Summer Romance

Cami DiCarlo is crossing off the list of her father's dying wishes.
1 Move from Chicago to Juniper Ridge, CO to open his new hotel—check
2 Live with her five sisters—four of whom she didn’t know about until he died—check
3 Marry the guy he picked out for her—oh wait, she didn’t know about that one.
Though she misses her father like crazy, she can’t help resenting him for interfering in her life, or the many, many secrets he’d been keeping—even if he did bring hunky Vince Talmadge into her life.

Luckily Vince not only knows what her father wanted—once he meets her he is more than willing to give a relationship a try. After all, it isn’t often that you meet a beautiful, capable, fascinating, complicated woman like Cami in this mountain ski town. The fact that they have definite chemistry doesn’t hurt. The question is whether or not he can make her see that they are really a Perfect Fit.

Camellia gripped her sister’s hand as they passed into the wood-paneled conference room at the attorney’s office. Her eyes burned, but she felt Lantana’s fingers squeeze hers so she sucked it up and continued on.

A quick sweep of the room showed a lot more faces than she’d expected, and though all of them were familiar, she wasn’t certain how she knew the women. Three women—two blondes and a brunette—were seated in the row of six chairs facing the table at the front of the room. She’d noticed them all at the funeral, and they’d been vaguely familiar then, but she still had no idea why.

“Cami, who are all these people?” Lana asked, leaning closer to whisper.

“No idea.” Her eyes sought out Alex—her cousin, her father’s lawyer, and estate executor.

He walked toward them, leaned in to kiss each of their cheeks and squeeze their hands. “Please take a seat. We’ll start soon.” He guided them to a couple of chairs along the right side of the room. “We’re waiting for one more person.”

“But what about—”

He interrupted Cami with a gentle touch to her elbow. “I’ll explain everything in a few minutes. Try to be patient.”

Cami sat beside Lana and looked up as Alex put a hand on each of their shoulders. “Are you okay?” he asked. “Would you like something to drink? I have soda, water or juice.” He waved to a nearby table.

“I’m fine.” It was a lie, she wasn’t fine. She couldn’t be fine the day after burying her father, after finding out he’d had terminal cancer that would have killed him in a matter of weeks—if the pulmonary embolism hadn’t done it first. She’d known he wasn’t well, but he hadn’t said it was cancer. The loss made the pain of her mother’s death five years earlier come back again full force.

“Nothing for me,” Lana murmured.

A tall blonde—thin, lithe, a little snooty in her three-inch heels and impeccable navy dress-suit—sauntered into the room, scanning it, before taking a chair. Her short-cropped hair framed her face and though a valiant effort had been made to cover it with makeup, her eyes were red and puffy from crying.

Cami studied all of the women again, four of them besides herself and Lana. All of whom had thrown flowers on her father’s coffin, all acted as though they had reason to belong, but none had approached her or Lana with condolences—or spoken to each other as far as she’d noticed. Who were they?
The women were near her own age, and so familiar. How had they known her father?

Alex greeted the newcomer, his low voice making the words indistinguishable, even from eight feet away. He gestured to his assistant to close the door, and he returned to the front of the room. He shot Cami and Lana a glance, grimaced, then let his eyes follow the line of women.

“I’m glad you could all make it, though I’m sorry for the reason you’re here. I’m Alexander Checketts, the executor of George Marlin DiCarlos’s estate. Because all of you were important to George, he remembered you in his will.” He glanced at Cami again and she lifted a finger. “As you’ll be able to tell when you hear the terms, this was a very recent revision.”

“Aren’t there a lot of other bequests in the will? Friends, employees?” She swept her eyes over the other women, doubting they fit either category. Wouldn’t she have known about them if they were important to her father?

Alex touched his fingertips to the tabletop in a gesture she had long recognized as a sign that he was uneasy. Most people wouldn’t have a clue he wasn’t perfectly comfortable, but she knew him too well to be fooled.

“They will all be contacted separately, but this portion of the will concerns each of you equally, and your father and I felt it best to present it to you as a private group.” He picked up the legal forms and began to read the stultifying legalese which always made Cami’s head ache, even under the best of circumstances—and these were far from that.
When he reached the bequests, he studied them. “I’m going to skip over the little things he wanted given to others, though I’d be happy to provide copies of the will to anyone who would like to check it. I’ll go straight to the part concerning all of you.”

All of you? What did that mean? Cami glanced at Lana and caught confusion on some of the other women’s faces as well.

“To my daughters, Camellia DiCarlo, Sage Parker, Rosemary Keogh, Lantana DiCarlo, Delphinium Gifford and Jonquil Chestnut, I leave my latest resort.”

Cami’s eyes flashed to Alex’s, but his gaze was riveted on the papers he held, though he paused for a moment. She stared at the other women. His daughters? It didn’t make sense, but Alex started reading again, so she focused on him.

“‘Yes, you are all my daughters, though none of you knew about everyone else. You will share equally in my legacy, but first I have a requirement. The newest hotel and spa will be ready to open in September and if you want to earn your part of the inheritance, you will all need to pull together to make it shine, as I know you will."

Cami stared at her cousin. What the heck?