Christmas at The Heartbreak Cafe (Lakeview Christmas Novel) (Lakeview Contemporary Romance Book 7) Read Online Free PDF Page B

located on 34 Main Street, Lakeview will be ending its lease agreement with Ella’s Cafe as of January 1 in the new year. We ask for your cooperation at this time.

7
    A repossession order ….
    Ella’s hands shook and tremored as she dropped the letter to the ground. Her lively, pink face drained of colour, and she forcefully held back panic as she attempted to maintain a sense of calm in front of her staff and customers.
    Quickly taking her cane, Ella departed for her small office in the corner of the kitchen. She couldn’t hold her anger in anymore as she forcefully slammed her door not caring if Colm or the other staff heard her. She needed a moment to think and to re-read in private and she did not want to be interrupted.
    Ella had been aware of her lease changing hands over the years. Just two years before, she had been forced to make almost double her old rent when Heidi’s husband took over. Now, despite the fact that Ella always paid her rent on time, it seemed like Paul had defaulted on the mortgage and the bank wanted to take the property back. It was an unimaginable, crushing blow.
    She didn’t quite understand. When he had taken over the building, she simply received a letter informing her of the change and where she should send her monthly payments. Why couldn’t the bank just take her lease over? Why was she being put out? Unless a repossession order meant the bank was planning to sell….
    Her mind raced in terror. Perhaps she could afford to buy the building herself, but the thought of the property price made her abandon that idea as quickly as it had come.
    While Ella had managed to scrimp and save over the years, she never had much left over except to pay for her own mortgage and utility bills. A building like this in such a prime location would have to be on the market for way more than she could ever afford.
    The party suddenly came back to the forefront of her mind. Momentarily, she had forgotten all about Heidi’s planning books, and her insistence that the café celebrations be at her Lakeview mini-palace. Did she not know what her husband was up to? That he had been taking Ella’s money but hadn’t been keeping up repayments on the property?
    She thought again about the declined credit card and wondered if there were serious financial problems behind all these largesse displays. Or worse, Ella wondered now, did Heidi know all along that Ella was going to be thrown out, and wanted to take pity on her by hosting the party? And was this why she seemed so distracted and evasive at the meeting today?
    Tears began to flow from her eyes as she began to rummage through her desk drawers.
    Grabbing a dusty brown folder from the bottom of a neglected shelf, she quickly pulled out a large stack of pictures. She had avoided looking at these images for so long, but now the pictures of her husband, her father-in-law, and former staff of the café down through the years were an immediate comfort to her. She flipped through the pictures of customers sitting at the same tables still in use today, ordering tea and coffee from the counter.
    In one particularly striking picture, Ella saw her husband as a teenager mopping the very room she herself was in now. In the photo, Gregory’s hair spiked and curled in a carefree way like his wide, toothy smile. His white shirt and black work pants were filthy, a trait she would later nag him about, yet he would never allow her to buy him new clothing unless they were completely destroyed.
    Seeing her husband in these images calmed her, if only temporarily. “What would you do, Gregory?” she whispered into the void, in hopes that an answer would come as easily to her.
    The last photo in the stack was of the café, her beautiful sanctuary, lit up at Christmas time. The walls were full of sparkly tinsel, and holly and ivy decorated the display cases. In the centre of the photo stood the staff; her husband, probably at about twenty years old at the time, stood dead centre