tell by the tension in her face that she was in pain.
“We’ll follow in Reece’s car,” Sara said, patting Miss Greer’s arm as the stretcher passed by her.
Reece waited until the stretcher had cleared the kitchen door. “We will?” he said to Sara.
“Of course we will.”
“Shouldn’t we call someone from Miss Greer’s family?”
“She doesn’t have any family. She’s never married or had children. And we can’t let her go to the hospital by herself.”
“I thought I would stay here and clean up the mess in the pantry,” Reece said, “and fix the shelf. Shouldn’t one of us be here to take care of the guests?”
“The guests know where we hide the key. They’ve all stayed with us before, so it’s no big deal. But if you want to stay here I guess that’s okay.”
“Isn’t it kind of unsettling, just letting strangers into your house to roam about?”
Sara laughed. He loved to hear her laugh, the sound a bell-like tinkling. “You New Yorkers! You think the Silversteins are going to steal us blind when we have their credit-card information?”
Good point. He nodded.
“Anyway, B and B guests are nice people in general. That’s what I’ve found. They never steal anything.”
