Deacon (Unfinished Hero #4)(55)

“And those demands are?” he prompted when I gave no detail.

I settled more fully on him and shared, “Well, usually it’s when they don’t read the terms and conditions and think there are towels, toilet paper, daily maid service, laundry onsite, crap like that. And that only happens when they first get here and find out that stuff isn’t provided.” My eyes wandered to the pillow and I went on, “Though, next up for Glacier Lily, gonna build an outbuilding and have a coin-op washer and dryer so I don’t have to deal with that part. When that’s done, I’ll build my gazebo.”

“Gazebo?’ he asked and I looked back at him.

“Last big dream for Glacier Lily. A big gazebo by the river with chairs in it for folks to sit, relax, drink in the view.”

“Can you afford that?”

“I’m gonna refinance the property,” I answered. “Roll the second mortgage in with money to pay back my dad and—”

I said no more because I found myself suddenly and surprisingly on my back with Deacon looming over me.

“You haven’t paid back your dad?”

I felt my brows drawing together, remembering I’d told him about that but confused as to why he had a dark look on his face all of a sudden. “No. He won’t accept installments and—”

“And you got a loan from the bank?”

“Well, yeah, Deacon,” I replied. “All the work I did on the cabins cost some cake.”

“And you got a loan from the bank to pay for it.”

I stared at him and repeated slowly, “Well…yeah.”

“Woman, don’t do that again.”

This was quick and firm too, it was also surprising.

“Why?”

“Banks suck.”

“Perhaps,” I allowed. “But they’re a necessary evil. And anyway, I didn’t promise them my firstborn child,” I pointed out.

Again, Deacon wasn’t in the mood for teasing or banter.

“Cassidy, listen to me, the economy was in the toilet for years. So bad, every time I came here, did it uneasy, hopin’ you were still in business, ridin’ a wave the rest of the country was not and keepin’ your head above water.”

God.

Deacon.

I wondered if it would ever stop coming to me, his moments of sweet and how deep they ran.

I wondered, but hoped it didn’t.

“Straight up miracle you did,” he kept at me. “You didn’t, you get in too deep with the bank and your shit gets messy, they can take it all and you walk away with nothing.”

“That won’t happen.”

“You don’t think it will until it does,” he stated and his words made me still underneath him. “You worked too f*ckin’ hard on this place not to enjoy the goodness you created. Do not put that in jeopardy.”

“Did that happen to you?” I asked cautiously.

“What?” he asked back.

“Did you lose something to the bank?”

His head cocked to the side. “Fuck no. Never owned property in my life and definitely never had a loan.”

That was intriguing, but I didn’t have time to get into it, he wasn’t done talking.

“I just know that shit goes down and it sucks. But if that shit happened to you with what I’ve watched you put into this place the last six years, it would do more than suck.”

He was not wrong.

He was also still not done.

“You refinance only if you’re gettin’ a better rate, you roll that second mortgage into it but you don’t borrow more to build the laundry or a gazebo. You don’t do those at all until you got the cash to pay for it or I got a good amount of time at Glacier Lily to put them up for you.”

Again, there was a lot there, all of it we had to go over, and I decided to start with the part that interested me most.

“You’ll put them up for me?”

“Yeah.”

“Uh, how are you gonna do that, Deacon? We’re not talking cleaning gutters here.”

I saw a veil slide over his features. He didn’t shut down, but he still shut me out.

He did this further by answering simply, “Got the skills.”

I took a moment to decide whether to push that or not.

In that moment I saw his expression remain veiled and we’d just shared something beautiful. I didn’t want to do anything to mar that, like push it when he wasn’t ready. So I let that go.

“The laundry would be a very nice added service,” I told him. “That’s probably the biggest request I get. There’s a Laundromat in town but people don’t like to schlep their stuff to town. And those coin-op machines cost a whack to use. It would pay for itself.”

“It could also start payin’ for itself when you can pocket that shit, not you earnin’ back what you put into it, givin’ it away, takin’ more time to do that since you’re payin’ interest on what you borrowed.”

He was again not wrong and this was sounding familiar.

“My dad would say that,” I told him.

“See your dad isn’t the scarecrow either,” he replied and I grinned.

“No, he isn’t.”

“No increase on your loan, Cassidy,” he ordered.