“I thought so too,” I admitted, the raw truth scraping out of me. “But even if we were to have made things work, she wasnever going to marry me. Which is why I started on plan B last week.”
Amber nodded slowly, her gaze understanding but not prying. She didn’t push and I was grateful for it.
“What do you say?” I asked, meeting each of their eyes in turn. “Are you in this with me?”
Ralph leaned forward, his earlier impatience gone. His face was serious now, all traces of jest wiped clean by the gravity of the moment. “What do you need from us, boss?”
I looked at him, then at the others. “Time,” I said simply, “and a place.”
The sharpslapof a palm hitting the bar jolted me out of my spiraling thoughts. I blinked, startled, and looked up to see Cam grinning. His eyes sparkled with mischief, the kind that danced dangerously close to madness, but behind it all, there was pride—pure, unfiltered pride—like he’d just unearthed the answer to every problem we’d ever faced.
“What’s this?” I asked as he shoved a crumpled packet of paper toward me.
“This,” he declared, leaning forward with the kind of theatrical flair that could’ve sold snake oil, “is where we makeAbbott’s 2.0.”
I unfolded the paper, my brow furrowing as I took in the advertisement for a building; floor plans, rough sketches of what I think was supposed to be a restaurant, and a handful of grainy photos.
“It’s an inn,” I said flatly.
Cam’s grin didn’t falter. He snatched the pages and flipped through the packet with a dramatic flourish. “No,” he corrected,tapping an image with triumph. “It’s abeachsideinn and restaurant. And it’scheap. Technically, it’s in Ponte Vedra, but it’s only a fifteen-minute drive from here.”
I squinted at the faded images—peeling paint, cracked tile, sagging railings. “Cam, this place is falling apart and Inns come with restrictions and codes we’ve never dealt with before.”
It was like I hadn’t even spoken. Cam flipped to another page and countered, “It doesn’thaveto be an inn. We can renovate the suites upstairs—there are twelve of them—and make you a three or four bedroom condo.”
I lifted a brow. “Ihavea condo.”
He waved me off like I was missing the point. “Sell it. Rent it out. Who cares? Becausethis—” he jabbed the page hard enough to crinkle it, “—is a goldmine.”
The words hung in the air, too bold, too brash, but something in them tugged at me. I sighed, my mind churning with what-ifs and half-formed plans. “Say we renovate six suites and build me a killer home, what about the rest?”
Cam’s grin stretched wider, practically daring me to dream bigger. “We combine singles into two-bedroom apartments. Fair warning, I’m moving into one.”
I scoffed. “Oh, you are?”
“Hell, yeah! And if we combine these two over here,” he said, pointing to a corner of the floor plan, “Amber could move in too. It would give her a place to work and somewhere her kid can be safe while she does.”
I glanced at Amber across the bar. She shrugged, a slow smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, and I realized Cam had already gone to her first. Possibly the others, too.
“You’ve really thought this through,” I murmured, a thread of admiration slipping into my voice.
“Damn right I have.” He nudged the paper closer. “Look at the price.”
I did, and my jaw clenched. It was cheap—toocheap. “It needs work.”
“Itdoes,” Cam admitted, his grin undeterred. “But my brother’s construction company can knock it out in no time.”
“How much time is ‘no time’?”
“Six months tops,” he said confidently, as if it were already a done deal.
“I have three.” A little less if he were counting, but rounding up sounded easier than saying two months, three weeks, and four days.
Cam shrugged, unfazed by my ticking timeline. “Do you want it done or doneright?”
I turned to Amber, who’d been watching me, reading my reactions. I needed her to be my bar manager on this one. She needed to love the location, but even more so if she were to live there. “What do you think?”
After a long moment, Amber said, “I think that if we’re doing this, we need to do it right. It’s not just a fresh start for you, but for all of us. And...” She swallowed hard. “If you’re open to the idea, we threw around the possibility of being partners. I couldn’t afford to contribute much, but I’d finally have something that would be mine.”
