Dockside Read Online Free PDF Page A

underway.
    When she was a little girl, she and her best friend, Jenny, used to watch the Rainbow Girls in their white dresses and gloves going there for their monthly meeting. The Rainbow Girls were a group of privileged young ladies who gathered to work on charitable pursuits, and they’d always seemed like a breed apart to Nina, like fairies who lived on a special diet of meringues and cream. She never actually wanted to be one of them—they seemed a bit boring to her—but she wanted to be their hostess. When she and Jenny would ride their bikes past the inn, she’d say, “I’m going to own that place one day.”
    The owners, Mr. and Mrs. Weller, lived on the premises and ran the place as a quiet retreat for tourists and people from the city. Nina had worked there each summer, beginning when she was thirteen. The work was not glamorous, but she’d been fascinated by the operation of the hotel, the array of guests from all over. Later, as a young mother, she’d moved up from housekeeper to desk clerk, bookkeeper and assistant manager, learning every aspect of the business. Even dealing with plumbing woes and cranky guests hadn’t discouraged her. After Mr. Weller died, Mrs. Weller carried on, but never with the same spirit she had when he was alive. When she passed away, she left the place—along with its mortgage—to her only living relative, a nephew in Atlantic City. He entrusted its management to a contract firm that let everyone go and sent in their own staff. Nina went to work as the mayor’s assistant while she finished her education. The experience had led to her being appointed to office when the mayor had been incapacitated by illness. Her friends and family thought her head would be turned by city politics, but she always came back to the idea of the Inn at Willow Lake.
    Due to neglect and mismanagement, the inn went into foreclosure. It seemed a perfect opportunity for her, a time to take a risk, to start something new.
    Her first step had been to approach Mr. Bailey, the bank’s asset manager, and propose to him that she reopen the inn, managing it on behalf of the bank while she applied for a small-business loan. It seemed like the perfect arrangement.
    Now she stood dripping on the faded cabbage-rose carpet in the salon and stared at Greg Bellamy, the new owner of the inn.
    Funny, he didn’t look like the kind of guy who stomped people’s dreams into the ground. He looked—God—like Mr. Nice Guy. Like Mr. Nice Guy with an incredible body and killer smile and hair that was great even when it was wet.
    Still, she had no trouble hating him as he hurried to a supply closet and grabbed some towels and a spa robe and slippers. “You can dry off and put these on while I throw our stuff in the dryer,” he said.
    The man was clueless, she thought, grabbing the bundle and heading into the closest guest room. The Laurel Room, it used to be called. Oh, she remembered this place, with its beautiful woodwork and lofty ceilings, the white porcelain sink set into an antique washstand. Apparently, Greg had wasted no time fixing the place up. The walls bore a fresh coat of sky-blue paint and a new light fixture hung from the ceiling. From the window, she could see Max out on the dock, casting with a fishing rod.
    She tried to numb herself to all feeling as she peeled off her cold, clammy things and put on the robe. The thick terry cloth fabric felt wonderful against her chilled skin, but she was in no mood to feel wonderful. Bitterness and resentment filled her up like poison, and it was hard not to feel utterly persecuted by fate. It seemed that every time her turn came up, something happened to snatch it away.
    All her life, she had made every choice for practical reasons, governed by what was best for Sonnet. Finally she had reached a point where she could take a risk. If not the inn, then something else. It was true that because of area covenants, there could never be another inn on the lake, but there