Page 8 of Return to Lovett Cove (Lovett Cove B&B #1)

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Mag, you’re not listening to me.” Jasmine pinched the bridge of her nose as she cut off her sister Magnolia’s excitement about the prospect of their mother opening an inn.

“Jas, I hear you. Floorboards need replacing, the corbels are rotted, you said the foundation feels off in the sunroom... The inn needs a lot of work, which is right up my alley!” she ended cheerfully.

Magnolia wasn’t wrong. As an interior designer, she could capture their mother’s vision for a charming cottage inn on the outskirts of a mountainous cove in a region that saw more rainy days than the often-humid busy streets of Philly.

Jasmine recalled seeing a few sketches of her ideas among her mother’s papers.

If she told Mag that, there would be no turning back.

They would be in the inn business for sure.

Jasmine scratched at the faded-red, frayed edges of the understaffed armchair in the front room.

Legs sprawled in front of her, she tapped her feet on the worn border rug.

She could see her younger sister sweeping around the room, reassuring Jasmine that reupholstering chairs could be done for next to nothing, and how a botanical-pattern rug in light colors would freshen up the room.

“Renovating isn’t a quick process,” Jasmine continued. She ignored the familiar dull ache in her stomach and took a deep breath to calm her nerves. “And this house is old. Who knows what’s in the walls?”

“If it’s been hanging around this long, it probably has excellent bones. Send me some pics.”

Jasmine leaned away from the room’s opening and snapped a picture with her phone.

She sent it to Magnolia before moving into the sitting room on the opposite side of the hall and then the staircase, the dining room, and the kitchen.

Jasmine made sure she focused on the holes in the walls, the loose spindle on the banister, and anything else that screamed money.

“Mom left this dump to me,” Jasmine complained. “Renovating means I would have to quit my job.”

“Would that be so bad? At least once a month, you text us that you hate your job.”

The sister group text was full of Jasmine’s angry-face emojis over yet another assigned task that meant late nights and weekends spent at the office.

“Daisy thinks you should get out and touch grass,” Magnolia quipped about their wildlife biologist sister. “Even Poppy thinks you should quit, and you know how she feels about work.” This coming from their chef-sister, who worked seven days a week, surprised Jasmine.

“If Poppy thinks I should quit… But I’m so close to being VP. Then a partner. It’s taken me years to get here. How can I throw that all away?”

“You wouldn’t be. Think of the skills you’ve gained that you can use in running the B it would be expensive, but there was room on a late flight.

“If you got back tonight, we could pull an all-nighter on the rest of the briefs and have a plan of attack ready by tomorrow,” Kennedy suggested confidently. “The partners stressed they wanted to hear from you on this.”

Jasmine heard the layer of uncertainty her assistant tried to obfuscate. Kennedy’s plan sounded doable, but the nausea bubbling in Jasmine’s stomach told her she’d have a hard time getting to the airport.

And an even harder time if the ulcer burst. That meant a hospital stay for at least a few days, if she was lucky. Well past the partners’ timeline.

And her mother’s inn? She wasn’t ready to sell yet. There was paperwork to sign to get it on the market. Could River take an electronic signature for an agent agreement or did her mother make him promise to make that difficult for her too?

“Jasmine? Jasmine, are you there?”

“Yes,” came Jasmine’s weak and breathless reply.

“What do you want me to do?”

Jasmine stumbled onto the front porch. She gripped the doorframe and felt herself sliding down. “Wait. Just wait,” she whispered.

“Wait? Wait for what? Do you mean wait on booking the flight? Or…”

Jasmine heard the roar of an engine. She squinted past the haze in her eyes to make out River’s truck. “River…” Her bottom hit the porch. Pain diffused across her abdomen and made it difficult to focus on Kennedy’s appeal for clarification.

River jumped down from the truck. “Jasmine!”

He sprinted across the lawn and leapt up the steps. As darkness descended, warmth cradled her close. Jasmine felt her lips curve up as she heard her name softly spoken.