Innkeeper's Daughter by Marie Ferrarella

Author:Marie Ferrarella
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-07-21T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

LEAVING THE PODIUM, Wyatt returned to the first row and took his place between Alex and her father. As he passed Alex, he kept his eyes forward but wordlessly he took out his handkerchief and handed it to her.

Accepting it from him, Alex murmured, “Allergies.”

Facing front now, Wyatt didn’t spare her a glance. “Bad, this time of year.”

Saying a few more words to the gathering, Reverend Edwards ended the service. People began filing out of the rows, their next stop the private cemetery where Dan Taylor’s casket was to be interred.

Since it was a relatively short distance from the ocean to the cemetery, rather than transport the casket by the dark limousine that had initially brought it from the funeral home, Wyatt, her father and six other pallbearers from among Uncle Dan’s friends carried it to the grave site.

The mourners, led by the minister, followed directly behind them.

Because there were so many mourners, it took a while for them to file by the casket one last time, leaving their long-stemmed red roses as a token of their sorrow.

Finally the casket was slowly lowered into the ground.

The solemnity of the act burned itself into Alex’s heart. She felt her eyes stinging again.

After her father and Stevi had led the guests away to the reception, Wyatt remained standing over the gaping hole that was to be his father’s final resting place. It was several seconds before he became aware that Alex was still there with him, standing on the other side of the grave.

Watching him.

“Don’t worry,” he assured her, “I’m not going to do anything stupid. You don’t need to hover over me.”

Alex lifted her shoulders in a careless shrug. “No place else I have to be.”

He studied her, becoming slowly aware of his surroundings. And her. From what he’d seen, Alex’s every moment was accounted for from when she got out of bed in the morning to when she fell back into it. His father used to marvel at how tirelessly she worked.

“Since when?”

“I make my own schedule,” she said, moving around to his side of the grave.

He couldn’t help smiling, just a little. “And exactly what is this listed under, ‘hovering over bereft friend’?”

“No,” Alex denied firmly in a slow, measured cadence. “For one thing, I wouldn’t have cited you as being a friend. For another, I don’t ‘hover.’ That description makes me sound like some deranged hummingbird searching for a place to land.”

He laughed. “You don’t fall into the hummingbird category.” Before Alex could take offense at what might have sounded like a putdown to her, he pointed out, “Black Hawk helicopters hover.”

“Better,” she acknowledged loftily. “But for the record, I am not hovering. I’m just waiting to escort a guest of the inn to the reception.”

A guest of the inn.

The formal title made him sound like a stranger.

“It’s not like I don’t know my way,” he said dismissively. He was trying to make her back off. Trying to get a few more moments alone with his father one last time.

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