Forever in Blue Jeans (18 page)

"This room should be red," Neil offered, looking around inside the door. "The sun sets on the back of the house. It would light up this room brilliantly."

"Yes, it would. I was thinking that myself. I wasn't sure about red, though. I kind of wanted to do that downstairs in the dining room."

"You could pick different reds from the same palette, and it work just fine."

"True," she said thoughtfully, her gaze scanning the room, taking in the floor-to-ceiling windows and a set of balcony doors leading out to the wrap around veranda.

"You know what else would work just fine here too?"

"Hmmm?"

"Cort."

Blue looked over her shoulder. "What do you mean?"

"He would look damn fine as lord of the manor here."

"Oh?"

"Every lady needs a lord, and this fabulous old house is the epitome of a manor home." Neil stepped out in to the hallway, more formally known as the gallery, and stretched his arms wide before turning in a circle. "God, B. I can't wait to see what you do with grand old place."

"I'm glad you're excited about it. I am too. I've loved every stage of the renovation, of learning more and more of its history, of my family's history here."

They walked down the grand staircase, which curved along one wall. "You should host weddings here, private affairs."

"Are you going to do the photography?"

"You know I don't photograph people wearing clothes, and I don't expect anyone would be willing to get down to their birthday suits for the wedding album."

"Probably not, but I've already thought about the wedding thing. It would be a beautiful setting. I'm going to hire a landscaper to create a walk through the pecan orchard complete with benches and a gazebo. I've got some rocking chairs and a couple of porch swings on order. I hope to have everything up to code and through inspection by the end of the year."

"Spring opening?"

"Yes. When everything is in bloom and beautiful. The only other time of year that I think would be just as perfect is fall, but I don't want to wait for another year if it can be helped." They stood in the doorway of the formal parlor at the front of the house. It had two sets of floor-to-ceiling doors that opened out onto the front porch. "This room will be a very calming green with dark wood accents, the dining room, as I said, some shade of red. The kitchen is done. I love the black and white. The other two rooms upstairs, one will be a light purple with brown accents and the other will be a sky blue."

"I'm glad you're not shying away from color. It's always looked good on you," Neil said, sitting on one of the stools at the island.

"It'll look more Victorian than antebellum, I'm afraid, but Aunt V loved color too, and from what I've read in family journals, the original colors in the house were bright, even though they weren't popular yet. Walls were always dark, and the rooms had pops of color. Some used to say it was because my grandmother was too drunk off her own cakes to realize the faux pas."

Neil laughed. "More like she was too drunk off the liquid ingredient than the cake itself, though if memory serves, since it was
so very long ago
that I had a piece, the cake is rather potent."

"Don't pull that crap on me. You had some last night."

"That doesn't count."

"Why not?"

"Because last night I was with others and couldn't indulge as I normally would. You should just get started on one. I'm not leaving here without it."

"Here as in Blue Ridge or here as in my house?"

"Both."

Blue sighed and made an exaggerated show of rolling her eyes back. "Fine," she said through gritted teeth, though there was no heat behind it. She loved to bake, and the cake would keep both her hands and her mind busy. Right now, she was all for that.

Neil got up from his seat and walked around to her. He smoothed his hand down the back of her hair and leaned down to kiss her cheek. "Good girl," he whispered. "While you do that, I'm going to grab my camera and take some before photos of the house. You'll want them along with the after. They would make a great collage in the foyer or along the wall leading up the stairs."

She watched him scamper out the back door in excitement. Leave it to Neil to do everything in his power to brighten her day, and his enthusiasm about her renovation project on the house meant the world to her.

Reaching into the cabinet under the island, she plucked up a new bottle of dark spiced rum.

She glanced down at her watch and nodded as she opened the bottle. "Not too early for a sip or ten while baking," she declared to the large, empty room, ignoring how the words echoed not only around the walls but around her heart. It was about as large and about as empty. "Cheers."

She lifted the bottle in a mock toast and took a sip.

Oh yeah, this was going to be a damn good cake.

Cort stood against the deck railing of Buck and Caroline's house. "Cabins, huh? I thought you just lured me up here to set me up with a woman needing an electrician."

Buck grinned. "The cabins, for sure. The set-up? I ain't copping to that."

"Uh-huh," Cort said skeptically. He knew them better than they thought he did. "Tell me about your business idea."

"I want to construct cabins all up and down the mountains. I could see it the second I got up here. Everything is natural and awe inspiring."

"I can't argue with that. It is something else. A whole other world surrounded by these trees and all the nature, but aren't there already a ton of cabins around here?"

"Yeah."

Cort waited for Buck to elaborate, but when he didn't… "Then what would make ours special?"

"Green."

"Green? As in color or eco?"

"Eco."

"Damn, Buck.” Cort whistled low. “You realize how expensive that would be? Not only for us but for the buyers?" Buck sat forward, an earnest look on his face and in his eyes. Cort knew that look well and braced himself.

"Look, we've all done a little eco building over the last few years. We all have some contacts in different areas. We can all learn, get the certification, but I think it would be our unique niche. Especially if we can make it more affordable. The cabins might be a little smaller, but I know we can make this work. I've put a lot of thought into it. I've made a lot of phone calls.

There aren't many green cabins up here yet. I think it's a good time to do this."

Cort couldn't argue with that. The three of them could get any certification they needed and Buck was right, between them, they had all the contact names and numbers. He also couldn't deny how often he'd thought of working alongside his friends. Maybe he--

"Have y'all seen the blue haze of the mountains in the distance?" Caroline spoke up from her seat on the arm of Buck's chair.

