“Listen, Mark, I've put together a rudimentary cost analysis based on your current profit and loss—”
“English,” I muttered.
She sighed. “Me know your numbers.”
My back was to her as I attempted to wrench an old cardboard box off the shelf, which made it safe to grin.
“Tell me more, cavewoman Stell.”
“Okay,” she drawled, “to summarize in Mark terms, you need about $4,000 a month to pay off credit card debt and the mortgage. Right now, you have $1,000 in savings and $15,000 in credit card debt. You have three weeks until both the mortgage and the credit card are due again. You pay $2,000 for the mortgage and a minimum of $1,200 for the credit card.”
Those numbers normally wouldn't bother me. Money was fluid and came and went, but a long, lonely winter awaited me with little to do. There had been years in my life when I grabbed any job I could just to eat, but that kind of work wasn't available in Pineville. Now, I had nowhere else to go.
“Not bad,” I muttered as my finger caught the edge of the box. Dust trickled on my nose and made me sneeze when I finally yanked the box off the shelf. The lid tipped to the floor, scattering dead moths. She eyed them and stepped back to the doorway, which she leaned against.
“Setting aside income from your HomeBnB's to pay electric and food, if you plan to open one cabin—mine,” she added with an edge of tightness that made me grin further, “—you would need to earn $3,000 from renting that cabin in the next 21 days. That requires you to book out the next three weeks for $152 a day.” She hugged the tablet to her chest. “Starting within the hour.”
Marie—Stella—had always had a slice of self-righteousness to her tone just when we were about to start arguing. Her depth of belief in numbers was a sure foundation. They don't lie, she always said to me around gritted teeth.
But outside forces could skew numbers within seconds of discovery. A winning lottery ticket. A new investor. An idea that built with sheer work instead of monetary investment.
That same tone built within her now and gave me a little thrill. It's why I secretly loved to talk to Stella: we always did this back-and-forth. While I dreaded it because I never won, I adored the path to my demise.
“You assumed we need to make $3,000 this month,” I said. “Drop that to $2,000.”
Her frown could be felt through my back. “The only way to do that is to use your savings?”
“Yep.”
“But then you have no savings.”
“Yep.”
She paused. The silence stretched so long I thought she'd left. When I looked back, she still stood there, eyebrow quirked.
“But . . .”
“Savings are meant to be used in the worst of times, right? I'm in the worst of times, Stella. Calculate please?” I asked.
With another grumble of assent, her tablet pen poked away. I turned half my attention to the box I'd just pulled down. Though dusty, a few tidbits still lived in there, half-eaten by mice. Nothing usable. With a grunt, I tossed it into the commissary to throw away with the next trash run, and moved onto the next one.
“$95 if you book out every day,” she said.
“Try for 14 days.”
Another dramatic sigh. “$143 per day.”
“Perfect!” I wiped my dusty hands on my jeans. “That gives us one week to find enough people to pay $143 per night to stay in that tiny cabin for two weeks.”
“You make it sound so easy,” she muttered.
I glanced back at her. Her lashes were low as she stared at the tablet, lips quirked to one side of her face as the tablet pen tapped against the side. When her gaze lifted to mine, I gave her a lopsided smile.
“It doesn't have to be that hard.”
“I think you're underestimating how much marketing you need to do to find someone,” she said. “Do you have a social media presence?”
“We don't have to market.”
She glared at me. “You're going to conjure them out of thin air?”
“Yes.”
At my simple response, her mouth shut.
“You’re going to cut and dye your hair so you blend in better?” I asked, to cover the fact that I'd been staring at her a little too long.
She snorted. “My life is not a Loveline Channel movie. So no.”
Her attempt to keep it lighthearted wasn't a failure, but I saw some tension in her response. Maybe she wasn't full-on witness protection program yet, but what if it turned to that? I couldn't discount that it was possible.
Honestly, the cougar scared me more.
“Can we return to the numbers?” she asked. “And the details? I need to know how you conjure clients out of thin air. Most companies require money in marketing to generate leads.”
“I'm not most companies.”
She snorted. “Whatever. I'd like to pad these a bit. I don't want to use up all your savings. Let's assume we can charge $160 a night. It buys us a little leeway.”
“I'm going into town tomorrow.” Another rain of dust showered on me as I gripped the third box to pull it down. “I'll start talking to people. I texted Lizbeth this morning and she's already starting on a website and social media page.”
“Just like that? You don't have the money to pay her.”
“I'm not.” I shrugged. “They love me. It's what family does. We're going to try listing the cabin as a HomeBnB first, see if we can get traction there since I already have a profile she manages for me for now.”
Stella quirked an eyebrow. “Lizbeth sounds pretty amazing.”
“She is.”
“How long have you known her?”
“Less than a year.”
“So fast?”
I shrugged. JJ and Lizbeth moved faster than even that. I didn't mention the fact that they spent only two months dating before they were engaged. For them, it fit. Plus, Lizbeth had loved JJ forever. Stella didn't seem like the uber-trusting type. She made a sound low in her throat, but kept her eyes on her tablet.
When the third box joined the other one to
