Love And Coffee: A Cup Of Grace Romance Series Book 1 (5 page)

              I let out my breath.  “I think I really like it, too.”

              And that’s how Cup of Grace was born.

CHAPTER EIGHT

              A week later, we were standing in the middle of an empty store.  It was cute as could be on the outside.  The windows had wooden gingerbread trim and it was situated in an older upscale neighborhood.  We thought that it would bring lots of foot traffic due to so many other shops nearby.  It was adorable when viewed from a car driving by.  Who could resist stopping in for a latte?

              But on the inside?  It smelled.  Bad.  And it was dirty.  Really dirty.  There had been a pizza restaurant there previously so the stove was still there, thankfully. Jillian would need one and that was one less expense we had to pay for.  But it had been empty for over a year and it showed it.  The previous owners must have left in a hurry because it looked like they hadn’t stopped to clean the place up.

              “Well, what do you think?” Al, our Real Estate agent asked.  “It’s a great location, and you know you need that for a coffee shop.”

              “That’s true,” I said, looking around at the damage.  We would have to paint everything.  I hadn’t really anticipated that the entire place would need it.  And the ceiling had some chunks of plaster missing.  We would have to fix that.  But it could be adorable, I thought.  We could pull in some tables and chairs and maybe even a sofa just like on Friend’s.

              “I know what you’re thinking,” Jillian said.

              “What?” I asked, turning to her. 

“You’re thinking about all the work.  That’s okay, we have Matt.  He said he would help us.”

              “Yes, but we have to pay him for the work.  We can’t expect him to do all this out of the goodness of his heart.  The man has rent to pay.  And we have a budget.”

              Kathryn put her arm around my shoulder.  “I think this is the place.  We’ve been to six other places and none of them felt right.”

              I sighed.  “You’re right.  This is the place.”  We would all just have to put forth a whole lot of elbow grease.  I looked at Al and said, “We’ll take it.”

              Al smiled real big and whipped out a contract for us to sign.  I let Kathryn handle the details on the contract.  She was better about that sort of thing than I was.  Or at least I hoped she was.  I wandered back into the kitchen.  I could smell baking berry scones and pumpkin bread beneath the stink of the shop.  I smiled, and it was for real this time.

***

“Okay, here goes nothing,” I said and opened the oven door.  The light from the room made a few roaches scatter.  “Oh wow.”  I said and slammed the door.

“What?”  Jillian called from the front of the shop.

“Oh it’s nothing.  This place has been empty for a while and I guess a few critters have taken up residence.” I shuddered.

I picked up the bucket we had brought along, put it under the sink faucet, and began filling it with water.  I added some vinegar and dish soap, determined to make the counter tops shine.

“Hello?”  I heard a voice say.

“Hey Matt!”  Kathryn said.

I went to the kitchen door.  “Matt!”  I called and put on my best smile.

“Hey ladies, how’s it going?”  He stood in the middle of the shop and looked up at the ceiling.  His dark hair spilled back onto his shoulders as he assessed the damage.

“I’m afraid we’ve got our work cut out for us,” I said, coming to stand beside him. 

“It doesn’t look too serious,” he said without looking at me.  “I’ll see if I can borrow my dad’s ladder tomorrow and see what I can do about it.”

“We appreciate that so much,” I said. I tried to will him to look at me.  “We’ll pay you, of course, for any work that you do for us.”

He waved my suggestion away, finally looking at me.  “Don’t worry about it.”

“No, we insist.  We’re in the same boat that you are.  Laid off,” I said.

He wandered over to the wall.  “You’ll want to paint everything,” he said.  “Otherwise the whole place will just feel old and worn out.  And uh, smell bad.  It’s a lot of work, but it’ll go fast.”

“That’s what I want to hear,” I said.  “We really need to get this place open as soon as possible.”

“I think it can be done in a month if we all work on it every day.  Well, everyday but Sunday,” he said and smiled.

