by Karis Walsh
“Honestly, your best option would be to have the building removed and sell the land as a residential plot. The zoning is right. You could develop it yourself and put a house or two on the property, but you probably wouldn’t recoup the expenses.”
She gave Tace an estimate of what she’d make on the land alone. Tace kept her face relaxed, but she felt her heart shrink inside her. The price was barely half what she had given Kyle. Not nearly enough to repay the second mortgage.
Tace stared at Joan. She’d expected to sell a brewery, not an unattractive piece of land. “But the equipment is well-maintained, and it’s producing good beer. Why wouldn’t someone want to give the business a chance?”
Joan gave her a smile that verged on condescending. “If this land were…well, more attractive, this might be a suitable location for a new winery. But anyone in the market for that type of property will want enough acreage for some vineyards, a place for receptions or weddings, and a large enough building to accommodate wine tasting tour groups. Something in the hills would be preferable to a valley like yours. I’m sure you could make some money selling the equipment to other microbreweries.”
Tace looked around. Late-blooming wildflowers dotted the variegated greens of grass and weeds. The skinny little cat was crouched near the woodpile and gobbling the food she’d left. She couldn’t see the bearded brewer in the shadows of the building’s interior, but she was sure he was lurking there and watching her and Joan.
Above all, the beer tasted great. Wasn’t that the most important thing? “What if the brewery was making money? Wouldn’t someone want to buy it then?”
Joan shrugged. “I suppose if it were a viable business opportunity, you’d have the potential for finding a buyer.” She glanced around again, her attention seeming to rest on the parking lot. “But operating costs will be expensive, and I’d advise against investing any more money if you aren’t certain you’ll get it back.”
Joan had assessed her car, the brewery, her and had found them lacking. Tace felt a surprising desire to prove her wrong. She wasn’t sure why—she usually didn’t care what other people thought of her or her financial situation. As long as she was getting by and helping Chris with school. But something about this place…
She could do most of the maintenance work herself. Spruce up the property and bring in some tourists to taste—and buy—the beer. How hard could it be to sell beer in a college town? God, she sounded like Kyle, the dreamer in the family. Not like herself at all.
Besides, Joan was right. No matter how much mowing and trimming she did on her own, there’d be expenses involved. A salary for the brewer, state and federal licenses, at the very least. She could add more hours at the store, but her wages were too low and wouldn’t make it worthwhile, especially since she’d need to spend time here. She’d be crazy to even consider it.
“Shall we go back to the office and sign the paperwork?” Joan asked, her voice clearly confident that Tace would listen to her and unload the property as soon as possible.
Yes. Say yes. But all she could see was an imagined picture of the two tiny rooms in the attic of her old house. They had originally been her and Chris’s bedrooms, but when her father passed and she moved downstairs, she had gotten the small bedrooms and the Jack and Jill bathroom painted and cleaned. They were empty now, but the rent from two boarders ought to be enough to get the brewery up and running. She’d have to share her kitchen—yuk—but it wouldn’t be permanent. And where did one find temporary boarders, only interested in leasing a room for a semester or two? Tace sighed. The college.
“Thanks for your advice, Joan, but I think I can get the brewery going. Maybe I’ll contact you when I’m ready to sell it as a functioning business.”
But probably not. She wouldn’t let Joan profit from her hard work if she managed to make the brewery a success. And she sure as hell didn’t want to give her a chance to gloat if she failed.
CHAPTER FOUR
Berit sat slumped against the door of the taxi. She’d just endured a long twelve hours on planes and in airports, and her back ached with a ferocity she’d never experienced before. She was accustomed to being uncomfortable, but over the course of this day she’d been humiliated, undignified, and helpless. Now she added cranky to the list.
