Her Unexpected Family (19 page)

“And now, by request,” the DJ said several songs later, “The Chicken Dance.”

“I didn't think anyone did the Chicken Dance at weddings anymore,” Lexi said.

“I haven't heard it since I was a kid,” someone else remarked.

Tessa surveyed the room, trying to figure out who might have made the request. She saw Josh making a straight line for her table. Lexi did, too. She sat up and fluffed her hair.

“Hey,” Josh greeted everyone around the table.

When he got to Lexi, she smiled and started to push her chair back, obviously assuming he'd come over to ask her to dance. She and Tessa were the only two women at the table right then.

“Tessa, it's our dance,” he said with a grin.

She shook her head with sympathy for Lexi. Josh might be able to tear out all the roots of a relationship when he called it quits, but didn't he realize most other people couldn't?

“Come on,” he urged. His dark-lashed, deep blue eyes challenged her.

He was up to something. He knew she didn't dance.

Tessa stood and offered Josh her hand. “You're on.”

Whatever Josh was up to, she was game. If making a fool of herself in front of everyone she knew in the area by dancing the silly Chicken Dance would humor Josh and make him more agreeable to what she needed to ask of him, she'd do it.
For Grandma
.

* * *

Josh eyed Tessa. This was too easy. She was giving in with no protest. What fun was that? He led her toward the center of the room. “We don't have to...” He gestured at the people flapping their elbows on the dance floor.

The corner of her mouth quirked up.

“Okay, so I asked you to dance because you laughed at me up at the altar.” He rubbed the back of his neck as the childishness of his words registered. When had he regressed to being ten years old?

“So, you don't really want to join them?” She mimicked his gesture to the people hopping around in front of them.

“You have to ask?” Josh toed for a foothold on some semblance of his dignity.

“No, not about that, but I have something else I want to ask you about. Let's take a walk outside where we don't have to talk over the music and everyone else.”

“As long as it's not about Claire's cousin.” Josh scuffed the toe of his shoe against the tile floor. His wedding-aversion mouth-to-brain disconnect had kicked in again.

“What do you mean?” She faced him, hands on hips. After a second, her eyes brightened. “Oh, Claire told you.”

His mind flipped back through his dinner conversation with Claire and came up blank.

Tessa laughed. “I told Pierre to speak French, said you were working on improving your French for a possible job transfer to Quebec.”

“Oh, that.” He waved her off.

“Yeah, what did you think?”

“I just wasn't following. All this—”

“Wedding stuff,” she finished for him as they crossed the hall to the door.

“Enough said.” Tessa so got him. He couldn't ask for a better friend. Josh gave her a side glance. Or one easier on the eyes. “What do you need to talk about?”

“I have a business proposition.”

He held the door open for Tessa, and they strolled outside to a picnic table. It had to be about the movie theater in Schroon Lake she'd inherited from her grandfather Hamilton a few years ago and reopened as the Majestic. Josh knew the business was touch and go in terms of providing a living for her and her grandmother. If he were her, he'd have sold the theater and gone back to the civil engineering career she'd had before she'd moved in with her grandmother to run the theater. But he wasn't her. Josh swung his leg over the wooden bench.

“You still with me?” Tessa asked, breaking the silence of his thoughts.

“I'm listening.”

“I've come up with financing for my plan to renovate the Majestic to do dinner theater in addition to movies during the summer tourist season.”

Josh leaned forward on his forearms. “The credit union approved a mortgage on the theater building?” He was surprised. All of the banks in the area had already turned Tessa down.

She shifted on the bench. “No, the loan officer suggested a mortgage on Grandma's house.”

That made sense to Josh since the well-kept Victorian would be much easier to sell than the old theater building.

“I couldn't ask Grandma to do that.”

“But you said you got financing.”

Tessa studied her nails, which were a soft shade of pink. With sparkles. He'd never seen her nails polished before. She'd gone all out for this wedding. Why? He took in the complete package from the soft wisps of hair framing her face to the delicate red-and-silver hearts dangling from her ears to her sparkling fingers. Whatever, she should do it more often.

