Seven
Nick watched the woman until she disappeared from sight.
He wasn’t sure why he’d felt a need to watch over Jenny like some guardian angel—or stalker, he supposed, depending on how you wanted to look at it—but she’d been distracting him for the past two days and he’d possibly become a tiny bit fascinated by her. She brightened up his workday. Maybe he enjoyed taking the mickey out of her and those ridiculous bloody dates a little too much, but they were an absolute joke. What wasn’t a joke was the way he was beginning to wait for Jenny to appear. She’d surprised him earlier when she’d told him her age—there was no way the woman looked fifty. And yet the knowledge took nothing away from the attraction he seemed to have for her. She was a feisty, funny, sexy as hell–looking woman and there was no denying he definitely wanted to get to know her a lot better.
He’d caught Jenny watching him over the last few days and had to admit he enjoyed the fact he somehow made her uncomfortably aware of him. He wasn’t big-noting himself; he wouldn’t say he wasMen’s Healthmagazine material, but he wasn’t too shabby, all things considered, and the way she looked at him from time to time gave his tired, overworked ego a pat on the back it sorely needed.
When she’d first told him about the blind dates, it all started to make sense, and—if he were being honest—he was kind of relieved. It was obvious she’d been bored out of her brain and that the guy hadn’t stood a chance for a second date, which made him feel a lot better.
Then she’d returned the next day with another fella who wasn’t much of an improvement on the first one. There was simply no way this woman had anything in common with any of the blokes she’d been out with.
Today, though, had taken the cake. Gone was the amusement at her doomed dates and in its place was a serious need to punch date number three in the face.
It’d started before the guy’s angry wife had stormed into his pub. The guy had been leering at Jenny across the table—practically licking his lips at the prospect of what he’d like to be doing to her after their meal. Nick hadn’t expected it to bother him so much, but it had. A lot. He’d seen this type of guy before and knew the game: he’d buy Jenny a few drinks and loosen her up then whisk her away and do … well, probably everything that had been running through Nick’s own mind over the past few days. He gave a silent grunt, acknowledging that that made him not much better than thedickhead she’d been out with. Only, Nick didn’t have a wife hidden away, and Jenny wouldn’t be some casual one-night stand he’d fling aside when he was done.
That thought made him stop stacking glasses and straighten. When had he become interested in a relationship? He wasn’t. He didn’t do serious relationships. He didn’t do desperate dating apps just to find a willing body, either. For the last two years, he’d been too busy putting together his business proposal, sorting out finance and renovation plans and selling his soul to the devil.
He began packing the dishwasher with glasses and had to force himself to calm down as the clink of glass got a little loud. It still stung. He’d wanted to do this thing himself—he’d been dreaming of this for the better part of the last decade and then, at the last minute, just when it looked like his dream might not happen, he’d been faced with a choice: Buy the pub with a partner or lose the opportunity completely.
He knew most people would think he should be grateful that he had a partner who had come forward to help him, and, maybe, if it’d been anyone else who’d offered to help, he would be. But it wasn’t anyone else. It was Susie.
Closing the dishwasher and turning it on, Nick’s eyes swept the room and, satisfied everyone seemed happy, went upstairs to the office and his living quarters. He loved old pubs—old anything really; he was a sucker for heritage buildings in any form, but pubs had always held a special place in his heart. He’d always been able to see a long-term plan, but lots of his mates hadn’t. They used to joke about his budgeting and investing strategies, though he’d never found it difficult—hewas a man of simple tastes. He drank in his early days, probably too much, but then he settled down. He figured out how much he was wasting on nights out each weekend and realised if he was serious about buying a pub one day, he had to save. The army wasn’t exactly a high-paying power job, but that only meant he had to be smart and find ways to invest in things that would give him the highest return. He’d surprised even himself when he discovered he had a talent for investing. Not enough talent to do it as a full-time career, like his sister had urged him to do—he’d rather poke his eye out with a stick before he took on a job in a city office and have to dress in a suit all day. He’d had enough of uniforms and ceremony, now he just wanted his own life and his own business.
The staircase, with its solid, red cedar balustrade that curved in a majestic sweep up to the second floor, was just one of the hotel’s heritage pride and joys. They didn’t build things like they did back in 1885. He still had to pinch himself that he owned a place with ties to the town’s very beginnings. During the renovation, he’d unearthed some pretty amazing things—old bottles and newspapers; a few secret hidey holes that he assumed had been installed for some rather suspect reasons he’d yet to discover; and the most exciting thing of all: a door under the staircase that led to a room that had been sealed off for God only knew how long.
At the top of the stairs, he turned into the first doorway and tossed a bunch of receipts he’d brought with him on the desk under the window. The view was nothing fancy—it overlooked the main street—but it matched the framed photo of the hotel he’d hung when he’d first bought it. If you swappedthe cars for horses tied up outside and bitumen for dirt, the view of the town was exactly the same as it had been almost a hundred and forty years ago. He liked the wide-open space of the countryside out here—the constant change of colours the further west you drove. He’d grown up in the city, but there was something about small towns that fascinated him. Maybe he missed the community spirit the army had provided and was craving that sense of belonging to something bigger than himself again. Maybe it was just the way he felt lighter—like he could breathe deeper, the further into the countryside he went, that made the decision to move here a no-brainer.
He’d never been to Barkley before, but the moment he’d seen the old hotel during his research, he’d known this was the one he wanted to buy and this was the town he wanted to live in. His mates had thought he was crazy; so had his sister. She’d done her best to talk him out of it and yet, he hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that this was where he wanted to be. When the pub had eventually come up for sale after a few years being caught up in a deceased estate and family court battle, it felt like a sign. Nick was out of the army and ready to buy. It had been fate.
It had also threatened to be a bottomless pit of endless renovations and expenses, which had jeopardised his dream more than once in the last twelve months. Nick sank into the chair behind his desk and tilted his head back to stare up at the ceiling. The damp patch in the shape of a lopsided snowman stared back down at him and he gave a weary sigh. Fixing the roof was the next job on the long and growing list. Each time he crossed off a job, another replaced it. At thisrate he’d never make any kind of profit—not if everything he made just went back into the building.
He pushed aside the million other thoughts racing around in his head and focused instead on the one job he could get out of the way now. He reached for the invoices. The paperwork wasn’t going to do itself.
