The Solid Grounds Coffee Company

by Carla Laureano

  Alex was nodding slowly. “That’s really decent of him. Low risk on his part, but it cuts a big part of your overhead.”

  “The advantages of living with a real estate mogul.” Bryan pushed himself up off the table, dusted his butt off, and jerked his head toward the office door.

  “How’s that working out, by the way?”

  “Weird.” It was nice in a way. He hadn’t lived at home since he was eighteen, and now that he was back, however temporarily, his mother was cooking for him and plying him with her baked goods. His father, on the other hand, kept giving him searching looks that he couldn’t quite interpret. “I really need to make this work so I can get my own place again.”

  “Cramping your style, huh?”

  “No style to cramp these days.” Bryan flipped off the lights as they went, then opened the front door and locked up behind them. The noise from the highway that had been barely perceptible a minute before washed over them. “I’m done with women. For a while at least.”

  “Why?”

  Bryan glanced at Alex before he darted across the street in the gap of traffic, his friend following. “You know why.”

  “Tell me.”

  He unlocked his car door and climbed in, the seal shutting out the noise again. The time it took for Alex to get to the passenger side allowed him to order his thoughts. “Because no one is Vivian. And she pretty much destroyed me twice. I’m not willing to do that to someone else. I need to get my head on straight without a woman around.”

  A smile rose to Alex’s lips. “Even Ana? You guys seemed pretty close at the supper club on Saturday.”

  “Especially Ana. That whole thing would go wrong in a hurry.”

  “Why? Because she would expect too much from you?” Alex must be in a pushy mood today because he never leaned this hard when it came to women. Definitely not when it came to innermost feelings. His former career as a psychologist was showing.

  “Because she would expect exactly what she should, and I would screw it up. And lose all of my friends in the process. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you and the girls are pretty much all I have left these days.” Bryan cranked the ignition, put the car in gear, and then rolled down the windows, effectively shutting off conversation. That was enough honesty for one day.

  Of course, Alex didn’t seem to agree. “I think you’re selling yourself short, as usual. But this plan of yours seems like a good one.”

  “Really?” Bryan took his eyes off the road briefly to assess Alex’s expression.

  “Really. The last time I saw you throw yourself into something this thoroughly, you were junior world champion the following year.”

  “Yeah, but you saw how my climbing career turned out in the end.”

  “Just don’t sleep with the fiancée of your investor and then throw her off the side of your building, and you’ll be okay.”

  Bryan whipped his head toward his friend. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

  “Why? It’s just good business practice.”

  Bryan snorted in response, and then the laughter came, pouring out of him along with tears from his eyes until he could barely see where he was driving. Oh, it had been a long time since he’d laughed like that. “You don’t pull punches, do you?”

  Alex grinned and Bryan swiped a hand across his face, still chuckling. He owed Alex one for that. What had happened in Suesca had taken up a good part of his brain, blowing up to gargantuan proportions in his mind. He’d received an email from Vivian a month ago saying that she’d made a full recovery, even though she wasn’t keen on climbing again, and Luke had taken her back. No apology, no blame for Bryan. Just water under the bridge.

  He needed to start thinking of it like that. If God had truly forgiven him, at some point he needed to forgive himself and move on. He smiled to himself at Alex’s bald-faced statement. That’s why he needed to be back home with his best friend. After all, if you couldn’t joke about the event that broke your heart and ruined your career, what exactly could you joke about?

  Chapter Five

  ANA CLIMBED OUT of her car and immediately wished that she’d changed her shoes before she’d made the drive. Her heels sank two inches into the soft dirt beside her vehicle, probably staining the cream-colored leather, the gravel no doubt leaving little scrape marks on the stilettos. Had she known she would be taking the road less traveled today, she wouldn’t have worn her second-favorite pair of pumps.

  It had started with arriving early in the office to get some work done, followed by surreptitious phone calls to the remainder of her venue list, all of which had been booked. Then a coworker opened up a long flat box at the desk next to her and brought out the most beautiful arrangement of flowers.

  “Where did those come from?” Ana had asked, enchanted.

  “Larkspur Flower Farm,” the coworker had said. “Their Instagram is amazing. They’re local but they ship all over the country.”

  Which of course had ended in an Instagram stalking session revealing that Larkspur Flower Farm was less than an hour from Denver, on a gorgeous, sprawling piece of land. It was like an organic butter commercial or something, where the sweeping green landscape was intended to show how natural and untainted their animals were. Rachel would love it, given the fact that all her produce came from local places. Maybe she’d want to bring in some flower bunches to sell in the . . .

  Ana gasped. Not flowers for the café. Flowers for the wedding. A venue for the wedding. With trembling hands, she’d looked up the phone number of the business and then dialed on her cell phone. A woman answered on the first ring.

  “This is Analyn Sanchez with the Massey-Coleman Group. I’m looking for an unusual venue for an upcoming event, and I’ve fallen absolutely in love with the photos on your Instagram feed. Do you ever hold events on your property?”

