Free Forever My Angel by Kelly Walker Page A

can’t shake my shitty mood today. While Angel was in the shower, I put in a call to my realtor, planning to set an appointment for later in the week to tour the two warehouses still in consideration for our new location.
    Norman Fitzsimmons and my father go way back, and they’ve always had a good business relationship. Though I couldn’t remember meeting him personally before we started this project, he remembered me as a child. He wasted the first thirty minutes of our initial meeting reminiscing, during which I learned two things: Fitz, as he asked me to call him, is envious of the way my father is able to step back from business a bit and let me handle things, and he also has a daughter he dotes on.
    Which is probably what gave him the bright idea to have his daughter take over showing me properties. That, or maybe he realizes this is pretty much a done deal, and all he’s really waiting on is for me to make a choice between the two warehouses.
    Unfortunately, the daughter insisted we meet today, either from eagerness, impatience, or both. I wasn’t going to agree until she told me she’s heard rumors of others being almost ready to put in an offer on one of my two prospects. She casually suggested it might even be the same developer who's recently opened a new night-life bar that seems to be aimed at competing with Tuck’s Tap.
    So now, instead of spending the morning relaxing before tonight’s annual Tuck's Tap holiday kick-off party, I left Angel at home with a mumbled excuse for leaving early and a promise to pick up brochures for her.
    I am not looking forward to trying to make large, business-plan-altering decisions with an untested, inexperienced little girl who’s there just to humor her father. Because of the lack of notice, my father isn’t going to be able to accompany me to make the selection, not that I truly mind. I wanted his approval, but I also appreciate his confidence in me. In the end, this club is my project, and he’s just there as an adviser if I need him.
    Not that I'm going alone. Kevin is meeting me at the first location so he can give me his opinion on how difficult it would be to set up adequate–no, scratch that, state of the art—security.
    Dougie’s meeting us there too, and that’s a conversation I’m not looking forward to having.
    I try to evaluate the neighborhood with critical eyes as I near the property. The street is relatively clean, the buildings nearby don’t look rundown, and there are no shady characters loitering about. I try to put myself in the same shoes as the fathers of the college club crowd: would they let their daughters come here? I think the answer is yes. We aren’t in a trendy part of town with a lot of foot traffic, like at Tuck’s Tap, but I think I could draw a crowd to this place. There’s a spacious parking lot, rather than street parking, although it needs better lighting to be safe. I’m not sure what the two buildings across the street hold; they aren’t marked.
    I briefly considered scouting for a location that already draws a lot of the club crowd, like Old Town, but I don’t want to be just another club. I want to repeat what my father did when he built Tuck’s Tap and bring something different and needed to an area. Hopefully that will pay off in the end, even if it makes it harder to get up and running in the beginning.
    It isn’t hard to spot Eva Fitzsimmons as soon as I pull into a parking spot. For one thing, other than us, the parking lot is empty. But even if it had been overflowing with other cars, I don’t think she would have escaped my notice. If I'd somehow missed her long, slender legs as she climbed nimbly off her motorcycle, her vibrant red hair whipping in the wind like a flag would have at least caught my eye.  I can’t help laughing at myself for making assumptions. Her voice might have been candy-coated and sweet on the phone, but in person I instantly get the impression she’s a firecracker.
    Her handshake