Gypsy came down the stairs of Elaina’s trailer wearing sweats, her hair tousled. And, damn, she didn’t look good. She looked…sick.
“Are you okay?” Miranda asked as Gypsy came a
round the driver’s side.
“Yeah, I just wanted to talk to you a minute.” She stood beside the open door and crossed her arms over her middle.
“I only have a minute. Jack’s already made me late. Thanks for staying at Elaina’s, by the way. It was good for Jack and me to have that time together.”
“Oh, no problem. I really like him. You two are good together.”
Miranda glanced at her trailer and smiled, then refocused on Gypsy. “What’s up?”
“Marty and I have been talking, and, well, to make it fast, he wants to sell me the bar.”
Miranda opened her mouth to respond, but nothing came out.
“He says that it’s just gotten to be too much for him,” Gypsy said. “It’s growing too fast, and he’s tired of trying to keep up with it. I offered to manage it for him, but he said he’s done. He wants to fully retire.”
All Miranda’s air leaked from her lungs, but she quickly realized this might be the best thing for both of them. “I guess the bar’s success has been both good and bad. Can you afford it?”
Gypsy gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I have a hefty down payment to invest, and I can get a business loan easy enough. The revenue at the bar is more than I need to repay that loan and live. It’s not even as all-encompassing as my job at the club was. I’m confident I can handle it.”
“You haven’t been feeling well, and those hours could be really hard on you.”
“I can manage. I’ve been through worse. But Marty and I want to know that it’s okay with you, because that’s really our first priority, and I don’t want anything coming between us now.”
Everything inside Miranda softened. Her walls seemed to be crumbling all over the place. First with Jack, now Gypsy. And it felt good. Right.
So right.
“If it’s what you and Marty want, then yeah, I’m totally okay with it. And I’ll help out as much as I can.”
Gypsy grinned, then squealed, hoisted herself up on the running board, and threw her arms around Miranda. “Thank you.”
Miranda’s drive to work felt different. It even looked different. The sky seemed brighter, the roads clearer, the stoplights shorter. She even pulled into the best parking spot in the area, right on the street in front of the construction site.
She grabbed her things and made her way across the site toward the construction elevator that would take her up to the twenty-seventh floor where she’d be working today. She watched the metal cage descend with her mind on everything but how she’d spend her day. There was suddenly so much good in her life, she felt shaky. Miranda had been disappointed so often in the past, she was too aware of how easily it could all be stripped away. Her relationship with Jack could snap from the physical distance between them. Roman’s offer could be swept out from under her in an instant. Gypsy could cave under the weight of the bar’s workload.
There were too many wildcards in her life right now. Wildcards she couldn’t control. She hated the sensation of depending on others. Depending on Jack for her full heart, on Gypsy to create a family, on Roman, just a stranger, to fund her dream.
But as the orange cage slid into place in front of her, Miranda thought about the risks Jack faced and how well he handled them all—family, business, partnership. If he could do it, there was no reason Miranda couldn’t.
Before her subconscious could start fighting back with doubts, she stepped into the elevator.
“Randy.” Alex stalked toward her, his expression concerned. “Can we talk?”
Oh, good God. She was so not in the mood to hear his gripes about Jack again. And Jack’s vague warnings about keeping her distance from Alex returned to her, making all the muscles of her shoulders tense.
“Get in,” she told him, stepping to the side. “I’m already running late.”
Alex stepped in and shut the metal door while Miranda pressed the Up button. “Can I use your truck to move a few pallets of masonry to the other side of the site? The forklift is trapped behind a new load of steel and your truck’s right out front.”
“Last time you used it, you left cement dust in the bed.”
“Sorry. I’ll have the guys make sure it’s clean. And I’ll drop that welding wire at Warrior for you, too.”
Miranda dug her keys from her bag and handed them to Alex. “What’s really bothering you?”