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He smiles. “I can honestly say never.”
We shoot the breeze for a bit, but then he pauses, comes around the counter, and gives me a straight-shooter look that disarms me since I’m so used to his grandpa style. “But you’re not here to make small talk. What’s going on?”
I suppose that’s no surprise. He runs a wildly successful business. He doesn’t have time to dick around.
“Sir,” I begin, since he feels like a sir right now.
“Yes?”
I swallow down my nerves. “I’d really like to keep doing this.”
“Special Edition?” His voice pitches up with tempered hope.
“Elodie is pretty busy with her store, and honestly, I want to spend more time with her on weekends.”
He smiles warmly. “That’s great.”
“But we’d love to do the cocktails and chocolates once a month, if that’s of interest to you. And we all really enjoy the Sunday pop-up. Is there any way you’d consider extending the lease on Sundays for me? And my grandma and the kids?”
Now that I’ve said that out loud, it’s a big ask.
He exhales, his face unreadable as he seems to give it some thought. “I have to see what else I might do with the space. But I like the idea.”
“Great,” I say, but that was the easy bit of this two-part convo.
“And your other matter of business?”
No point dragging my feet. “And the other thing is…Elodie and I weren’t actually engaged when we rented the place.”
His brow knits. “Excuse me?”
Shit. I’ve offended him. But I soldier on. “We had the impression you wanted us to be engaged, so we pretended to be. You said you’d prefer to lease to a committed couple, so we decided to act like one.”
When the ruse registers fully, his expression falters. “Oh.” It’s said with more disappointment than I expected.
“I’m sorry we lied to you.”
He scrubs a hand over his beard. “And the wedding? Was that a lie too?”
“No, we really got married, even though it was a little impromptu,” I say. His eyes stray to my ring, like he’s checking the facts, so I keep going. “And we’re staying married. But I wanted you to know the score.”
A smile shifts the corner of his lips, but he seems to fight it off as he asks, “So you faked it, but got married for real, and fell in love?” He sounds too amused. That has to be a good thing.
“Yes, sir.”
“I did have a good feeling about the two of you.” He sighs contentedly. “I can just tell. It’s a gift of mine.”
He doesn’t sound mad in the least.
But he also doesn’t offer me the lease. “I’ll let you know if it’ll work out,” he says.
After dinner that night, Elodie and I pore over real estate listings in San Francisco, scouring rentals. “We can’t stay here much longer,” I say, looking fondly at Zane’s palace of a place.
“And neither one of our places is big enough for the four of us,” she says heavily.
“But we’ll keep looking,” I add. “We’ll find something.”
And we do look, every night and every day until finally, we find a small three-bedroom outside of Hayes Valley that’s available in two weeks.
