Sing for Their Supper - 6

"We should buy it," Brent said.

Tuck smiled. "I knew you'd say that. So let's tell the owner and get the ball rolling."

The building had been a restaurant before the present owner had decided he wasn't making enough money to keep it going. It sat on the edge of Vale Lake, just outside of the city proper. The property included not only the building but also a large parking lot—a plus as far as they were concerned. And the price was right, since the man wanted to get rid of it as fast as possible and was willing to do a quick sale. Not cheap, but not nearly as much as the other places they'd looked at had cost—and with the quick sale, it would be theirs much sooner.

"You do realize we're going to use up most of our savings," Brent told his husband.

"And? We've been planning to do this… It seems like forever. Now we're going to make it a reality." Tuck took Brent's hand. "You're the one who should be worrying. Most of the money came from your father."

Brent grinned. "And if he knew what we're going to use it for, he'd roll over in his grave." Probably the truth, Tuck figured.

Brent's father had made his fortune on the backs of the underpaid people who worked for him. He'd had no compunction about doing that, claiming that if they were stupid enough to work for slave wages, it was their problem. When he decided to outsource the work to laborers in Mexico, he'd made even more money—and felt no remorse about putting the people who had been working for him out of jobs they'd needed in the process.

That had been Brent's first taste of what it meant to be homeless, he'd told Tuck. Not personally, but he'd seen some of those people lose their homes and everything else they'd owned. They'd ended up on the streets—out of work, out of hope. And his father hadn't cared. All he'd wanted was money and more money. When he'd died of a heart attack at the age of fifty-six, Brent and his mother had each inherited half of his fortune. She had also inherited the business, which she had immediately sold. Then, with more money than sense, as Brent put it, she'd moved to Florida and bought an expensive condo. Brent, on the other hand, had invested his inheritance. He had been twenty-seven at the time.

Tuck had met Brent a year later, when Brent had joined the theater where Tuck worked as an actor. At the ripe old age of twenty-eight, Brent had taken over as the business manager when the former one had accepted a job at another theater halfway across the country. He and Tuck had instantly hit it off and, two months later, they'd moved in together. Last year, they'd gotten married. Now, they were planning on opening a new theater—once they had the building.

"Mr. James," Brent said, approaching the seller, who had been waiting a polite distance away while Brent and Tuck had talked. "We want this. So let's get with the lawyers and make it happen."