“First of all, Amanda, stop ogling Malachi’s backside.” I gripped her shoulders and forcibly rotated her to face the other direction. “Second, no one is kissing anyone.”
Amanda frowned, clearly disappointed.
“As for me and Malachi—” My ringing phone interrupted. Thankfully. Wasn’t really sure how that sentence would have ended.
I dug my phone out of my pocket. Damien? Unease slithered up my spine. My brother never called, not even when he needed something. He always went through Mama. “What’s—”
“Jo Jo, Mom’s in the hospital.”
18
Malachi
The heels of my palms dug into my lower back as I stretched out the kinks that hours of bending over had put there. Trimming the horse’s hooves myself saved me about forty dollars a head every six weeks or so, but my muscles protested against the DIY farrier work.
I straightened and patted Lightning’s rump. Only one more to go and I could pack away the nippers and rasp until next month.
“How’s it going?” Bill shaded his eyes against the bright afternoon sun as he leaned against the fence boards.
I picked up my water bottle and took a long draught, then wiped away the liquid that had dribbled down my chin with the back of my sleeve. “It’s going.”
“Good. Good.” Bill nodded, looking around. He seemed unhurried, as if he had nothing better to do than stand around and shoot the breeze.
Well,Ihad better things to do. “What can I do for you, Bill?”
The accountant leveled his gaze at me. Gone the guest who’d asked to borrow a fishing pole this morning; in his place, a shrewd businessman. “Actually, I wanted to discuss what I could possibly do for you.”
I untied Lightning’s lead rope and led him to the gate that opened to the pasture where the horses grazed. Muscle memory took over as my fingers worked the nylon straps through the buckle at the jaw of the gelding’s halter. Freed, Lightning trotted off.
I turned back to Bill. “I’m listening.” But I was also too busy to stop. If he had something he wanted to say, he’d have to say it while I worked.
“Right.” Bill’s hand reached for the base of his throat—to adjust a tie knot was my guess, but he wasn’t wearing one today since, obviously, we weren’t in an office building. “Nate and I were discussing your operation, and I wondered if you’d be interested in taking on an investor.”
My hand paused midair from untying Thunder and leading him around to the farrier stand. “You want to invest? In the Double B?”
“I do. From what I understand of how your ranch runs now, you breed and birth the calves, then sell once they’re weaned. However, if you retain ownership until maturity and sell directly to the processing facilities when they reach market weight, then your profits will increase exponentially.”
“I realize that, but we don’t have the capital to foot a feed yard bill for six months for each head, nor do we want to take out financing.”
“That’s where I come in.” Bill’s eyes shone with excitement. “As an investor, I’ll take on the financial burden of getting the calves from six-hundred-pounds at the time of weaning to the optimal packaging weight of twelve-hundred pounds.”
Double the weight meant double the profits, but it would cost around six-hundred dollars per head at the feed yards to reach those numbers. “For what percentage? And are you talking about a claim in just the calf operation or a stake in the ranch itself?”
Somehow the last option felt like a failure and betrayal to a hundred-and-fifty-year heritage. If I started to parcel out shares of our family’s history, would there be a legacy left at the end?
“The ranch and land and revenue from guests would be untouched by me. I’m not interested in the day-to-day running and have no plans to actually get my hands dirty with this. I want to write a check and have one written out to me six months later. I’d leave everything else in your hands.”
A few quick mental calculations gave me an estimated figure for what such earnings would look like. “With the price per hundredweight what it is and the size of my herd at present, we’d be looking at a yield of about twenty-seven thousand dollars.”
“Split fifty-fifty.” Bill beamed.
An extra thirteen grand sounded good. More sounded better. Like he said, he didn’t want to get his hands dirty. I rubbed at my jaw, considering. “Seventy-thirty, seeing as how my family and I will be doing all the work.”
His head jerked back, surprised I’d countered. He seemed to consider. “Can your land support more cattle?”
I nodded. “We could add about fifty more beeves. But you won’t see a return on your investment in them until next year. My heifers will come into heat again a month or so after calving and will be artificially inseminated before reaching the seventy-five days after dropping point.”
“And the gestation period?”