If she survived this year and managed to walk again, she’d do so with a newfound appreciation of and sympathy for anyone needing a wheelchair for mobility. The airports had been completely accessible, of course, with ramps and elevators and cloyingly helpful porters, but the actual experience of using them had been much more challenging than she’d anticipated. She’d had airline attendants pushing her from gate to gate calling Excuse us! Wheelchair coming through! She’d had those same attendants stand outside her bathroom stall every time she’d had to use a toilet. Seeing their feet stationed just on the other side of the half-door had been worse than sharing an open-air latrine with a jumble of other archaeologists. Far, far worse had been when she’d lost her balance in the handicapped stall in the Denver airport bathroom and pushed her chair out of reach. She’d nearly had to ask for help, but she’d managed to catch herself with the guardrail and had used her foot to pull the chair close enough to grab with her free hand.
Her doctors and therapists had warned her against doing too much too soon, but she hadn’t seen how coming to this tiny, godforsaken town and teaching a few classes could possibly be considered doing too much. On the last leg of her flight, though, from Seattle to Walla Walla, she’d sat stiffly in the tight seat on the Bombardier turboprop and wondered if she’d made a huge mistake. She could barely stand the trip to get from Florida, where she’d been since her return to the States, to the backwoods of Washington State. Over the course of her career, she’d spent hundreds of hours in rickety little planes, a few with nothing more than a canvas tarp as a door and more than one without a working radio, and the seventy-some seat plane would normally have seemed luxurious as the Concorde to her. Instead, she’d shifted and winced and wished she hadn’t thrown out the pain pills her doctor had prescribed. The scenery below offered little distraction. Fields and barren hills. Deep gouges and steep basalt ridges left behind after millennia of glacial and volcanic activity. Boring. She could dig all day and probably find nothing more than rocks.
After a tedious day of travel, the taxi ride to her new lodging was much too short. She wasn’t prepared to meet her landlord and have to ask for help getting settled in her rooms. She was also uncomfortably aware that she hadn’t mentioned her injury when she’d e-mailed this Stacy person about the space she had available. She’d hoped to be more mobile by now, although it had only been a few weeks since her accident and the surgery to fuse her two cracked vertebrae. She was still wheelchair bound, however, except for brief forays to the toilet or into bed. She’d been warned repeatedly about the serious damage she could do if she pushed herself and injured her back again before it was fully healed. Paralysis. A permanent limp, constant pain, and a lifetime in her wheelchair. She wasn’t sure if her doctors were merely being thoroughly pessimistic or not, but she had to resist her usual blasé attitude toward health-care providers and actually listen to what they were telling her.
Except for this job. She couldn’t stand to sit still for months, with nothing to do. Kim’s offer of an academic-year-long job at Whitman sounded dull, but at least it was something to do. She could use the time to write another book, do the minimum required to skate through her classes, and give her spine time to recuperate. She looked at the quiet residential neighborhood passing by outside the taxi window. As soon as she had the go-ahead from her doctors, she was out of here.
The cab parked outside a yellow- and white-trimmed house. Old by American standards—practically brand new by Berit’s—the home looked tidy and cared for. Walking or wheeling distance from the campus. Two rooms and a private bathroom—heavenly, considering the accommodations Berit had left in Peru. A shared kitchen and living space with one person. Delightful. But right
now, Berit would give just about anything to be back on the dig, hiking to the stinky latrine and trying to muffle the snores of her bunkmates with a questionably clean pillow held over her head.
The cab driver got Berit’s chair out of the trunk and came to her door to help her get out. She was carefully transferring her annoyingly fragile body from car to seat when she noticed a woman standing on the front porch. At the top of a flight of wooden stairs. Of course she’d have stairs—how many houses had Berit seen with them in her lifetime? Now, something she’d taken for granted and barely gave any attention to loomed before her like an insurmountable obstacle. And at the top of them, unreachable as a goddess, was—she presumed—her sexy new landlord. Damn. Long legs shown to perfection by khaki shorts. Short being the operative word. A snug teal V-neck shirt revealed small breasts and a thin waist. She looked muscular and slender at the same time. Outdoorsy and down-to-earth. Exactly the kind of distraction Berit needed during her months in purgatory. Unfortunately, vigorous sex was off the table for the time being.
