Love Shack (Tiny Houses, Big Hearts)
Read Love Shack (Tiny Houses, Big Hearts) Online
Authors: Roxy Mews
Tags: #contemporary, #Romance, #comedy, #Tiny House, #Banker
Table of Contents
Look for these titles by Roxy Mews
Living tiny doesn’t leave many places to hide.
Tiny Houses, Big Hearts
, Book 1
Felicity Newhouse left a life of excess for a tiny house—and she’s never felt richer. She’d like to give back to the artisanal community who gave her wounded spirit a place to land, but she wants to do it on her own terms. Except she’s been turned down for a loan four times. And the fifth bank on her list isn’t looking too promising, either.
The woman sitting across Brandon Halston’s desk must be out of her mind. Who’d want to live in a house the size of his walk-in closet, much less create an entire community of them? He’s drawn to her soft beauty and her ideals, but business is business.
When her story hits the news, Brandon’s boss solves the PR nightmare by ordering him to spend a month in her house—while cameras roll. The heat between them boils over like the water for their morning coffee. But when one person is hiding who they really are, passion may not be enough to clean up the dirt someone is digging up behind the scenes.
Warning: This book contains copious amounts of coffee and sex in confined spaces. If the tiny house is rockin’ don’t come a-knockin’.
Love Shack
Roxy Mews
Dedication
For Holly. This book wouldn’t shine anywhere nearly as bright without you. Thanks for helping me dream “tiny”.
Chapter One
It was a brilliant plan. Well, as brilliant as a plan destined to fail could be.
Felicity Newhouse sat in front of a large mahogany desk. She had all the correct elements of her business plan in order. She had the prototype paid for out of her savings, and she knew in her heart this was her life’s calling.
Unfortunately the evil horrible banker on the other side of the mahogany desk couldn’t give a rat’s ass about doing good for the world.
“A tiny trailer is not collateral for the loan you are asking for. If anything, it’s a liability, because there are rules about living in a camping structure in this city for more than a few days.”
“It’s not a camping structure,” Felicity explained for the fifth time. “It’s a tiny house. This is a dramatic new movement sweeping the country. They are popping up all over the place. Did you review the artisan community in Washington DC I included information on?”
Mr. Halstan removed his glasses and leaned back. He pushed the three hundred plus page document Felicity had slaved over toward her. She picked it up. She’d be damned if he would toss it in the trash, and from the way this was going, if she left it here, that was exactly where her business plan was going.
It was a shame the banker had no heart. If he would do anything but frown and pinch his brows together, he would have been a damn good looking man. That was usually how the hottie lottery went. All the sexy ones were bastards.
“I reviewed it. I still don’t see how you are going to make money.”
“It’s a charity. The bulk of the proceeds would go towards building homes for the needy, but if you would look at the financials, you can see that after just three home sales we would be able to begin paying the loan back. Three more and it would be paid in full. They can even be sold for travelers. All models I’m offering are Department of Transportation compliant in the US.” Felicity flipped to the page she had tabbed in green.
“You don’t need to show me. I just don’t believe you will get that many sales.” He turned to his computer. “You don’t have the value in your collateral to cover the loan, and you don’t have a marketable product for us to take a chance on.”
“Isn’t my credit good enough?” Felicity started panicking. “I always pay all my bills.”
“In cash.” Mr. Halstan waved off her efforts to show him the numbers one more time. He finished crushing her soul with the words. “You don’t have bad credit. You just don’t have
any
. You don’t have collateral to put up, and you don’t have any liquid assets that would be marketable when this venture fails. I’m sorry. There’s nothing this bank can do for you.”
Felicity grabbed her things. She wanted to scream, but like her mother had taught her, she wouldn’t burn the bridge. The evil bank man looked shocked when she extended her hand. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Halston. I appreciate you listening to me and considering my plan.”
“You’re welcome, Ms. Newhouse. Good luck,” he said to her face. As she was closing the door, she ground her teeth as he mumbled. “You’re going to need it.”
* * * * *
There were a few things Felicity took from her entrepreneurial education.
First—not everyone would share your vision. That was damn obvious since this was the fifth bank that had turned her down.
Second—if you did your research and knew in your heart this was a great idea, fuck the people who said it can’t be done. The vulgarity wasn’t part of her lesson plans, but the sentiment behind it was.
Finally—if you can’t gain respect, you won’t have anything. People want to believe in the idea they are investing in, but more importantly, they want to believe in the leader.
