Chapter 10
Luc parked his truck in the side parking lot, and looked at himself in the mirror, he liked what he saw, and then shook his head at himself for worrying about how he looked.
On a heavy sigh, he said to the mirror, “This is me, like me or not, I don’t care.
” With that in his mind, he exited his truck, and as he rounded the corner he spotted Lilith standing outside the café, but a couple of doors down.
She must be nervous because her hand was on her stomach and she drew in several deep breaths.
“Lilith?” he called out, and smiled when she whipped around and spotted him.
“Lucius, you’re here.”
“I am, and you can call me Luc if you prefer?”
“Why? I like the name Lucius. You can call me Lily if you would like?”
“No, I like the name Lilith.” They established that, then with his hand on the small of her back, he escorted her to the café, held the door open for her, and when they approached the counter, he held her back. “No questions asked, I’m paying.”
“Okay.” She knew when to pick her battles and knew this wasn’t one of them. They ended up ordering the basic coffee and a Danish. Luc didn’t know if it was coincidence, or not, but they ordered the exact same thing.
“I’m a simple person,” she said as they took a seat in the back, away from the others. At first they were quiet as they ate their cheese Danish, but then Luc looked at her with a stunned expression.
“I’ll be right back.” He stood and left the table and Lilith watched him, thinking he was heading to the restrooms, but he stepped up to the counter, talked to the server, paid them some money, then came back to the table. “Sorry about that.”
“What did you do?”
“I ordered a carafe of coffee. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to have to keep getting up and down to get another cup of coffee. I don’t know how much you drink, but I basically mainline this stuff.”
Lilith smiled as she nodded, and waved her hand in front of her face as she giggled.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve reached for my cup while doing my paperwork and find that it’s gone ice cold because I forgot to drink it, or couldn’t remember drinking it and the cup is empty.
Since I enjoy iced coffee every once in a while, it doesn’t bother me. ”
“Yeah, me too. I hate when that happens.” They finished eating, then waited until the barista set the carafe down and walked away.
“So, Lilith, what can you tell me about some of the places you’ve been to on your past vacations?”
Lilith grinned, and didn’t notice that Luc adjusted himself in his seat when his manhood suddenly woke after being dormant for so long.
He listened intently to all her travels, and at one point, he felt jealous.
She was doing what he had dreamed of. Not that he couldn’t do it, it was that none of his friends had the same passion he had for the paranormal things in the world.
“What about this year’s trip?” he asked, and again nodded when she told him everything she knew.
“Would you like a travel partner this year?”
“Right now? Right this minute? No. I’m only saying that because I don’t know you enough to spend a week with you in close proximity.”
“That’s a fair assessment. Would you like to get to know me better?” Luc closed his eyes and hung his head at that question, then looked at her with a defeated expression. “Sorry, that was a really bad question.”
“You’re fine, and yes, I would, but I have one question for you first.”
“Which is?”
“Starr told me that you don’t date. May I ask why?”
“It’s not like I have never dated at all. I have. I also wouldn’t say that I don’t date, it’s just that based on past experiences, I’ve learned to be more selective with whom I date.”
“Can you explain that more?”
“Sure. I am the sole owner of Hell’s Coffin, the bar slash restaurant.
Starr tells everyone the club owns it, but not on paper.
On paper, I own it. Because we use the place as a club house, they are like silent security for the bar.
They help out a lot if I need it. The bar used to be an old cow barn on my grandparents’ property.
Would you like a little history of the place? ”
“Absolutely,” Lilith said with a laugh, refilled their cups of coffee and settled in for his story. “I love mysteries.”
“Not so much a mystery, but rather than documented history.”
“All the better.”
“Okay, let me see if I can get all my facts straight to tell this. My current property is one hundred acres. It’s been in my family for the last two hundred years. It was a farm that they worked to sustain the family.”
“As all people did throughout time.”
“Correct. Well, maybe I get a little of my rebellion from this ancestor, but during prohibition, my granddaddy at the time, turned the barn that is currently the bar I operate into a speakeasy.”
