most, like your carefully reconstructed post-divorce self-esteem—the self-esteem you used to have before the pre-divorce version got ripped in half.
Maggie headed across the street with Gus trotting beside her. Cuervo Municipal Park had a dog walk where Gus could sniff to his heart’s content. She was too keyed-up and restless to sleep anyway. And even though the moon had sunk low, she could see enough to know it was just her and Gus under the night sky.
As always, the best thing to do was to keep walking.
* * * *
One of the things Jake enjoyed the most about his H155 Airbus helicopter was the legroom. He also loved the speed. As the fastest civilian helicopter on the market, it flew him from Dallas to Cuervo in just over an hour, with no commute time from the airport like with his plane. It seemed longer than two weeks since he’d been there. But if this new property location was what he hoped it was, he’d be flying to Cuervo plenty.
The intercom clicked on. “Two minutes until landing, sir,” Liam said from the cockpit.
“Set us down in that open field,” Jake told him.
Across the aisle, Richard Glasgow already had beads of sweat on his forehead. It was no secret that he hated flying. Jake’s favorite architect, Carmen de Boers, sat next to Richard, looking cool and composed. But then nothing ever got to Carmen. Jake had seen her smooth a client’s ruffled feathers, talk an airline into a seat upgrade and convince an employee not to sue her over a “wrongful” termination, all without breaking a sweat. He teased her regularly about being the Fred Astaire of business negotiations but wasn’t sure she actually got the compliment.
Jake gazed out the window, watching the scenery fly by. Rolling hills of wildflowers made patches of color below. Roofs gleamed silver in the noon sun. He rarely indulged in daydreams, but it was hard not to be excited about finally finding a location. He’d wanted to build this techpark for ten years now—a multi-use incubator for the finest tech minds in the country. And all within easy access of San Antonio.
Of course, every time he thought of Cuervo now, he also thought about Maggie.
Don’t be ridiculous. Women were like restaurants, he told himself. Only a fool contented himself with the taste of just one.
But when she’d walked away from him that night in the gazebo, he’d had no clue this craving for her would eat him alive. He was a man used to getting his own way. Was that the reason he couldn’t shake her off?
He glanced across the aisle at Carmen de Boers in her spiked heels and then at Richard Glasgow in his signature red power tie. Neither of them had experienced a kiss like the one he’d shared with Maggie, he was sure of it. Carmen was married to her job. Richard was married, period. And nothing killed passion faster than domesticity, unless of course you counted children.
“We’re preparing to land, sir,” Liam said over the intercom.
Jake latched his seatbelt and grinned at Richard. “Your favorite part.”
Richard’s knuckles showed white on the arm rests of his seat. “I don’t even like standing at the top of the stairs.”
“Relax and take a deep breath,” Jake said. “The drop is fun. No worse than an elevator.”
They set down just outside of Cuervo and got out under the powerful downwash of the helicopter’s rotor blades. Jake headed toward the center of the field with Carmen and Richard in tow. There were no trees, which pleased him since he hated cutting them down. And they were maybe half a mile from the main road. But all in all, plenty of space to build a multi-use facility—offices, restaurants, lofts, retail. Offhand, he could think of half a dozen tech firms that would gobble up leases here. He’d taken meetings with literally hundreds, earning himself the nickname of “Geek Adjacent.” But what could possibly be more exciting than 3D printers, video tattoos that turned your forearm into a computer display or even just the fun of solar-powered electronics?
“I like it,” Carmen said, scribbling notes on a clipboard. “Not too close to the mouth breathers, but still within walking distance.”
Jake grinned. He grabbed his cell phone and reeled off a stream of photos. Carmen had a city girl’s contempt for locals, most of whom she referred to as mouth breathers, knuckle draggers and Deliverance extras. He wondered what Maggie would have to say about that.
While Carmen picked her way over the dried grass and the gopher holes, still making notes, Richard said, “Pretty sweet location, isn’t it? Farm land, originally. They used to graze cattle here.”
Jake thumbed through the photos he’d taken, already calculating how to push through the environmental impact studies, the traffic overviews, the permits. Hold up there, buddy, he told himself. Never let yourself build things in your mind until you have the papers in your hand. “Where’s this other place you wanted to show me?” he asked Richard.
“It’s in town,” Richard replied. “Do we mind walking?”
They headed out, crossing the field and then following the road into Cuervo. Richard talked nonstop about the project. Carmen was clearly busy with her own thoughts. The sky was a pale blue shell dotted with puffy clouds. The air smelled of sunbaked dirt and road tar. A soft spring wind feathered through the wild grass. In the distance, Jake heard someone cranking the gears on a tractor.
“Are you going to try and see that woman you met here a few weeks ago?” Richard asked him. “What’s her name? Madeleine, Margery—”
“Maggie,” Jake said. He wasn’t ashamed of it. Why should he be?
Carmen gave him an eye roll. “So it’s farmer’s daughters now? Does she wear bib overalls and walk around with a piece of straw hanging out of her mouth?”
Richard laughed. “She runs a bakery.”
“Who can keep up?” she said. “One day it’s yoga instructors. Now it’s raspberry scones.”
“I’d eat the hell out of a scone right now,” Richard muttered. He gave Jake a quick look of apology. “I don’t mean that way, of course.”
When they turned onto Main Street, Jake took a look around. There was something charming and unpretentious about Cuervo that strongly appealed to him. The sidewalks were swept and the fire hydrants freshly painted. Some storefronts had striped awnings over their doors. Others were crammed with flowerboxes full of daisies and purple coneflowers. Two old men played checkers in front of a place called Fred’s Hardware.
The street ended at an intersection. One of those old hooded traffic lights hung suspended from wire. Just past it was a water tower with the word Cuervo painted on it. Maggie’s bakery was around that corner. He found himself a little impatient to see her.
Richard gestured toward a building across the street. “Well, what do you think? You said you wanted someplace big enough to turn into residential lofts.”
Jake looked up and went a little lightheaded.
It was an old Art Deco movie theater, probably built in the early thirties, but boarded up now, a grande dame past her prime and sadly neglected. The Regal, it said in broken, unlit neon.
For most of his thirty-one years, Jake had dreamed about renovating an Art Deco building.
Uncle Marty had taken him to see The Adventures of Robin Hood in a lushly romantic Art Deco theater when he was a kid. The city bulldozed it ten years later and built a parking garage. But ever since, Jake had vacuumed up every scrap of knowledge, lore, history and hearsay he could find about the period. Something about its extravagance and naïveté strongly appealed to him.
Now here he was standing in front of what could be a lifelong dream come true. He could easily imagine there were cartoon Valentine hearts floating out of his eyeballs.
“Nice to meet you,” a slightly pudgy man with horn-rim glasses said to them. “I’m Chuck, the owner of this old popcorn palace.” He pushed open an old-fashioned grate and then unlocked the front doors.