  She never had, but she was open to the idea, which was what had led Ana forty miles south of Denver—the middle of nowhere—wearing a silk-blend suit and five-hundred-dollar shoes in the mud.

  Before she could finish imagining the damage to her pumps, the door to an enormous greenhouse opened and a woman about Ana’s age emerged. She wore jeans and a flannel shirt open over a Led Zeppelin concert tee, her burgundy-streaked hair piled into a bun on top of her head. She carried a pair of sizable garden shears, and Ana couldn’t tell whether she’d been pruning something in the greenhouse or if they were meant for protection.

  “Hello!” Ana called, stepping away and shoving the door of her SUV closed. “You must be Darcy.”

  “That I am. You must be Analyn.” When she got close enough to stick out her hand, Ana realized Darcy was at least a decade older than she’d first thought, if not more. She smiled and her eyes crinkled up around the corners. “I have to say, your call surprised me. You want to hold an event all the way out here?”

  Ana filled her lungs with fresh air and looked around. Much of the land was still barren this early in the season, but she knew from the photos that it would be alive with all sorts of wildflowers and cultivars in less than a month. “It’s actually for a friend’s wedding. She’s a chef, emphasis on fresh and locavore, and I think this would be absolutely perfect for her.”

  Darcy nodded thoughtfully. “Why don’t you come with me? I’ve got a pair of boots you can borrow and then I’ll show you around the property.”

  “That would be great.” Ana’s laugh left on an exhale as she picked her way through the damp gravel lot toward the main house. “I was so excited when you said you’d consider it, I didn’t even stop at home for a change of clothes.”

  “Well, I don’t recommend heels for your wedding guests. In fact, if we’re talking summer, they might be better off in casual clothes. Afternoon rain can get everything pretty muddy.” She led Ana to the farmhouse, a freshly painted white wood structure, and opened the door into what was no doubt a mudroom, from the look of several pairs of galoshes lined up on the tile floor. This was a true working farm that someone—Ana assume
d Darcy—lived and worked on.

  Darcy plucked out a pair of bright-red galoshes and handed them to Ana. “These will be big, but they’re better than ruining your heels. You can leave your shoes here. They’re safe as long as we take Donald with us.”

  “Donald?” Ana asked, but her question was answered when Darcy stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled. Immediately, a huge, mud-spattered golden retriever appeared from around the house and bounded toward them.

  The dog made a beeline for Ana’s trousers, but Darcy stopped him short with a cluck of her tongue. “Heel, Donald. With me.” He skidded to a stop and circled to her side, tail wagging madly.

  “Good dog you have there,” Ana said.

  “Well, he’s a better companion than a guard dog, that’s for sure.” Darcy chuckled and began walking across the wide gravel lot. “Since you called, I’ve been thinking about locations for the wedding. There’s an old garden that dates back to the original construction of the house. It could be a good place for taking vows, if we positioned the chairs in a semicircle around the outside . . .”

  They rounded the house and Ana gasped. It was a fairy-tale garden, or it would be when it was in full bloom. The tiny space, marked off by a low stone wall, showed the signs of summer, green creeping vines beginning to poke from the ground and crawl up the collection of peeling white trellises. At the farthest end was an arch; if she wasn’t mistaken, the bushes around it were climbing roses. “Do you think those will be filled out by mid-June?” Ana asked.

  “Depending on the rain and the weather, possibly. We can always add some cut greenery or potted trees to make up for them.” Darcy shrugged. “It’s Colorado. We could have snow in June that kills the buds. But I figured the arch would be an ideal place to get married since there’s already a little stone aisle to walk down.”

  Ana pulled out her phone and snapped several photos of the garden, not trusting her memory to properly convey the size and layout to Rachel. “Where could we set up tables for the reception?”

  “It depends.” Darcy gestured again and Ana clomped after her, curling her toes in the boots so they didn’t slide off her feet while she walked. The advantage of being a size five was that you could buy great shoes on clearance. The disadvantage was that almost no one had anything you could borrow.

  “If the weather is good,” Darcy continued, “you could set up tables out here in front of the fields, in view of all the flowers. You’d need to bring in lighting and heat, though. This is the first time I’ve thought about hosting an event here, so I don’t have any of that in place. Pretty much what you see is what you get.”

  Ana nodded thoughtfully and took several more photos, using her sketch app to mark the area where Darcy had suggested they set up. It could be perfect. Hadn’t Rachel once said that she wanted a simple backyard wedding with lights and flowers? This was a little bit more in depth, but it solved the problem of what to do with a hundred and fifty guests.

  “What about if the weather is bad?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. Follow me.” Darcy turned on her heel and began walking down a gentle slope toward a cluster of outbuildings. She led Ana straight to a big white barn and pulled one of the creaking doors open.

  Ana coughed at the cloud of dust that enveloped her when she stepped inside. It was . . . a barn. Big, empty, with an unused hayloft above. Right now, it housed only a green John Deere tractor and a bunch of hand tools.

