“Anyway, I need to talk to you about the Pederson wedding. Nathalie, our bride, hates the ballroom wallpaper. And I agree. It’s so… formal.” She tapped her pen on the notebook, cocked her head, and flashed Traci a winning smile. “And dated. It just screams nineteen fifties. I was thinking instead we install a nice grass cloth maybe, or a more contemporary paper.”
Traci cut her off. “We arenotchanging out the ballroom wallpaper for one spoiled-brat bride. That is a custom de Gournay mural, with all the flora and fauna native to this part of the coast. God only knows how much it cost when Helen had it installed.”
Madelyn fluttered her lashes. “You know, Traci, time does march on.” She gazed around the lobby. “We don’t want to give our guests the impression that we’re stuck in a time warp, do we? It seems to me that our post-Covid event bookings are a little… tepid. Ric thinks—”
Traci didn’t care what her brother-in-law thought about the hotel’s décor, or the health of the Saint’s event bookings. “Let me remind you that before you joined the company, we’d just finished a massive property-wide renovation project, and our designer specified that the de Gournay should stay. We spent several thousand dollars having it restored and repaired.”
Madelyn wrinkled her cute little nose.
“You don’t have to get so defensive, Traci. I realize that the restoration project was Hoke’s little baby, but really, you need to be more objective about matters like this. Ric and I are only trying to help keep our family’s legacy alive.”
Traci felt the heat rise in her cheeks at the mention of Hoke’s name. Ric and Madelyn had been attempting to meddle in the way the hotel was run ever since the plane crash.
Before her father-in-law, Fred, became totally incapacitated with Parkinson’s, he had finally caved to Ric’s demands that his wife should be given a role in the company’s management. The old man installed Madelyn as the family holding company’s “design director,” a nebulous title that seemed to allow her free rein to pass judgment on everything from the look of the Verandah’s printed menusto signage for her husband’s exclusive new townhouse development to, apparently, the appearance of the hotel ballroom. This despite the fact that the woman’s only recent job experience was as assistant manager of a high-end menswear shop.
Which was where Ric and Madelyn had met. Her brother-in- law liked to order custom tailored shirts and bespoke suits from H. Capaldi’s in Atlanta. Madelyn had apparently suited Ric just fine. They’d dated in secret until her divorce was finalized, then married quietly in Atlanta and honeymooned in Provence.
Parrish, not surprisingly, had taken an instant dislike to her new stepmother.
“Thanks for your concern, Madelyn, but you can assure Ric that the hotel is in good shape. I’ve hired a new chef for the Verandah, and earlier this week, Parrish agreed to step in as guest relations manager for the summer.”
Something flickered in the other woman’s eyes. “Parrish? That can’t be right. She’s headed for Europe. She’s already packed.”
Traci wasn’t surprised Ric hadn’t told his wife this bit of news.
“I persuaded her to put off Europe—just ’til the season’s over. Great news, right?”
Madelyn pursed her lips.
“As for the event bookings,” Traci continued, “we’ve got two new conferences coming in July, and they’ve already reserved half our rooms. And I know we have every weekend in June and July, as well as some weekdays, solidly booked with weddings. So it’s all good, right?”
“We’ll see,” Madelyn said, her tone pessimistic.
“Okay,” Traci said briskly. “Glad we had this little chat, now I need to get back to my office. But feel free to keep me updated on the new signage for the beach club.”
CHAPTER 13
Traci closed her laptop, glanced at her phone, and stood. It was after eight. If she didn’t hustle, she’d miss sunset, which was an unforgiveable sin at the Saint.
Hoke’s mother had started the tradition shortly after she’d married into the family. Helen Parrish Eddings was from landlocked Iowa, and she never stopped marveling at the technicolor displays of sunsets over the river that divided the resort from the mainland.
Leo, the senior bellman, held the door as Traci entered the hotel lobby, crossed the nearly empty space, and stepped out onto the cobblestone courtyard of the Riverside Patio.
The bartender saw her approaching and handed her a glass of prosecco. “Thanks, Kendra,” Traci said.
She joined a knot of folks standing at the edge of the patio, facing the river. Some of them, the old guard who didn’t live at the Saint but maintained their family club memberships, greeted her with hugs and waves. A sunburnt family of six—grandparents, she assumed, with their grown children and two young grandchildren—stood slightly apart, not quite sure of the protocol. Hotel guests, Traci surmised, or maybe they were renting one of the bungalows for the week. She greeted them, directed them to the bar for their complimentary glasses of prosecco, then joined the regulars just as the sun hovered at the water’s edge.
Suddenly, a trumpeter stepped forward, and just as the sun slipped from view, he played the first bars of “Retreat.” Glancing around, Traci raised her glass and the other spectators followed suit. “Here’s to another beautiful summer at the Saint,” she called.
“Here, here!” The others joined the toast and drained their glasses.
She slipped quietly from the patio, walked back to her car, and as dusk settled over the island, she drove the winding roads, yet another ritual Hoke had insisted upon at the close of a business day.
“Why?” she’d asked, dumb as a rock at the age of nineteen, the first time she’d joined him on the golf cart ride around the property. “You have about a hundred employees working here. Why not let them do the tour? Why can’t we just go to the movies like normal people?”
“Granddad always did the rounds, and then Dad, and now it’s my turn,” he’d said, patting her knee. “Besides, this is something I enjoy. It’s the time of the day when I can really get a good look at the property. If a tree branch has fallen, or the trim on one of the bungalows needs paint, I can see it, make a note, and then address it first thing in the morning.”
It wasn’t until they’d been married nearly a year that Traci began to comprehend everything that went into running a historic family- owned resort like the Saint.