Berit wheeled up the path leading to the door and met her landlord as she descended the stairs.
“Are you Stacy Lomond?” Up close, she was even more beautiful than her gorgeous figure had led Berit to expect. Her mouth turned up in the corners, as if she were perpetually about to smile, and her eyes were a clear spring green. The openness implied by these two features was contradicted by the shape of those crystal eyes. Almond-shaped? Cat’s eyes? Neither phrase did them justice. The enticing slant of her eyes and brows gave them an exotic look, and Berit pictured them gazing at her over the edge of a silky, gold-filigreed veil. Hiding a mystery. Berit wanted to dig her fingers deep into Stacy’s short, thick hair and kiss her until she gave up all her secrets. She gripped the arms of her chair instead. She was apparently addle-brained after an arduous day of traveling.
Stacy hesitated a moment before approaching Berit and shaking her hand with a firm grip. “Everyone calls me Tace. You must be Berit Katsaros? I wasn’t expecting…Did you mention you were…?”
“In a wheelchair? No, I seem to have forgotten to tell you. It’s a new experience for me.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
Berit hated the look of sympathy she saw in Tace’s lovely eyes. She’d seen it over and over since her accident. She had never been in this position before, and she knew she wasn’t handling it with as much dignity and grace as she should. Usually at this point she made some joke to break the tension and keep herself from buying into the self-pity she felt rising within her. You should see the guy I landed on! It was only funny because Mark had come out of the fall with a bodysuit of colorful bruises, but nothing more serious. She had managed to land on her back on the edge of a worktable before rolling off it and coming to rest on top of Mark.
Berit didn’t feel like joking now. The sun was already starting to set, casting a pinkish glow over them, and she was exhausted. She could normally curl up in the corner of a trench and take a nap, but now she craved a soft bed and warm blankets. And the comforting arms of someone like Tace Lomond. She’d usually be flirting by now, confident in her ability to get a woman in and back out of her bed with equal ease. Instead, she was looking up at Tace, seeing the pity and doubt in her expression, and feeling—yet again—completely helpless.
“I’m sorry, too,” she said, with a biting snap in her voice. “I wasn’t even supposed to be on that dig, but I thought I’d help some fellow scientists while I had a break between my normal jobs. Stupid rain seeped in and eroded the shelf between the levels, and we fell through. My injury will heal, but for now…I really don’t want to be here”—Berit pointed at her lap—“or here.” She gestured around her, indicating the whole damned town.
She half expected Tace to respond to her angry tone and yell back at her. The thought was oddly appealing. Berit wasn’t afraid to speak her mind, but she never actively sought out debates or arguments. She felt tightly wound after her trek across country, and her futile attraction to Tace exacerbated her anxiety.
“I haven’t made any preparations,” Tace said, “and your rooms are on the second floor, in what used to be the attic.” Instead of responding to her provocation, Tace’s voice and expression remained calm and irritatingly aloof.
“Then I guess I’ll need to find somewhere else to stay,” Berit said. She pushed hard against the wheels of her chair and backed over the toes of the cab driver who had come up behind her with her duffel bag. He swore and stepped back, dropping her bag.
“Jesus,” Berit said, her anger dissipating and leaving her deflated and ready to drop. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were right there.”
“Just came to get my money,” he said, sounding as if he’d absorbed her negative emotions.
Berit frowned. She was spreading joy everywhere she went. “You’ll need to drive me to a hotel, I suppose. I’ll find a new place to rent in the morning.”
He looked about as pleased by the proposition of stuffing Berit and her belongings back into his cab as she felt about being stuffed in there. He sighed and picked up the bag. “Won’t be able to find a hotel room in town this week.”
“He’s right,” Tace said. “With school starting next week, everything will be booked. And finding another place to rent won’t be easy, either. Maybe we can work something out.”
