She couldn’t tell them that she was married, but try as she might, she didn’t love Aidan the way she wished she could—not the way her sisters loved their husbands. Not the way a wife should. Not the way he deserved to be loved. For the rest of his life.
It occurred to her that maybe her lack of love for him might be self-preservation. Was it? He had never said he loved her. Instead, he proclaimed that talk was cheap when it came to saying the three words that most people used as the basis for getting married.
The thought of tying herself to a loveless marriage made her stomach feel hollow and her throat ache with unshed tears.
She wished they loved each other. Why couldn’t they love each other? Because she cared about him so much. But that probably wasn’t enough. If this marriage of inconvenience hadn’t happened, they probably would have broken up sometime. Kate felt the elusive tears that had escaped her earlier well in her eyes. Tears of frustration. Tears of anger—how could she have been so stupid to let this happen? Tears of sorrow because she didn’t want to hurt Aidan...again.
She let the tears flow for a minute.
Then she blew her nose and fixed her makeup.
To buy herself a couple of extra minutes, she walked around to the front of the inn rather than using the kitchen doors, and climbed the steps to the stately wraparound veranda and let herself inside.
She mustered her best smile for a group of guests who were lingering in the lobby. Since Gigi’s retirement, Kate hadn’t been as involved with the inn as her mother and sisters, even though Zelda had a plan to draw all three of her girls into the family business, allowing each of them to continue doing what they loved, only doing it from the inn.
For Elle, it was art; the middle Clark sister, now Mrs. Daniel Quindlin, was in charge of art classes that were based at the inn. A graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design, Elle also facilitated art and architecture tours around the city. She had temporarily shelved her talent as an artist when she moved to Atlanta to teach elementary school art, after her longtime boyfriend had left her at the altar. As fate would have it, that breakup had led her to her true soul mate, Daniel, whom she had previously blamed for causing her fiancé to change his mind.
Elle’s classes and tours were drawing a lot of new business to the inn. They were nearly booked solid four months out.
For Jane, it was creating beautiful pastries and delicious baked goods. She was the pastry chef for the tearoom at the inn, which they had opened last spring. She was creating quite a stir with her unique confections. Recently, she had won the Oscar Hurd Foundation award, a prestigious award that celebrated upcoming talent and those in the culinary business who were making a difference.
Now that her mother had implemented two thirds of her plan, she was determined to move into the final phase and build a small building in the inn’s garden, which would house a spa. She wanted Kate to run it. With that, all three of her daughters would have their own unique place in the family business.
The only problem was, Kate already had a business of her own. She worked hard doing hair and had built a steady, loyal client base. She didn’t own a salon but rented a chair from Kerrigan Karol, one of Savannah’s premiere salons. As far as she was concerned, she had the best possible life as a hairdresser. The money was good. She loved what she did, and cherished her independence. She could set her own schedule. Such as today, when she didn’t have to arrive until just before her first client’s appointment. She loved not having to answer to anyone but her clients. When the salon drama got too thick, she could remove herself and let Kerrigan handle the mediation and the soothing of fragile egos.
Even if she didn’t own the “walls” or the chair, she had built this business on her own. Nothing had been handed to her.
She didn’t have to worry with the day-to-day operations of a brick-and-mortar building. No leases or rent or mortgage. No going in early to open the doors or locking up at night. No fretting about filling unrented chairs. No worrying about appeasing the clients of other stylists when those stylists decided to stay home nursing a hangover after a night of partying. With all those artistic personalities, it happened more frequently than the uninitiated might think.
Now Zelda was strong-arming Kate to give up her chair at Kerrigan Karol and take on all of the additional responsibility Kate didn’t want. Zelda saw it as the ultimate gift that she could give her daughter. She couldn’t understand Kate’s apprehension—no matter how many times or how plainly Kate tried to explain it to her.
Because the spa meant so much to her mother, Kate had examined the possibility of running it from every angle. She could move her clientele from the current Kerrigan Karol Salon location to the inn, but she also would have to hire additional stylists. It would be frowned upon if she tried to poach her coworkers from Kerrigan. That meant she would need to run ads and take in hairdressers she didn’t know.
Not only that, they would have to bring in licensed therapists and estheticians for massages, facials, manicures, pedicures and all the other traditional spa services, to accommodate a transient clientele. She would need to have stylists who could work guests into the schedule at a moment’s notice. As it stood, most of her clients booked a year’s worth of appointments in advance. She rarely had flexibility to work in walk-ins.
Then, there was the financial end of it. She hadn’t had the heart to bring up finances with Zelda—as in who was paying for and installing the equipment needed to
