Surprise had her dropping the rest of the way into her chair. “Pardon?”
“Oh, Sandy said you’d been sick.”
Right. Of course the family would mention something like that. It was normal—expected, even. She had to get her reactions under control.
“I’m feeling okay, thanks.” Best get this conversation off that track and onto business. “Dad said you’d be the person to start with to figure out the best means of acquiring candidates for the business incubator.”
“I’ve definitely got some ideas. Cecily will, too, so you’ll want to schedule a conversation with her. Do you have some notion of what kind of timeline you’re looking at?”
“The purchase of the property should go through by end of next week. I hope to have contractors lined up by then to begin renovations. Like my father, I prefer to use local labor as much as possible, but I expect that will depend on their schedules. Brody is my preference, since he worked for the company for years, but I’m not sure he’ll be able to get to it as quickly as I need. Do you have any others to recommend?” She scribbled down names and notes as Norah reeled them off.
“What about capacity? How many businesses do you think you can fit in there?”
“Some of that depends on what kind of businesses they are.” Tess went over the refined specs she and Mitch had hammered out.
“I can think of a couple of prospective local businesses that would be a potential fit. But honestly, I’m thinking we’ll want to advertise. Candidates will have to apply, right?”
“Yeah. It won’t be like somebody just coming in to rent the space. The entire point is for them to accept mentorship, so we’ll have to determine if their business concept is a good fit for what we have to offer.”
“How will you go about making that determination?”
“Well, the first part of the application process will be the business plan.” Tess launched into an explanation of the process and felt some of her anxiety smooth out. This was business. This she knew and understood. At least here she still had some control.
“I haven’t finalized the plans, yet but on average, new businesses spend thirty-three months in incubation before moving out on their own. Some programs have formalized benchmarks and graduation. I want to do a bit more research on that front before I present the options to my father, but as our incubator won’t be industry specific, I anticipate a pretty diverse selection of businesses.”
Norah leaned back in her chair. “I’m impressed with the amount of work you’ve already gotten done.”
Focusing on this project was the only thing keeping her sane right now. Every other waking second, she’d been thinking about the baby, and that whole situation was too overwhelming to focus on for long. But, of course, she couldn’t share that.
“This is a passion project of mine, so a lot of the basic groundwork I already had laid out as a concept. I’m just having to adapt it for this location.”
“Trey said you were the one who shifted the focus of the company the first time. That you’d talked him into building stuff instead of breaking it up. No more chop shop.”
“Dad told you about that?”
Norah smiled. “Yeah. He talks about you all the time.”
Tess swallowed against a sudden thickness in her throat. What was that about? She knew her dad loved her. She knew he was proud of her. Why should that make her all emotional? Maybe the pregnancy hormones were already wreaking havoc.
“I took Pretty Woman to heart. It just always seemed to me that if you’ve got the kind of resources Peyton Consolidated has, you have a duty to use them to the betterment of others. Thankfully, he agreed with me. The business incubator is just another way of doing that on a smaller scale. It’s that small scale, start-up part of business that’s always been my particular interest. It’s…personal, I guess. It’s not all about boardrooms and billion dollar deals. And there’s so much hope and excitement. That’s a really good feeling.”
“So you think you’ll stick around to run it after the center is up and running?”
She’d be having a baby. She couldn’t fathom taking that child away from Mitch, and she couldn’t imagine taking Mitch away from here. She couldn’t keep putting off telling him. They needed to discuss the future and make some decisions together.
“I don’t know yet.”
Norah smiled. “Well the building process will keep you here long enough to see if small-town life is for you. I’ll warn you, though, Wishful has a habit of keeping people who had every intention of going. I was one of them.”
“Wishful is charming.” And it was. Over the past couple of weeks, she’d spent some time out and about in town, getting the full tour from Mitch and hitting up some of the local watering holes like The Daily Grind and Speakeasy Pizza. The locals had been welcoming, but not in a simpering, suck-up kind of way. And the fact that they didn’t make a big deal about the Peyton name or fortune was beyond refreshing. They accepted her because they’d accepted her father. And they’d accepted him because of Sandy. Tess supposed marrying their favorite mayor was a pretty good in.
“Is that the only thing you’re finding charming?”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m just wondering how things are going with Mitch. I mean, you were kinda railroaded into it. Are you really okay with this situation?”
“You mean did I say yes just to be polite? No, I didn’t.”