Page 32 of Blame it on the Bet
I’m not sure which part of that sentence I should pick apart first, so I start in the middle.
“I’m sorry—fruits of the forest?” “It’s a pie.”
“Okay…and Janet Larti?”
“Lahti. She owns the Little Slice of Heaven Pie Shop down the street. She can see things, you know. Like a psychic.”
“Uh-huh,” is the only response I can come up with after this stunningly bizarre exchange.
“Dude, it’s the pie. She bakes the pie, and it tells her things. People come from all over. And she’s never wrong. Not once.”
“I…uh…I’ll have to remember that,” I mutter, grabbing my new clothing and beating a path to the changing room before she can tell me about the little leprechauns who live in the attic.
Chapter Thirteen
HENNESSY
“This is just…insane,” Jameson says, putting her fingers to her temples as if she’s suddenly got a migraine. “How could you have made a bet with that man?”
The four of us agreeing on anything is an extremely rare occurrence, and that’s what I’m worried about as we sit around a table in the pub after hours. I’ve explained the situation to my sisters, and now I’m fielding their questions and concerns. Lots and lots of concerns. I still don’t know what the hell I was thinking when I agreed to this bizarre arrangement, but I’m not about to tell them that. So, I maintain my facade of perfect calm and confidence.
“James, what have we got to lose? We raise the cash— we win. Bryan Truitt goes home before the end of the five weeks—we win. We decide to sell it to him, we get it for twenty-percent above market—we win. Even if we don’t raise it, we sell it with no loss. Another win.”
But my oldest sister is not convinced by my win-win-win scenario.
“But why would he offer to buy it and…and deed it back to us if he loses the bet? That’s a hundred-thousand dollars! Who does that? Who gives away that kind of money to someone he’s just met? I mean, why? What’s in it for him?” she demands.
Bailey rolls her eyes in frustration.
“James, he’s like one of those Hollywood gazillionaires.
A hundred K is like pocket change for him,” she explains.
We’re all silent for a second.
Jameson jumps in.“How could you possibly know that?” “His suit, for one thing,” our youngest sister informs us. “It wasn’t off the rack, I can tell you that much. Custom tailored all the way from the pants to the shirt. And his shoes? Hand-tooled Italian leather, I’d guess. Plus the Armani trench…” She pauses, doing the math in her head. “Yeah, he was wearing like ten grand. Damn…I should’ve sold him more stuff when he was at Campbell’s.”
Bailey shakes her head regretfully and takes a noisy sip through the straw of her coke.
“Uh, well, I guess it shouldn’t really matter. At least we know he’s got the cash if he loses the bet,” I offer, a little shocked by this new revelation. I shake my head as if that will make me snap out of it, and press on with the discussion. “Yeah, so, here’s the thing, we still have the option to sell to him at an excellent price. A price that’ll pay off the debt and leave us with a large chunk of cash, even after we put aside money for Bailey and Walker to get through college. Pops would’ve wanted that covered no matter what. Then we can split the rest after that goes into trust.”
“Are you saying you want to sell?” Walker asks me, her gray eyes slitted with suspicion.
“No, I’m not. What I am saying is that it’s a viable option. But what we really need to determine—right here, right now—is if we want to keep the pub, and if we do, do we have the bandwidth to run it ourselves. That has to be a unanimous decision, as far as I’m concerned.”
I look at James, who looks at Walker, who looks at Bailey, who looks at me.
“Well, we’ve been running it since Pops died in December,” Walker points out. “We could use more help, for sure, but I think we’ve been doing okay. So, yeah, I’m voting yes.”
“I’m in, too,” Jameson echoes right behind her. “What about Prince Charming?” Walker sneers.
“Who, Win? Well, he ordered me to vote no. That alone makes me want to vote yes. But, more importantly, I think it’s what Mama and Pops would want,” James informs us with a firm nod.
My eyes move to Bailey, who’s again twirling her hair and popping her gum.
“Well, duh!” she finally proclaims with a roll of her eyes. “I’ll take that as a yes.” I laugh and then sober up again. This is too important to joke about. “I’m willing to do whatever needs to be done to see us—to see the pub— succeed. So…I’m going to take a leave of absence from my job for the next six weeks so I can focus all of my energy on this…on raising the cash so we don’t have to sell.”
“Or,” Walker offers up, “we could try and run Bryan Pruitt’s butt out of town. That would solve all our problems, wouldn’t it? If this bet is legit, he’d have to buy the pub and give it back to us. And we’d have the bonus of him being gone.”
