AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I hesitated for a second—I was still a woman with manners and a mother to make proud—but when he started talking about Flexion’s clean diesel, all ability to maintain executive functions went out the window. Lizard brain—activate.
So I did what any hippie bee farmer would do.
I wound up, took a breath, and yelled, “Frack you!” before letting her rip.
The egg sailed in slow motion over the crowd as his face swiveled to the sound of my voice, those dagger-eyes running me through seconds before the egg popped him smack between them.
A laugh shot out of Bettie before she hollered, “Farm fresh, bitch!”
Yolk slid down his nose. His eyes stayed closed for a protracted moment that I suspected he needed to school himself.
When they opened, they locked on mine.
I’d never felt naked under someone’s gaze until that moment, my lungs empty and extremities tingling. He’d pinned me to the spot from twenty feet away, his face unreadable. And though his eyes blazed like a thousand suns, his lips quirked into a tilted smile.
“Nice shot, Miss Blum.” He retrieved his pocket square without breaking eye contact. “Hope it was organic.”
In an out-of-body sort of feeling—and with the shock that he knew my name—I slapped on a smirk of my own, lifting my chin in challenge before offering a dramatic sweeping gesture, accompanied by a condescending nod. The crowd was chuckling and whispering, but the devil wiped the egg off his face and soldiered on, unfazed. But when he closed his speech and stepped back, he shot me dead with his eyes again, his smile sending a message clear as day.
Game on.
And oh, he had no idea just how on it was.
2
The Closer
GRANT
I should have won a fucking Academy Award.
Confusion and admiration rippled off the crowd as I spent ten minutes answering questions without flinching after getting hit in the face with a warm egg. With a long-practiced calm exterior, I ignored the tightening of my skin from the residue, particularly in a spot just left of the bridge of my nose that itched with particular ferocity. Two questions had been directed to The Egg Incident, both which I’d handled with a dry joke, a wry smile, and a pointed look in the offender’s direction.
My only surprise was that I couldn’t manage to make her shrink beneath the weight of my gaze, which I knew to be oppressive.
Instead, Jo Blum rose to meet me. What I couldn’t tell was whether she believed her bravado or if it was just bald obstinance in the face of a challenge.
Either way, she’d break. They always did.
The Blum farm was one of six I’d been sent here to acquire rights to, and of the six, their farm had the largest shale deposit. On visiting the farms to open up talks, I’d been denied by the Blums before I’d stepped onto their front porches. But I had a couple of aces up my sleeve.
Just had to play them right.
This part of the country was always the same—families living on the same plot of land for a hundred and fifty years or more, somehow able to survive the farming decline in the fifties, when everyone sold off their rights for oil to keep their businesses alive. It was rare that the state didn’t own the mineral rights—on the sale of any old property, mineral rights transferred straight to the state—but to find this many hold outs along the vein of shale we’d found was unfortunate.
Which was why they’d sent me.
I was the closer, sliding in to get the job done when others failed. I knew a hundred towns just like this. Sure, they’d hold the line for a little while, but soon enough, they’d fold. Just had to find the weak spot and press. Easy enough.
I’d learned from the best, after all. My father was the original closer for Flexion and my boss. Mistakenly, I thought his mentoring me would bring us closer. But nobody should wish to get so close to a snake. You’d think I’d learn my lesson after all these years, but here I was in Lindenbach, Texas, dead set on closing the deal as quickly as possible in a thinly veiled attempt at impressing that cold-blooded bastard who raised me.
He’d taught me two things in life. No one would help me but me. Power was equivalent to control, and control was equivalent to happiness. In thirty years, life had only proven me right.
Some sought power with a fist. I acquired it with a velvet tongue and tried-and-true strategy. For instance, in Lindenbach, I knew at least half of my in was with the mayor—a base, misguided, tone-deaf man whose power was strictly his for what his forefathers accomplished. His Stetson gave him more power than his policies ever would.
Convincing the rest of the town was where the challenge waited. There was one sure-fire way into their good graces, and it rested somewhere in the Blum family farm.
