AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“So,” said Tina, sounding almost deliriously gleeful, “the city block deal…”
Brendan sighed. He just couldn’t seem to get out from under the shadow of that stupid deal. It was following him around, snapping at his heels like a rabid dog.
“What about it?” he asked, not bothering to hide his distaste for the topic.
“Well, it looks like it’s back on.”
That stopped him short, mid-step, right in the middle of the porch.
“What?”
“You know how the seller’s representative was saying they wanted another hundred million added to the price?”
“Yeah, Tina, I remember it well.”
“Apparently therepresentativeis now being investigated for fraud and money laundering, so the seller, theactualone, he got in contact to explain everything and how he’d never even signed off on that sort of demand, and he was falling over himself to apologize. Long story short, he wants to know if we’d still go ahead with the deal for the original terms.”
Brendan was frozen, speechless, staring out at the horizon, his fingers and toes slowly going numb from the cold. The biggest deal of his career, the biggest deal in the history of the entirefirm, was now being handed back to him on a silver platter. It didn’t seem real.
“Uh, okay…” He spun around as if there might be hidden cameras and this was all a big joke, but there was only the weathered front door to the house. “Sorry, Tina, I’m in a bit of shock here.”
“Don’t worry — we were all the same,” she said with a chuckle, the sound of coffee cups clinking and an espresso machine whirring in the background, which Brendan had to admit was making his mouth water a little; he’d only had access to instant coffee since moving here, something he hadn’t dared complain about in front of Nicole.
Nicole…
“I need to think,” he said, running his hand through his hair to brush it back off his face.
“You’re not going to accept the deal?” asked Tina, actually starting to sound worried now.
“The deal will get accepted,” he said. “But it’s whether it’s me or you that goes ahead and does the accepting, that’s the thing.”
There was a small sigh from the other end of the phone.
“I know you’ve gotten attached to your farm,” Tina said, not sounding disapproving per se, just the same amount of confusion she’d had all along. “But you only bought it in the first place because this deal fell through and turned everything on its head. Now you can get your life back on track.”
“The thing is, Tina,” he said, desperate for this not to blow up into an argument, “it might just be on an entirelydifferenttrack now.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone, and Brendan braced himself for whatever was about to come next. It seemed that Tina hadn’t thought of this arrangement as permanent…
“Okay,” she said, drawing out the word like a sigh. “Is that what you want?”
“Yes… No? I don’t know. Look, it’s still early, Tina,” he said, even though he was usually up by now anyways. “Let me wake up a bit, get some breakfast, and I’ll call you back, okay? We can have a proper discussion about this.”
“Yeah, I think that’s a really good idea, Brendan,” she replied, voice unreadable.
They hung up, and Brendan stayed out on the porch, despite the cold and his lack of jacket or boots. It was tempting. It wasmorethan tempting. He could feel that thrill running up his spine, the feeling he got whenever he was close to closing on a deal. The bigger the deal, the bigger the thrill — which he guessed was why the failure of it last time had literally nearly killed him. But, like Tina had said, here was an opportunity to get it back, to return his life to “normal,” to the comfortable existence he’d led in Houston with the world at his fingertips.
Brendan didn’t need to wait a few hours to have a conversation with his sister to figure out what he would do. He knew what he wanted to do, knew it deep in his gut. He didn’t want to go back to the city; he wanted to stay here, to continue to run this place. More than that, he wanted to stay with Nicole, wanted more than just a friendship or a fling with her.
After last night, it didn’t seem so impossible that she felt the same way. She’d changed her plans once already; maybe she really would accept his request to stay, for them to keep doing this together. He’d have to make it clear he didn’t just want to use her for her knowledge, to keep her around to piggyback off of her superior skills — that he wanted her to stay because he couldn’t think of a life without her in it now, without her stubbornness and fortitude.
What he needed to do was think, and for that he needed some time alone, just to get his thoughts in order. The sun was starting to properly reach over the horizon, and he could already see some cattle in the distance making their way to the sheds.
Nicole could do one morning of milking without him. He’d drive into Silver Ridge and get them some breakfast from the diner, some pastries or something, and by the time he drove there and back, he would have more than enough space to get everything straight in his head.
With a plan to guide him, Brendan went back inside, threw his jacket and boots on and stuck a sticky note on the middle of the kitchen table saying where he’d gone and that he’d be back soon.
A drive would do him the world of good.
