Once Upon a Christmas Eve Read Online Free PDF Page B

you mind if I ask why you thought you were meeting him?”
    The hint of disquiet in her expression belied the dismissal in her small shrug. “I thought he wanted to talk about my bistro.”
    â€œWhat made you think that?”
    â€œBecause I was told that he’d read my latest review and wanted to meet me.”
    â€œDo you always meet men who read your reviews?”
    She eyed him evenly. “I do when the man is an investor and I’m in need of one. I saw on your website that Layman & Callahan invests in local businesses. I’d hoped to talk to him about mine.” A regretful little smile curved her mouth. “But that was before you said your company doesn’t invest in restaurants.”
    â€œWhat I said,” he clarified, conscious of her lingering disappointment, “is that we usually don’t. Our investors expect a certain return on their money. A business has to be big enough to produce an assured annual revenue before we’ll look at it.”
    She frowned at that.
    â€œWhat made you think mine wasn’t big enough?”
    â€œThe Corner Bistro?”
    She’d named her place exactly what it was. And what it was, was small.
    â€œOh,” she murmured, and went silent.
    His own quick silence had more to do with the deafening sound of opportunity knocking.
    He had no idea how Scott intended to pursue this establishment’s admittedly intriguing owner. All he knew for certain was that it could be in his own best interests if the guy succeeded, and that the opportunity to help both himself and his partner was literally staring him in the face.
    In the years since he’d helped the former college football hero save the company Scott had inherited from his father, Max had taken the business that did the legwork for corporations looking to relocate, from regional to national and beyond. As agreed when Max had achieved what Scott had thought impossible, Layman & Son had become Layman & Callahan. Driven, focused and refusing to stop there, Max had grown the company to include property investments for the same corporate officers who sought them for their company’s expansions.
    Tommi Fairchild’s bistro was definitely smaller than the apartment buildings, hotels, trendy nightclubs and high-end restaurants in their partnership portfolio. But the place did have potential. The framed reviews by the hostess desk were four-star. Aside from the FedEx guy eating a bowl of soup and two women with Book Nook shopping bags, the customers he’d seen leaving by cab and under umbrellas appeared to be brokers, secretaries celebrating someone’s birthday, and attorney-types from the high rises a mile away. To bring people out in the rain in the middle of the work week, it seemed to him that her food and service must be pretty amazing.
    He wouldn’t play messenger, but as he watched Tommi Fairchild’s pretty brown eyes shift toward the doorway as ifwaiting for him to move, he could certainly start checking out the place as a possible investment. Since working with her would give Scott the perfect excuse to hang around, his partner could pick up the ball when he got back and take it from there.
    â€œYou said yesterday that you own this,” he reminded her, not above doing whatever he had to do to achieve a goal. As long as it was legal, anyway. “Are you the sole proprietor?”
    Looking surprised by the question, or maybe surprised that he remembered what she’d said, her glance shifted back to him. “I am.”
    He’d wondered before how that was possible, given how young she appeared. He wondered again now. “Do you mind telling me what kind of financing you have?”
    â€œI have a small SBA loan,” she said, speaking of the Small Business Administration. “I needed it to buy a salamander and add the wine bar.”
    â€œSalamander?”
    â€œIt’s a kind of broiler. I use it for fish and to melt and brown