Page 47 of One Snowy Day
The most loaded ‘oh’ of all time.
Lachlan watched as Jason’s gaze went from him, to Tanya’s smile, back to him.
‘What are you doing here?’ There was a hint of a challenge there. ‘If you’d told me you wanted to meet, I could have come to you. I tried to talk to you this morning.’
Lachlan nodded. ‘I know. I guess I didn’t have anything to say then.’
‘And you do now?’ Jason’s eyes narrowed, like an animal that was wary and anticipating attack.
‘Yeah.’
Tanya put an earthenware mug of coffee on the island in front of him and pulled out a chair, so that she was sitting at right angles to him.
‘Are you okay with me staying for this?’ She directed the question at Lachlan, and he wondered if she thought he was here to settle scores or to hold them to some kind of belated account for what had happened.
‘Sure. It won’t take long. I just want to talk about Dad’s will.’ He put that out straight away, hoping it would defuse any defensiveness Jason was feeling. If he was going to get anywhere with his brother, he had to come at this from a place of peace.
‘Yeah, I’m not fucking happy about it either. I can’t believe all we got was one crappy property and some change.’
Lachlan wondered in what world £125K could be called ‘change’. And he’d seen for himself that Alyssa’s café was far from ‘crappy’, but this wasn’t the time to argue.
He tried to keep his tone even and non-confrontational, even as he said, ‘I didn’t say I wasn’t happy about it. To be honest, I didn’t expect anything, so it made no difference to me.’
‘Always the Boy Scout,’ Jason jibed, with a bitter smile, as he reached into a drinks fridge on the far wall and pulled out a beer. He came back and stood at the other side of the island fromwhere Lachlan was sitting so that he was directly opposite and in front of him. Lachlan knew it was a classic power move. Stay standing. Be the tallest in the room. Command the space.
He wanted to reply, ‘Always the dickhead,’ but he managed to refrain.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tanya lower her gaze so that she was staring at the island and wondered if she regretted staying to listen.
He had to get this back on track, so he ignored the dig and rewound a few seconds.
‘The thing I wanted to talk about was the Weirbridge building.’
‘I used to hate it when Mum would drag us out to the sticks to go to that place every summer,’ Jason sneered.
Of course he did. It was one of Lachlan’s favourite memories, so naturally Jason had a completely opposing view. But again, now wasn’t the time for arguing. ‘I went there today. Do you know much about it?’
Jason’s mannerisms were telling him that his brother’s brain was whirling, trying to work out what was coming. Always trying to be ten steps ahead.
Jason took a slug of his beer before he answered. ‘Yes. Café on the ground floor, with a flat above it. Would be worth a fortune in the city, but not out there. Like Jeremy said, the building is worth about £360K. I had my guys give me a report on it this afternoon. We made some calls to a couple of other developers I know, and I reckon we can offload it in the next week or so. If they do it right, they’ll get three flats out of it and a decent profit. I’d do it myself, but I’m stacked with other projects right now and don’t have the time.’
Lachlan caught the boast – his brother was clearly doing wellif he didn’t have time to take on this redevelopment. Maybe that could work in his favour.
‘What if we didn’t sell it though? If you’re too busy right now, what if we hung on to it a while longer? I met the woman who runs the café and lives in the flat today. That’s why I’m here. That place is her life, Jason, and we’ve given her sixty days to wrap it up. I want to help her find a way to keep her business, or at least give her longer to work something out.’
Jason’s reaction was instant. ‘What, and risk the market going down and we lose money? Are you crazy? We can get cash for that right now, and we’d be mad not to go that route. I mean, sad for the café chick, and hate to sound brutal, but these things happen in business. So no. I’m not holding off.’
The next argument was out of Lachlan’s mouth before he’d even thought it through. ‘What if I bought you out?’
Jason at least paused to run the numbers on that before he challenged it.
‘The value is £360K minimum. So that’s £180K you’d owe me. Even if you use the £125K Dad left you, you’d still come up short. Unless, of course, you have £55K lying around somewhere.’
They both knew he didn’t.
‘I could look at getting a mortgage…’
What the hell was he doing? Why would he take out a mortgage on a café in Weirbridge when he lived in London and had solid intentions never to come back here? There was just a sudden and unassailable need not to let his brother win.
