“I don’t mean any disrespect to them. You know I love them. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I like my independence. I’ve worked hard to build my business without anyone’s help. It is mine. No one can take it away from me.”
Like Dad tried to take the inn away from Mom and us.
“Yet, isn’t it crazy how Kerrigan’s decision to close his shop at the end of the month has left you scrambling to find a new home?” Jane arched a brow at Kate. “Do you have any other salons in mind? If you get too far away, your clients might not follow you.”
It was true. She had been so comfortable renting a chair at Kerrigan’s salon for so long that the possibility of having to relocate had never entered her personal equation. For nearly a decade, she had booked her own appointments and come and gone as she pleased. If she wanted a day off, she scheduled herself off. There was no asking for time off, no coordinating days or coverage. No standing in for other stylists if they didn’t show. That was the beauty of being an independent contractor. She rented a chair, minded her own business and life was grand.
“I don’t know if I want to give away my independence by running the spa,” she admitted. “That’s more like punching a time clock. Will you level with me? How much do Gigi and Mom get in your business?”
“I can honestly say it hasn’t been a problem,” Elle said of the art classes and tours that she ran out of the inn.
Jane shrugged. “Same here. I had the same worries when they started talking to me about opening the tearoom. I made it clear that I needed my independence if the arrangement was going to work. If you think about it, the three of us have defined ourselves in niches that Mom and Gigi know very little about. They respect that. I’ve found that they leave the pastry decisions to me because I know what I’m doing. Sure, they might ask for a batch of blueberry scone or a specific cookie, but they let me look at what’s selling and what’s not and they trust me to make the decisions that make the business work.”
They all sipped their tea for a moment. Jane was the most no-nonsense of the Clark sisters. Like Kate, she had put herself through school and had been making her own way before their mother and grandmother had come up with the grand plan to involve the three more closely at the inn. Elle had been an elementary school teacher. She could easily get a teaching job at one of the local schools if she found the arrangement too constricting.
“Kate, why don’t you talk to them?” Elle said. “Be up-front with them. Let them know your feelings and your trepidation. Honestly, since Gigi got married and turned over management of the inn to Mom, she’s not really into micromanaging. Mom is happy that Jane and I are back at the inn, and she’s a little distracted with Stephen, so she hasn’t been a problem, either.”
“Yes. Talk to them,” Jane urged. “Now that the three of us are happily married, and they have men in their lives to distract them, too, I think you’re going to see a world of difference. Their buttinsky quotient is a lot lower than it used to be.”
Happily married. Kate’s heart twisted.
And what if things didn’t work out with Aidan? Would they think that gave them a license to remind her daily of what an idiot she had been to let such a great guy get away? Because Aidan was a great guy.
What was wrong with her?
Was she trying to push him away to prove her point that all men were like her dad or was she so self-destructive that she was hell-bent on carrying on her father’s legacy of heartbreak and dysfunction? It would serve her right if she ended up being the spinster sister who lived with her mother in the old Victorian house on the park.
Then again, at the rate her mother’s and grandmother’s love lives were going, Zelda and Gigi would probably be too busy to worry much about Kate’s sorry state of affairs. It seemed that she was the only one who was still obsessing over what Fred Clark had done to their family.
“Have you ever thought about contacting our father?” The question slipped out of Kate’s mouth before she could think better of it. When Jane and Elle shot each other alarmed glances and then looked at Kate as if she had invited them to go dumpster diving for their dinner, she wished she could have reeled the question back in.
They didn’t know about her trial separation from Aidan. Was that what it was? A trial separation? Kate didn’t even know. The only thing she was sure of right now was that both of her sisters were blissfully married, happily working at fulfilling careers and starting families of their own. Of course, they didn’t give their father a second thought.
“Are you talking about the father who left Mom and us high and dry and then tried to sue for half the Forsyth Galloway Inn?” Jane asked.
That was why. He was why.
“There’s no other father that I’m aware of,” Kate said. “So, unless you know something I don’t know, yes. He’s the one.”
Since Kate seemed to be the only one haunted by the past, logic told her she needed to face the ghost head-on, look him in the eyes, tell him what a rotten excuse for a father he had been and then move on. The problem was, every time she went through the mental exercise of doing that—where the meeting would happen, what she had to say and how she
