Chapter Four

“SO WHAT DO YOU THINK?” Bryan turned off the ignition of his car and peered through the windshield at the building on the opposite side of the street. It was constructed of old red brick, as most of the neighborhood’s buildings were, with a peeling white metal sign above. “It used to be a ketchup factory.”

Alex leaned forward in the passenger seat to take it in. “That makes sense. Because it looks like it’s either being held together by ketchup or rust. Maybe a mixture of both.”

Bryan laughed as he opened the door. “Don’t judge it until you see it. The inside is better.”

Alex didn’t look convinced, but he climbed out and stood next to Bryan while they waited for traffic to clear enough to cross to the other side. Bryan pulled a key out of his pocket and fitted it into the glass door on the right side of the roll-up warehouse door.

“You have a key? You already rented it?”

The lock opened with a smart click, but the door itself took a little yank to clear the metal doorframe. “No, but the listing agent is a friend of my dad’s, so he said he’d trust me with it. I told him I’d make a decision by the end of the week.”

“You still don’t have any money,” Alex said.

“Don’t bother me with irrelevant matters like that.” Bryan gestured for Alex to enter first, then followed him in and locked the door behind them.

The office area was spacious but dingy, with threadbare blue commercial flooring and white walls that looked to be nothing more than drywall screwed into the original brick. A grayish acoustical tile ceiling added to the depressing feel of the space. “I’d rip down the drywall, pull up the carpet, clean up the floors. Bring in some industrial furniture and shelving to hold sample bags. All we really need is a place to meet customers should they come by the roastery.”

Alex looked around, nodding slowly. “It’s not the worst. It has potential. I’m reserving judgment.”

“Good, because this is the part you have to see.” Bryan led Alex into what had been the warehouse and appreciated the shocked look that came over his friend’s face.

It was big, at least five thousand square feet, with soaring twenty-foot ceilings and old transom windows atop the high brick walls. Ductwork snaked across the ceiling overhead.

“What would you do with all this space?”

“I’m glad you asked.” Bryan moved to an oddly shaped jog in the space behind the office. “I was thinking about closing this off to be a cupping room. I’d put a sample roaster in there, so we could hold cuppings for coffee shop owners and distributors to taste our different roasts. If we open it up from the office, it could stay closed off from the main roasting area.”

He moved on and swept a hand toward the back. “This area here we would build out and insulate to store our beans. Humidity and climate have a major effect on the roast. The goal would be to keep it at a constant level year-round. We’re not going to have a huge crop yield, so I’m certainly not going to risk ruining what we have. And once we get going, I’ll probably need to buy beans from other farms. It will allow me to expand our offerings beyond the variety that I grow.”

“You do know a lot about coffee.” Alex seemed a little surprised, and Bryan tried not to be hurt that his best friend had underestimated him.

“I spent the better part of the last year figuring this stuff out. I know you think I’m a screwup, Alex —”

“I don’t —”

“Yes, you do. But you’ll remember I actually do have a business degree —magna cum laude, in fact. I’m smart enough to do this. And determined. What else do I need?”

Alex threw him a sidelong glance. “Money?”

Bryan laughed. “Well, there is that. But I have a plan.”

“And what’s that? Besides hiring Ana to do all the work.”

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.” Bryan settled on the edge of an abandoned table, ignoring the fact it was covered in dust and he’d now have a dust print on the seat of his athletic pants. “I’ve done a lot of favors over the years. All those people who say they owe me one? I’m calling them in.”

Alex didn’t look convinced. “You’re calling in favors.”

“They were big favors, bro.”

“Well, that may be. But landlords don’t tend to take payment in favors.”

“They do when they’re your dad.”

Alex looked shocked. “What?”

Bryan laughed. “My dad owns this building. Why do you think the agent let me have the key? I’m going to rent it from him, but at a reduced rate. It’s been sitting vacant for over two years and costing him money in upkeep and security. He offered to give me the space cheap until I broke even, but I need to build it out and furnish it.” It hadn’t been quite as easy as he’d made it sound. Bryan had laid out an entire business plan and his projected earnings report based on a conservative expected yield on his farm, low initial overhead, and a 35 percent profit margin. Mitchell had point-blank told him that it was a bad risk to lend him money, but if he was going forward with it, he’d give him the building at a quarter of the going occupancy rate. For a self-made man who didn’t believe in coddling his son, it was a significant show of support.

Alex was nodding slowly. “That’s really decent of him. Low risk on his part, but it cuts a big part of your overhead.”

“The advantages of living with a real estate mogul.” Bryan pushed himself up off the table, dusted his butt off, and jerked his head toward the office door.

“How’s that working out, by the way?”

“Weird.” It was nice in a way. He hadn’t lived at home since he was eighteen, and now that he was back, however temporarily, his mother was cooking for him and plying him with her baked goods. His father, on the other hand, kept giving him searching looks that he couldn’t quite interpret. “I really need to make this work so I can get my own place again.”

“Cramping your style, huh?”

“No style to cramp these days.” Bryan flipped off the lights as they went, then opened the front door and locked up behind them. The noise from the highway that had been barely perceptible a minute before washed over them. “I’m done with women. For a while at least.”

“Why?”

Bryan glanced at Alex before he darted across the street in the gap of traffic, his friend following. “You know why.”

“Tell me.”

He unlocked his car door and climbed in, the seal shutting out the noise again. The time it took for Alex to get to the passenger side allowed him to order his thoughts. “Because no one is Vivian. And she pretty much destroyed me twice. I’m not willing to do that to someone else. I need to get my head on straight without a woman around.”

A smile rose to Alex’s lips. “Even Ana? You guys seemed pretty close at the supper club on Saturday.”

“Especially Ana. That whole thing would go wrong in a hurry.”

“Why? Because she would expect too much from you?” Alex must be in a pushy mood today because he never leaned this hard when it came to women. Definitely not when it came to innermost feelings. His former career as a psychologist was showing.

“Because she would expect exactly what she should, and I would screw it up. And lose all of my friends in the process. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you and the girls are pretty much all I have left these days.” Bryan cranked the ignition, put the car in gear, and then rolled down the windows, effectively shutting off conversation. That was enough honesty for one day.

Of course, Alex didn’t seem to agree. “I think you’re selling yourself short, as usual. But this plan of yours seems like a good one.”

“Really?” Bryan took his eyes off the road briefly to assess Alex’s expression.

“Really. The last time I saw you throw yourself into something this thoroughly, you were junior world champion the following year.”

“Yeah, but you saw how my climbing career turned out in the end.”

“Just don’t sleep with the fiancée of your investor and then throw her off the side of your building, and you’ll be okay.”

Bryan whipped his head toward his friend. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

“Why? It’s just good business practice.”

Bryan snorted in response, and then the laughter came, pouring out of him along with tears from his eyes until he could barely see where he was driving. Oh, it had been a long time since he’d laughed like that. “You don’t pull punches, do you?”

Alex grinned and Bryan swiped a hand across his face, still chuckling. He owed Alex one for that. What had happened in Suesca had taken up a good part of his brain, blowing up to gargantuan proportions in his mind. He’d received an email from Vivian a month ago saying that she’d made a full recovery, even though she wasn’t keen on climbing again, and Luke had taken her back. No apology, no blame for Bryan. Just water under the bridge.

He needed to start thinking of it like that. If God had truly forgiven him, at some point he needed to forgive himself and move on. He smiled to himself at Alex’s bald-faced statement. That’s why he needed to be back home with his best friend. After all, if you couldn’t joke about the event that broke your heart and ruined your career, what exactly could you joke about?