Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,21

lights. Main Street in Moonflower Bay was mostly lined with nineteenth-century redbrick buildings ranging from one to three stories, but a little ways out of downtown proper were some old bungalows from the 1940s he supposed used to be actual homes for people. These days they had dentists and chiropractors and insurance brokers in them.

“This used to be Jason Sims’s place,” Jake said.

Right. The town lawyer used to live in the house and have his legal practice in the front. “You’re working on Jason Sims’s house?” Something had gone down regarding Jason Sims when Jake and Nora were getting together. Law didn’t know what, but it was safe to say Jake was not the president of the Jason Sims fan club.

Jake snorted derisively, but Sawyer said, “Jason asked us if we were free to do some work here, and as far as I can tell, Jake decided that taking the job was the surest way to get the dude out of town.”

“Out of town?”

“He built a new house on the lake outside Bayshore and is moving his practice,” Jake said with a smirk, unable to hide his satisfaction at the idea of Jason Sims moving away. “Says they’re more litigious than we are.”

“So he’s putting this place on the market.” Sawyer gestured toward a wall of rickety-looking built-in shelving. “He hired us to rip out these crappy 1970s built-ins and do something new.” Sawyer and Jake ran a carpentry business together, though Jake did most of the actual work since Sawyer was otherwise employed as the chief of police. “He’s getting it ready to list, but I bet he’d do a private sale.”

“I can’t buy anything,” Law said, even as he looked around. The place was a little worse for wear—some 1970s crimes against good taste had indeed been committed—but it had good bones. Original wood trim, a brick fireplace in the living room, hardwood floors.

“You could keep the separate rooms up front here,” Sawyer said, sticking his head into a small den off the living room. “It would create little nooks.”

“Buying is not in the budget,” Law said, though this could really work with the spirit of what he was imagining. A place that seemed unassuming but then surprised you with its great food. “And look at the kitchen.” He led the guys to the tiny kitchen at the rear of the place. “It’s too small to do restaurant-scale stuff.” So, there, this place was a no-go.

“There’s room to push out into the yard.” Sawyer opened the sliding glass door from the dining room, and they all peered out into an overgrown but sizable yard.

Jake nodded his agreement. “We can push the existing kitchen into the yard. Then we get rid of this wall”—he crossed back to the dining room and patted a wall that looked pretty load-bearing to Law, but he trusted his friends—“and that will open up this space into the hallway. You could open the bedrooms, too, or keep them as separate rooms. I like Sawyer’s idea of dining nooks.”

They weren’t listening to him. “I can’t buy a place,” he said again.

“Why not?” Sawyer asked. “You buy a place, you own it outright eventually. Isn’t that better than paying rent forever?”

“I can’t buy a place without getting a loan against the bar, and then I won’t own the bar outright anymore.”

“So?” Sawyer said.

“I’ve got the biggest personal loan I qualify for, and that together with my savings is enough to float a reno of an existing commercial space and four months of the restaurant’s operations,” he said, reciting the gist of his business plan—which he was aware didn’t answer Sawyer’s question. “And my father…” He paused, not knowing how to explain his dilemma.

“But your dad passed the bar on to you, right?” Sawyer said. “He doesn’t have a stake in it anymore.”

“Right, but this isn’t about him.” Well, it was, in a way. It was about his dad and his grandfather. It was about the family legacy the bar represented. Law might own the bar, but he didn’t own that legacy. He merely stewarded it. Hell, his dad jokingly referred to the bar as his second child. His parents had just about killed themselves keeping it open in the economic downturn of the 1990s. He remembered the day he and his mom had come down before opening to find his dad sitting at the bar crying. Dad hadn’t heard them come in, and Mom had looked at Law with such sadness in her eyes, laid a