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If he didn’t want to listen, her options were so perilously limited.
“We need you,” she said. “If we could use your road as an access to the store, it would solve everything. People would still drive through town before turning to Four Corners. The distance on the dirt road would be shorter. People would just come in from the other side of town.”
“And you don’t have any other plan?”
She shook her head. “No.”
In that same manner as before, it was like he missed a beat before speaking. “Sounds like poor planning.”
“We had a good plan, but you, the town, disagreed with it.”
“You have enough land you could have put the store nearer to the road.”
“We each have our own plot,” she said, running over the tail end of his sentence. “The Kings were hardly going to let us build a facility in the middle of their land. We’re a cooperative, but that only goes so far.”
He plunked the axe head down on the ground, his hand gripping the handle hard. “Fair enough.” He lifted the axe and turned it slowly. “I do fancy that I am a fair man, Miss Sullivan. But you really thought you could plan all of this on the assumption that I and the whole town would be all right with it?”
“Yes. Well, no. It isn’t that we simply assumed... We really did think the permits would be a formality. We were paying for the road and we didn’t foresee there being any issues. But there were issues.”
“Yes, there were.”
“So now we need to come up with something else, and that involves you.”
He said nothing, but somehow the slight lift of one dark brow spoke in loud volumes.
She cleared her throat and continued. “I have a degree in agribusiness. And there are some things that I could recommend to you that you can improve here on your homestead.”
He lifted the axe up off the ground and turned it so the blade was facing him. He brushed his thumb over the sharp edge, then looked over at her. “Because you think I need it?”
“Yes. I mean... I’m sorry about what I said the other night.”
He smiled, slow and unkind. Her heart was thundering now, but with excitement. This was the part she’d been waiting for. “I would love to do a review of the place and give you pointers on what you could do.”
“What’s your area of expertise?”
“Everything. From the business end, profits and different types of crops. I know so much about how to organize, how to maximize land use, how to ensure you have the right paperwork, streamlining and, well...everything.” The words flowed effortlessly, because she was an expert. Because she knew—exactly—what she was talking about. Exactly what she was doing, and it felt great.
This was what education got you.
Pennies well spent.
“You know so much about streamlining and everything, but you have to ask me if I can provide you with an easement for road access?”
“Our land is the way that it is. And the county surveyed it the way they did, and reached the conclusion they did. And that’s the thing. With ranching, you’re going to run into the realities of where exactly your ranch is set. But that doesn’t mean you can’t refine things.”
“Is that so?” He leaned back on his heels and she suddenly became very conscious of the difference in their height.
Quinn was not a tall woman. She was the smallest of all her sisters, and she’d compensated for that by being—what some would call—unreasonably determined. She was willing to grit out any situation that came her way, willing to fight and push and scrap if need be.
As an adult she’d discovered she could use her brain instead of actually scrapping with anyone. But that same baseline determination was what had gotten her through...everything. Most especially getting scholarships and leaving Pyrite Falls and Four Corners for the first time and going to California for school.
She’d worked so hard. To fit in. To get the best grades. To learn what she needed to. Because her goal had been to bring it back home to Sullivan’s Point and help her sisters. Especially Fia, who had taken such great care of them after their parents had gone.
So it didn’t matter if he was tall, and unyielding and far too slow to speak, and a whole lot of other things besides. She was Quinn Sullivan, and she knew her business.
“It is so. And I would like to have the opportunity to speak to you in depth about your needs.”
He looked her over. Slowly. Very slowly. And with that a burning sensation started in her stomach and bloomed ever outward.