“Like what? Do you want to just wheel me into the garage?” Berit asked, waving toward the gentle slope of the driveway. On second thought, it might not be a bad idea. She could park in a quiet corner and let herself fall asleep…
“I hope this isn’t rude or insensitive, but…can we help you up these few stairs? You can stay in my room, and tomorrow I’ll move my stuff into the attic. Until…for as long as you need.”
Berit looked at Tace and felt the fog of self-absorption fade. Tace seemed almost desperate to keep her there. The house was decent, and the neighborhood nice enough, but maybe she needed the money from rent as much as Berit needed a place to rest.
“I don’t know. You can’t be here every time I come in or out of the house.” Berit wanted to help both of them by staying, especially Tace. Her own weariness seemed to ease when she saw the worry lines appear on Tace’s forehead when she frowned. She’d either stay, or have Kim help her find students to lease the rooms she was leaving vacant.
“I can get a ramp installed out here,” Tace said. “The stairs to the attic rooms are too steep to maneuver even with a ramp, so getting upstairs would be impossible. Although you could get down easily enough, as long as you didn’t mind using the kitchen island as a brake.”
Tace’s mouth turned up in a smile, fulfilling the promise of its natural shape, and Berit felt her breath hitch in her chest. The thought of being in Tace’s bed, between her sheets, was enticing, even though Berit couldn’t do much beyond sleep. And she desperately needed to sleep. The sky, once it had started moving toward dusk, was darkening rapidly.
“Okay. We can give it a try.”
Tace hadn’t realized how tense she was until Berit’s words made her relax with a sigh of relief. She’d been dreading the invasion of her home by a college professor, but she needed the money enough to make her disregard her personal concerns. She slung the duffel bag over her shoulder and carried it inside, then walked back out to meet Berit as she wheeled herself toward the stairs.
Tace had been torn when Berit answered her ad about the rooms for rent. She’d been planning to have two students, but Berit wanted one room for a bedroom and the other for a study. Tace’s age would have given her a slight advantage over college kids, and they’d be unlikely to care much about her or her education. A professor, an adult, might be more patronizing toward her, but less likely to have parties or a constant stream of drunken friends over to visit. In the end, Tace had gone with the numbers. Berit was only one person, as opposed to two students. Plus, she’d offered more rent money since she wanted to occupy the entire suite. A win-win for Tace.
When Berit got to the bottom of the stairs
, Tace held her arm out and supported Berit as she stood up. The cab driver came along to help, albeit with a reluctant expression—probably still angry about the run-in between his toes and the wheelchair. Berit waved him off, however, and gave him the cab fare. He seemed happy to go, and Tace had a feeling Berit didn’t want more people than necessary to see her awkward ascent of the stairs.
She wrapped her arm around Berit’s waist and tried to ignore the suddenly heated sensation in her left side where their bodies were in contact. She’d come out to greet her tenant and had been stunned by her beauty. Short blond hair, cut in a pixie style with wispy ends, and big blue eyes were common enough, but Berit had the timeless look of someone who could have been a movie star in any decade. Her beauty spanned generations. Her nose was gracefully slender, and her skin flawless. A slightly square jaw kept her from being too perfect and made her look unique instead. Tace had been so enraptured she hadn’t noticed the chair until she herself was walking down the stairs toward Berit and she realized her house wasn’t accessible any other way. The back entrance had just as many steps.
Tace felt the contours of some sort of brace under her arm. Berit’s voice had been angry when she spoke, but Tace heard something deeper. Pain, weariness, frustration? More emotions than simple surliness. So Tace had not only insisted Berit come in—instead of accepting the reprieve and letting her go somewhere else—but she’d offered her own rooms as well. Partly because she really did need the rent money. Mostly, however, she wanted to help erase the tension and hurt on Berit’s face.
Berit kept one hand on the railing and held tightly to Tace with her other one. They climbed slowly up the five steps, and Tace left Berit leaning against the doorway to rest while she jogged down the steps and retrieved the chair. She carried it across the threshold and helped Berit sit down again.