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“I do, but you’ll just be thinking about how much work you have. And I can’t exactly take a week off to help, so you have me and my truck for today only.” Ben kissed my cheek and stood up.
I lay there for a second longer, sad that practical matters like selling the store had interrupted a lazy morning in bed with Ben.
“Alright, fine.” I wrapped the sheet around my torso and stood, surveying the floor for my clothes. I grabbed a t-shirt and pulled it on. “Can we at least get breakfast first?”
* * *
I stacked the box Ben had pushed out of the secret room onto the growing pile.
“How many more?” I asked, crouching down to look into the small alcove. Ben had set a floodlight in the corner to check for bats and after extracting over a dozen boxes from the space, it was fully illuminated.
“This is the last one and it’s heavy as hell.” Ben grunted, hunched down, his back to me.
The box scraped across the floor and he muscled it toward the door. I stood out of the way as he pulled it into the shop.
“How did your grandma get those in there?” He ran a hand through his hair, eyebrows furrowed.
“No clue. Maybe she hired someone to do it.”
“Have you opened any of these yet?” Ben asked, stretching his back.
I moved around him, kneading his shoulders. “Not all of them yet, but so far nothing exciting has turned up.”
“Really?” He leaned into my touch, tilting his head back. “No gold bars or piles of cash?”
“Not yet, anyway.”
“That’s a real shame. There’s still a chance, though.”
“There’s a better chance this will all be up for auction in a couple of weeks.” I frowned. “And we haven’t even touched the back room.”
“More time to find our fortune.”
I suppressed a groan. Ben turned, slipping an arm around my shoulder and pulling me in close. He kissed my forehead. “It’s not that bad. It’s just a lot.”
“I don’t even remember half of this stuff.”
“I think your grandma was hiding it from you,” Ben said, my hair muffling his voice.
I relaxed against him, pressing my palm to his chest, feeling for the beat of his heart.
Slower than mine. Almost imperceptible under the thick flannel of his shirt. Not violently fast like the night before, after we’d tumbled into bed, clothes peeled off on the trip upstairs, his mouth tasting of me and his body slick with sweat.
Comfortingly slow, though. My stress ebbed away just being next to him.
“So, are we still searching for gold or what?” Ben murmured.
“Let’s keep going,” I sighed, pulling away.
After a quick search of the store for box cutters, we set to work opening up the boxes. Most were filled with junk, various items from estate sales that she realized had no business in the shop once she dragged it in. I set aside a few pieces in the keep pile. Ben took pictures of the stuff not good enough for auction but too good for the trash, posting the pictures to a local group for free items. Hopefully, someone would find a use for them.
We worked for hours, developing a system that whittled down the massive pile of boxes into smaller, more manageable stacks. Mid-day, Ben set up some tables to put out the free stuff on Main Street in a way that looked professional enough not to draw the ire of the town busybodies, who wouldn’t appreciate what amounted to a giveaway on the street.
“It’s getting dark,” Ben said as he returned to the back room. A faint sheen of sweat coated his forehead. “You want to call it a night?”
I looked at our progress and nodded. “Yep. I have the rest of the week to clear out anything that’s not going up for auction. Do you think anyone would mind if I closed up shop now?”
He shook his head. “I think they’d understand. Besides, it’s not exactly tourist season around here. Who’s coming in?”
