Unable to help it, I smiled.
"You like her!" Liam said. "You better not screw this up. I want her to do some marketing work for Platinum Provisions. Jack thinks if he gets her and Chloe together in a room to come up with some product ideas, they'll basically start spinning gold."
* * *
I didn'tlike the idea of my brother having designs on Josie's time. I barely saw her as it was. She worked late every night on the marketing campaign.
I missed having her at home, and it wasn't just for her cooking, though the kids certainly missed it. After dinner, I went back to the office to meet up with Josie. She was waiting for me in the lobby.
"Are you too tired for a date night?" I asked after I kissed her.
"You mean a late-night date night?" she asked. "I've had a lot of coffee and chocolate, so I'm down. Where are we going?"
"Somewhere cool." I'd been plotting all afternoon. I drove her across town to the Mast Brothers’ Chocolate factory. Using the code Archer had given me, I unlocked the padlock at the gate.
"Do you own this too?" Josie asked.
"Unfortunately not," I said. "It would be much easier if we did. Then Archer could just have it. He's going to have to convince the owner to sell."
"I hope he's not tearing down these cool old buildings," Josie said as we drove through the silent complex. "Did it belong to the Harrogates?"
“Two of Harrogate’s sons had this chocolate factory. Mast Brothers’ Chocolate doesn't exist anymore, but the building complex still remains," I said as I parked the car and grabbed the picnic basket out of the back. It was a smaller one than the big trunks we had taken to the train park.
"You packed snacks!" Josie said, wrapping her arms around me and kissing me.
"You're working really hard. You deserve a reward," I replied, pressing her close to me.
"If Archer turns this into a conference center, he has to make candy here in a little workshop or something," she said as we walked through the abandoned building.
"That's what they had," I explained, continuing my tour. "We moved here during their last year of operation before they folded. At one point they did have some exhibits." There was a dusty glass wall through which we could see some old candy-making machinery.
"I wonder if there's any candy left?" she mused.
"Please don't eat it," I begged.
Josie laughed, the peals echoing around the large space.
"This," I said, pointing to an animatronic weasel in a top coat, "is Mast the Meerkat."
Josie was silent for a good moment then said, "That's not terrifying."
47
Josie
"This is a huge factory!" I exclaimed, twirling around in the abandoned lobby like I was inBeauty and the Beast.
"This is only one of the buildings," Mace said.
"And Archer is really turning this into a conference center?"
He nodded. "I think he wants to attract those huge international conferences—as big as the medical conference we're going to in a few weeks. Those attract tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of people."
"And the town is going to be okay with that?" I asked. Judging from how the townspeople had reacted to PharmaTech's expansion, I wondered if they would accept this conference center.
"This is a little different because Archer would be restoring historic old buildings," Mace explained as he led me through the abandoned factory. "Those types of adaptive reuse projects are always more popular and well received. The bigger issue will be convincing the owner to sell. I think a lot of people have this idea that the factory is going to come back. They need to move on. The convention center would provide a lot of good jobs for people in this area."
He led me up the stairs to a roof deck and took out a blanket from the hamper, laying it out. We sat out there holding hands and silently admiring the view. I could see across the town to the Svensson PharmaTech buildings glowing on the hill. The tree-lined brick streets were strung out in a grid pattern, cut here and there by the vestiges of long-removed rail spurs. The train whistle sounded, and I snuggled next to Mace as we watched the train slowly crawl down Main Street.
