Chapter 7 Roan
Chapter seven
Roan
Roan paced in the garden as he threw sticks to Beastie and waited for her to bring them back to him,
He was a fool.
He’d just called Abigail beautiful and then run away from her.
Even if she didn’t think he was a beast, she certainly had no reason to assume anything good of him at this point. But if there was one thing that this time together had shown him, it was that he desperately wanted her approval and wanted her to think well of him.
In the past two days, she had gone from being simply his employee to being someone whose opinion he valued.
He’d meant every word of what he said. She was smart and kind and beautiful.
She had more kindness in her little finger than he had in his entire body, and he’d always known that, but he’d never been able to enunciate it so clearly before—because until now, he’d never spoken to her about anything other than the tavern.
And it wasn’t as if he’d spent much time with her now, either.
But the tiny bit of time they’d spent together had proven that if he chose to spend more time with her, he could very quickly lose his heart to her, and that was an unsettling thought.
What if she didn’t feel the same way? What if she couldn’t wait to get out of here? What if she ran after they broke the curse and never came back?
Not that he expected she would…but there was always the potential for that, and even though he hadn’t considered it until now, he was terrified of it.
He didn’t want to lose her, and that had never been clearer.
The door opened behind him, and Abigail came out, wiping one hand on her apron, the other holding the bucket of kitchen scraps for the compost pile. Roan watched as she dumped the food in the pile and set the bucket down before coming over to join him.
“At least your garden is still growing well,” she said, her voice steady.
Her presence was steady as well.
He looked down at her gratefully. She could have run away from him and avoided him after he’d made things awkward, but she was here standing beside him, showing him that he was not alone and that she hadn’t been scared off.
He swallowed over the lump in his throat.
“I’m glad it is,” he said, trying to keep his voice even. “I would have been sad if it all stopped growing because of this curse.”
“I think it may end soon,” she said, her voice quiet. “If we did get sent back in time like the ball suggested, we only have three more days.”
“That’s still a long time,” Roan said, his voice shaking a little more than he would have liked.
“I know,” she said quietly. “I’m worried about the others.”
Roan was, too. He’d gone into the storage room a couple of times to check on them. They were still breathing, and they didn’t appear to be suffering any ill effects of being asleep. But they were asleep.
“We should prepare to feed them something nutritious when they wake up,” he said. “Though without knowing when they’ll wake up, that makes it difficult.”
“I know,” Abigail said with a sigh. “But there’s some canned soup in the storage room now, so we’ll be able to open a couple of those jars when the time comes and only have to heat it up.”
She was so resourceful. Before she’d come, he’d always been living moment to moment in the tavern, and what he served was dependent on what they had.
But shortly after joining him, Abigail had filled the storage room with canned foods and canned ingredients that made it possible for them to quickly feed more mouths than normal if they had unexpected visitors.
It didn’t happen often. Most of the town had their rhythms and never changed. But occasionally, they had a few extra visitors, and having the food put up ahead of time to quickly open and serve a hearty stew or a delicious soup was something he would never take for granted again.
If only he could afford to give her a raise. She deserved it.
“Thank you,” he said quietly, wondering if she would know that he meant for more than just the soup.
She smiled up at him, and his whole day grew brighter.
“You’re welcome,” she said, resting her hand on his shoulder for a moment before turning and walking back into the tavern.
Roan was ready to tear his hair out of his head. He had been fighting the balance sheet for the past hour and was no closer to figuring out why he couldn’t make everything work properly.
The fact that the numbers didn’t quite match wasn’t what bothered him. What bothered him was the fact that it seemed he was losing money.
He didn’t know how to stop it, but if he didn’t stop it, he could lose everything.
Roan ran his hand down his face and sighed.
This was not what he’d been hoping for. When he sat down to work on this, he’d been hoping to find that he had miscalculated and would be able to work it all out.
Instead, he found more bills that he didn’t remember paying, and more vendors than he could expect to pay with the usual number of patrons his tavern hosted on a regular basis.
It all seemed rather hopeless, and he didn’t like hopeless.
“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong,” he said to Beastie, who was sitting at his feet, staring up at him. “I feel like I should be better at this, but I’m not, and I don’t know how to fix it.”
It wasn’t a new problem. He’d first realized it was bad last winter, when he’d started trying to court Beatrice, the librarian. That hadn’t gone well, of course—who could ever learn to love the town beast? All it had done was convince everyone that a beast was all he was.
His grandparents had been a team—his grandfather doing the day-to-day running of the tavern, and his grandmother doing all the behind-the-scenes work, including the accounting.
He’d hoped that he could find that, too.
When Montgomery, the town’s trader who went back and forth to the capital city regularly, had mentioned that his daughter was one of the smartest in town, he’d thought she might be worth pursuing. He couldn’t afford a wife he couldn’t trust with his money or his tavern.
