Page 16 of Dragon’s Golden Mate (Shifter Nation: Enchanted Over Forty #2)

Kendrick’s hands were tight on the wheel as he drove across town the next day. There was no option of walking this time. Granted, his stamina far surpassed that of most humans, and it wouldn’t be a problem for him physically. He just didn’t have the time to walk that far.

Part of him wished he did, because he still couldn’t get Maeve out of his head.

It was even worse now. Her mind had melded to his the moment they were both in their animal forms. He’d wavered so many times on how he felt about her and what he should or shouldn’t do about it, but that fact changed everything.

It was no longer about a decision on their parts. Fate had spoken.

Still, that didn’t mean he could do anything about it.

If they’d been simple humans, Kendrick imagined they’d continue to spend time together.

Everyone would speculate and giggle behind their hands, but their families would be amused at two old folks finding love like that. It would be sweet and easy.

That was a nice fantasy, but Kendrick was a dragon.

He might live for a millennium or more. And Maeve?

However much time she had left on Earth, even if she lived to be quite old, would be a flash in the pan compared to his lifespan.

As soon as he committed himself to her, she’d be gone.

Why should he put himself through that again?

Was a little bit of joy worth the massive amount of pain that would come later?

His mind couldn’t stop wrestling with the problem of Maeve, nor could it ignore the issue of the church.

Lucille’s paper pusher had managed to give them a few more days with the demolition review, but that was still no guarantee that the building would remain standing once that time was up.

Would the portal entrance just be paved over once the church was torn down?

What would happen to the gargoyles? The creatures had attacked Kendrick and Maeve, but they were only doing the job they were meant for.

He felt a certain amount of kinship toward them.

Fortunately, his job today would be a good distraction. When the call had come in for another consulting job, Kendrick had taken it immediately. He needed something else to focus on. As he pulled over to the curb, he could see that this would take a considerable amount of focus, indeed.

He stepped out and admired the three-story brick building, constructed in a toned-down Italianate style. The arched windows sported simple, hooded crowns in alternating light and dark bricks. Larger, paired windows soared up to the centered gable, which showcased the bracketed cornice.

“She’s a beauty, isn’t she?”

A couple approached him, holding hands. Kendrick figured they were probably in their mid-sixties or so.

The man had a long, lugubrious face. His thick black eyebrows told of the color his silver hair had probably once been.

He let go of his wife’s hand to shake Kendrick’s.

“Robert Sutton, and this is my wife, Linda.”

He gestured toward the short, curvy woman next to him. She had a pouf of curly hair, dyed a shade of light red. She had brilliantly pink cheeks and a genuine smile, which widened when she took her turn shaking Kendrick’s hand. “We’re so excited to meet you and see what you think of the place.”

“Kendrick Alexander. Pleasure to meet you, as well. What can you tell me about it?”

Robert straightened up a little, apparently more than happy to do so. “It was originally an elementary school. Those got consolidated and updated over the years, and it sat vacant for a while. It’s gone through a few hands, with every owner attempting something different.”

“So a few renovations have already been made,” Kendrick concluded. Everything on the outside seemed fairly original except for a shabby awning that’d been hung over the front double doors.

“A few, but a lot of it is still original. We’ll take you inside.” Robert and Linda led the way up the concrete steps.

Those soaring windows on the front led into a large, open hall with a central staircase. What had once been classroom doors led off either side. Kendrick spied a kitchen through one and a makeshift living room in another.

“Bits and pieces of the plumbing and electrical have been updated over the years,” Robert told him as they ambled down the hall.

“I don’t know that any of it will be usable for our purposes, though.

It seems that everyone who owned the building saw that it was a big space and ought to be used for something, but they didn’t know how to change the flow to make it work for something more modern. ”

“And what do you have in mind?” They stepped into one of the classrooms, which hadn’t yet been touched. It was empty and swept clean, but Kendrick didn’t see any recent updates.

Robert walked to the center of the space and held out his hands.

“Just look at the size of these rooms. They’re huge!

One of the previous owners, judging by the rooms at the front of the building, tried to turn each one into a room of a house.

One for the kitchen, one for the living room, one for a bedroom.

Then you have the problem of all the extra doors, and that gets awkward when you start thinking about bathrooms.”

“The average classroom size in this building is almost a thousand square feet,” Linda added.

“That’s bigger than most apartments! We can make each classroom its own apartment, and we’ll use an open concept so the light from the windows reaches most of the space.

I’ve drawn up a few plans.” She pulled a piece of graph paper from a folder under her arm and handed it to Kendrick.

He studied the drawing, which had been done entirely by hand, and then compared it to the space they were standing in. “Hm. You really have made good use of the windows. It looks like each of these classrooms has two doors, so residents would have an emergency exit.”

“The plumbing was one of our biggest concerns,” Robert explained, coming back over and putting his arm around his wife. “There are bathrooms at the end of the hall on each floor, but that’s it. The rooms themselves don’t have any water.”

“You’ve got very tall ceilings, though, which would be an advantage. That gives you plenty of space to run heating and air ducts, plumbing, and electrical. It would take a lot of work, and it wouldn’t be cheap, but it could be done.”

“We also considered making a couple of them two stories. They’d go for a higher rental price, of course, but we like the idea of having different options to meet different budgets.” Linda summoned him back into the hallway. “Here. We’ll show you.”

They made their way up to the second floor. Even less work had been done up there.

“Some of these rooms are just slightly narrower, so we thought combining them with another one on the second floor would be a good solution.” Robert put his hands in his pockets and walked slowly around the room.

