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She wanted her farm back. It was all she had left of her parents, of her dad. It had been her whole life from the moment she’d been born. She’d been so defeated after Scott had left, too exhausted to really do anything other than put the place up for sale and go about each day as best as she could. She hadn’t eventriedto keep fighting, she had been so sick of having to fight. But now there was a fire back in her, fueling her forward. She’d somehow been granted one last opportunity, and she wasn’t going to waste it. If she was still going to lose the farm once and for all, she wasn’t going to give it up without fighting tooth and nail for it.
Nicole didn’t want to go back inside; she could have kept walking all night. The dark had never bothered her, especially with a billion stars in the sky to light the way. But though the days were slowly starting to warm up with the promise of spring, the nights still had a fierce bite to them. Her cheeks and nose were ice-cold as she trudged back to the house, her fingers frozen despite being shoved deep into her coat pockets.
Brendan was sitting at the dining-room table, surrounded by stacks of ancient manila folders and piles of receipts, his laptop lighting up his face with bright blue lights, in sharp contrast to the warm yellow light bulbs in the fixture above his head. It made him look like a space alien that had set up an office on Earth. Which maybe he was… Nicole wouldn’t be surprised if all billionaires were secretly aliens; the world would make a whole lot more sense if that were the truth.
“What’re you doing?” she asked him, genuinely curious despite herself.
Brendan’s dark eyes flicked up from the screen.
“Still working on collecting all the paperwork together,” he said, rubbing at his eyes. He’d been in here all day. “Digitizing everything I can so that it’s all in one place.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Nicole said, hating herself a little for actually kind of meaning it. “Dad was terrible at handling all that stuff, refused to let anyone help with it, and by the time it got handed to me and Scott it was kind of…”
“A mess?” said Brendan with a good-natured smile.
“Yeah. That’s putting it lightly.”
He shrugged. “It’s fine. It’s really not that bad, and it’s sorted out now. Almost. I’ve been drawing up a business plan as I go. I figure we hire someone purely for the creamery, expand products, have them go to markets and things like that as well, go direct to the consumer, advertise ourselves.”
Nicole bristled even though she knew she shouldn’t. She forced her shoulders out of their defensive hunch and kept her hands firmly by her sides instead of letting them cross against her chest. Brendan was a businessman; she wasn’t. That was why she hadn’t been able to keep the place going after her dad died and Scott left. But still… she didn’t want him to think that she was a complete idiot.
“Never really made enough to hire someone full-time for that,” she mumbled, not wanting to sound like a brat, even though it probably came across that way. She had just triedsohard, and it hurt to see someone swoop in and snap their fingers and fix it all so easily. Even though she’d had to swallow her pride and admit that Brendan was a halfway decent guy, it didn’t make itfun.
He looked up from his laptop, perfectly oblivious to how hard Nicole was trying to behave herself for his sake — which she was doing because, however it had happened, here she waslikingthe guy.
“Oh, yeah, there’s no way you could have done it just with your outgoings,” he said in full agreement. “But I have the capital behind me to do it. It will get the gears turning to be self-sustaining after that. It’s just a sunk cost, that’s all, but you’ll have that in any business.”
“Oh.”
He rattled off the words as if it were the easiest thing in the world. Nicole could see why he was a billionaire tycoon. This stuff was as easy to him as breathing.
“You’re such a responsible adult,” she teased, trying to get back on even footing.
Brendan’s eyebrow gave a sarcastic little quirk. “Unfortunately, it’s not one of my more amusing personality traits.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to expose myself to that much longer. I’ll leave you to it, then,” said Nicole.
“Night.”
She hadn’t had dinner but she wasn’t hungry, her stomach having been wrapping itself in knots all day following her attempt at sabotage, so she climbed the stairs and headed straight for her bedroom. Maybe,maybe, now that he had seen all the figures, seen their dismal numbers, getting rid of the milk today would be enough to make it all look like such a terrible investment that he really would change his mind.
Her guilt was swept aside by the warm feeling of victory. Maybe it hadn’t been a pointless exercise after all.
CHAPTER8
BRENDAN
Old habits die hard. Brendan was up early again, but not out of some valiant effort to improve himself and his knowledge or even to watch the sunrise like it was some spiritual endeavor. He was just stressed, the thoughts swirling around his half-awake brain until there was no point trying to ignore them. So, here he was, four thirty in the morning, once again standing in the old-fashioned kitchen waiting for water to boil on the stove so he could eat some eggs. Maybe his sister and everyone else back in Houston weren’t so wrong for thinking he’d lost his mind in packing up and moving here to be a farmer. Brendan wasn’t entirely sure how he’d ended up here himself. The list of events leading up to him standing here didn’t exactly form a straight path.
Six months ago, what felt like a lifetime ago now, he would have laced up his sneakers and gone running till his muscles trembled and sweat poured off of him in waves. But that was out of the question; he wouldn’t be able to exert himself that much for many more months, maybe ever again. So instead he paced around the kitchen, feeling like a tiger locked in a too-small cage. Picking up and moving to the country was a good idea and all, but apparently his overthinking, business-oriented brain hadn’t got the memo and wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
The business model for the farm was about as simple as it got. Milk the cows, process the milk, sell the milk. But after poring through all of the records he’d inherited with the sale, it was painfully obvious that business was going backwards. Despite milking the herd twice a day, there didn’t seem to be any milk to sell — there was nothing stored in the creamery, anyway — and he honestly didn’t know how Nicole had even been able to buy herself groceries with the amount of money trickling into the place. Not when every penny earned seemed to be going to repairs, veterinary care, gasoline…
He dropped eggs into the now boiling water, watching them bob about, buffeted by the bubbles.
“Is insomnia contagious or something?”
Brendan whirled around, the spoon in his hand raised as if he could use it as a weapon. Nicole was standing there watching him, amused, in her pajamas and her hair loose for once. It made her look softer, he thought, seeing her like that.
