The Solid Grounds Coffee Company

by Carla Laureano

  “I told you. I left that all behind me.”

  “And I still don’t believe you. Just because you don’t have a sponsorship, just because you aren’t competing, doesn’t mean you stop climbing. Most retired climbers can’t keep themselves off the rock.”

  “Maybe it’s not as hard to stay away for me. I’ve got a business to build.” A business that was getting a ridiculously slow start. He had the space. He actually had enough savings that he’d started the build-out. But as far as the equipment to roast the beans? He was still short by thousands. The roaster he was looking at ran nearly twenty thousand dollars, with another five for a sample roaster. That didn’t even include the afterburner and other emissions equipment he needed to meet Denver’s air quality requirements. He might be able to find used equipment, but he’d hoped to make it easier on himself by buying the same drum roaster he’d learned on in Oregon. That way he’d only be adjusting to the difference in beans and not the difference in equipment performance. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but that was before he was thirty-five grand short.

  “Where’d you go?” Alex studied him carefully. “There’s more going on here than you’re telling me, isn’t there?”

  Bryan clapped him on the shoulder. “You give me too much credit. I’m not that complex. Just worrying about money.”

  “Your dad—”

  “Has done plenty. I just need to find someone who’s willing to lend me the money in return for an equity stake in the business.”

  “You sure you want to go that route? I know you don’t like the idea of bank debt, but you’d retain your entire share of the company.”

  “But the bank wants to be repaid no matter what happens to the company.” Bryan grinned at Alex. “Trust me, I can find the money.”

  “Then what’s holding you up?”

  What was holding him up? His beans were going to arrive in two weeks. Besides finding someplace to put them, he hadn’t made much progress. Part of it was the fact that the learning curve going from a professional climber to a business owner was pretty steep. Sure, he had a business degree, but most of what he’d learned in college was theoretical. Putting it into practice and knowing he was doing the right thing was another matter entirely. He needed someone to help.

  “Ana!”

  That was some impressive mind-reading from Alex. “I already asked Ana, remember? She said she might be able to consult on marketing, but she’s busy with her full-time—”

  “No, I mean, there’s Ana.” Alex pointed to a dark-haired figure at the bottom of the steps. Or she had been at the bottom of the steps. She was charging up the wide platforms with determination, her black ponytail bobbing with every step.

  “What’s she doing here? She’s not the type to ditch work to exercise.”

  “I’m not so sure I’d agree with that assessment,” Alex said. “But didn’t you hear? She lost her job.”

  Bryan’s eyebrows flew up.

  “Well, not lost exactly. Put on leave for political reasons. Very political from what I heard.”

  “Ah, that whole senator’s-son drama?” Bryan had caught a little snippet of the situation on the news, but he hadn’t paid much attention. His opinion of politicians was sufficiently low that nothing they or their families did would change it much.

  “Supposedly. She’s been out since last week. Rachel says she’s going stir-crazy.”

  “Is that right?” Bryan watched her thoughtfully as she continued her upward charge. She was sharp and aggressive, just the type of person he could use on his side. And now that she had some spare time . . .

  Though honestly, her intelligence wasn’t what had his attention at the moment; that had much more to do with the brightly colored running tights and sports bra that showed off her toned body and a flat expanse of abs. But he’d always been attracted to her, and her work situation didn’t affect the reason he stayed away. It did, however, make it far more likely that she’d be willing to help him.

  She finally reached the top, only slightly out of breath. “Hey! I thought that was you. I saw your car in the lot.” She was speaking to Alex but looking at Bryan, probably the reason for Alex’s amused chuckle.

  “I just heard what happened at work. I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” She wiped her sweaty forehead with a glistening arm, and slay him if it wasn’t one of the sexiest things he’d seen in a long time. Nope. Not going there. She took a drink from the water bottle clutched in her right hand. “Who would have thought we’d almost hit eighty in April?”

  “Denver,” Bryan said with a shrug and Ana smiled in agreement. He swiftly moved on. “Are you just starting or finishing your workout?”

  “Depends.” A sparkle surfaced in her eyes, directed toward him. “You game for another couple of rounds?”

  “You’re on.”

  “How about you, Alex?”

  Alex looked between the two of them. “I’m done, but you can stay if you want. Ana, you mind dropping Bryan home?”

  Ana nodded. “Not at all. If that’s okay with you, Bryan.”

  “Yeah, I’d appreciate it.” The three of them started down the stairs slowly, but Bryan had a distinct sense of Alex’s self-satisfaction. Nice. His friend might think he was doing him a favor, but he was just putting him in the path of temptation.

  Ah well, he’d resisted this long; it wasn’t like a couple of rounds of steps were going to make any difference.

  At the bottom, Alex gave a salute. “See you later, Ana. Bryan.”

  She waved back with a smile, but part of her was already focused on the steps again. There apparently wasn’t anything she didn’t give her full attention. That was something he could get on board with, especially if he was the object of her attention.

  Maybe this was going to be more difficult than he thought.

