So he’d make her see reason.
“Do you think there’s a chance we could do things the way you said?” Serenity asked hopefully. “Revitalize the downtown area and make it a place people would want to come?”
That’s when Caleb realized Havana’s plan to raze the town would affect Serenity’s hotel too. No wonder the two of them were at such odds. His bewilderment at the fractures in their relationship grew. Did her niece have a clue how much Serenity loved this building? Caleb didn’t believe in ghosts, but Serenity did, and he had every intention of honoring the ones she’d befriended in her hotel. Maybe Havana had been away too long to see that.
“Of course,” he assured her. “Old-timey main strips with the original buildings still intact would be a huge draw. We just have to get some people to agree to open up shop here.”
The vision unfolded in 3-D like a movie in his head. The row of buildings took on a sheen of prosperity, new signs, people strolling down the new sidewalk he’d put in. A candy store, spruce up the antique store, maybe a place that sold books. No pigs though.
On second thought… “You said the town used to be an artist’s colony?”
At Serenity’s nod, the entire canvas blanked out and reshaped itself. He might not have a fancy degree like Havana, but he could use his imagination.
The key here wasn’t to remodel the town into a carbon copy of a hundred other historical spots. Maybe they should embrace the pigs. Let the people of Superstition Springs do their thing at the top of their lungs. Serenity was her own kind of different, dispensing love predictions when her extrasensory perception got the nudge. The only place in town to buy staples was called Voodoo Grocery for crying out loud. It wasn’t hard to imagine that most if not all of the town’s residents had more color than gray.
“I can see a shop that sells crystals and other new age stuff,” he said as the plan fell open in his head. “Turn the antique store into a curio shop. Open a bakery called Spirits and Cupcakes, I don’t know. This is Superstition Springs. Let’s show the world that they too can find some magic in their lives.”
Serenity clapped her hands, her eyes damp with emotion. “I love that idea, Caleb Hardy. You have to be the one to make it happen. I can see now that my prediction was always meant to bring you here.”
Walked into that one. Magic might be on the horizon for other people but not him and not just because he didn’t quite believe in such things. The power of suggestion went a long way toward fulfilling people’s expectations about the mystical.
Sure, there was something special about the hotel that you could feel the moment you walked across the threshold, but it wasn’t magic, and even if it was, Caleb didn’t deserve special, not yet. After he’d built a prosperous town in memory of a Syrian village that had been victimized by five ruthless warriors trained to kill, then maybe.
Of course, he had no idea where to start. More than a decade of special warfare gave a guy the skills to HALO drop from a helicopter over the Mediterranean but not to create a tourist draw from scratch. Sure, he had some skill at seeing the big picture, but that didn’t make him overly qualified at filling the gaps in a town that wasn’t his—as Havana had so eloquently pointed out.
Maybe he should step back and let someone else run the intel on this op.
“I have some money,” Serenity offered hesitantly. “My grandmother left it to me, and other than buying this hotel from Goldie Mays, I haven’t done a thing with the balance. Could we use it to help make over the town?”
Blind trust. He’d done nothing to earn that. His team was one thing, but Serenity was another entirely, and it humbled him to have her so on board with whatever he might conjure up. She didn’t have anyone else to turn to. That much was clear. Her own niece couldn’t see past her ambitions to the vulnerable town that needed protecting. That alone meant he had to do this right. But he also cared. Inexplicably. He’d never set foot in this town before, and already he had a fierce need to see that vision for the town come to life.
It was the right thing, no question. He’d just have to find someone else to fill the leadership boots.
“Hold that money tight. It might come in handy later, but for now we need to work on getting the town to agree on the direction,” he said slowly, feeling his way through the steps. “If there are some who want to sell out to Havana and her shopping center, we gotta get them to see reason. We have to be united on this.”
“I knew you’d come to be something special to me,” she said, and she’d practically lit up with a glow that made her lined face beautiful. “I got a sense the moment I saw your name on the list of deployed servicemen who had no family.”
That speared him right through the gut. He’d always wondered how Serenity had first decided to pick up a pen and send an authentic handwritten letter to a stranger half her age. The letters had quickly become a lifeline, often bolstering his flagging spirits as the assignments in Syria got tougher and tougher the longer the conflict dragged on.
Eventually she’d started writing to the others on his strike team after he jokingly mentioned that they were jealous of him for gaining a surrogate mom. They all had family-shaped holes inside, only one of many reasons the four of them had jumped in the Yukon after him when he’d announced he was moving to Texas.
Caleb might not deserve his own magic, but even he couldn’t deny that this had destiny written all over it. Maybe he believed in the power of suggestion a little more than he’d have admitted.
Six
The first time Havana came to live in Superstition Springs, Serenity had owned a tiny clapboard house nine miles from the center of town, off the dirt road that led to Farmer Moon’s property. With window box air conditioners and the random space heater for the short but frigid winters, it hadn’t been terribly comfortable, made less so by the fact that Havana’d had to share a room with Aria and Ember.
Aria had been seven and always did everything Havana said. But at nine, Ember and Havana were too close in age, and her sister did not recognize anyone’s authority other than her own. Still didn’t. Or at least that was Havana’s assumption since they hadn’t spoken in years, not since Havana had abandoned her sisters in desperate search of her own identity.
Which had been totally selfish. A knee-jerk reaction to Ember’s pregnancy. Havana knew that. Had been living with the knowledge that she’d dumped all her responsibility and jetted off like she didn’t care, except she did. Her life had turned into this push-pull of insanity where she yearned to be a normal teenager and couldn’t in Superstition Springs.
Ember had fled Superstition Springs in presumed disgrace shortly after Havana, which was also Havana’s fault. She should have been there to take care of Ember. At least warn her sister away from that one life-wrecking bad decision. But her sister hadn’t ever returned. Havana was the one back here begging for someone to give her another chance to prove she could take care of people as well as she thought she could. She wasn’t going to cut and run this time.
Her aunt had bought the old Mays Hotel sometime during the eight years Havana had been away. Serenity lived on the third floor, which had been converted from single rooms into what could have been a trendy loft-style space if done correctly but instead had taken on a Winchester House patchwork feel, with hallways leading nowhere and walls half-painted with a hard line down the middle where the color just stopped.
It was quaint on a good day and weird all the rest of them.
But it was a place to stay, so she’d taken her aunt’s offer of a room before realizing the extra bedroom in question already had an occupant—Aria.