Love Shack (Tiny Houses, Big Hearts) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Look for these titles by Roxy Mews

  Living tiny doesn’t leave many places to hide.

  Tiny Houses, Big Hearts, Book 1

  Felicity Newhouse left a life of excess for a tiny house—and she’s never felt richer. She’d like to give back to the artisanal community who gave her wounded spirit a place to land, but she wants to do it on her own terms. Except she’s been turned down for a loan four times. And the fifth bank on her list isn’t looking too promising, either.

  The woman sitting across Brandon Halston’s desk must be out of her mind. Who’d want to live in a house the size of his walk-in closet, much less create an entire community of them? He’s drawn to her soft beauty and her ideals, but business is business.

  When her story hits the news, Brandon’s boss solves the PR nightmare by ordering him to spend a month in her house—while cameras roll. The heat between them boils over like the water for their morning coffee. But when one person is hiding who they really are, passion may not be enough to clean up the dirt someone is digging up behind the scenes.

  Warning: This book contains copious amounts of coffee and sex in confined spaces. If the tiny house is rockin’ don’t come a-knockin’.

  Love Shack

  Roxy Mews

  Dedication

  For Holly. This book wouldn’t shine anywhere nearly as bright without you. Thanks for helping me dream “tiny”.

  Chapter One

  It was a brilliant plan. Well, as brilliant as a plan destined to fail could be.

  Felicity Newhouse sat in front of a large mahogany desk. She had all the correct elements of her business plan in order. She had the prototype paid for out of her savings, and she knew in her heart this was her life’s calling.

  Unfortunately the evil horrible banker on the other side of the mahogany desk couldn’t give a rat’s ass about doing good for the world.

  “A tiny trailer is not collateral for the loan you are asking for. If anything, it’s a liability, because there are rules about living in a camping structure in this city for more than a few days.”

  “It’s not a camping structure,” Felicity explained for the fifth time. “It’s a tiny house. This is a dramatic new movement sweeping the country. They are popping up all over the place. Did you review the artisan community in Washington DC I included information on?”

  Mr. Halstan removed his glasses and leaned back. He pushed the three hundred plus page document Felicity had slaved over toward her. She picked it up. She’d be damned if he would toss it in the trash, and from the way this was going, if she left it here, that was exactly where her business plan was going.

  It was a shame the banker had no heart. If he would do anything but frown and pinch his brows together, he would have been a damn good looking man. That was usually how the hottie lottery went. All the sexy ones were bastards.

  “I reviewed it. I still don’t see how you are going to make money.”

  “It’s a charity. The bulk of the proceeds would go towards building homes for the needy, but if you would look at the financials, you can see that after just three home sales we would be able to begin paying the loan back. Three more and it would be paid in full. They can even be sold for travelers. All models I’m offering are Department of Transportation compliant in the US.” Felicity flipped to the page she had tabbed in green.

  “You don’t need to show me. I just don’t believe you will get that many sales.” He turned to his computer. “You don’t have the value in your collateral to cover the loan, and you don’t have a marketable product for us to take a chance on.”

  “Isn’t my credit good enough?” Felicity started panicking. “I always pay all my bills.”

  “In cash.” Mr. Halstan waved off her efforts to show him the numbers one more time. He finished crushing her soul with the words. “You don’t have bad credit. You just don’t have any. You don’t have collateral to put up, and you don’t have any liquid assets that would be marketable when this venture fails. I’m sorry. There’s nothing this bank can do for you.”

  Felicity grabbed her things. She wanted to scream, but like her mother had taught her, she wouldn’t burn the bridge. The evil bank man looked shocked when she extended her hand. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Halston. I appreciate you listening to me and considering my plan.”

  “You’re welcome, Ms. Newhouse. Good luck,” he said to her face. As she was closing the door, she ground her teeth as he mumbled. “You’re going to need it.”

  * * * * *

  There were a few things Felicity took from her entrepreneurial education.

  First—not everyone would share your vision. That was damn obvious since this was the fifth bank that had turned her down.

  Second—if you did your research and knew in your heart this was a great idea, fuck the people who said it can’t be done. The vulgarity wasn’t part of her lesson plans, but the sentiment behind it was.

  Finally—if you can’t gain respect, you won’t have anything. People want to believe in the idea they are investing in, but more importantly, they want to believe in the leader.

  Felicity was not a person who garnered a lot of respect in a business setting. She was wearing her best suit, but she’d bought it at a second hand clothing store. Felicity didn’t buy anything new. She recycled, she composted, and she gardened to keep her carbon footprint as small as possible.

