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“Uh, be still my beating heart.” Elodie looks up from the garden a little later. She holds her hand to her chest, eyes half closed.
“What’s up?” I can feel myself smiling and my mood lifting.
“You have no idea how sexy you look, have you?” She ducks inside and comes upstairs to sits on the windowsill before swinging her legs outside. “You have this way of sitting on a floor with your knees bent, legs untidily akimbo. It looks so sexy.”
“Be glad,” I say, getting up. “There are workers here today, or you might have to follow through on your flirtations.”
She slides off the sill and comes to give me a quick kiss. “I thought the building was over.”
“Just some final snags with the pods.”
“The pods? Already? My God you’re quick, it’s only been five weeks.”
“I have to be. I’ve spent all my money, so unless the place is ready to take in guests, I’ll be eating grass and weeds.”
In fact, I there are a few final things to finalise down the hill. The installation of the solar panels and finishing off the wooden stairs and paths between the different gardens. Once that’s paid for, I’ll have about £2,000 left, which is bound to be eaten up by soft furnishings. Yesterday, when Gabriel came to photograph the chalets, we used bedding and cushions borrowed from his and Pierre’s home.
“I love the curtains,” Elodie says running her hands over the blue fabric. “You must have a very talented home stylist.”
I cross my arms and watch her walk around the sitting room. She looks different. Excited about something. Like someone whose birthdays and Christmases have all come at once.
“Yes, I have a very talented home stylist.” I can’t help teasing.
“Should I be jealous? Don’t tell me she’s good in bed, too.”
I wiggle my eyebrows. “You have no idea, she’s sizzling hot.”
“Thank you.” She simpers. “I guess you’ll get the good loving tonight.”
“Why are you in such a good mood?” I ask her after we kiss again.
Her smile widens and she twirls, making her skirt fly up. “You are looking at not only a – what did you call me? – sizzlingly hot and talented woman but one who’s also free of all her debts.”
“What?” I’m instantly serious.
She had shown me her payment plan not long ago. Even with the most optimistic estimate for her shop revenue, it looked like she would be paying it off for two to three years. It’s not only the huge loan which her grandfather doesn’t remember borrowing, but the terms he signed with Morris and Sweeny were positively criminal. When Elodie tried to make a bulk repayment, last month hoping to eat into the capital and reduce the exorbitant interest rate, she couldn’t. The agreement didn’t allow a change to the repayments schedule. She would have to pay it at the snail’s pace they set or pay the entire capital at once.
“What do you mean debt free?”.
“Grandad,” she says with a huge smile. “Alastair Sweeny came over on Friday for his usual weekly payment. And Grandad suddenly asked if they’d like to buy the old shop in the village in return for the loan. It’s a brilliant idea, never occurred to me, but we don’t need that old shop in the village. It also has the small lavender field behind, pretty but small, about half the size of a tennis court. I could tell Sweeny was interested because he got that money-shine on his face.”
“Money-shine?”
“You don’t know him, he gleams, literally gleams when he thinks he’s about to make money.”
“I try not to look at him so closely, the first time I met him, he was trying to buy my house for a song.”
“Yeah, he tried to argue that the old shop was too small and worthless, but then I—” she gives me a slow smirk full of mischievous charm. “I suggested they could make it into a café with a nice alfresco area in the lavender. He listened, and slowly, his skin started to gleam. This morning, he came back and said he would take the deal. He’s going to draw up the contract.”
“I’m impressed, your grandfather can be lucid enough when he wants.”
“He’s a highly intelligent man,” she says bristling up. Then she makes herself relax because she knows I mean no disrespect. “It’s only when he’s tired that he loses concentration.” Her voice softens with love for him.
She looks up to him and is incredibly loyal. I’ve learned very early to never say anything less than complementary or her hackles rise. So, I keep my opinion to myself. When I had dinner with him, a few weeks ago, Hedge repeated the same story about mead three times. And every time she listened as if for the first time then gently redirected the conversation into a new topic.
“You’re very good with him.”
She must want to change the subject because her next question makes me forget the business side of our partnership.
