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Sarah showed her friends the message.
“Well, the price to fix this place up couldn’t possibly be better, and you could work from here, right?” Jessica said.
Her officediddo most of their work remotely with just weekly meetings or pitch presentations in the office… Sarah stared at the old house. Could she do it? Obviously her friends wanted her to, but putting her own life on hold didn’t exactly appeal to her. But then neither did seeing a historic building and her grandmother’s legacy disappear.
“I think I need more wine for this decision,” Sarah said, picking up the bottle. Three drops trickled out.
“Is there any in the cellar?” Whitney asked.
Sarah’s eyes widened. “I’d totally forgotten about the cellar. Let’s go check.” They stood and followed her inside. “I feel like I should ask you to sign waivers before entering,” she said, stepping over a loose floorboard in the entryway. “Be careful on the stairs.” She hit the light on the wall above the curving, concrete stairwell heading down to the cellar. The dim lighting and low ceiling made her shiver.
“This is creepy at night,” Jessica said, echoing her thoughts.
“It’s kindaPhantom of the Opera-ish,” Whitney said. “You could totally use this staircase in pics for the sale brochure.”
They reached the big wooden crescent-shaped door with its iron ring handle. When they were kids, the cellar used to make the best hiding place. She hadn’t been down there in years, though, and it was no doubt just a castle for spiders and mice by now. She shivered at the thought as she pulled, but the door wouldn’t budge. “It’s stuck.”
“Grab the ring,” Jessica told Whitney.
“On three…”
They pulled, and this time the door flew open.
Sarah entered, feeling along the wall until her hand hit the switch. As the space illuminated, her breath caught. Wall-to-wall, ceiling-to-floor wine racks were full of dusty bottles.
“Holy shit,” Whitney said, entering. She approached a rack and picked up a bottle, then blew the dust away. “This is a 1987 merlot.” She picked up another one. “This one is from ’79.”
“These are all vintage, too,” Jessica said from the other side of the rack. “There has to be thousands of dollars’ worth of wine down here.”
“Everything is organized by type…and date.” Unexplainable excitement rose in Sarah’s chest as she continued scanning the rows of liquid gold.
Jessica rejoined them, a bottle of wine in each hand. “I think this is a sign.”
Sarah shook her head. “You think everything is a sign.”
“This cellar would be an amazing draw for a potential buyer, if they could get past the deteriorating exterior,” Whitney said, then held up her hands in defense of Sarah’s look. “Just sayin’.”
Sarah released a deep breath as she stood in the middle of the cellar. This cellar was a treasure, and the price to renovate was reasonable. She’d make the money back after the sale. And she didn’t really need to be on-site to do her job. She could drive into the city whenever necessary…
Whitney and Jessica continued to stare at her expectantly.
Sarah sighed. “Fine, Grandma—you win. Here goes nothing,” she said, taking her cell phone from her pocket. Opening the message from Wes, she typed quickly before she could change her mind:When can you start?
Chapter Four
There were worse ways to wake up in the morning.
Maybe she was still dreaming. Sarah blinked several times, but the sight of Wes’s six-pack abs was real outside the bedroom window.
Those certainly hadn’t been there in high school.
He’d always been athletically built, but more lean and cut from a young metabolism and all the cardio playing football. This new muscular body was the product of his hard, laborious days. A tanned chest and the hint of oblique muscles appearing at the top of his jeans were almost enough for her to forgive the unmerciful hammering he was doing at… She rolled to look at the clock on the bedside table.
Ten fifteen?
Shit.
She sat up quickly. Too quickly. Her head throbbed, the pounding inside her brain keeping time with the pounding against the roof. Too much wine the night before.