“From Jared.”

Josh straightened. “You went to my brother.”
Good old Jared; always ready to step in and save the day
. Old wounds of sibling rivalry ripped open.

“No, he came to me. I thought you knew. He said you told him about my plans and the trouble I was having with the financing.”

“Yeah, I did.” But not in a good way. He'd been feeling Jared out for a way to discourage Tessa from what he saw as a potential financial disaster.

“Anyway, he called the other night, and we got together yesterday. You know how he is about supporting local businesses. I think he'd hate to see the Majestic go under almost as much as I would. He suggested a couple of things that could make the plan more successful.”

Josh ground his teeth then relaxed his jaw.
Admit it, Donnelly. You're jealous. Tessa is your friend, and you want to be the one to rescue her from her financial plight, although with a more lucrative plan than saving her struggling theater business.
Tessa had too much potential to stagnate in Schroon Lake.

“Hey,” Tessa said. “Lose the face. I would have called you last night, but you had the wedding rehearsal and all.”

“Sorry, I've had a lot on my mind.”

“Like how to talk Connor out of marrying the love of his life.”

Josh grinned. “That and other things. Tell me what Jared suggested.”

“He can't give me as much of a loan as I was asking the banks for.” Tessa gave a number that was about twenty thousand short of what Josh knew she needed.

“We went over those numbers,” he said. “I can't see how you can get the job done for any less.”

Tessa gestured palms up, fingers splayed. “That's where you come in, why I needed to talk with you.”

He read the excitement on her face, and his stomach churned. He had some money invested from the couple of lakeside cabins he bought cheap, remodeled and flipped for a profit. But not money to lend, like his brother, the ex-international motocross champion. His stash was to finance his move away from Paradox Lake when the right promotion came along. He needed to have a good long talk with his brother about putting him in this situation.

“Tessa, I don't have that kind of money.”

“I know that. I wouldn't think of asking you for money.”

But she'd ask Jared
. He placed his hands palms down on the table. Just give him another five years and he'd be as successful in his own right as his older brother was.

“What I need from you is your brawn and brains.”

He burst out laughing. “Brawn and brains.”

“That doesn't appeal to your masculinity?” She batted her eyelashes at him.

She was going to have him rolling on the ground soon.

Her expression grew serious. “Here's my proposal. First, since I'd only be doing the dinner theater a couple of nights a week, Jared suggested I have the dinners catered by that new restaurant that's opening on State Route 74, rather than add full kitchen facilities. I'd only need a refrigerator-freezer and an industrial warming oven.”

“That makes sense.” So much sense, he wished he'd thought of it, except he hadn't been encouraging Tessa in her project.

“Second, in exchange for you helping me make the other necessary alterations to the theater building, you could live rent-free in the apartment over the garage adjacent to the theater and Grandma's house. Then, once I open, I'll give you a twenty percent cut of the Majestic's profits until you've been fully paid for your time.” She tilted her head so the rays of the setting sun reflected the expectant look in her soft brown eyes. “What do you say?”

A great plan except that he didn't expect there to be any profits to pay him from.

In response to his hesitation, she prompted, “The sale closing on the cabin is still next week so you have to be out, right? And you don't have anyplace to live.”

No place but with one of his brothers or back with Gram and Harry again as he'd done when he first returned to Paradox Lake to take the job at GreenSpaces.

“Or did you find a rental?” she asked.

“The closing is next Thursday, and I haven't found anything long-term, only a couple of places that are available to rent until late June when the summer people start arriving.”

“Then you'll do it? I'll have the attorney who settled Grandpa's estate draw up a contract next week.”

Since he didn't have much confidence in the project paying out, as a friend, he should say no. But as a friend, he knew how much it meant to Tessa to stay in Schroon Lake and run the Majestic, even though he didn't fully understand why. She could do so much more with her life.

“Sure. It's a deal.”

Copyright © 2016 by Jean Chelikowsky Gordon

ISBN-13: 9781488007408

Her Unexpected Family

Copyright © 2016 by Ruth M. Blodgett

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