Here & Now (The Duchess of Zombie Street Book 1) by Amy Cross

Author:Amy Cross [Cross, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackwych Books Ltd
Published: 2024-07-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Standing alone in her office, Daphne Earnshaw stared down at the contract that sat waiting for her signature. The pages were slightly crumpled, having earlier been screwed up into a ball and deposited in the nearby bin, but she'd carefully slipped them out and had straightened them to the best of her ability, and then she'd set them down on the desk alongside her father's old fountain pen.

And then she'd simply stood and stared for several minutes.

“This hotel is our family's legacy,” she remembered her father, David Earnshaw, gasping on his deathbed many years earlier. “We built it up from scratch and we must...”

He'd collapsed into another coughing fit, bringing up blood as the cancer had continued to eat away at him. At the same time, he'd tried over and over again to get more words out, even as the effort left him breathless and in pain.

“You don't have to worry,” she'd told him at the time, back when she'd been just a young girl. “Daddy, I'll always look after the hotel.”

“You don't know much about business,” he'd spluttered. “Or hospitality.”

“I can learn.”

“You have no experience.”

“I'll gain it.”

“Do you even want to run the hotel?”

“I want to continue our family's legacy,” she'd insisted, “just as you continued it, and as Grandfather continued it. While there are any breaths left in my body whatsoever, I assure you that the hotel will remain with us.”

“You can sell it, you know,” he'd replied, still struggling with each and every word. “Nobody would judge you for that.”

“I would never sell our heritage.”

“But it's okay if you change your mind,” he'd told her, reaching out and taking hold of her hand. “You don't have to tie yourself down to this place. Just promise me that, whoever you sell to, you'll make them keep the name. That's all I ask. The Earnshaw has been on Sombie Street for all these years, and it should remain here. Don't let them rechristen it with some garish new title that has nothing to do with our past.”

“None of this matters,” she'd told him, “because I would rather die than sell. I promise, Daddy. The hotel will always be safe under my stewardship.”

Now, still standing alone in the office, she looked over at the portrait of her grandfather Augustus Earnshaw and felt tears welling once again in her eyes.

“I've failed,” she said out loud. “Let's be blunt here. I was filled with all that gung ho energy and I believed I could take on the world. I made a fairly decent stab at the whole endeavor, but now I have to admit that I fell short.” A solitary tear ran down her cheek. “I could cling to the hotel for the benefit of my own ego and that would buy me, what, a few months at most?”

She swallowed hard.

“Or I could put the jobs of our staff first, and secure the hotel's future by...”

She looked down at the contract again.

“I can't allow my own hubris to ruin everything,” she whispered.

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