The Welcoming

doors.”
    “Yes, ma’am.” Keeping his eyes on hers, he dropped the ring into his breast pocket. “Anything else?”
    “I’ll let you know.” She rose, took her plate to the sink and stalked out.
    “What got into her?” Dolores wanted to know. “She looked like she wanted to chew somebody’s head off.”
    “She just didn’t sleep well.” More concerned than she wanted to let on, Mae set down the mixing bowl in which she’d been creaming butter and sugar. Because she felt like the mother of an ill-mannered child, she picked up the coffeepot and carried it over to Roman. “Charity’s not feeling quite herself this morning,” she told him as she poured him a second cup. “She’s been overworked lately.”
    “I’ve got thick skin.” But he’d felt the sting. “Maybe she should delegate more.”
    “Ha! That girl?” Pleased that he hadn’t complained, she became more expansive. “It ain’t in her. Feels responsible if a guest stubs his toe. Just like her grandpa.” Mae added a stream of vanilla to the bowl and went back to her mixing. “Not a thing goes on around here she don’t have a finger—more likely her whole hand—in. Except my cooking.” Mae’s wide face creased in a smile. “I shooed her out of here when she was a girl, and I can shoo her out of here today if need be.”
    “Girl can’t boil water without scorching the pan,” Dolores put in.
    “She could if she wanted to,” Mae said defensively, turning back to Roman with a sniff. “There’s no need for her to cook when she’s got me, and she’s smart enough to know it. Everything else, though, from painting the porch to keeping the books, has to have her stamp on it. She’s one who takes her responsibilities to heart.”
    Roman played out the lead she had offered him. “That’s an admirable quality. You’ve worked for her a long time.”
    “Between Charity and her grandfather, I’ve worked at the inn for twenty-eight years come June.” She jerked her head in Dolores’s direction. “She’s been here eight.”
    “Nine,” Dolores said. “Nine years this month.”
    “It sounds like when people come to work here they stay.”
    “You got that right,” Mae told him.
    “It seems the inn has a loyal, hardworking staff.”
    “Charity makes it easy.” Competently Mae measured out baking powder. “She was just feeling moody this morning.”
    “She did look a little tired,” Roman said slowly, ignoring a pang of guilt. “Maybe she’ll rest for a while today.”
    “Not likely.”
    “The housekeeping staff seems tight.”
    “She’ll still find a bed to make.”
    “Bob handles the accounts.”
    “She’ll poke her nose in the books and check every column.” There was simple pride in her voice as she sifted flour into the bowl. “Not that she don’t trust those who work for her,” Mae added. “It would just make her heart stop dead to have a bill paid late or an order mixed up. Thing is, she’d rather blame herself than somebody else if a mistake’s made.”
    “I guess nothing much gets by her.”
    “By Charity?” With a snicker, Mae plugged in her electric mixer. “She’d know if a napkin came back from the laundry with a stain on it. Watch where you sneeze,” she added as Dolores covered her face with a tissue. “Drink some hot water with a squeeze of lemon.”
    “Hot tea with honey,” Dolores said.
    “Lemon. Honey’ll clog your throat.”
    “My mother always gave me hot tea with honey,” Dolores told her.
    They were still arguing about it when Roman slipped out of the kitchen.
    ***
    He spent most of his time closed off in the west wing. Working helped him think. Though he heard Charity pass in and out a few times, neither of them sought the other’s company. He could be more objective, Roman realized, when he wasn’t around her.
    Mae’s comments had cemented his observations and the information that had been made available to him. Charity Ford ran the inn from top to bottom. Whatever went on in it or passed through it was directly under her eye. Logically that meant that she was fully involved with, perhaps in charge of, the operation he had come to destroy.
    And yet . . . what he had said to Conby the night before still held true. It didn’t fit.
    The woman worked almost around the clock to make the inn a success. He’d seen her do everything from potting geraniums to hauling firewood. And, unless she was an astounding actress, she enjoyed it all.
    She didn’t seem the