by Julie Kenner
"I intended to be very good. But you stopped me."
She made a show of not laughing, then poked him I soundly in the chest. "Okay, Mr. Comedian, listen up. How's this for an amazing idea?" She sat up, crossing her legs and shoving the pillow in her lap so that all that was revealed was a tiny bit of cleavage. He shifted as well, intrigued by both her enthusiasm and her nakedness.
"I'm listening."
"Sonntag House."
"What about it?"
"We're living in it, right?"
He frowned, completely clueless as to where this was going. "That's the plan. At least once we finish enough renovations to make it livable."
"And I'm going to keep managing the motel, right?"
He decided it was best to just answer and not elaborate. He had a feeling this might take awhile. "Right."
"And they're right next door to each other."
"Right." He couldn't stand it. "Julia, what are you getting at?"
"Why don't we open a bed-and-breakfast?"
"Well, I don't know. A lot of reasons, I guess. Do we want to open a B and B? I mean, we'd talked about opening one here."
"Well, yeah. But this place is so small and remote. They do very well in towns, you know. With Freder-icksburg's charm, it's natural that tourists would rather stay in a B and B. And the house is big enoughespecially with the guesthouse and if we converted the carriage housethat we would still have plenty of room for ourselves."
"And you'd want to run this?"
"For starters, I could. I mean, we'd have to hire some help, but I've been thinking. There must be dozens and dozens of towns like Fredericksburg across the country. We could do the same thing there."
He must be more tired than he thought. "The same what?"
"Open B and Bs. Make them high class but accessible. And here's the best part." She reached out and took his hand. "We could stock Sonntag wine. You could turn down Barrington's deal."
He blinked, trying to process everything she was saying. Then he sat up, deciding that a prone position wasn't the best for focusing. Not with his near-naked fiancee right next to him.
"Let me get this straight. You want to turn Sonntag House into a B and B, then maybe start a chain of B and Bs across the country?"
"Right."
"And the chain would stock Sonntag wine."
"Exclusively."
"Sounds good," he said. "Except my cash flow problem is now, and this B and B chain doesn't yet exist. And whose chain would it be, anyway? Marv's Motor Inn is hardly the image you're talking about."
She frowned a bit at that. "Yeah, I know. I was thinking that he could be an investor, but that we'd be the face behind the chain. Maybe a subsidiary of the holding company Pop set up. I don't think that name is very public, so it wouldn't mar the image too much."
He gaped at her. He'd known that she was sharper than Marv gave her credit for, and he'd also known that she was getting the hang of the motel business. It made sense, of course. She was smart, and she'd grown up in the business world. She had to have picked tidbits up here and there. But what he hadn't known was just how deeplyand how wellshe'd processed all the information.
"That sounds good," he admitted. "But it still doesn't address the winery's immediate cash flow problems."
"No," she said. "It doesn't. I was thinking that you and I should form a partnership"
"I think we are, babe."
She gave him a quick kiss for that. " A business partnership, and the partnership can buy Sonntag House. The purchase money can be invested into the winery. And then, by the time Sonntag House is refurbished, the B and B corporation will be up and running and we can transfer the title into the business."
"I think you forgot one little thing."
Her brow furrowed. "I did?"
"How is our partnership going to get the money to buy Sonntag House? Your dad? Because I don't think I could agree to that. It would be too much like coming full circle."
"Oh, no. I don't need to ask Pop. I can just use my own money."
"Your own money? You just said you didn't have any money." He frowned. "And besides, do you have any idea how much Sonntag House is appraised for? It may be a shambles, but this is prime commercial real estate. And we're talking over an acre of land here."
"I know," she said, tossing out a figure that was remarkably accurate. "I can get that in a snap. I have way more than that in my trust fund."
He couldn't stop staring at her. "Julia, sweetheart, you just told me you couldn't access your trust."