“I think it’s a great idea,” Kendrick replied honestly. “I don’t think you’d have any trouble renting them out, either.”

“If these walls could talk, eh?” Robert stopped and patted the thick wall near the window. “They’d probably have a lot to say about spitballs and writing lines, but probably also young love and learning.”

“Speaking of the walls, how much of the original building do you want to keep in terms of aesthetics?” Kendrick asked.

“As much as possible,” Linda answered. “We’ve seen the other condos that are all slicked over and painted white.

That’s not really who we are. We want something a little different, something that lets people know this place has been around for a long time.

I especially like the hardwood floors and the brick. ”

Kendrick smiled. It was nice to work with people who actually wanted to save the building and hold on to a bit of its past. If the Suttons were successful, this old school could last another hundred years or more. “Wonderful. I like that.”

“Well, we’re not like some of the other real estate developers you’ll find around here,” Robert said, twisting his mouth. “We’re nothing like Deegan.”

“Deegan?” Kendrick asked.

“Sure, Deegan Enterprises. This wasn’t the first building we wanted. We found some others we were interested in, but Deegan outbid us every time. When it’s just the two of us versus a corporation, we can’t win.”

Kendrick wondered if they’d wanted to buy the church, but he didn’t share information among his clients. “That’s a shame.”

“What’s really a shame is the way they run their business. They boast about being big on ‘revitalization,’ but we know what it really means.” Robert used his fingers to put quotation marks around the word.

“And what is that?” Kendrick tried not to sound too interested, even though he wanted to know anything he could about Cassandra and her company.

“They just buy the cheapest, oldest places they can find, tear them down, and build something shiny and expensive on the lot. Sure, they might reuse a few bricks or something, but that’s just a token to keep people off their backs.

If you ask me, it’s just a way for them to get around the right way of doing things.

Citizens would speak up if they thought they had a chance or that it would make any difference. ”

“Now, Robert.” Linda patted her husband’s arm and then looked at Kendrick. “He gets so riled up about these things.”

“I think I have a right to,” Robert countered. “Those big real estate companies are built on the backs of the poor. Places like Deegan take lower-income housing, tear it down, and build luxury condos. They destroy historical places and turn them into shopping centers. They have no heart.”

Kendrick had to wonder if this was what Lucille’s friend had in mind when he’d referred to Cassandra with such contempt at the protest. It wasn’t just that she was the enemy of the church. She’d done this multiple times and in multiple locations.

“That woman who’s in charge really knows how to market her scheme, too,” Robert went on. “Deegan Enterprises is having a big concert soon, framing it as a fundraiser for ‘downtown revitalization.’ That makes it sound so altruistic, but money is at the center of it. Just like anything else.”

“Not for us,” Linda reminded him, squeezing his hand.

“You have to remember that, Robert. And you can just let them have downtown, because we can’t afford anything there anyway.

We’ll have our nice little place here, and everyone will talk about what great landlords we are because we always fix things right away. It’ll be just what we always wanted.”

He smiled at her fondly. “Our own way of kicking dust in their eye, right?”

“Exactly!” Linda giggled a little. “I just can’t wait!”

Robert looked at Kendrick. “Well, what do you think?”

Kendrick thought the two of them were adorable together.

They were a good pair, a true match who complemented each other.

He thought coming there would be a great distraction, but it only made him think of Maeve even more.

Would the two of them be like that? Would other people see them holding hands down the sidewalk and think it was cute?

That wasn’t what Robert wanted to know, though.

“I think it’s a very good possibility. I’ll need to check for any structural issues that need to be addressed.

You’ll need to get some professionals here for plumbing, electrical, and heat.

I’ve got good recommendations for you, people who are truly good to work with. ”

“What about keeping some of the elements of the building?” Linda asked. “For instance, what about these doors? Could we use the originals?”

He walked over to the classroom door, playing with the handle and examining the thickness.

“Aesthetically, I think it’d look great.

The problem is that it wouldn’t be secure enough for most folks.

I think what you could do instead is turn these into interior doors within the apartments themselves.

For instance, these could be the doors to the bedroom and the bathroom. ”

“Perfect!” Linda clapped her hands in front of her.

“I’ll need to look around more, and then I can write up a full report with recommendations,” Kendrick offered.

“The place is all yours,” Robert said. “We’ll just be in those front rooms, cleaning out some more junk from the last resident.”

They headed downstairs, but Kendrick went systematically through the building.

He looked around for any glaring issues, made notes of what could feasibly be salvaged and what couldn’t.

Some of his connections would be very happy to get this kind of work, especially for people like the Suttons who truly cared.

Eventually, he made it up to the third floor. It was a little stuffy, but new ventilation throughout the building would fix that. He admired the view, briefly thinking about how much the new tenants would like it. Anyone who rented there would be set up with a great situation.

That made him think about Cassandra and what Robert had said about her.

She’d seemed to Kendrick like any other real estate developer, someone who was after the fastest dollar and the biggest impact.

That wasn’t unusual at all, and in fact it’d been going on much longer than anyone these days might realize.

The fact that Cassandra specialized in the method didn’t necessarily say anything about her, either.

What the gargoyles had said about her, though, made him wonder if there was more to the story.

No one else apparently knew about this portal under the church, or at least no records of it existed.

According to the images the stone guardians had shared, however, Cassandra definitely knew about it.

Was she actually drawing power from it, as they’d indicated, or was that symbolic?

More importantly, what the hell was he going to do about any of it?