The way Buck looked up at her when she said anything, the way he was always touching her, whether it be her hair or her back or just her arm, Cort had never seen his friend look happier, more content. Same way Decker was with Rosie. His friends had each found "the one", and while he would never have admitted to believing in her for himself, he knew she existed, had in fact existed for the last five years.

"No." Cort shook his head.

"Well, they're called the Blue Ridge Mountains for a reason. The haze comes from the trees, from a chemical they emit into the atmosphere. It mixes with other chemicals in the air and creates a haze, moisture to protect the leaves from the sun. It's one of the most beautiful sites I've ever seen."

"It sure is. There are some mornings Rosie drags me out of bed just to look out over the mountains."

Cort laughed. "You're so whipped."

"Not as whipped as she is." Decker winked as he said it and grinned from ear to ear.

"Okay, okay." Cort held up his hands in surrender. "TMI, man, TMI. Back to this business idea. Equal shares?"

Buck laughed and nodded. "Equal shares."

"And you're both certain you want to get into this?"

"I am."

"Me too."

Cort looked from one to the other of his two best friends in the world. He knew they wouldn't steer him in a direction that was wrong or unstable, even though at the present time the construction industry
was
a bit on the unstable side. But the eco-boom going on would provide some interesting challenges, experiences, and income. He wasn't one to shy away from the challenges, and it wasn't as though he had a permanent address right then. He tried not to think of Blue, of her address and how it could likely be his too, of how things had been left when Neil arrived and gave Cort an excuse to leave.

Before arriving in Blue Ridge, he'd have said he didn't care to settle down anymore. He was happy roaming, not being any one place for too long. On the surface, anyway. Deep down he wanted what he'd always wanted: the wife, the white picket fence, the kids, and pets. He wanted the summer evenings on the front porch and the Christmases complete with decorations and lights and midnight assemblies of toys.

He pulled himself from those thoughts and refocused on the conversation at hand. It was iffy that Blue would even have him for a lover now, much less as more. "How hands-on would we be?"

Buck slid back in his seat and wrapped his arm around Caroline. "I figure at least one of us would have to travel to each site pretty regular, and I want to do the actual building on-site. I don't want to manufacture something and have it shipped in. I want to build on-site. I want to use as much of the natural materials of the land as possible. I know we'll need to hire a few people, but for the most part, I want us to do the work. It'll help keep some of the costs down and we'll be able to keep an eye on everything from the ground up."

"How much funding do you think it's going to take outside of what we each contribute?"

Buck smirked. "More than I want to think about. My father will pony up some as an investment, and a few of his guys will be available to us as workers."

"We always talked about going into business together. Now that Decker and I are in the same area, we'd hoped you'd consider joining us."

"Yeah, man. It's time, I think. We're settling down, or at least Buck and I are settling down. I think it's something we all would like and like Buck, I don't think there's a better place to do something like this."

He couldn't argue with either friend. "I assume you have figures and a business plan." Cort was the more cautious of the three of them. Always wanting to know everything up front.

Always needing to know where the exits were. It had served him well, but it also kept him from experiencing a lot of the spontaneous fun in life. Decker and Buck were forever telling him to lighten up, to just have fun, to just live in the moment without having to know all the details before making a decision.

At the same time, this was a big damn decision and a lot of damn money. Not that he didn't have more than enough to put into this new venture, and they wouldn't steer him wrong, but he needed to see all the facts and projections.

Buck nodded. "Yes, I have everything you need to look at."

"Good. I'll do that and get you an answer in a few days. When are you looking to get this underway?"

"I want to have everything in place by the time the ground thaws in the spring."

"All right. That will give me enough time to finish up a few projects I'd committed to for the next few months."

"You got more than Blue's place to do?" Buck asked, taking a swallow of tea.

The move prompted Cort to pick up his own glass of tea. It was the best sweet iced tea he'd ever had. While he was a boy from out West, he had developed quite a taste for the Southern elixir. "Yeah. There's a townhouse in Charleston, and in the fall, I need to head out to Texas for a job that was put on hold a while back. The guy thinks he'll have the money to finish it up before winter."

"If it would help, I can work on Blue's place."

"I'm the electrician."

"I can do some."

Cort grinned. "Yeah, but I can do it all. Besides, you're not the expert on historical homes."

Decker shielded his eyes. "Okay, you two. Put the dicks away. I don't really care to see you compare whose is bigger."

Caroline grinned. "You might not, but I wouldn't mind seeing."

"Like hell." Buck held up his hands in surrender. "I give. You're right, but if she needs any general work..."

"Yeah yeah. I can do that too, remember?" Buck had a lover he was head over heels for, but that didn't mean Cort was going to give the other man any reason to spend an inordinate amount of time with Blue.

Good God, he was jealous. There was nothing to be jealous about, but damn... What the hell other explanation was there?

"I haven't been out to the plantation yet, but Rosie said it really is beautiful."

"It is. It's been well taken care of, and it'll be great as a bed and breakfast."

"It's not open to the public right now, though, is it?"

"No, I don't think so. I think she's concentrating on the renovations. It'll need work after the electrical is done. Looks like electric light was added back in the forties, but the last work that was done was around the sixties or seventies."

"So you're rewiring the whole house?"

"Yeah. I'm going to hire some local guys, maybe from down in Atlanta to come and help me out. No way I can do it all myself. I need to go through the place, make some calls, and write up an estimate. It won't be cheap, but she'll get exactly what she wants."

Buck nodded. "I've made a few contacts just over the Tennessee border. There are some local guys who grew up around these areas that might be willing to lend a hand."