“And you need some kind of assurance that I’m not going to rip the rug out from underneath you the second I feel like it since you’re trying to do your business out of my home.”
“Well, yeah, I guess I was hoping for some kind of lease agreement or something.”
“I wrote down a few ideas, but I didn’t go to a lawyer, because… That just seems like…I don’t know, not something I want to do. I guess I’d rather get taken advantage of than feel like I have to go and have a whole bunch of legal papers to sign.”
“Same,” she said, feeling really good about this all of a sudden. He felt the same as she did about lawyers, which was a little bit of distrust mixed with a lot of distaste. Not that lawyers couldn’t be good people, just, Christians weren’t supposed to need to have a lawyer between them.
“All right, sounds like we’re in agreement on that. Like I said, Idid take the time to write a few things down.” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper.
She laughed and reached into her back pocket and pulled out her folded piece of paper.
They held them up, looking at each other’s papers and then bursting into laughter.
“I’m not sure whether this is a good sign, that we think alike, or whether I should be scared,” he said.
“Same. This is just too uncanny. I was not expecting you to show up with a list.”
“I was not expecting that from you either.”
They exchanged papers and then sat for a bit while they read each other’s.
Her eyes skimmed over it, then she read it more slowly. Everything he had on his paper was to protect her. That they would have a signed lease agreement that she could use the barn, as long as she agreed that the barn could be used by his children when she was not giving therapy sessions.
That she would continue therapy for his children, and he would be paying for it.
She smiled at that. He had written that she would have the run of the house, except for the occupied bedrooms, and she could choose which ever unoccupied bedroom she wanted to stay in, unless she wanted to stay above the stable, but he had a note that there were a lot of things that needed to be fixed and he was hoping that she would choose to stay in the house because he didn’t want to put the money he was intending to use to purchase horses into fixing up the apartment.
She could get on board with that.
She read down through the rest of them and then looked up.
He had finished reading hers and was waiting.
“You first?” he said, lifting his brow like he was giving her the option. Which he was.
“All right. All these sound good to me. I’ll choose a bedroom, andthen you don’t have to spend money on the apartment above the stable. I knew there were some things that needed to be fixed there.”
“I’m not sure how much I will get into doing it. I also saw some rodent droppings, and I heard some scratching in the walls. So I don’t think you want to be there until we do a thorough extermination.”
“You’re correct about that,” she said, smiling.
“Thought so,” he said.
“All right, this lease agreement sounds good to me. Should it be six months or a year?”
“We can make it whatever you want. I have zero intention of standing in your way over that. Really, the only plans I had for the barn were for the kids to have horses there, and I was thinking that I might just build a small barn behind the house and the kids can keep their horses there, and that way you would have the entire barn in the front for yourself.”
“I hate to see you do that, but that would be really nice, because I hate the idea that the kids couldn’t use the stable while I’m there. Probably the only thing that I would want for them to do would be to not bother my clients and me wherever we are. For example, if we are in the ring riding, they could be in the stable. That’s not a problem. I just need to be able to have uninterrupted time with my clients,” she said, lifting her hands and spreading them out, hoping that he understood what she was saying.
“I totally get that. That’s the reason I don’t often take my kids to work with me. I can’t be dealing with my children while I’m trying to deal with a client. They deserve my undivided attention, because they’re putting money down in my business, and I should be making sure that they get the service they’re expecting. But if my kids are there, I want to be giving them attention.”
“From one business owner to another, thank you for understanding.”
He nodded his head. “The kids are old enough that they understand. If they were three or four or something like that, it’d betough to tell them and expect them to listen, but Robert, even though he’s the youngest, understands that he has to wait until the adults are done speaking until he can get the attention of whoever it is that he needs to talk to.”
“I agree. Your children are very well behaved, and I’ve never had any trouble with them at all. I really wasn’t worried about that, but I appreciate you being considerate that way.”
“No problem. That’s the whole point. I don’t want to see you lose your business and your clients and everything that you’ve built, and that’s pretty much where my thoughts were going when I wrote out the list.”