“Oh my gosh, like they did in the cities, with passwords and everything, just so people could drink?”
“Yes,” Luc said with a smile at her enthusiasm. “From my family history, it just wasn’t during prohibition. My ancestor from the eighteen eighties to the nineteen forties ran several stills out in the woods. Not once was he ever caught, nor was he ever on anyone’s radar for being a bootlegger.”
“What happened to him?”
“He got old, nothing dramatic, just got old, and when his son took over the farm, he dismantled all the stills, and called a buddy of his father’s to come get the supplies and all the left-over moonshine.
He turned the barn back into a cow barn.
” As he talked, Luc had grabbed a napkin and was drawing on it.
There was a large square with several x’s on it.
“This is my property. Yes, I inherited it from my grandparents. This large x is the bar.”
“What are the squiggly lines?” She looked at him with a frown and sucked in her breath when he looked at her with a grin.
“Trees.”
“Oh,” she said, and giggled. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. Anyway, these other x’s are my house, I live in what everyone referred to as the main house when it was a working farm.
These other two marks are where my parents and sister live.
We all live on the same property, but have separate homes.
These are former staff cabins. I guess you would call them staff, they worked on the farm. ”
“Caretaker’s cabins?”
“Yes, something like that. Anyway, there used to be a house closer to the barn, but that was destroyed in a snowstorm back in the 1970s. There was so much snow it collapsed the roof, and by the time anyone could come in and try to replace it, it was too late, there was extreme termite damage. It was better to just finish tearing it down than to do anything with it. The only thing left is the basement, which we covered, and the chimney is still standing.”
“Why did you decide to make the barn into a bar?”
“I don’t really know. I think at the time, I had heard about the bootlegging, the speakeasies and thought that was so cool.
Once I inherited the property, it was no longer a working farm, and my parents had rented out most of the land to the surrounding farmers.
I stopped that once one of the people renting my fields tried a couple of illegal things. ”
“May I ask what they were?”
“One, he refused to pay me. Two, he tried to tell me that because he worked the land then he had squatters rights. With that, he tried to sell a track to a housing development. I had my lawyer on him so fast that he lost his shirt, and ended up packing up and leaving. Once the dust settled from that fiasco, I refused to let anyone work the land. It’s gone farrow, and I don’t care.
” He shook his head, finished his coffee, and refilled both cups.
“Right around that time I had started the motorcycle club, Hell’s Coffin, and if it hadn’t been for that court case, I don’t think I ever would have started the bar slash restaurant. ”
“Why?”
“Because of the barn being a working cow barn, like cows were milked there, it had been zoned commercial, but it sat on private property.”
“Ah, and because it was registered as commercial already, you just had to come up with a new business to put in it.”
“Correct. Like I said, the club had just started and we started using the barn as a club house. One thing led to another, and it wasn’t long, total of three years, to make it into what it is today.
You can’t tell from the inside, but the walls are solid concrete, we just added studs, extra insulation, and drywall to make them into real walls.
” He looked at her with his signature smirk and raised brow.
“I can’t tell you how many hours it took us to pressure wash all the shit off the concrete walls.
We did everything legally and even invited the health department in to inspect before we went the next step. ”
“Oh, wow, that was nice of you.”
“Yeah, I didn’t want to pull into the parking lot one day and be told they were shutting us down for having a speck of old fecal matter on the walls. I know it sounds disgusting, but that’s why we added the extra walls. Besides, it helps with the cooling in the summer, and the heat in the winter.”
“This is all fascinating,” she said as she cradled her cup in her hands and lifted it to her lips to sip. “However, it doesn’t tell me why you don’t date.”
“Oh,” he said sheepishly, and leaned forward. “During all the construction of the bar, establishing the club, and taking that asshat to court for trying to steal from me. I met someone. I learned fast that she was only dating me for two different reasons.”
“Which were?” she asked to prompt him when he remained silent for almost two minutes.