Page 94 of Tempting as Sin
He nodded thoughtfully. “Five-point-five percent interest.”
“Four-point-five,” she shot back.
He raised an eyebrow. “Current bank rate is five-point-two on a home-equity loan.”
She smiled sweetly. “Which would make me stupid to pay five-point-five.”
“Except that you need it today.”
“Except that I have two other sources, and you actually want the collateral.”
Hunter looked at Rafe. “Two sources, of which you’re one and your brother’s the other. Which would be at zero percent, let me guess.”
Rafe leaned back himself and folded his arms across his chest. “That’s right.”
Hunter told Lily, “I’ve got my own ideas about why you’d rather pay me interest than get the money on easier terms. Suppose you tell me why you need it so urgently, though. Help me get excited about my investment, since I’m not actually in the lending business. Expanding the shop? Could be a good move.”
Lily hesitated, then said, “No. I’ve thought about that, but…no. Not now. I need to add another bedroom and a half bath—well, a shower to my downstairs half bath—on my house, and I need to do it fast.”
“Why?” Hunter asked.
Lily said, “Because…there’s this little girl.”
Hunter’s expression changed. “Tell me about her.”
Lily paused again, then explained. About Bailey and her grandmother, about Chuck and the hospital and pneumonia and foster care, and the rules that said you needed two bedrooms.
“And you’re going into debt to save her,” Hunter said. “Even though you’ve known her for a couple weeks. Even though she’s one of thousands of kids like that.”
“She’s not ‘one of’ anything,” Lily said. Fierce again, and sure. “She’s Bailey, and she’s special. But what child isn’t special? What child is disposable? No child, that’s who. No child. Do you know the starfish story?”
Hunter cocked his handsome head. Barely. “Tell me.”
“A man is walking down a beach,” she said. “The tide’s too low, and thousands of starfish are lying there on the sand, drying out. Dying. The beach is littered with them. He sees another man near the shore, picking up starfish one by one and throwing them back into the water. He asks him, “Why would you do that? There’s no point. You’ll never save them all.” The man looks at him, picks up another starfish, throws it back, and says, ‘I saved that one.’”
Silence for a long minute, and then Hunter said, “Tell me what you have in mind for your floor plan.”
She took a breath and shook it off, then went back to business. So much more than she gave herself credit for. A loving heart and a gentle soul, a strong mind and a steady spirit. A woman for a lifetime. “Give me a piece of paper and a pen,” she said, “and I’ll show you.”
She was sketching, then, and they were talking. About doors and windows, about adding a shower, and where you’d do it. “If you go on and extend the bath out here,” Hunter said, taking a fine-point Pilot from a holder on his desk and adding a few lines to her drawing, “you can have a window, which would make more sense. Frosted glass with a screen, and a tub instead of just a shower. Kids like tubs. Storage here, too. Shelves and drawers. You’re going to need that.”
Five minutes more, and they both sat back and looked at their final sketch, drawn onto a clean piece of paper. Lily said, “That works. Thanks. So will you lend it to me? Four-point-five percent?”
“Five percent,” Hunter said, “and one of my crews on it. She’s in foster care, and they won’t consider you until your place is done? My crew, then, and my foreman. We knock it out in ten days max, and I loan you the cost of it at five percent. Five-year term. My secretary will email you the papers tomorrow. It won’t be thirty thousand, though. More like twenty. Maybe less.”
“Ten days?” Lily asked. “How could you do that?”
Hunter smiled, finally. Plenty of charm there, and something else now, too. Warmth. “Because they work for me, and I only hire the best.” He stuck out his hand across the desk. “Deal?”
This time, Lily didn’t hesitate. She put her hand in his. “Deal.” And then she sat back, and so did he. She laughed, then teared up. “Thank you. I can’t say…I can’t…thankyou. You don’t know what this means.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I do.” No smile now. “I had a wife once. I had a little girl, too. For an hour.”
There it was. The twist at the end that punched you in the throat. The hair on the back of Rafe’s neck stood up, and Lily’s face twisted. “Brett,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah,” he said. “So was I. You’re right. Kids aren’t disposable. Sometimes, though, it seems like the world can’t wait to throw them away. We’ll keep this one.”
Lily’s shop was busier than it had ever been. Bailey was still in foster care. Rafe was still in Sinful.
