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His brow wrinkled even more. “What kind of hiccup?”
The kind that challenged your every move. “The heritage preservation officer?—”
“You mean Charlie Reeves?”
I meant the bane of my existence who had been sent here to torture me in every way a man could be tortured. “Yeah, she’s going to be a problem. She didn’t exactly go for the hotel plan.”
“Why am I not surprised? You know, I had to deal with her over a colonial shack near some of my land, and I swear she would not budge. I even offered to buy her a new car. Have you seen that clunker she drives? She didn’t go for it. Saw right through me.” Theo’s gaze wandered off into the distance and he shook his head. After my meeting today, I wasn’t surprised to hear that the spitfire couldn’t be bought. That just made her even more of a threat.
Sinclair met my gaze. “So what’s the problem?”
“The problem is Mayor Greene wants us to restore the theater lobby for the wine gala on the last night of the festival. He’s giving us the opportunity to present our respective plans to the city council for a vote.”
Theo gripped the stem of his glass, his skin taking on a reddish hue. “Do you mean to tell me there’s a chance I won’t get my hotel?”
“Don’t worry, Sinclair. You’ll get your hotel. It’s just not going to be as quickly as we’d hoped.”
“That’s a shame. You sure you can make this happen? In my experience, the members of the city council haven’t been welcoming to us outsiders.”
“Well, I’m not exactly an outsider,” I said, hoping I wouldn’t be penalized for not having stepped foot in New Elwood in over thirty years. But why would I? There was nothing left for me here. Lydia Radcliffe might have owned prime real estate, but she wasn’t exactly the warm grandmotherly type. I had no interest in being part of her legacy.
The timing had been perfect when Theo reached out to me with an offer. He wouldn’t have been my first-choice buyer, but the guy was loaded and I’d just been given the opportunity to buy The Bach Company, a legacy real estate development firm back in Arlington. Except the legacy part was ending. Hamilton Bach was beyond retirement age with no wife and no kids and no plans to go to the grave with the company. In my early years in the business, he’d been a close mentor to me. Working for him, I never got the impression he’d sell a single slice of his pie in the sky. I wanted exactly what he had but I knew I wouldn’t get it there. So I left The Bach Company to start my own operation.
I nearly fell out of my chair when Bach called and asked if I was interested in an acquisition. Of course I was. It was a dream proposition. The deal of a lifetime. The only challenge was, even if I’d sold my business and put up my remaining properties as collateral, it still wasn’t enough to cover the initial payment.
That’s when Theo Sinclair swooped in to save the day. Maybe my mom wouldn’t get what was meant to be hers in New Elwood, but at least I could use it to create enough wealth to set the both of us up for life. After everything she’d been through with Lydia, she deserved that much. We deserved that much.
“Speaking of your local royalty status, what’s happening with Radcliffe House Apartments? How soon can we do the demo?”
I looked out over the wooded railing and spotted the old Second Empire house in the distance. The land it was seated on butted up against his winery right at the edge of town, and Theo wanted to claim it for his vineyard manor like he was the king of New Elwood. More power to him. Wouldn’t be my first choice of place to settle down, but you couldn’t account for taste.
The apartments, at least, were an easier prospect than the theater. “I’m working on the permits now. The house will be obliterated before the ink’s dry on the deed.”
“Good. You have no idea how badly I want that eyesore away from my view.”
Oh, yes, I did. At least he didn’t have to live in it.
By the time I left Sinclair Vineyards, it felt like all the screws were tightening around me. I needed this deal. I needed to hand Theo Sinclair the properties with all the red tape already cleared. I needed to get my money and get out.
Charlie would do her best to stop me, but she didn’t stand a chance.
SEVEN
CHARLIE
Crochet hooks danced as I retold the events of the past twenty-four hours. A handful of elderly women including Minnie listened on while they worked, inserting the appropriate hums of displeasure whenever I spoke Sebastian Anderson’s name.
“So now I have to meet the bastard at the Monticello tomorrow morning so we can go over the work that needs to happen for the gala. I actually have to work with him for a month, and I might not even get to save the theater at the end of it all.”
Beside me, one of my two best friends, Abigail, ignored the tangle of yarn on her lap and sipped her glass of Pinot Grigio. My other best friend, and the final member of our inseparable childhood trio, Sophie, stared at me, wide-eyed, while her cute crocheted elephant took shape between her hands.
Abigail grinned. “I want to go back to the part where he plucked splinters out of your butt.”
“It was a desperate situation,” I replied, defensive. I hadn’t mentioned the whole ass-smacking incident, but judging from the glimmer in Abigail’s eyes, she could tell I was holding back. She exchanged a glance with Sophie, and it was clear they’d extract the information out of me as soon as we were alone.
Hooker’s Paradise wasn’t exactly the right place to go into that kind of nitty-gritty detail, though. When I dropped my gaze to my lap and saw the sad few rows of a half-finished granny square I’d managed to create over the past six months, I wondered how long it would take for the rest of the women to kick me out of their club.
But Hooker’s Paradise wasn’t really about crocheting. My late mother—adoptive mother, technically—had been an avid knitter and crocheter. She and her girlfriends had started the club before I was born as a way to relax and gossip in peace for an hour or so every couple of weeks. I started attending when I was ten years old, then stopped when I became too cool to do it as a teenager, and came back to the club as a way to reconnect with my mom after I came back from college. It had been a constant in her life, and mine too as a result.
