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Especially if it would help Cody.
I wouldn’t say I had a crush on him. He was one of my brother’s good friends—basically another older brother when the chips were down—so of course I’d do what I could to help.
I’d do it for any of the guys, if they asked me.
But it didn’t hurt that, of the five who weren’t actually my brother, Cody was the best looking of the lot. In my mind, at least.
Hey, a girl had to have her dreams.
I hurried through the opening procedures. I wanted to make sure I was ready to go, so if things with Cody went long, I could just unlock the front door and we could keep working. As a rule, Saturday mornings weren’t super busy.
There weren’t any times I’d say the storewassuper busy.
I pushed the constant worry about profit margins and operating expenses back to the far recesses of my brain. Worrying didn’t fix things.Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?If I had to repeat Matthew six verse twenty-seven multiple times a day, then so be it.
But it might not be a bad idea to figure out some strategies to increase revenue. Because the way things were going right now, I wasn’t going to be able to justify keeping the lights on into the new year.
And then what?
I could always go back to social work.
My stomach twisted at the thought, and I shoved it away, too.
If nothing else, being an entrepreneur had upped my denial game to new heights.
The knock on the door made me look up from the register. I grinned at Cody and hurried over to unlock the deadbolt and let him in.
“Right on time.”
“I do try.” He grinned and thrust a to-go cup from the café down the street at me. “You like the vanilla cold brew, right?”
I took the cup. “I do. How’d you know?”
“Austin must’ve mentioned it.” He shrugged and glanced over his shoulder at the door. “Should we lock that?”
“Yeah.” I moved around him to do so. “Though I’m not expecting hordes of book marauders anytime in the near future.”
He chuckled. “Good thing. I’m not sure how you defeat that kind of enemy.”
“Me either.” I pointed to the sitting area across the store. “Why don’t we sit over there? It’s more comfortable.”
“All right.” Cody sipped from his cup and headed over. He settled on the sofa.
I bit my lip. Would it be weird to sit beside him? I could take one of the arm chairs. But what if we needed to look at something together? Annoyed at myself, I sat beside him. “Give me the scoop. Last night you were pretty light on details.”
He sighed and raked a hand through his hair. “I don’t have a lot of details. We do two big fundraisers each year. The July Fourth barbecue and the Christmas gala. We used to have someone whose entire job was donor relations and development. These events fell firmly into her purview. But she’s gone and from what I can tell, she didn’t do anything on the Christmas event at all.”
“Okay. Maybe this is a good thing.”
“How? Because I’ve got just over three months to get this planned and I don’t really think that’s enough. So I’d love to see whatever silver lining you’ve spotted.”
I fought a grin. He sounded so dejected. “You get to make this whatever you want. No restrictions. So this is a chance to think outside the box and make it a memorable event, not just another black-tie dinner and dance.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “What if they expect a black-tie dinner and dance? If I don’t give them that, then what? I can’t afford to go way outside the box and make it so we can’t fund all our programs.”
I nodded. “Fair. Still. There’s gotta be some middle ground. You called hotels yesterday, right? Did you find a venue?”
Cody shook his head. “Everyone’s booked up.”
