where she was.
An uneasy feeling feathered through Alex. “Okay, now you’re scaring me, Dad,” she told him.
This was the way she’d discovered her father was ill all those years ago. Fortunately his lung cancer was still in the early stages when it had been detected and she had done the research to find an excellent physician who was able to halt the progression of the disease and eventually get her father back on his feet.
“What’s wrong?” Alex pressed, wanting him to get the information out now.
“Are you ill, Mr. Roman?” Dorothy asked, in concern and compassion.
“Dad?” Cris only uttered the single word, obviously too fearful to say any more. Probably, thought Alex, too afraid that if she said anything more out loud, it would come into being.
Apparently realizing how his request for their attention must have sounded to them, Richard was quick to set their minds at ease, at least about this one point.
“Oh, no, this doesn’t have anything to do with me. At least, not in the way you might think. Although...”
As long as her father’s cancer hadn’t returned, she could handle anything else, Alex thought. Rolling her eyes dramatically, she said, “Dad, you are really, really bad at breaking news to people, you know that?” She shook her head. “C’mon, out with it.”
He suddenly turned to Cris and asked, “Are Stephanie and Andrea around? If it’s all the same with you, I’d really rather only have to say this once.”
“Okay, back to being scared,” Alex announced, trying to keep the situation light even though she was filled with a sense of foreboding and dread.
“I’ll go find them,” Dorothy volunteered.
But Alex was already on the inn’s conference line, calling both her younger sisters’ cell phones—something neither girl was ever without except, possibly, in the shower and not always then. She was convinced that Andy was hermetically sealed to hers.
“Stevi, Andy, Dad wants to see us at the reception desk. Now.” It wasn’t a request, it was an order, issued with an undercurrent of fear.
“Anyone ever tell you you make a great dictator?” Cris asked mildly.
Ordinarily that might have sparked an exchange that bordered on the lively, but right now, Alex paid no attention to her sister. She was focused on her father, to the exclusion of everything else.
“Do we get a hint, Dad? A glimmer of a coming attraction while we’re waiting for the two divas to show up?” she prompted.
“It’s not about me, I promise,” Richard told her with what she assumed was his attempt at a reassuring smile. It didn’t work.
“Or the inn?” Alex asked, watching her father’s face. Family was exceedingly important to her, but the inn was a close second.
The next moment she told herself that it couldn’t be about the inn. She handled all the accounts as well as the never-ending piles of paperwork that went along with running the place. She would have known if there was a lean on it or a second mortgage taken out—
Wouldn’t she?
She looked uncertainly at her father.
“Or the inn,” he assured her. Again, he qualified his answer a moment later. “At least, not in the way you mean it.”
“All right, just how does it concern the inn?” Cris demanded, clearly not able to take another moment of suspense.
Without meaning to, Richard sighed. He’d left Wyatt sitting in his office. The young man had arrived quietly just a few minutes ago, entering through the gardens and the back door that was always unlocked during daylight hours. Guests hardly ever made use of that entrance, but friends did. And Wyatt was a friend. More like a son, actually. He’d known him since the day the boy had been born.
“Wyatt has come to see me. He’s just arrived.”
“Wyatt?” Alex echoed.
The name brought with it a legion of memories that ran the expanse of two decades and more. Theirs was an ongoing, antagonistic relationship that seemed to be the very embodiment of the war between the sexes—even though he got on well enough with her sisters and they with him. Complicating this was the fact that her heart never failed to skip a couple of beats the first time she saw him each year. Her physical reaction never changed. It was only when her mind kicked in that her behavior returned to normal. Wyatt Taylor was an extremely handsome example of the male gender and it was her misfortune to be attracted to a man she was constantly at odds with the rest of the time he was at the inn.
“When?” Alex wanted to know. “I didn’t see him come in.”
She’d never seen her father’s smile look so incredibly sad. “He came in through the back.”
“Why?” Alex asked. Whatever was bothering her father was tied to Wyatt, she thought. It figured.
Her sisters got along with Wyatt. For the most part, he was like their big brother. The son her dad never got to have.... She refused to dwell on that.
Wyatt had been coming to the inn every summer with his father for years. She and the others all fondly thought of Wyatt’s father as Uncle Dan, even though Dan Taylor was no relation to either of their parents. He and their father had been best friends since elementary school.
Daniel Taylor was an independent journalist who’d traveled the world over, hunting down stories that proved to be too challenging, too elusive for the new breed of reporter. His erratic lifestyle had put a very real strain on his marriage until one summer, Dan found himself divorced and much too far away from the son he adored. So every summer, when he was granted a month’s precious custody, he would bring his son with him to the inn. He came here because his best friend was a single father, too, and was blessed with insight. He came because he wanted Wyatt to have fun with kids his own age, and she and her sisters qualified.
And above all else, he came to the inn because he practically lived out of his suitcase and had no real place to call home. So for four weeks each summer, Ladera-by-the-Sea Inn became home to Dan and his son. And, by extension, she and her sisters, as well as her father, became Dan’s missing family.
During the rest of the year, whenever he could, Dan would come to visit and stay a few days or a week—until another assignment would whisk him away. When they were younger, Dan brought gifts from the places he’d visited. As they grew older, Alex realized that the greatest gift the man had brought them was himself.
“Why isn’t Wyatt out here?” Alex asked.
Whatever was wrong, she was convinced it had to do with Wyatt. Although for the life of her, she couldn’t begin to guess what it could be.
“Because I told him to wait,” Richard answered quietly.
“Why isn’t Uncle Dan with him?” Cris asked suddenly.
And even as she asked the simple question, Alex knew the answer. She guessed by her sister’s expression that Cris must have known it, too. If they were right, Alex hoped the news didn’t take Cris back to the
