Pet Friendly Read Free

hugged briefly.
    â€œCall me when you get home,” he told her.
    Claire grabbed her bag and smiled. “Call me when Gwen says no to the dog.”
    â€œShe won’t,” he said. “But thanks.”
    â€œI’ll talk to you later,” she said. “And, Todd? Good luck.”
    Todd waited until Claire had disappeared into the crowd before getting back into the car. Archie was sitting up in back, an expectant look on his face.
    â€œHow you doing back there?”
    The little dog tipped his head and whimpered.
    â€œMust have been cold back there with the window down. You want to move up here?” He patted the passenger’s seat. “Be my guest.”
    As Archie settled down on the seat beside him, Todd started the car. Claire was wrong, he thought. Gwen was going to love Uncle Bertie’s dog just as much as he did.

CHAPTER 2
    E mma Carlisle was not having a good day. In fact, at that very moment she couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually had a good one. When she inherited the Spirit Inn from her grandmother, she’d thought her life was finally turning around, that all the lousy relationships, rotten jobs, and just plain bad luck in her life had been payment in advance for her once-in-a-lifetime windfall. Instead, it seemed as if karma was once again having a big ole laugh at her expense. You thought you were out of the woods? she heard it snickering. Ha-ha! Fooled you again.
    This latest bout of karmic deserts was being served up by Harold Grader, her up-until-now friendly local banker, who’d apparently decided that loaning her more money to maintain and upgrade her hotel would be throwing good money after bad.
    â€œI’m sorry, Emma,” he said, looking anything but. “The committee just isn’t going to approve another loan when you’re only making the minimum payments on the one you have.”
    â€œI understand,” Emma said, “and I know it doesn’t look good, but business has really been picking up.”
    â€œYes, I can see that,” he said, prodding the financial statements on his desk with the tip of his finger. “But your overhead has also increased. If anything, it looks as if you’re making less on a per-guest basis than you were before.”
    Emma closed her eyes in silent acknowledgment. It didn’t make sense to her, either, but she’d been over the figures a dozen times and every time it came out the same. It was as if her profits were vanishing into thin air.
    Maybe I’m just incompetent.
    No doubt that’s what her banker was thinking. Emma had worked at her grandmother’s inn every summer since she was six and could do any job on the property, yet when people heard that it had been gifted to her, they just assumed she was a neophyte, a manager in name only who left the real work to her older, more experienced staff.
    It didn’t help, of course, that Emma didn’t look like the kind of businesswoman a bank was used to dealing with. She was a little below average height; her figure was more boyish than buxom; and she considered makeup to be a waste of both time and money. She liked the convenience of shorter hair, but had grown hers out after being mistaken once too often for a preteen boy. At work, she wore a suit and the highest heels she could walk in without breaking an ankle, but her days off were spent in T-shirts and jeans.
    Grader was fiddling with his pen. “What does Mr. Fairholm think of your proposed changes?”
    Emma tried not to resent the question. Clifton Fairholm had been her grandmother’s assistant manager since the Spirit Inn opened, and Gran’s will had stipulated that he be allowed to keep his job when ownership of the hotel changed hands. He was as stumped by the inn’s problems as she was, but his fondest memories were of the hotel in its heyday, and convincing him to modernize the place was like forcing a fish to