"I can't. Not for just anything. But I totally forgot about the exceptions. I've been allowed to use a percentage of the principal and interest to purchase real estate since I was twenty-five. I just never have, so the possibility never even entered my mind." She bounced a little. "It's a brilliant plan, don't you think?"
"Jesus," he said.
"Roman?" Her brow furrowed and she was looking at him with some concern.
"Sorry. I just didn't realize. I mean, I never imagined you could get your hands on that kind of money."
"But that's a good thing, right? That I can get the money. It can totally solve your problem. Our problem."
He rubbed his temples, trying to get rid of the thought that pretty soon she'd be able to buy and sell him several times over. So much for feeling needed.
"Roman? What's wrong?"
He shook his head. "Nothing, babe. Nothing's wrong at all." And it wasn't. So why did he feel so numb?
"Honey bear? Do you really think this is a good idea?" Myrna's voice was whiny, but at least she kept to a whisper. Marv hadn't wanted to bring her along, but she'd hauled her butt out of bed and blocked the doorway. For a woman who usually resembled a mouse, at times she could be as stubborn as an elephant.
He'd given in because he didn't have any choice. No one knew just how much he gave in to the woman. She was his weakness, damn it all. And, yeah, he loved her.
"Marv? Did you hear me?"
" Shhhh . Yeah, babe, I heard ya. Do you want everyone else to hear you, too?"
"Who's gonna hear? Nobody's awake in this town except us."
"Let's keep it that way." It was a quarter past two, and she was right. The place was dead quiet. A streetlamp on Main mixed with the motel's exterior light to give some illumination. But they weren't at the front of the motel. They'd gone out the back and now they were creeping along Orange, moving around the fence until they reached Sonntag House.
He paused at the corner of the property, Myrna so close behind he could feel her breath on his neck. "Damn it all, it shoulda been mine."
"What would you've done with it, anyway?
Ripped it down? Built a bigger one of those?" she asked, waving her hand back toward the Inn. "It's a pretty house. I'm glad it's still standing."
He turned long enough to scowl at her. "Don't you go traitor on me, too. I got enough of that from Julia."
"She's in love, honey bear. And I think he loves her, too."
Marv made a rude noise, then tugged at her hand. "Come on then," he said. "Let's go see what was so all-fired important they had to hang on to this shambles of a house. I asked around, you know. They held on to it, but they didn't have the money to fix it up." From what he'd heard, the litigation and the decline in the oil market had hit the family hard. "It's been sittin' here for the last fifteen years, just falling into ruin." He wanted to feel some glee about thatas if he'd won in the end after allbut somehow he couldn't work up the energy to gloat.
The front and back doors were both locked, but Marv wiggled a window and managed to get it to open.
"Marv, I don't know. What if there's an alarm" His wife's face scrunched up with concern.
"Baby, we're in bumfucksville. No one's got alarms." He hoped.
Figuring he had nothing to lose, he hoisted his leg over the windowsill, then tried to climb through. One of the curses of his life was being short, and he got stuck. He grunted a bit, then felt his wife's hands on his haunches, shoving him throug
h. He landed on his keister with a thud and scowled up at her. She shrugged and offered a tiny smile as she picked her way through the window after him.
"Hmmmph," he said, looking around. The room they were in was open and mostly unfinished, with stripped wallpaper and sanded but unfinished floors under their feet. "Not much to look at considering all the time he's spent here."
Myrna kept quiet, but she started poking around. After a second, he heard her call from the kitchen. "Honey bear, come check in here."
He got there, saw she'd turned the light on, and immediately flipped it off.
"But how can we see if we can't have a light?"
He handed her one of the penlights he'd brought. She didn't look happy, but she clicked it on and aimed it at the cabinets.
"Well, well," Marv said. "Lookey heah."
Myrna nodded. "Pretty nice, huh? And Julia said Roman was doing most of the work himself."
Marv grunted, not ready to like the guy even though he had to admit that the kitchen was pretty damn nice. "Cabinets need another coat of stain."
