AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Lauren stilled. This was exactly what she was afraid of with the whole building inspector thing. “Do you think a new owner might be willing to continue to lease to me? I mean, some people buy property as an investment. Right?”
“Yes, but your building is on prime gulf front real estate. Plus, it’s actually linked to the lot next door. The owner is interested in getting rid of all of it at once. He doesn’t want to break it up into smaller tracts.”
Lauren knew Orla didn’t mean the land that The Bistro by the Beach was on. Frida owned her building and was paying a mortgage. Orla must be referring to the large vacant tract of land on the other side of her shop. “How large is the lot?”
“Two acres.”
“Can I ask how much the going price would be?”
“In the neighborhood of about ten to eleven million dollars, I’m afraid. But that’s just the asking price,” she was quick to add. “I’m sure the owner might be willing to negotiate it down some.”
Lauren nearly swallowed her tongue. “Of course.” Ha! And to think, she’d come over to see if the owner would be willing to do renovations to the building. Fat chance now that the building was going to be sold.
Wait. If the property had been leased for all these years why were Nora and Vince suddenly interested in selling the land now? As Earl’s daughter, Nora had received a trust fund even larger than Lauren’s. Could she be in some sort of financial trouble? Maybe Daddy would know something about this.
She stood. “Well, thank you for your time. I guess it’s not too premature to ask you to start looking for another place to lease? Something with the same square footage and for the about the same price?”
Orla smiled sympathetically. “I’ll keep a look out.”
Lauren said goodbye to Andy on her way out. Luckily, Ted’s car was gone so there was no chance of running into him again. What a disappointment! She’d been so excited on her way over with her big plans for the building. But maybe Orla could find her something else to lease. It probably wouldn’t be on the beach, or next to The Bistro, of course, but she could compromise. The important thing was to put her plan in action.
Everyone at Bunco was excited to hear Lauren’s news about her new maternity line. Pilar was this week’s host and she’d set up a taco bar on the outdoor patio of her home. It was early April and the weather was clear and cool. Tiny white lights hung in streamers from the big oak trees and the tables were decorated with brightly colored sarapes and big Mexican hats.
“Since we’re doing couples Bunco the first week of May, I decided to celebrate Cinco de Mayo early. Just consider this Cinco de Bunco,” she said. The rest of the women groaned, except Pilar who laughed at her own joke as she sipped away on her frozen margarita.
Lauren was scooping salsa onto her plate and answering questions as fast as the other women could toss them out to her.
“What are you going to name the company?” Mimi asked.
“That’s still up in the air. But we’ve narrowed it down to three names.”
“Is the website done?” Frida countered.
“Dhara’s brother Rob is working on it.”
And on it went.
After discovering the building wasn’t going to be available to lease much longer, the first order of business was trying to find a place to relocate. So far, nothing had come up except an old abandoned industrial warehouse on the outskirts of town that was way too big and way too dilapidated for their purposes. In the meantime, Lauren had been working on dress patterns and experimenting with different materials. Dhara was still busy fine-tuning the business plan, but it looked like they would need at least fifty-thousand dollars to
invest initially. It made her nervous to dip into her trust fund like that, but it was doable.
The conversation eventually turned to next month’s couples Bunco.
“Who are you bringing, Lauren?” one of the women asked.
Since she was the only Babe who was partner-less, it seemed like a natural question for the group. Except they asked her the same question every week and every week she would carelessly shrug and say, “Oh, I don’t know.”
She’d planned to make an excuse and tell them she couldn’t go, but lately, she’d begun to wonder if maybe inviting Nate wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
Last week, he “just happened to be driving by” her house and brought Chinese with him. The three of them (four, if you included Hector) had eaten in comfortable camaraderie (Chinese for the humans, dog food for Hector). Now that Henry had gotten to know Nate better, he seemed to really like him, and Nate had never once made any kind of romantic overture toward her. It was a little disappointing. But exactly what she’d asked of him, so she shouldn’t be a hypocrite about it. If they were just friends, then why not invite him to couples Bunco? She just have to make sure he understood they weren’t actually a couple.
“I was thinking of asking Nate Miller. To couples Bunco,” Lauren said, in case that needed clarification.
Everyone turned to look at her.
“Doc’s Morrison’s Nate Miller?” asked one of the Babes who didn’t know about The Kiss. Mimi looked at Lauren with renewed interest.
“I’ve known him since high school and we’ve sort of become friends, so, why not?”
