“I hadn’t planned to use it all,” he said. “But don’t worry, Miss Greer. I’ll stay for at least a few more days, and if you need to be in the hospital longer than that, we’ll work something out.”

The doorbell rang.

“That must be the paramedics,” Sara said as she went to answer it.

Reece tried not to feel annoyed that Sara had volunteered him for a job before consulting him, knowing he couldn’t refuse in front of a woman lying on the floor with a broken hip.

“Just promise me you won’t leave the finances to Sara,” Miss Greer whispered. “Don’t get me wrong, she’s a lovely girl, sweet and generous to a fault and a hard worker. But she doesn’t have a head for business. Have you ever seen her checkbook? It’s the stuff of my nightmares.”

Reece couldn’t help it, he actually shuddered. He’d caught a glimpse of Sara’s checkbook when she’d brought it out to pay one of her hippie-artist friends for a handmade ceramic teapot-an entirely useless item in his opinion, but Sara had been in raptures about it. The checkbook register was written in five different colors of ink and had more cross-outs than a third-grader’s book report.

“I know exactly what you mean,” Reece whispered back.

“You can’t let her touch the B and B’s checkbook-or the calendar. She’ll write down the wrong dates.”

“I’ll handle it, promise,” Reece said. “You focus on getting well.”

Miss Greer pinched his cheek. He hadn’t let anyone get away with pinching his cheek since he was eight years old. “You’re a good boy, and so handsome, too. How is it no woman has caught you?”

A few had tried, especially after a radio station had named him one of the top-twenty bachelors in Manhattan. But he suspected most of them had been more entranced with the cachet of the Remington family name than with Reece himself.