I looked away as I felt my body react. While Dad didn’t have a policy against dating clients, it wasn’t exactly professional. Maybe once we were done with her café, I’d ask her out, but fornow, I needed to keep my hands to myself and my mind on her building—not her body.
She led me deeper into the space toward the long wall that separated us from her coffeeshop next door.
“I want to knock down as much of this wall as possible. I know it’s load-bearing, so whatever we have to do to make it work is fine. I can live with columns. Nearly this entire side will be café seating space. We need to reconfigure the kitchen at the coffeeshop and incorporate the back-room area of this building to make a larger prep space.”
“What about that?” I pointed to the staircase coming down in one corner that led to the second floor. “Do you want to leave it or move it?”
“I think it depends on what you can do under it and on the second floor.” She changed direction, walking over to the old oak baluster, patinaed dark with age. “Above the coffeeshop is just storage. A lot of the walls have plaster chipped off, and the floors are so worn there’s no gloss left on the wood. I just store extra supplies up there. Here, the second floor has been better maintained, but I’m not sure what to do with it. I don’t really want to put seating up there. For one, I don’t think I’ll have the business to support that much table space. This is Parker’s Landing, after all, not Juneau. And two, it would put a larger workload on my servers to have to carry trays up and down the stairs, not to mention make it more dangerous.”
Staring at the stairs, I chewed on the inside of my bottom lip, contemplating uses for the space. “You could try to find a tenant to rent the upstairs, either for a business or as an apartment. We can convert it to either. A shop would cost less, especially if you have an agreement with the tenant to let them and their customers use your bathrooms.”
“Okay. That’s sort of along the lines of what I was thinking. If we can just clean up the upstairs for both sides, and maybe addsome shelving, I’ll look into renters. I can put a small giftshop up there and sell branded merchandise and other kitchen-type things myself as well.”
“That’s not a problem. I looked up the plans for this building and for the coffeeshop before I came. We shouldn’t have to do much more than knock down walls and support the roof. All your plumbing on both sides is on the interior wall between the back rooms and the main store areas.” A corner of my mouth kicked up. “Gotta love Alaska’s cold. Keeps things off the outer walls.”
“Usually,” she said with an answering smile.
We wandered around the vacant space, including the upstairs, for several minutes. I took some notes, like adding an extra dumpster for the junk the previous owner left. There were also some cracks in the walls I wanted to investigate. In an old building, usually they were due to age, but we could get some earthquakes here, so there could be issues with the foundation.
As we passed through the door to the back room, I eyed the wall separating the space, noting some discoloration. It looked like there might be some water damage.
My eyes tracked toward the ceiling. It was clear, but that didn’t mean water hadn’t run down the wall cavity.
I added a note to my list to check the roof.
“So, how soon do you think you can start?”
Looking up, I was struck again by Mina’s beauty. Her alpine blue eyes shone like twin beacons.
She raised a hand to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, the movement quite graceful.
She asked you a question, Decker.
Clearing my throat as my subconscious mind admonished me, I glanced around the space. “I can get a crew in here for demo Monday. I don’t need permits to knock anything down, except the wall between the buildings. A lot of the cosmeticstuff—refinishing the floors, replacing drywall, paint—can all be done without much fuss. As for connecting the spaces, I’ll have the plans drawn up this week”—I paused, remembering all the other projects on my plate now—“or early next week. Once you look them over and approve them, I’ll submit permits. But there will be plenty to keep the crews busy until we get approval for knocking down the common wall.”
The corners of her eyes crinkled as she bestowed a bright smile on me. “Great. That actually works out well. I want to go through the stuff Mr. Shuman left behind. I can do that the rest of this week and clear some of this out.” A small furrow formed between her eyebrows as she glanced at the art lining the one wall.
“Would you like me to drop off a dumpster before Monday?”
The furrow disappeared. “That would be amazing. I was wondering where I could find one on short notice.”
“I have one at the yard. I’ll bring it over this evening and put it out back. Does that work?”
She nodded. “That’s perfect, thank you.”
“Not a problem. I actually already had it on my list.” I turned my notepad around so she could see where I’d written, “Dumpster for junk.”
Mina chuckled. “That’s what a lot of it is too.” She sighed. “He said he would clean it out.” She shook her head. “It’s not as full as it was when I looked at the place before putting in an offer, but his definition of cleaning it out and mine are wildly different.”
I agreed. The space should be empty of anything not bolted down. “Don’t worry about it, though. Anything you don’t get through, my crew and I will pitch.”
“Can you guys remove the old shelving units and displays out there?” She gestured to the main store.
“Of course.” It truly wouldn’t be an issue. We could roll a lot of it right out the door and into a dumpster. The rest we could smash up and carry out in pieces. In fact, I hoped most of it was too wide to fit through the door. Demolition days were great stress relievers, and God knew I needed some of that in my life.
“Perfect.” Mina’s sunny smile made another return.
Seeing that more often would ease some stress as well. She had a gorgeous smile. It lit up her entire face.
