Love on Ice Page 10
With a sigh, Lilia picked up her head and pushed the book away, saving the frustrating math for another day as she stepped out of the office and into the heart and soul of her own life, her bar Coyotes. Well, it wasn’t her bar yet, but she had exactly two more payments to her Uncle Stevie, two more months and the entire place would be hers and hers only. She had saved it from the brink of bankruptcy only a year ago, negotiating with her retiring uncle the sum of money so that the family wouldn’t lose the bar that her grandfather had poured his life into. Now all that stood between her and ownership were two more payments in her uncle’s name and he would sign over the deed. She couldn’t wait. Already she was planning on throwing a huge party with drink specials and the like to celebrate.
Her cell phone rang and Lilia grinned when she saw the caller ID. “Uncle Stevie! I was just thinking about you.”
“Lil, my girl, how are you?”
“I’m good, excited that this is the homestretch,” she responded, trying to keep the giddiness out of her voice. “I hope you are gonna come to the grand reopening.”
“About that, my girl, I’ve got bad news.”
“Um okay,” Lilia stammered, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Is it more money? I can handle it.”
“My girl, I’ve got an offer and I think I’m gonna take it,” he said. “They want to bulldoze the bar and make some shopping plaza or something. It’s a hell of a lot of money, Lil.”
“You can’t do this,” she shot back, her panic rising. “The bar is our family history, my livelihood! You can’t do this to your family!”
“That bar is nothing but a money pit, girl,” her uncle replied with a long, drawn-out sigh. “We are better off selling it while we can.”
“How much?” Lilia demanded. She wasn’t going to give this up. She wasn’t going to sell this bar only to see it bulldozed.
“Twenty grand,” her uncle stated simply. “This buyer, he’s gonna pay me an extra twenty grand on top of what I agreed with you before and I gotta accept, baby girl. I am sorry.”
Lilia swore softly, her mind racing. She couldn’t let him do it, she couldn’t lose this place. “I can get you the twenty grand. If I do, will you let me keep the bar?”
“Aw come on, Lil, that’s not why I told you.”
“I don’t care. If I can get my hands on at least twenty grand, will you sign over the deed to me?”
“You’re family, Lil, I can’t take that kind of cash from you.”
“You’ve been taking money from me for the last year,” she reminded him angrily. “If I back out now and say sell it, will you be able to give me back my money?”
Her uncle was silent then as Lilia suspected he would be, so she went in for the kill. “I will get you twenty grand by the end of two months. You can count on that or you owe me what I’ve paid.”
She then slammed the phone down, fighting the urge to throw it across the empty bar. Her uncle wasn’t any better than the rest of her family. Pushing her hair out of her face, Lilia looked around the bar. She wasn’t going to let it go, she would raise the money and then once the deed was in her hands, she would wipe her hands of her family. They hadn’t done anything but cause her misery.
***
“That’s horrible, Lil! Did you cuss him out at least?”
Lilia sighed heavily into the phone as she picked at her supper, wishing she had cussed out her uncle for what he was doing to her. “No, Kate, I was too angry to even think about it. I did slam the phone down if that counts.”
Kate chuckled then squealed in laughter and Lilia knew that Luke must be doing something to her on the other end. It was quite disgusting to see the two of them together, head over heels in love with each other. Lilia was happy for her best friend, really, that she had been able to find true love in the form of a hot, rich man like Luke. It warmed her heart to see her best friend so happy, someone as deserving as Kate, but the third wheel she had become was starting to get a bit old.
“Lil? Hey, you still there?”
“I’m here,” Lilia replied, laying her fork down on the plate.
“What am I going to do, Kate? I don’t have that kind of cash in my back pocket.”
“I could ask Luke for it,” Kate said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind bailing you out, Lil.”
“Oh no, I couldn’t,” Lilia said, immediately dismissing the thought. The last thing she wanted to have was that guilt hanging over her head. “Don’t even think about it, Kate.”
“Well, just a thought,” Kate said. “Hey, you are still coming with us this weekend, right? This is the perfect time for you to let loose.”
“I don’t know, Kate, now that I got this going on I probably shouldn’t,” Lilia sighed, thinking of how much she was looking forward to the Florida sunshine. Kate had invited her along to take a trip down to Florida so Luke could check on the hotel his family owned – a free trip complete with spa treatments. It was a chance for her and Kate to spend some girl time together too, which seemed to be very little now that Luke was in the picture.
“Oh no, you aren’t backing out of this now,” Kate said. “I won’t take no for an answer, Lilia Anderson.”
Lilia, not wanting to fight with her right now, said her goodbye and ended the call, biting her lip as she looked around her small apartment over the bar. If she lost the bar, she lost her place to live as well. The bar was her life. She couldn’t lose it!
Surprised at the tears welling up in her eyes, Lilia wiped them away and took her plate to the tiny kitchen attached to the living room. Her mind was made up. She would get that money somehow. She wasn’t going to be another Anderson failure in their family of failures. Her dad wasn’t someone she had known; Lilia was the product of a drunken one-night stand. Her mother was a bitter woman, forever blaming Lilia’s non-existent father for everything that went wrong in her life. Lilia could almost hear her mother’s voice during one of her drunken tirades, blaming the pregnancy for the reason she was living in a disgusting trailer park instead of a nice house.
“I hate this life! If only I hadn’t been so damn stupid to fall for the likes of your father, that good-for-nothing bar hopper with a tiny prick, then I could be one of them highfalutin women on the better side of the tracks.”
Lilia tried to shrink into the corner of the room as her mother slammed the pot on the stove, the cigarette ash hanging from her mouth dropping down the front of her grease-stained shirt. Her mother tended to get into one of her moods after a particularly long day at the diner, combined with a bottle of cheap vodka like the one that now sat empty on the counter. “Mom, I can cook my own meal if you want to go lie down.”
“Oh no,” her mom said, shaking her head. “I am not gonna let you tell everyone I can’t take care of my own child. You just sit in that corner and shut up, Lilia.”
Lilia had spent many a day in that corner, avoiding her mother at all costs and trying not to rock the boat. The only saving grace had been her grandfather, a rowdy, chain-smoking man who had built the bar with his own two hands. Lilia had always escaped to this place when her mom had gotten in a particularly bad mood. He would accept her with open arms, giving her a kind smile and allowing her to work behind the counter for a few bucks on some nights. When he had died of cancer, her uncle had taken over and within two years the bar was already going under. Lilia had taken it from his grasp and really made something of it and she was just getting started. Well, until the road bump of twenty grand.
Placing her plate in the sink, Lilia braced her arms on either side of the sink and looked out of the window, seeing angry rain clouds rolling in. At least the weather would match her mood now.
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Olivia West is a bestsell
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