And getting her away from her drunk of a father also seemed like it might be appealing.
Montgomery had even started hinting—or saying outright—that he should court her.
But Beatrice had run off and married the lord who started her beloved library.
Roan didn’t begrudge her the happiness she’d found, but it had left him, once again, in the position of not knowing where to look for a wife who could put up with being married to him and his tavern.
And still losing money faster than he could earn it.
Beastie simply laid her head down on her paws and stared up at him with those big brown eyes that trusted him to do everything. Roan sighed. Beastie and Abigail were depending on him, and he had to figure this out for their sake.
Giving up was not an option.
“Yeah, we’ll figure it out, right, Beastie?” he asked, reaching down to scratch the top of her head.
She thumped her tail against the ground enthusiastically, and Roan smiled at her. At least somebody here loved him.
He frowned at himself. Where had that thought come from?
There was a rap at the door, and he said, “Come in,” his heart feeling lighter when he looked up at Abigail.
Somehow, she had become someone who could lift his spirits just by entering the room, and he wasn’t sure he liked that.
It sounded dangerously close to “love” territory.
Even when he’d been at the height of attempting to court Beatrice, he’d never been in love with her.
The last time he’d loved another human…well, it had ended a long time ago, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to be that weak again.
But he could hardly tell her to leave, even if he wanted to.
“Is something wrong?” she asked as she approached with a tray that held a bowl of stew and a slice of bread that smelled divine.
“Maybe,” he admitted. “I’m not sure I can make these numbers work right.”
Better to admit to that than the fact that he was wrestling with his feelings.
“Can I help?” she asked as she slid the tray onto the table next to him. “I used to help my father when he had trouble making the numbers work.”
Roan glanced at her. “Really?”
“Of course,” she said. “Do you truly think I would lie about that?”
“No,” he said hastily. “You just surprise me with all your many areas of expertise.”
“I’m a well-rounded woman,” she said with a smile, fetching the extra chair in the corner of his office and pulling it up next to his desk. “Show me what’s wrong with these numbers.”
Roan handed her the book, slightly surprised that he was willing to do so.
If Conrad had suggested he let Abigail look at the tavern’s numbers, he would have laughed at him, but suddenly, the idea of her helping him with it didn’t seem odd at all. In fact, it felt completely normal.
“I think I see at least one issue,” she said after a few moments of staring at the numbers. “You are still paying the baker for more loaves of bread than we purchase. We reduced our order when I started baking some, but it looks as if the price hasn’t gone down since then.”
He looked at her in a new light. She hadn’t even looked at it for five minutes, and she’d already seen an issue that he had overlooked for some time.
“And I’m sure there are some other things we can cut back on if that’s an issue,” she said, leaning closer to the page in front of her to study it. “I know there are other things in the kitchen that we could buy less of since I’ve started doing some of our own preserving.”
Roan could hardly keep the emotion out of his voice as he said, “Thank you.”
Abigail looked up from the notebook and smiled at him, and Roan could scarcely breathe. “Of course. It’s in my best interest to make sure the tavern does well,” she teased.
Roan’s mouth opened to say something, but then he closed it.
She was dangerous. One smile from her had him ready to do anything to see that smile again.
He needed to guard his heart, because if he didn’t watch it, he was going to fall head over heels for her. He needed her to run the tavern—he couldn’t lose her because he decided to be silly and let his heart get involved.
That wouldn’t help anyone.
He just had to convince his heart that leaving her alone was the better option, because right now, it was treacherously close to doing anything for her.
He sighed and looked down at Beastie, who was looking at him in disapproval.
Love was not for him. It was for those who weren’t trying to run a successful business.
He needed all his wits about him to make sure that he didn’t lose his tavern, and falling for Abigail was a distraction he could not afford.
Women in general were far too easy to lose one’s head around. He’d gone to drastic measures to keep his brother from losing his heart—he should be willing to do the same to protect his own.
The argument felt hollow, but it was the best he could do at the moment as he thought of his brother and the woman he had loved—perhaps still loved.
Roan wasn’t sure. He had distanced himself from the situation after Thea had appeared in the Northlands, ten years after Nathaniel had left her behind in Riyel.
Neither of them knew that Roan had taken their letters, and he was no longer sure if it had been the right decision. He’d thought it was the right thing at the time, or he wouldn’t have done it.
There was no sense in regretting it now. It was over. It didn’t matter if he wasn’t sure it was the right thing anymore.
His brother had gotten over his broken heart far more quickly than he would have without Roan’s intervention, and that was the whole point of why he had done it.
Love wasn’t worth it.
The only things he could count on were his never-ending pile of work and Beastie.
He didn’t need a woman interfering with all the things he had to do, even if she smelled like flowers, smiled like sunshine, and had a knack for fixing his problems.