  But it was big enough to hold hundreds of people if they arranged the tables right . . . and she’d bet that Melody could do something amazing with lights and decor strung from the rafters.

  Ana nodded slowly. “Lots of possibilities. What are you thinking for a rental fee?”

  Darcy named a price that was less than half of what they’d been paying the event center.

  “Did I hear that right?”

  Darcy shrugged. “You’re just paying for the space. You’ll need to bring in everything else yourself. So really, I wouldn’t want to charge any more than that.”

  Ana took several more photos of the barn and then held her hand out to shake Darcy’s. “Let me show these to Rachel and we’ll get back to you. Thanks so much for taking time to consider it.”

  Darcy nodded placidly and gestured to Ana’s borrowed boots. “Think you might want to switch out your shoes first . . .”

  Ana laughed and followed Darcy back to the farmhouse, where she swapped her boots for her heels and then gingerly picked her way out to her now-muddy SUV. Once ensconced in the quiet interior, she pulled out her phone and dialed Melody. It rang several times and then went to voice mail. She was probably elbow-deep in bread dough right now.

  “Melody, it’s Ana. I think I have a solution for Rachel’s wedding. I’m going to text you some photos now.”

  She sat there for several minutes, picking the best of her photos and sending them to Melody. The baker was very visual—once she’d seen the space, she’d be mentally designing it. Then Ana could figure out how much it would cost to decorate and furnish to Melody’s specifications, and they could present it to Alex and Rachel.

  For the first time in days, a tiny portion of her worry lifted. It might not be her fault, but she’d volunteered to help organize this event, so that made it her responsibility. And she wasn’t going to sleep until she had the problem completely solved.

  Not that she slept anyway.

  The sun was just dropping behind the horizon when she pulled back onto the highway and headed north to Denver . . . and found herself smack in the middle of a traffic jam. Despite the constant talk about widening and expanding I-25 south of the city, the work never actually materialized, which meant a single accident could cause gridlock. Ana took a deep breath, held it in for a count of four, and then blew it out in a long exhale. Despite what her yoga teacher said, it didn’t help with her stress levels. She checked her watch. At this rate, it would take her forever to get home.

  Her phone rang through the speakers of her car. She answered it with a button press. “Analyn Sanchez.”

  “Well, well, no need to be so formal.”

  Ana’s tone softened. “Hey, Mel. Did you get my photos?”

  “I did! That place is gorgeous! I can just imagine . . . well, I’ve got ideas already. It’s all I can do not to dump the cleanup on Talia and get to work sketching.”

  “You won’t do that. You’re too responsible now that you’re a business owner.”

  “You’re right, but I thought about it. Where are you now? We could draw it out together.”

  “Stuck on the interstate. Accident south of Castle Rock. I can drop by your apartment when I make it back to Denver, though.”

  “Justin and I have dinner plans later. I might not be there. How about tomorrow afternoon?”

  “Sure. Just let me know.” Ana kept her voice light, without anything to communicate the pang of . . . something . . . that surfaced in her chest. She didn’t blame Melody for wanting to spend time with her boyfriend. But once more, the sensation of being left behind overwhelmed her. Before, they’d been three single women trying to make their way in the world together. And now that Rachel and Melody had significant others, they didn’t need her anymore.

  No, that was ridiculous. Of course they needed her. Who did they call anytime they had an unsolvable problem? When they needed business advice? When they needed a reliable Denver contact in any industry?

  They just didn’t need her for personal advice. They had Alex and Justin for that. Partners.

  Ana dropped her head back against the seat of her car, fighting something she could only call self-pity.

  No. She wasn’t that person. Not anymore. She didn’t sit back and let things happen to her, feel bad about how things turned out. She took control of matters. Right now, those matters just might not include a man. She felt like she’d exhausted every dating option in Denver, including online, blind dates, setups, and the never-successful bar scene. Heck, she’d even tried dating guys she’d met at her tw
o churches, and that hadn’t gone any better.

  It was beginning to feel like she was destined to be alone.

  She knew she shouldn’t let it bother her. The Bible talked about the blessings of singleness and the troubles one faced when married. But right now, her single status didn’t feel like a gift or a bullet dodged. It just felt lonely.

  Though it was harder to feel lonely when you were busy. By the time the traffic finally loosened up—and then slowed again approaching downtown—she’d dictated a full list of tasks to her calendar. The only thing she’d leave to Rachel was food. Now that their original venue, chosen as much for the chef as the location, was unavailable, Rachel was going to have strong opinions about a replacement. Maybe she’d be able to call in one of her culinary contacts to help.

  Ana was feeling significantly better when she finally pulled into her garage at a quarter past nine, having spent almost four hours on the road this evening. Even with her comfy seats, her back and legs ached from the inactivity. She could crank out a few miles on the treadmill to work out the kinks and figure out something light for dinner . . .

  Her phone rang. She let out a sigh before answering.

  The panicked voice on the other end snapped her to attention.

  “Slow down. What happened?” Her stomach sank as the details seeped in. “Call 911. I’ll be right there.”