Felicity was not a person who garnered a lot of respect in a business setting. She was wearing her best suit, but she’d bought it at a second hand clothing store. Felicity didn’t buy anything new. She recycled, she composted, and she gardened to keep her carbon footprint as small as possible.
Sitting at the bus stop outside the bank, she was deep in thought when a woman and her daughter sat down next to her.
“Mommy, why can’t we live in our own house? I don’t like the Harmony Home. Jilly has her own house. I want to have a bedroom with a Barbie dream house like Jilly.” The little girl pouted.
The mother glanced toward Felicity before lowering her voice and responding. “Some people live in different places because their parents can afford different things. I promise you, Candice, the second I can afford to get us out of the Harmony Halfway Home, I will get you a dream house.” She handed her daughter a small sucker. The kind that came fifty to a bag for a dollar.
“We could afford it if daddy hadn’t left,” the little girl mumbled around her sucker.
While her mother tried to blink away tears, the girl looked on. Those eyes understood far too much for someone so young.
“We’ll do just fine without him, sweetie. I promise.” The woman kissed the little girl on the head. It was a sweet gesture, but she did it just as much to hide her worried brow as she did to show her love for her daughter.
When the bus showed up, Felicity didn’t get on.
“You riding with us, lady?” The bus driver raised her eyebrows at her.
“Nope. I have one more place to go first.” Felicity felt empowered saying that.
The bus driver just looked annoyed to have held up the route.
She didn’t understand that Felicity just had an epiphany.
That little girl wanted a home of her own. If Felicity could just get someone to look at her project with that little girl’s eyes, she could show them how important it was. She had a way to get people who needed help into a better situation. She might not get bank funding, but she would get the public behind her. Maybe instead of trying to impress a computer logarithm, she needed to touch the hearts of the people around her.
The news station was just two blocks away. Walking into the building to try and sell them a story probably wasn’t the right way to do things, but if Felicity had learned anything over the past few months, it was that the right way never really worked for her.
Chapter Two
Brandon Halston loaded the files he’d need to work on from home on his flash drive and shut down his office computer. It was after six and he didn’t want to be at the branch when the cleaning crew came through again.
Working late was how he’d made it to assistant branch manager at thirty. But some days, when it took away his social life and made his back ache like he was sixty, it didn’t seem worth it.
His cell phone rang. The number read
Channel Thirteen News
. He let it go to voicemail. If this was about the bank’s upcoming community fair participation, the call needed to be directed to people who were much better at PR than he was.
Brandon could smile. He just didn’t enjoy doing it anymore. He had to smile while he listened to every potential borrower come in and beg for cash. He had to smile when he pandered to the high-end clients and large businesses that used their banking services and kept the cash flow where it needed to be. He even had to smile at all the people who complained about fees because they had overdrawn their accounts for the fifth time that month.
By the time he finished a shift, the last thing Brandon wanted to do was smile. Even using those muscles to tip up the corners of his mouth made him feel a sense of responsibility. He had enough of that in his life, and damn if he didn’t want to get away from it for a bit.
Being good at your job also meant you got more of the workload. Brandon knew if he did take a much needed vacation, all it would afford him was worrying about the sheer volume of work that would be waiting for him when he got back. Or worse, he would spend weeks fixing the mistakes made in his absence.
He would probably just have his vacation paid out again this year. He made a quick note in his to do list to get the paperwork filed next week. It would be a nice bump in his savings account, and he wouldn’t have to worry about the hassles associated with time off.
Just as he saved the update to his calendar, the notification blip dinged on his phone. He’d listen to the message after he got home.
He hadn’t even made it the thirty feet to his car before the damn phone rang again. This was the most action the device had seen in months. It wasn’t like Brandon had any friends anymore. He’d been too busy to go out while he was building his career, and the people who used to call him and invite him out stopped some time ago.
This phone call, Brandon answered. It was his boss.
“Mr. Pembrook. What can I do for you, sir?” The smile popped back into place. Brandon’s jaw hurt.
“You can tell me why I’m getting a call from a news reporter naming us as an uncharitable bank who refuses to help an up and coming entrepreneurial Good Samaritan.”
Brandon’s smile evaporated. The news station called his boss?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.”
“Did you turn down a loan for a charity proposed by a local woman today?”
Brandon had turned down three loans today. Only one was a woman. “She shook my hand when she left. I wasn’t at all rude to her, sir.”
“Were you honest?”
“Yes.”
“I told you to cut that crap out.” His boss exhaled on the other end. Mr. Pembrook was smoking. His boss only ever smoked at the bank to try and keep it from his wife that he hadn’t really quit. If he was smoking at home, this was serious.