Sinner and Saint

Chapter Twenty One

It took almost three very hectic months to finish converting the city's oldest inn into a mixed residential-commercial building. The exterior maintained the look of the old building with its name, Marigold, in small ornate brass letters mounted on the same spot where it's been the last hundred years, right above the front entrance.

Since the property was in the heart of downtown, the top floor was split into eight apartment units and the main level was dedicated to retail space. There were no street-facing display windows though. There was a small brass plate on the outside of the building, right below the building number, with a list of the businesses to be found inside. Flanking the front lobby, three on each side, was an assortment of small local businesses—a brow bar, a leather goods store, a handcrafted chocolate shop, a vintage bookstore, a men's salon and a custom jewelry maker. They were the kind of businesses that relied heavily on local knowledge and the reputation of being elusive. It seemed like a risky gamble in the beginning but we had more businesses apply than we had leases to offer so Jamie and I were definitely hunting for the next old rebuild somewhere in downtown. But it wasn't just Marigold's profit potential that made it one of our most important projects ever.

At the end of the lobby past all the businesses, was the same old wooden double-doors that had always been there. Instead of leading to what used to be the small dining hall, it now opened to the newest office of Jones-Marshall Properties. We used to occupy one unit in that first four-plex we converted—the one with the restored fireplace and steamy memories of Stellan and I reuniting the first time—but with the expansion of our company to commercial spaces and managing our larger multi-tenant rental properties, we had to grow our staff and our office space. It was double our old square footage but now we had a couple of small meeting rooms and Jamie had his own micro-office, which he's still only mildly tolerating. He'd insisted he didn't need one since he was usually out on sites but I told him it made him look more legit as a 'businessman' to Sidney's very wealthy and conservative family. He'd just rolled his eyes at me and muttered something under his breath about the things he did for that man.

Anyway, the entire Marigold project had started even before my permanent move to Cobalt Bay. It was on track to wrap up late in the spring but I pushed to get us a almost a month ahead of schedule. Of course, I wanted the doors open for business as soon as possible—and also maybe because it was an excellent excuse to throw at Stellan to keep him off my case in the last three months.

Since that night of my birthday, I kept a good distance.

Stellan called once and I let voicemail pick it up.

He didn't say much. He actually sounded like he'd been grinding his teeth. Just said that we needed to talk.

I got back to him by email, glossing over the message he'd left and mostly talking about the feedback I had regarding the site plans.

I kept it strictly business as best as I could and it didn't take more than a couple of emails before Stellan got the hint.

His daily calls stopped and as much as I missed them, short as they were sometimes, it was for the best.

The only couple of phone calls we've been on were to quickly chat about the project, when it got a little too complicated to email back and forth. Neither of us went off-topic in those conversations.

A week ago, after all the Marigold craziness had died down and we had a couple days to breathe, I went with Jamie to Stellan's house as we were about to break ground. We'd already spent a month finalizing the construction plans and getting permits and Jamie's been over there a couple times to get measurements and figure out any earthwork requirements. I let him handle all the preliminary work, which he usually did anyway.