  There was no way Ana could win a race against him, though, and she must have known that when she’d thrown out the challenge. She barely topped five foot one; he had a full ten inches on her. For a moment, he considered letting her win, but he knew that would irritate her more than losing. Besides, he wasn’t the type to throw a race because of a girl.

  “Ready?” Ana asked, sending him a challenging look.

  “Go!” he said, and they were off.

  He quickly outpaced her, first just by a step, then several, then a large section of the steps. When he hit the top, he turned, panting, and saw she was still at the quarter mark, still taking the steps at a steady, almost unhurried pace. Had she thrown out the challenge to see him kill himself? He grinned. If she had, his respect for her went up a notch. He’d always known she was tough, but there was something particularly attractive about that evil streak.

  She reached the top, barely out of breath, and checked her pulse rate on the fitness watch. “You beat me.”

  “As you knew I would.”

  “I wanted to see if you were going to throw it for me.” She worked a kink out of her neck and pulled one arm across her chest to stretch out her shoulders. He averted his eyes from the glimpse of cleavage displayed above the neckline of her sports bra. Definitely not letting his mind go there. But she was moving on. “I was thinking about hiking the Trading Post Trail. It’s only about a mile and a half, but it’s a nice cooldown. What do you think?”

  “I’m game.” He started down the stairs beside her, their pace slower this time, and threw her a smile. “A mile-and-a-half hike is a cooldown?”

  “To me it is.” She smiled too but didn’t look at him, focusing instead on the steps ahead of them. They’d known each other for two years, but thanks to Alex, this might be the first time they’d ever been alone together.

  A warm breeze caught them on the way down, drying sweat and giving a moment’s relief from the surprisingly hot April sun. At the bottom of the amphitheater stairs, there was still the long walk down the cement switchbacks, then down the hill to the parking lot, which also served as the trailhead. Only when they’d traversed the whole d
escent in comfortable silence did Bryan broach the subject he’d been wanting to mention from the moment he’d seen her.

  “Weird coincidence that we’d all be here today.”

  “Not really.” She flicked her gaze up to his face. “Rachel told me you and Alex would be here. I was hoping to run into you.”

  “Oh yeah?” He’d like to say that all he felt was curiosity at that revelation, but that would be a complete lie. “Why’s that?”

  “Obviously you heard what happened with my job.”

  “I did. I’m sorry, Ana. Sounds like you got a raw deal.”

  She shrugged. “My boss did what he had to do to keep a client without losing me. Do you know that I was one of the first people he hired when he opened his firm? I came from San Francisco for this job.”

  “At least you get a vacation out of it. Most people would love to be in your position.”

  “Except other publicists are taking over my clients and forming relationships with them. Most likely they won’t come back to me in four months. I’m going to have to build my roster from scratch. Which I can do—” she paused and wiped her arm across her forehead again, a stalling gesture—“but it’s going to be a lot of work.”

  Bryan hadn’t thought of it like that. She’d been trying to do the right thing, and she’d gotten her clients taken away from her. That didn’t seem right. “You have anything you’ve always wanted to do? Play the guitar? Take up needlepoint?”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But no. Honestly, it’s only been a week and it’s killing me. I’m bored out of my mind.”

  “Well, I have a coffee company that needs help getting off the ground. The offer’s still open. The plea, really, because I could use your help much more than you need mine.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that.” Ana finally focused on him. “What still needs to be done?”

  “Pretty much everything.” He filled her in on the space he was renting from his dad and the progress on the build-out. “My beans arrive in two weeks. Problem is, I don’t have any money for the equipment. I need to find someone to invest in the company to even have a company. And that’s a tough sell when we haven’t made a cent.”

  “You’re ‘pre-revenue,’” Ana said, putting the words in air quotes. She gestured with her head to break off from the paved path down to the soft dirt that wound around the large red rock formations and into a meadow. “You have a business plan? Sales projections? An idea of your overhead?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then you don’t have nothing. You have any leads on investors?”

  Bryan rubbed his chin thoughtfully, still surprised to find a beard there. He kept thinking he was going to shave it, but stopped each time before he went through with it. “As a matter of fact, I got invited to an engagement party tonight at the Oracle. The guy getting married owes me some big favors.”

  “He have the bank account to pay off those favors?”

  Bryan nodded.

  “Great. What time should I be ready?”

  Bryan blinked at her. “You’re coming?”

  “Of course I’m coming. At very least, you need a wingman . . . er, woman. And I can be very persuasive.”

  I bet. “In that case, I could pick you up at eight thirty. We don’t want to be there before the alcohol starts flowing, but we need to get to them before they’re too drunk to remember what they agreed to.”

  Ana nodded as if that was a perfectly reasonable statement. He’d gotten the impression that her clients had been the bad boys—and girls—of pretty much every industry in Denver, but now he wondered how much of their behavior she’d had to witness herself. Besides being called to the drug overdose of an underage escort.

  Probably a lot.

  And to his shame, he realized that up until recently, he’d probably had a lot more in common with them than he had with her.

  “Anything I need to know? I don’t like going in cold.”

  She was serious about this. “Maybe we should define your role here before we go in there tonight.”