“What church do you go to, Matt?” I asked.  I knew so little about him. 

“New Life.  It’s a good place to go.  I’ve been going since I was a kid.  How about you?”

“Well, Jillian found this new church plant about six months ago, Valley Believers Fellowship.  It’s still small, only about a hundred people, but we’re growing.  It just feels really good there.”

“That’s awesome,” he said, his eyes lighting up.  “Everyone needs a good church home and it’s awesome that all three of you found a home together.”

“Yeah, we’ve kind of been inseparable since college.  It’s kind of weird I guess, and completely unintentional.  I swear,” I said, raising my right hand and making a swearing motion. 

“Yeah?  Unintentional?  First college, then jobs at the same company, now moving in together and opening a business together.  I’m not sure I’m buying that one,” he teased, his blue eyes twinkling.

“Yes it is!  Our dorm room at college was assigned to us. I got a job at the paper first and then Kathryn did and Jillian followed.  We liked it so we hung out there.  Well, until we were asked to leave, of course,” I said with a giggle.  “And church was just kind of a natural, you know, to go together.”  It felt good to be able to talk to him about church things.  I had tried dating a man that wasn’t a Christian once.  Just once.  We managed to stay together for almost a month.  But that was all we could take of one another.  It just wasn’t a good fit.

“I really like your idea, by the way,” he said turning toward me.  “I think having a comfortable place for people to come and have Bible studies would be great.”

I noticed that Kathryn and Jillian had mosied on back toward the kitchen.  But were still within earshot. “I think we’re going to put some Bible verses on the walls.  You know, painted in black.  And we’ll have to find some other art work.”

“I like it,” he said.

We stood and looked at each other for a couple of minutes, and then I finally said, “Well, maybe we should get some work done.”

At that moment a roach decided to scurry across the toe of my shoe and I screamed and yes, I’ll admit it, I did a little dance.  I hate bugs.  Bugs of any kind, but especially roaches.  Hate, hate, hate them.  I can’t say hate enough when it comes to roaches.

Matt calmly reached a long leg out and stomped it with his size twelve shoe. 

“Gee, good thing you were here to handle that,” I said and averted my eyes from the squish.

“Well, that’s what I’m here for.  Just call me bug killer extraordinaire.”

I giggled like a schoolgirl.  I couldn’t help it.  He was cute and there was no getting around it.

“Well, I guess I’ll get to work filling in these holes in the walls,” Matt said.  There were a number of small nail holes in the walls from the previous tenants as well as some larger ones that needed to be filled before we could paint.

I got a broom and got working on the floors, turning my head when I got to the squish.  I swept up more than a few dead roaches and I began to wonder about that.  “I hope we don’t have a bug problem,” I said to no one in particular.

“Nah, sometimes they just wander from building to building.  There’s that fried chicken place a few doors down.  They might be attracted to that,” Matt said.

“Ew, remind me not to eat there,” I said.  “Which reminds me, we will need to schedule an inspection with the health department before opening day.”

“I wonder what this is,” Jillian said from the far corner of the room. 

“What?” I asked, still sweeping up dust and bugs. 

“This.  There’s a rag and it’s stuck to the floor.”  I looked up and saw her on her knees, tugging on something.  “It’s stuck really solidly.”

“Here.  Let me help you,” Kathryn said and went over to lend a hand.  They both got hold of the rag and pulled.  The next thing I knew, there was screaming and both of them were on their behinds on the floor.  They looked like turtles on their backs as they flapped their arms and legs and struggled to right themselves.  The screaming was deafening and both Matt and I stood rooted to our places while we tried to make sense of the scene.

Then I saw it.  Or rather, them.  Thousands of roaches flooding out of what was now a hole in the floor.  Maybe millions.  Okay, that was probably an exaggeration, but there were a lot of them, just streaming out of that hole. 

