Page 60 of Will Bark for Pizza
Maybe I couldn’t save Mom’s bookstore, but at least my most important friendships were still intact.
“Anyone up for darts?”
“Only if you won’t cheat,” Alyssa said to me.
“I never cheat,” I said, turning my board around but refusing to get off my butt. Partially, I was feeling lazy. Mostly, I wasn’t eager to be tossed into the lake again.
“Youalwayscheat,” Aspen agreed with her. “But it doesn’t matter. I’ll still beat you.”
Despite the shittiness of the bookstore situation, at least I still had my friends.
But I also still had to deal with Beckett Campbell and my conflicting urges to sneak across the hall tonight to smother him with a pillow . . . or crawl under his covers and mount him.
TWENTY
BECKETT
Cutting the ignition,I scanned the full parking lot of Kat’s Place. I didn’t recognize any of the vehicles packed into the gravel lot. No patrol car. No beater truck.No red Jeep.
Just as well. I could grab a late dinner to-go and head back to the Kniffen Street house to finally start mudding. I did some of my best thinking while mudding and sanding walls. And after the lunch hour that stretched to two hours and ended with dessert pizza and slightly tipsy book club members who had a whole lot to say about a certain Margene Miller, I had a lot to think about.
Before I could push open my truck door, my phone rang.
Closing my eyes, I took a deep centering breath as I pulled the phone from my shirt pocket. Some days, the temptation to throw this thing in the lake was stronger than others.
When I opened my eyes, it wasn’t Madeline’s name on the screen as I expected, but Nana’s.
Small relief, though still more than I wanted to deal with tonight. But I didn’t dare send her to voicemail.
“Hey, Nana.”
“Well, how’d it go?” Nana asked, skipping the pleasantries just like Madeline always did. Guess it ran in the family, and I never noticed.
“I did a walk-through of the bookstore today with the current owner and an appraiser.”
“And?”
“It’s a good building. Great building, actually. Corner location in the middle of downtown. An apartment upstairs that could be rented out. Good bones. No obvious issues. It’s been well kept up. There’d be no issue leasing it out. I’m told there’s plenty of local interest. I have a meeting with my realtor next week to go over market rent rates.”
“It’s priced competitively, I’m sure.”
“The appraiser hasn’t given the owner a final number yet. He promised to have it by early next week, but I have a ballpark. I’ve been promised first right of refusal.”
“You get that in writing?”
“No,” I admitted. “Didn’t think that’d go over well here.”
“Ah, I forget you’re in a small town.”
Nana grew up in a town roughly this size and lived there until her first husband passed away. But once she remarried a couple of decades ago, she moved from major city to major city. Now that she was a wealthy widow, she traveled the world and bought real estate when she wasbored. She avoided small towns as much as possible. Whether she liked being on the go, or was running from the painful memories of losing Gramps, I still hadn’t decided.
“You have the capital to make this work?” she asked.
“That shouldn’t be a problem.”
The bookstore would require a hefty down payment and likely be the last property I acquired for a while, until I built my cash reserve back up—unless Karl did something shocking, like offer to sell me the cabin on the lake. It would mean frugal living for a while if he did, but I’d make it work. Maybe pick up some handyman jobs around town if I wanted to build that reserve more quickly. Joe promised there were plenty if I wanted them.
The book club ladies would get a kick out of that.
