“You should see your face!”
“Well, it’s just…we have a five-year plan.”
“You have all the time you want,” Lily said, “I’m just saying, the old man’s been making noises about it. You don’t have to grant his every wish, you know.” But then she rolled her eyes. “Five years, though?”
“Well, yeah. Maria’s taking over the vet clinic from her mom, and that’s gonna be an adjustment.”
“Huh.”
“What, you disapprove?”
“Oh, gosh, no! I just—hope I don’t have to wait five years for one of my own.”
Her brother looked at her in surprise. “I didn’t know you had baby wishes, Lily.”
“I didn’t either, but all Dad’s yammering about you and Maria making him a grandpa got me to thinking about it, and I realized, I really want to be a mom. I want to be the kind of mom our mom was.”
“You’ll be even better,” he said, and he leaned down to kiss her cheek.
A white van pulled into the new driveway that curved around the building, past the main entrance, to the big parking lot in the back. It looked like a re-purposed delivery truck. “That’s Dirt River.” She bounced on the balls of her feet in excitement.
“Dirt who, now?”
“The local band I booked! I want them onstage before everyone arrives. I can’t wait to hear what they think of our setup. They’re going to use our built-in amps, our microphones, the whole shebang.” She’d had a crash course in operating all of the above from the installers. Ethan would be better at it, though. He worked with those things all the time.
The thought of Ethan sent a wave of something both delicious and terrifying through Lily from her toes on up, as she hurried through the addition past the stage, through the backstage area to the brand-new stage door. She opened it and waved at the four young men who were already out of their van, unloading instruments, and carrying them across the pristine black parking lot that was twice size of the old one.
Tomorrow, Ethan would be home, she thought. And her heart clenched. Tomorrow, in time for the grand opening.
Harrison went outside to lend the guys a hand, and then they trooped in with guitars, keyboard, and several parts of a drum set, all of them greeting her as they passed. They were excited to perform in Ethan Brand’s new honky-tonk during its opening week. And the higher Ethan rose on the charts, the more excited they got.
She hoped the exposure would help them out.
When the last of their stuff was in, she closed the door and returned to find the guys on the stage, setting up, plugging in. They didn’t need her to tell them what was what.
“What do you guys, think?” she asked, pushing a button to extend the solid retractable wall over the glass, then stopping halfway. “Open or closed?”
“It’ll still be light out at seven,” said Lupé, a drummer with a neck as thick as his bulging biceps. “I think closed.”
His three bandmates nodded, so she pushed the button again and close the barrier all the way.
Harrison said, “Way better. Much more intimate, and we still have the view from the side windows. It’ll give everyone time to take the place in, before you dazzle ‘em with even more.”
“After dark, I can flip on the party lights and turn on the fire-and-water feature from in here.” She pulled a remote out of her apron pocket and wiggled her eyebrows. “Then I’ll open the slider for the big reveal.”
Another vehicle pulled in, a gray mini-van with a florist’s logo on the side.
“I didn’t order flowers,” she said. But she unlocked the side doors, their new main entrance. The vehicle hadn’t pulled all the way around to the parking lot but had stopped right in front of them.
A smiling woman with gray hair in a pixie cut got out from the driver’s side and a younger woman from the passenger side as the rear hatch rose. Lily stepped out, and the older one came her way with a clipboard.
“You’re the owner?”
“Co-owner, sort of.” No paperwork had yet been done. Everything really depended on Ethan’s return, how things were between them, and whether she felt like she could keep working with him without being in a constant state of heartache. Wanting him and not having him might be easier from a distance.
But lately, it kind of seemed like he might feel the same way she did. And yet, he wasn’t here. And he hadn’t said a word about having changed his stance on things, or altered his belief that he couldn’t live in Quinn, in the shadow of his noble family.
“We can set them up for you, no extra charge,” said the older of the two.
