Spellbound

CHAPTER ONE

"Raven, you can't—"

She shot me a glare across the table, and the air in the room seemed to chill. "I'm the oldest female Fox. I'll be able to do whatever I please."

Gritting my teeth, I clamped my hands down on the arms of the expensive leather chair, my pulse pounding in my ears. And I had no reply. None, because Raven was right. As soon as that will was read, everything I loved about being with my aunt Hazel would be in my cousin's hands. Hands that wanted to do nothing but destroy what our ancestors had worked so hard to build.

The door at the front of the room opened, and my great-aunt's balding, middle-aged lawyer, Mr. Cartwright, stepped over the threshold. "Are we all here now?"

"Sorry I was late," I said with a sheepish smile.

His face was warm and open, and he wore an expression that made me feel like maybe I wasn't the most irresponsible person ever to exist. "It's all right, Miss Fox." He sat at the head of the table and opened the folder in his hand, pulling out a packet of papers. The will.

"Let's get started. The will isn't very long, and it's relatively straightforward." He cleared his throat and began to read.

It was all the standard wording about sound mind and last will and testament. My thoughts drifted as he droned on, thinking, This is it. Hazel's will was her last act on this earth. Never again would she walk the halls of the Reynard or lead a ghost tour. We would never sit together in her hotel suite and talk about what it was like to own the hotel or our plans for the future. I would never pull her close in a hug and melt against her as she embraced me back. She was gone.

"'I hereby bequeath the Reynard Hotel and all its assets to my great-niece Gemma Diane Fox.'"

"Wait, what did you say?" I blurted out, snapping my gaze to Mr. Cartwright. "Did you say my name? That can't—"

"That can't be right!" Raven sprang from her seat and slapped her palms on the table. "For one hundred and fifty years, the hotel has been passed to the oldest girl with the Fox name. I am the oldest. Hazel can't break tradition."

It was my brother Trevor who backed her up. "She's right, there was only one incident when it didn't pass from an aunt to her oldest niece. What's going on here?" His dark, perfectly coiffed hair without a strand out of place only added to his I'm better than you attitude.

I shouldn't have been surprised at Trevor's reaction. He and I may have gotten along when we were younger—he used to take up for me on the playground when the older kids picked on me—but in our later teen years, he became more and more critical of me and my life decisions. He didn't like my friends, my boyfriends, my choice of extracurriculars. When I'd dropped out of college two years ago, he'd laughed and told me that I would never make it in this world. He had no mercy when it came to me, no forgiveness. He had become a carbon copy of our father.

"Hazel had every right to break tradition. She had no legal obligation to follow it, and she made no mistake in her wishes. We discussed it at length, and Gemma is the one she left the Reynard to. There's no question about it," Mr. Cartwright said.

"It doesn't make any sense; Gemma doesn't know anything about running a hotel," my father said, and my aunt and uncle grumbled their agreement. Of course they did. They wanted their daughter to inherit it so she could shut it down.

"I can learn," I started, but everyone spoke over each other, pushing me out of a conversation that had nothing to do with them and everything to do with me.

Raven raised her voice over the others, her attitude one of utter disdain and condescension. "Not to mention that I have my degree in hospitality and am currently the manager of a five-star luxury hotel in downtown Boston." Her eyes darted to me on the word degree, as if to rub it in my face that she had graduated and I hadn't.