Now that got me going.
“I’ll tell them to use the barn’s fridge tomorrow,” I said. “Sounds expensive if they break it.”
She was nodding her head.
“The kitchen and appliances being done means that they’re almost done and we can move in soon?” Desi asked.
That question was directed at Candy, whose father was responsible for the building process.
“Not yet,” she disagreed. “I’ll bet there’s at least another month until it’s fully done.”
There were groans all around.
“It’s not like you’re out of a place to stay,” Candy pointed out.
That was true.
I mean, I’d walked through the place today, and the air conditioner felt like a fucking dream.
The place we were in right now wasn’t a dream.
It was a packed-full nightmare that was housing way too many people in a too-small space.
“But you can go over there and cook your pies,” she said. “Daddy won’t care.”
That’s what we ended up doing.
Gathering pies and cake shit, we all trudged over to the new place that was about a quarter-mile walk from the old one.
“What are y’all going to do with the old place once you’re in the new place?” Candy wondered.
Originally, we’d planned to refurbish the barn. But after some inspections and a few more consults with Candy’s father, the decision was made to start fresh.
Meaning it saved us money and cost us money at the same time in the grand scheme of things.
“Bulldoze it,” Ace suggested.
I looked backward over my shoulder at the old trailer that had housed us these past few years, then turned to study the new place.
“Bulldozing it does sound nice,” I admitted. “That place is a dump.”
And it was.
The place was falling apart around our ears.
The air conditioner worked when it wanted to. The lights flickered if too many of us were using electricity all at once.
The floorboards creaked—and not in an old house kind of way, but in an ‘I’m about to break’ kind of way.
The septic system backed up through the pipes at least once every three or four months.
And in the end, the place was old, and it needed to go.
There wasn’t going to be any saving it.
“You could let the hands live in there while you fix up the bunkhouse,” Candy suggested.
Now that was a thought.
“That’s not too bad of an idea,” Callum admitted. “But, saying that, we don’t really have the money to do…”
“Actually,” Banks, my other brother, said. “We do have the money if you allow me to actually pay for something out of my own goddamn pocket.”
Banks was a professional bull rider.
He wasn’t rolling in the dough, but he did have enough that he could afford to upgrade the bunkhouse.
I wasn’t opposed to it, but he also had to let us pay him back if and when we had the money.
“I’m…” Ace started to say.
“We agree,” Codie said, slapping her hands over Ace’s mouth.
“We do, too!” That had come from Desi’s mouth. “But me and Candy have already been talking. We have a little equity in the coffee shop now. We could definitely afford to put a little bit of money in there. Especially now that I’m going to be baking there just as much as I’m baking at the coffee shop.”
Desi and Candy owned a coffee shop together.
Originally, Candy had done the coffee shop part while she sold the pastries, cakes, and cookies that Desi made. But eventually that’d become a little too much for Candy seeing as the entire coffee shop had practically exploded. Only a few months after having the shop up and running, they’d downsized.
Now all they did was sell pastries during certain hours and they didn’t even offer coffee at all. At least, not liquid coffee. They still sold packaged coffee that the customers could use in their own homes.
Which had done surprisingly well considering how pissed off the customers had been when they learned of the downsizing.
After everyone got their feathers settled, they’d still come in to get their fix.
They’d also learned to deal with the odd hours and sometimes arriving and there being no pastries.
Yet, people still came.
And I had a feeling that had a lot to do with the fact that it was associated with the Valentines.
See, the Valentine name was a big deal in our small town.
After recuperating from our wounds that we’d sustained from our father shooting us, we’d been placed with a family in Houston.
From there, everyone else had wondered about us. Thought about us constantly.
And now that we were back, they were still just as nosy as before, only a lot more careful to hide it.
“This is so cool!” Desi said as she placed her offerings onto the counter in the new kitchen.
I looked around and had to agree with her.
The new place was about four times the size of the old one, which was good seeing as Ace was already adding to his family, as was Callum.