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“Well, all I know is, he said he would be happy to meet me at his office tomorrow to review the contact personally, rather than put me off on his assistant or project manager”
“You’re meeting him alone?”
“No, of course not,” I lied. “His team will be there in case questions come up he can’t readily answer.”
“Well, that’s good do know,” he said. “I get the feeling that he wants to get this deal signed, sealed, and delivered as quickly as possible.”
“That’s my impression, as well,” I said.
“I also think having Miss Leone there tonight was just to keep me occupied while he took the time to see who I brought to the table.”
“You think that we were being played?” I asked, suddenly concerned that my flirting with Conner was not a great idea, after all.
“I think that McGee wanted to get a feel for the hotshot lawyer I brought with me,” he said. “I wouldn’t say that we were being played, but I still don’t trust them fully.”
“Maybe you should just walk away from the deal,” I offered, even though that would mean that I had no reason to spend the weekend with Conner McGee. I might have been wrong, but I believed part of the reason he wanted to see me again—aside from the sex—was to get me onto his team. What he didn’t realize was that no man, no matter how sexy, could make me betray my family.
“Maybe I should walk away,” Uncle Allen said with a heavy sigh. “But I need to do this deal, Katie. The quicker, the better.”
I got the feeling that there was more to the story than he was letting on. “Is there something you’re not telling me, Uncle Allen?” I asked. “You’ve gotten offers in the past that you refused to even consider. Is there a reason why you want this deal to happen?”
“I didn’t want to tell you, Katie,” he said quietly. “But my health is not good. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep running Benson Digital. And I don’t want to put that responsibility on anyone else’s shoulders.”
I shifted in the passenger seat to face him. The fact that he wasn’t well was not a total surprise. He’d gotten, and beaten, cancer several times before. It had been in remission for several years, but we all knew it was just a matter of time before it came roaring back and eventually took his life.
Cancer took my mother and grandmother.
Two of my brothers had already battled with it.
I prayed that the gene had not found its way inside me, but my h
ealth wasn’t the issue at the moment. Suddenly, the clock began to tick in my head.
“Tell me the truth,” I said quietly, putting my hand on his arm. “You’ve never kept things from me. Don’t start now.”
“The cancer is back,” he said.
“How bad?”
He sighed and flexed his fingers around the steering wheel. “It was detected early. I start treatment in a week. The doctor thinks I can beat it again, but there are no guarantees.”
He glanced over to give me a smile, as if I was the one in need of reassurance.
“The truth is, Katie, I’m tired. I want to quit the grind while I’m ahead and spend the rest of my life doing things I’ve always wanted to do.”
“Things like?”
“Travel the world. See Africa. Ireland. The Middle East.”
“What else?”
“Give away my money to people and causes that deserve it.”
He put his eyes back on the road and nodded slowly.
“I want to do good things with the time I have left. Selling the company at a premium to Price Bean & Whitlock will let me do that. But I’ll only do it if I’m certain my legacy can remain intact. The manufacturing plant, the jobs, the money it generates for the town. I won’t have the people who have been loyal to me for thirty years suffer because I’m tired of playing the game.”
“I understand,” I said, setting my jaw firmly. “I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen, Uncle Allen. You can count on me.”