Myrna just pursed her lips and aimed her penlight into the dining room. An antique chandelier hung there, its facets reflecting the light like a million diamonds. "Oh, honey bear, this is class. Pure class, no question about it."
"Don't mean a thing," Marv said, unwilling to be charmed. "They don't know each other worth spit. Julia's moon-headed over some buff cowboy, and the broke cowboy's just after her money. Probably hoping if he keeps piddling away at fixing this place up, she'll pump some money into it and they can sell at a profit."
"I don't know. I've seen the way he looks at her."
Marv didn't want to think about that, so he headed on upstairs, leaving Myrna in his wake.
The bedrooms were in various stages of progress, with the original furniture shoved to the middle of the rooms to make way for the electrical and aesthetic work going on in the walls. But it was a small sitting room just off the landing that caught Marv's attention.
The walls were painted a muted and familiar shade of pink, and there was a long chaise lounge, just like the kind his princess had had in her bedroom growing up. A vanity was centered against another wall, a drawing table and desk on another. A window box filled with flowers anchored the room.
Marv snorted. "Guess we know which room he set our little girl loose in."
When Myrna didn't answer right away, he turned to see her looking down at a spiral-bound notebook sitting open on the vanity. "What you got there?"
She held it out to him, a little smile tugging at her mouth, and her eyes so bright he could see them sparkle even in the thin light the penlights provided. "I don't think she's seen it yet."
Marv scanned the page, his brain slowly processing the information. The handwriting was cramped and masculine, without any of Julia's girlish flourishes. And the notes were cryptic, as if someone was trying to remember every little thing he'd been told. The notes tracked the room, and with a start, Marv realized what he was looking atRoman was making a sanctuary for his little girl.
He couldn't know for certain, but something in his gut told him that this room was a secret. That Satan's spawn had gone out of his way to do this nice thing for Marv's little princess.
He shuffled a bit, then tossed the notebook back down on the vanity, not sure how he felt about that.
"Marv?"
"Come on," he said, his voice more gruff than he intended. "We should get the hell out of here before someone sees us."
And with that, he left, and didn't once look back.
* * *
Chapter Fourteen
Surprise your guests with thoughtful welcome gifts: maps of the town, local products, hand and body lotions. It's your wedding, but it's also an event. Memories are fabulous, but everyone loves goodies. Make yours the talk of the town!
from Wedding Tips and Bridal Secrets
Roman stared at his computer screen, willing the numbers on the Excel spreadsheet to expand to fill a vacuum.
No luck.
The winery was running against tough times, and he had to make some decisions.
Fortunately, he had options. Unfortunately, he didn't like any of them.
On the one hand, he could enlist Alex's skill as a venture capitalist, sending his friend out to drum up investment dollars. But that meant selling pieces of the business in some form or other, and the winery had always been family owned and operated.
Strike one.
He got up and moved from the desk to the window, passing the still unmade bed as he went. Julia had gotten up at the crack of dawn, eager to get on the road to Austin and find the perfect dress.
He'd turned down the offer to go with her, and she'd left him with a list of places to call about finding a new location. So far, he'd called the city (the park was already booked), the local VFW Lodge (no answer), and still had four more places on his telephone list.
He'd have to handle that later. Right now, he needed to deal with the business.
He thought again about Julia and the hurdles she was leaping as the wedding approached. He knew she was worried about the little details, along with the larger ones like the location and the dress. More, he knew he should have gone into Austin with her. She certainly wanted him to.
But at the same time, he also knew that she didn't want him to see the dress before the wedding, which meant they would have parted waysshe to go shopping, he to meet with Barrington and possibly strike a deal.
A deal he no longer needed because of Julia's money.
He frowned. He'd told her he was going to stay at home and catch up on work at the winery. The unspoken implication, of course, was that he wasn't going to pursue the Barrington deal. And why would he, after she'd so generously offered her own funds?
He sighed, running his palm over his unshaven jaw as he looked out over the vines and the grapes, ripe and bloated and ready for the harvest.