  Sitting at the bus stop outside the bank, she was deep in thought when a woman and her daughter sat down next to her.

  “Mommy, why can’t we live in our own house? I don’t like the Harmony Home. Jilly has her own house. I want to have a bedroom with a Barbie dream house like Jilly.” The little girl pouted.

  The mother glanced toward Felicity before lowering her voice and responding. “Some people live in different places because their parents can afford different things. I promise you, Candice, the second I can afford to get us out of the Harmony Halfway Home, I will get you a dream house.” She handed her daughter a small sucker. The kind that came fifty to a bag for a dollar.

  “We could afford it if daddy hadn’t left,” the little girl mumbled around her sucker.

  While her mother tried to blink away tears, the girl looked on. Those eyes understo
od far too much for someone so young.

  “We’ll do just fine without him, sweetie. I promise.” The woman kissed the little girl on the head. It was a sweet gesture, but she did it just as much to hide her worried brow as she did to show her love for her daughter.

  When the bus showed up, Felicity didn’t get on.

  “You riding with us, lady?” The bus driver raised her eyebrows at her.

  “Nope. I have one more place to go first.” Felicity felt empowered saying that.

  The bus driver just looked annoyed to have held up the route.

  She didn’t understand that Felicity just had an epiphany.

  That little girl wanted a home of her own. If Felicity could just get someone to look at her project with that little girl’s eyes, she could show them how important it was. She had a way to get people who needed help into a better situation. She might not get bank funding, but she would get the public behind her. Maybe instead of trying to impress a computer logarithm, she needed to touch the hearts of the people around her.

  The news station was just two blocks away. Walking into the building to try and sell them a story probably wasn’t the right way to do things, but if Felicity had learned anything over the past few months, it was that the right way never really worked for her.

  Chapter Two

  Brandon Halston loaded the files he’d need to work on from home on his flash drive and shut down his office computer. It was after six and he didn’t want to be at the branch when the cleaning crew came through again.

  Working late was how he’d made it to assistant branch manager at thirty. But some days, when it took away his social life and made his back ache like he was sixty, it didn’t seem worth it.

  His cell phone rang. The number read Channel Thirteen News. He let it go to voicemail. If this was about the bank’s upcoming community fair participation, the call needed to be directed to people who were much better at PR than he was.

  Brandon could smile. He just didn’t enjoy doing it anymore. He had to smile while he listened to every potential borrower come in and beg for cash. He had to smile when he pandered to the high-end clients and large businesses that used their banking services and kept the cash flow where it needed to be. He even had to smile at all the people who complained about fees because they had overdrawn their accounts for the fifth time that month.

  By the time he finished a shift, the last thing Brandon wanted to do was smile. Even using those muscles to tip up the corners of his mouth made him feel a sense of responsibility. He had enough of that in his life, and damn if he didn’t want to get away from it for a bit.

  Being good at your job also meant you got more of the workload. Brandon knew if he did take a much needed vacation, all it would afford him was worrying about the sheer volume of work that would be waiting for him when he got back. Or worse, he would spend weeks fixing the mistakes made in his absence.

  He would probably just have his vacation paid out again this year. He made a quick note in his to do list to get the paperwork filed next week. It would be a nice bump in his savings account, and he wouldn’t have to worry about the hassles associated with time off.

  Just as he saved the update to his calendar, the notification blip dinged on his phone. He’d listen to the message after he got home.

  He hadn’t even made it the thirty feet to his car before the damn phone rang again. This was the most action the device had seen in months. It wasn’t like Brandon had any friends anymore. He’d been too busy to go out while he was building his career, and the people who used to call him and invite him out stopped some time ago.

  This phone call, Brandon answered. It was his boss.

  “Mr. Pembrook. What can I do for you, sir?” The smile popped back into place. Brandon’s jaw hurt.

  “You can tell me why I’m getting a call from a news reporter naming us as an uncharitable bank who refuses to help an up and coming entrepreneurial Good Samaritan.”

  Brandon’s smile evaporated. The news station called his boss?

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.”

  “Did you turn down a loan for a charity proposed by a local woman today?”

  Brandon had turned down three loans today. Only one was a woman. “She shook my hand when she left. I wasn’t at all rude to her, sir.”

  “Were you honest?”

  “Yes.”

  “I told you to cut that crap out.” His boss exhaled on the other end. Mr. Pembrook was smoking. His boss only ever smoked at the bank to try and keep it from his wife that he hadn’t really quit. If he was smoking at home, this was serious.