After a moment, Matt rushed to help Kathryn and Jillian, grabbing each by the hand and pulling them to their feet.  They both started jumping and slapping at the little beasts that were now crawling up their legs.  And the screaming, oh the screaming!  I would have liked to have helped, but you know, there was that little issue of the bugs being all over the place and my own rather strong abhorrence to the nasty little creepy crawlies.  Kathryn and Jillian just kept jumping up and down and screaming and after a couple of minutes I decided to scream, too.  Call it sympathy screaming.

Jillian and Kathryn ran toward me, still screaming.  I screamed some more and we all ran to the side of the room opposite of the hole, which was still releasing roaches.  Matt worked on stuffing the rag back into the hole, every now and then stopping to fling a roach off his hands.

That did it.  I vomited right there, on the floor. Did I mention I have an intense fear of bugs?  Turns out they also make me sick.  Roaches scurried everywhere, and the hair on the back of my neck was standing up. 

“Oh my gosh, what is that smell?”  Kathryn asked, not turning around and still doing a little hop to make sure none of the roaches were hitching a ride on her clothes.

“I think it’s me,” I said, wiping my mouth with my sleeve.  Yeah, that would impress Matt.  Very lady like.

“Okay, I think I got it plugged up,” Matt said, breathing hard.  “Are you guys okay?” he said looking over at us.  He looked at the mess I had made on the floor and winced a little.  Roaches scurried over my shoe and I screamed and danced and felt my stomach heave.  Would this horror never end?

“We’re okay,” I said, still out of breath from projectile vomiting.  “But I gotta get out of here.”  I hurried out the door with the other three hot on my trail.  Once outside, I inhaled as much fresh air as my lungs would hold.

“What was that?” Jillian sobbed. “Why did that happen?”

“I’m not sure.  Looks like there’s a crack in the foundation and someone stopped it up with those rags.  I think they used some sort of adhesive to keep the roaches from squeezing out through the cracks around the rags, and the two of you dislodged it.”

“Wow.  And this was a pizza place.  I’m glad I never ate here,” I said.

“You know what?”  Jillian said wide-eyed.  “My ex-boyfriend Derek took me here to eat a lot.”

“Ew,” Kathryn said, horrified.

“Yeah.  They had great pizza.  Loved the olive deluxe.  At least, I think those were olives.”  She turned a little green and I thought she would hurl next.

“Just don’t think about it,” I offered helpfully.

“Good idea,” she said.

“Well, the owner is going to have to exterminate,” Kathryn said.  “I wonder if Al knew about this?”  She took her phone out of her pocket and made a call.

I looked over at Matt, grateful that he had been here to stop up the hole.  “I don’t know what would have happened if you weren’t here.  I mean, we could have been standing in two feet of roaches in no time.”

Matt laughed and kicked an errant roach out of the way.  “I bet you three wouldn’t have hung around long enough to see them get two feet deep.”

“Yeah, probably not.” I shuddered.

Kathryn started to raise her voice and we all turned toward her,

“What do you mean?  That can’t be right!” she said, and I could see the tension building in her jaw. Al should be glad that he wasn’t in the same room with her.  Once that twitch started up in Kathryn’s jaw, there was no telling what would happen.

              “I’m going to get a lawyer!”  She growled and clicked the end call button.  “It’s times like these that I wish I had an old fashioned phone that I could slam down the receiver on.”

              “What did he say?” I asked.

              “That the tenant, meaning us, is responsible for all repairs, including extermination of insects and any other vermin.”

              “Vermin?” I said.  ”Do you think there’s rats?  Or mice?  What did he mean by vermin?  Does he know something that we don’t know?  Something else?”

              “Oh no, I can’t do rats or mice,” Jillian said.  “No, no, no!”

              “I think he was just telling me what we were responsible for, not that there actually are any here.  I hope,” Kathryn said, frowning.

              “Let’s not get too carried away yet,” Matt said.  “Why don’t you call up an exterminator and have him come take a look around?  Then you’ll know what you’re really dealing with, and he can handle getting rid of them.”