Page 12 of Cosy & Chill
“You handing over the scarf and the gloves to the lady at the coffee store? That wasn’t a commission.”
“It was a gift. Audrey’s cheered me up lots of times when I needed it. I wanted to say thank you.”
“You are a very thoughtful man. I thought so yesterday.”
“Very thoughtful,” Finn retorted. “If you can deliver your ice cream in containers that her customers can take home, Audrey is happy to talk to you about supplying her stall.”
“You talked to her about my ice cream?”
“Yes. It’s a networking thing, isn’t it? You meet people, and if you like what they do you look out for opportunities for them.” His lofty tone disintegrated a little bit after that, and he shot Leo a sideways glance. “I watched a networking video on YouTube and that’s what they said one should do. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Are you nuts?Of courseI don’t mind! I’ll go and see her tomorrow.”
“Take the green apple ice cream if you have any left. She loves Granny Smith apples.”
“So did you. I noticed.”
“I like anything sour: green apples, lemons, rhubarb.” He didn’t mention that he used to suck boiled lemon sweets instead of going down to dinner when his father was in a strop. These days, he went to the Crown & Anchor. “I meant to text you later. I didn’t think we’d bump into each other like this.” Like the night before, Leo’s shoulders sagged and his smile died. It returned quickly enough, but Finn was sure of what he’d seen. “What’s the matter?”
Leo tugged on his sleeve. “Let’s go sit over there on the bench. I’ve got to confess something.”
Finn had no idea what to expect. They’d only met last night. They’d spent a few hours talking. Had he—the thought heated his cheeks and neck—had he shown that he enjoyed Leo’s company? Was Leo upset about that?
“Don’t make that face. The wind might change,” Leo quipped. “It’s nothing serious, only… I got a little bit carried away. I passed by your store this morning and decided to go and see the people who are marketing it. It’s a solicitor, not an estate agent. I went to ask about the rent, you know?”
Finn couldn’t have said a word had his life depended on it.
“Come on, say something, please,” Leo begged.
Finn snapped back to himself. “You went to ask about the rent?”
“Yes, I did. You looked so sad last night. I thought… what can it hurt?”
“What did they say? Were they rude?”
“Why should they be rude? I was a potential client with a genuine enquiry!”
“And?”
“We have an appointment at two o’clock to view the building. And yes, we’d be renting the whole building. Store at the bottom. Living quarters above.”
“‘We’?”
The blush on Leo’s cheeks made his eyes seem as blue as the sea off Hawaii that Finn liked to imagine.
“I thought… if it was too expensive for you by yourself, I mean… maybe we could go halves? Having a store on the High Street has to beat a stall at the market, right?”
It would at that, and Finn had already pictured Leo behind the long wooden counter. Was it so strange that Leo had had the same idea?
“We can never afford it.”
“You may be wrong there. I’ll let Mr Tienfield, that’s the solicitor, explain it to you properly, but… The house has been in the same family since it was built, and it’s always been a store with a family living above it. Before he died, the owner put all his money into a trust to look after the house. He didn’t want it broken up into flats, so the trust offers assistance to people who want to run a store from the place and live there, too.” He grinned. “Now you’re looking the way I felt sitting in his office. And I haven’t even told you yet that the rent is a thousand pounds per month.”
Finn went pale. “A thousand pounds a month?” It was a ridiculously small sum.
“Crazy, right? I pay nine-fifty for my studio apartment. Seems owning your own knitting store may not be as impossible as you thought.”
Finn swirled the dregs of his latte in the paper cup and then took a sip. The tea was cold now, but it helped push down the lump in his throat.