  She waved a hand. “Call me your advisor.”

  “And what do you expect to get out of this arrangement?” He couldn’t help it: the words came out more flirtatious than businesslike.

  She drilled him with look. “A share of the profits, of course. But as they’re advisory shares, let me prove my worth and then we can discuss my percentage. I don’t bring any value, you don’t pay me anything.”

  “That seems . . .” Pretty typical for an advisor, but generous coming from an average person. Then again, she was on leave from a job that paid a salary well into six figures. At least that’s what he assumed from her LoDo address and the new leased Mercedes every two years. She didn’t need the money, just something to do.

  “How can I pass up that offer?” He stopped abruptly and put his hand on her shoulder to stay her progress as well. “Look. A bald eagle.”

  She followed his gaze to where a huge raptor circled above them, no doubt looking for snakes and rodents for its lunch. A smile came to her face and she cupped a hand over her eyes to shade them from the sun. “It’s beautiful.”

  “There are several breeding pairs that nest at Castlewood Canyon, where Alex and I used to climb. Some of the routes are closed so no one disturbs them. Of course, there’s also plenty of turkey vultures and hawks, which aren’t quite as glamorous.”

  Ana started walking again, but she hadn’t missed the comment buried in his wildlife ramblings. “Used to climb?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “Not really.”

  She nodded thoughtfully, but she didn’t press. He figured that only got him off the hook for today. She wasn’t the type to let something go when she was curious. And why wouldn’t she be curious? Before he left, climbing had been his life. Now he wouldn’t set hand or foot on a rock. That wasn’t a normal reaction to a disaster that had befallen someone else.

  But then, his abandonment of his former career had nothing to do with Vivian’s fall at Suesca. It had to do with the catastrophe that was his life, everything that had led him up to that point. He’d left that part of himself in Colombia, hopefully never to be seen again. His rebirth was more than just spiritual; it was a desperately needed whole-life overhaul.

  “So, what’s the dress code for tonight?”

  “Club wear, I guess. I don’t know. I’ll wear jeans.”

  “That’s very helpful, thanks.”

  “You’re asking a man what you should wear to a club? You’re far more qualified to answer that question than I am.”

  “And you know your friends better than I do.” When he just gave her a blank look, she waved her hand. “Oh, never mind. I’ll figure it out. Tell me more about this coffee of yours.”

  That he had no problem talking about. It was the easiest part of this venture, the story behind the organization and his farm in particular. The owners had started out growing coffee years ago, but during the early nineties and then again in 2001, the wholesale cost of coffee plummeted and they’d sold off more and more of their farmland to neighbors who were growing coca for the local cartel. Eventually, they’d seen that the only way they were going to survive without having to sell the family farmlands was to grow coca as well. But it had never sat well with them, especially when their only son left the farm, ended up working for the cartel, and was killed in an altercation with government forces who were trying to encroach on the cartels’ territory.

  Café Libertad had essentially offered a way to get their revenge all these years against the drug runners, or at least to assuage their conscience in working to supply the people responsible for their son’s death. In the five years since they’d started producing a coffee crop again, the farm’s soil had proven somehow unusual and yielded a coffee that had been rated between eighty-eight and ninety-six points.

  But eventually they found themselves in their seventies, past ready to retire but with no one to pass t
he farmland on to, leaving a good chance their land would get swallowed up by the neighboring coca plantation against their wishes. Which was where Bryan had come in.

  Yes, he owned a coffee farm in Colombia that bordered coca fields. There was a sentence he’d never expected to say aloud.

  “The thing is, these farmers are practically slaves to the cartel. The only reason they’ve been able to escape its control is because of all the conflict with government forces. Coffee gets them out of the middle of the fighting, gives them a sustainable livelihood, and allows them to band together with others like them. In numbers, they have a voice. The co-op lets them negotiate higher prices from wholesalers, brand the region.”

  “But you’re not part of that?” Ana asked. “You’re bringing in beans for your own use.”

  “Because it doesn’t cost me anything, in the sense that I already own them. Over time, though, I’m going to need more than my farm can supply. And I’m hoping I can get those beans from co-op members. After all, I’m basing my story on the redemption of these coca farmers, drugs to beans. I can’t buy them from just anywhere and feel good about it.”

  “The redemption angle is really compelling. We can do something with that.”

  He threw her a sidelong glance. “It’s not just a story. It’s as much my second chance as theirs. I’ve been so unanchored, it feels like my opportunity to have something solid for a change. Lasting.”

  Ana stopped walking as if she were surprised by his transparency. For good reason. He was used to glossing over real feelings with humor or flirtation.

  And then she said slowly, “Solid . . . like . . . solid ground. Solid grounds. The Solid Grounds Coffee Company?”

  “The Solid Grounds Coffee Company.” He tried the sound of it on his tongue. “Just enough humor. Just enough meaning. I like it.”

  “Good. Me too.” She socked him in the arm, surprisingly hard for such a small woman. “You’ve got yourself a business name.”

  “Solid Grounds,” he repeated to himself. “I guess you’re earning your advisory shares in the business already.”