He should be happy his fiancee had the financial wherewithal to help him weather this storm. He should be thrilled. So, he wondered, why wasn't he?
Julia had never been a slouch about shopping, but this was ridiculous. She'd hit Austin at ten on the nose, and by two thirty she'd been through every single bridal boutique, department store and even resale shop in the Greater Austin Metropolitan area.
Nothing. Nada. Zip.
Not one dress that tickled her fancy. Nothing that sent her into fantasies of walking down the aisle, twirling with Roman on the dance floor, laughing as they shared a piece of wedding cake. Just nothing.
The way it was going, she'd end up wearing a nice white suit. Maybe Chanel. And she'd tell everyone she did it on purpose. A fashion statement.
Except that wasn't what she wanted. She wanted a Princess Di kind of dress. Tulle and bones and a train and yards and yards of silk.
Apparently, she wasn't going to find the dress today.
Now she was zooming down Highway 290, passing Johnson City as she got close to Fredericksburg. Ramshackle buildings advertising GOOD STUFF dotted the wildflower-lush landscape. Stands of fresh peaches and beef jerky were spaced at appetizing intervals in front of fields housing roaming cows. Things she'd thought so odd when she'd first arrived now seemed perfectly normal. Charming, even.
Very little of the landscape actually filtered through the haze in her brain, though. She was too focused on her dress crisis. She knew what she had to do; she just didn't want to.
Still, it was already Wednesday. Tomorrow was her bachelorette party. Friday the rehearsal. And on Saturday, she was getting married. She was fresh out of time.
And that meant she had no choice.
Reluctantly, she reached into the passenger seat for her phone, then punched in "7," the speed-dial she'd programmed weeks ago.
One ring. Two rings. Three. And then "Hi, you've reached Breckin at With This Ring. Leave a message after the beep, and I'll get back to you with all the ways to make your wedding special."
She considered hanging up, but reminded
herself that she was down to the wire. "Breckin? This is Julia Spinelli. Um, about our little disagreement. I was, um, wondering if maybe we could have coffee today and talk about it? I well, maybe I was a little hasty. So, um, anyway. If you're free, could you come by the Inn around six? I'll be in the conference roomwe're hosting Ann Marie's book groupbut I can get away long enough to chat. Anyway. Thanks."
She closed her phone, her face burning. She had been right to fire him, and she hated that she now had to come crawling back. But she wanted the big fancy weddinghad always wanted it. And if she had to eat a little crow to get it well, bon appetit! * * *
Julia perched on a stool behind the reception counter, three different bridal magazines open in front of her, and the computer browser aimed at the fashion section of theknot.com. She might be working at the Inn, but she'd be damned if she'd waste time that could be spent on her dress quest.
She heard a clatter in the hallway, then the telltale rumble of her father clearing his throat.
And then they appeared. Julia tried to stifle a gasp, but couldn't quite manage. They just looked so silly.
Marv , with his round little Napoleon body, had crammed his feet into a pair of royal blue cowboy boots. His stubby thighs strained against the dark blue denim of a pair of Wranglers, which were capped off by a belt buckle the size of, well, Texas. It gleamed silver under the lobby's fluorescent light, and she could see that it was in the shape of a star appropriate for the Lone Star State, of courseinlaid with an etching of one of the state's famous longhorn cattle. He'd topped the outfit with a western-style shirtalready sweat-stained under the sleevesa string tie and a pristine cowboy hat worn low enough on his head that she couldn't see his eyes.
He looked ridiculous, but not quite as silly as Myrna, who was wearing a similar outfit in even more glaring colors. At least her mother was coordinated, though. Pink cowboy boots matched the pink shirt, pink string tie, and pink cowboy hat. The bloodred lipstick, however, clashed a bit.
What the devil were her parents up to? For a mo-ment, she feared they were making fun, but then her mother smiled and did a little pirouette. "We're getting into the spirit. What do you think?"