  “What did she tell the station?” Brandon couldn’t think of a single thing he had done to warrant a news story. People got turned down for loans all the time. They didn’t run crying to a reporter about it.

  “That she was turned down by five banks and one of them was ours. They wanted our statement about the situation. I told them I needed to review the financials, but I assured them that the decision was based purely on a business matter, and no personal influence was brought into it.” He took another drag of the cigarette. “Then she asked me why I wouldn’t consider a project that would help the community as much as this one. She actually asked why I wouldn’t want to contribute to building a sustainable resource for underprivileged people in our town.”

  “She wants to build hippie shacks and sell them as houses. They are on trailers, for fuck’s sake.” Brandon tried to gather himself. “They are campers, sir.”

  “I don’t care if they are tour busses littered with dirty needles. You need to review that proposal and poke sufficient holes in it for me. Then I need to figure out how to spin it so we come off good on the news tomorrow.”

  “News?”

  “I’m getting fucking interviewed by the station. All the other banks refused to comment. This is one of those situations where we get portrayed as the evil corporation who ignores the people, or we work something out and write this shit off as a community outreach charity project.” He inhaled again and his breath caught. “I hate this shit, but it’s part of PR.”

  Brandon hated it more. “I don’t have the proposal. I gave the plan back to her.”

  “Why wouldn’t you just keep it and throw it in the trash?”

  That was the funny thing. Brandon usually could give two shits about making a bit more paper waste for the cleaning crew to dispose of, but for some reason, he had been pretty sure that plan was her only copy. He couldn’t destroy something she’d worked so hard on and believed in so vehemently. Even if it was a pile of hippie crap.

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Do we have her contact information in the database from her credit application?” Another cigarette puff.

  Brandon didn’t like where this was going. “Yes.”

  “Call her.”

  Brandon hated where this was going. “Why?”

  “If we can contact her and perhaps learn something about the plan, we can see what in there is salvageable. Yes. That’s exactly what we can do. Do you think if we tweaked the business aspect, she could get off the ground with this?”

  “This whole idea is dumb.”

  “I get that. Is it feasible to make it less of a catastrophe?”

  Brandon thought about it. The woman was smart. She had her numbers balanced perfectly, and her suppliers, plans, contractors, and even contact with the city for undeveloped land were all in order. It was just a dumb idea to build a bunch of hippie shanties.

  “Her plans are well thought out. It’s the idea of people wanting to live in a house no bigger than a tool shed that’s flawed.”

  “Don’t you watch the news? The tiny house thing is a trend. People like living in closets with toilets turning their shit to mulch. It’s a thing.” There was a click and a hiss as his boss lit another cigarette. “If that’s the only reason you turned it down, you’re an idiot. Call her first thing in the morning, and then meet me at eight at the branch.”

&nb
sp; “You want me to call her before eight am?”

  “You said yourself she’s a hippie, right? Don’t they get up early?”

  Brandon hung up. Maybe he would take a vacation.

  Chapter Three

  Felicity was shaking. Her hands could barely hold onto her purse as she dug for the bus pass. Plan B had actually worked. Sure, this was about her tenth Plan B, but still.

  The news coordinator had looked at her like she was crazy, until she mentioned tiny houses. Debbie Diggs’s eyes had lit up. Debbie’s brother and his wife were going on some kind of cross country trek in their own tiny house. The reporter wanted to cover their journey but had been turned down by the station because it wasn’t close enough to tie it to the local interest.

  Felicity was her in. Adding in the fact that she could emphasize how banks were denying funding for tiny houses in general, it became a story on how the corporations were keeping people from becoming financially independent.

  When Felicity had first walked in, the receptionist had frowned at her. Seemed everyone she shared her ideas with frowned at her, but at the mention of tiny houses, Deborah was called into the studio. Miss Diggs was still working upstairs and came down to listen as Felicity told her story again.

  Deborah hosted a segment called “Debbie Digs” where she uncovered people being taken advantage of or different goodwill stories that needed some exposure. She was also an expert at pulling information and Felicity slipped up and mentioned her trust fund before she realized how careful she’d have to be. Luckily the reporter could also be distracted by tiny living.

  Deborah had the same look in her eyes as all the bankers had…at first. But when she’d seen the pictures of Felicity’s own house, and the plans she had as starting points for people to design their tiny dream homes, something changed.

  “Do people really live like this long term?” Deborah held onto the third design in her packet, called the wagon wheel. It was a natural wooden tone structure that had elements of the old west, including using some swinging doors to block off the loft for that saloon feel.