The Inn on Sweetbriar Lane by Jeannie Chin

Author:Jeannie Chin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: None
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2021-09-28T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Good. Don’t be back before noon.

June stared in bewilderment at the text her mother had sent in reply to June letting them know she’d overslept and was running late getting home before the breakfast rush.

Her first instinct was to ignore it, of course. Standing at the top of the stairs heading down from Clay’s apartment, she was already dressed and ready to dash across the street. She hadn’t missed breakfast hour at the inn since her mother’s stroke. Someone needed to man the desk, and Ned always needed help with topping off coffees and ringing up bills.

As if her mother could hear June’s protest, June’s phone took that opportunity to buzz again. June tapped on the photo that came in. A selfie her mom had clearly taken of herself behind the desk, Sunny the cat draped luxuriously across the computer’s keyboard appeared on the screen.

June’s stomach did a series of complicated flip-flops.

I’ll be right over.

June’s mom was on doctor’s orders to rest. Sure, maybe June had taken that to an extreme. She hadn’t allowed her mother to lift a finger in the nearly nine months since her stroke, and both her mother and Ned had begun to chafe at the restrictions. Her mom had taken up baking, and she was always doing something or other on the tablet they’d gotten to help keep her occupied during her recovery, and yes, June had started letting her mom and stepdad be on call during off-hours more, now that she was spending so much time with Clay.

But this was something else entirely.

The doctors had been clear. Stress aggravated conditions like her mother’s. She wasn’t going to set back her mother’s recovery or risk her ending up in the hospital again because June had forgotten to set an alarm.

She started typing furiously, telling her mother to go lie down, but before she could get the message finished, her phone buzzed one more time.

This message was from Ned.

Let her, June. Seriously. I mean it.

June paused.

That wasn’t like Ned. He’d voiced concerns here and there, of course, but overall, he let June take care of everything these past nine months. Him telling her to stand down was out of character.

Behind her, floorboards creaked. She turned to find Clay standing in the doorway to the bedroom, his hair mussed, dark rings under his eyes, a little unsteady on his feet and green around his gills, but it didn’t matter.

Heaven help her, she was in so far over her head with this man.

Last night, hanging out with him and his friends had cemented the situation for her. His loose smile and the rough laughter that accompanied every one of the embarrassing stories she and his buddies had told about him had softened any last, remaining restraints left on her heart.

Then there was the way he’d looked at her after she’d dragged him upstairs and put him to bed. He’d been unguarded in a way she’d never witnessed before, and it had pulled at her emotions even further.

He’d looked at her like she was a miracle, and he was lucky to have her.

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