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I scanned the faces of the three other men in the room, my eyes finally settling on Cooper. “You already look pissed. Is it bad?”
He shrugged. “I have no idea yet what’s going on, but you know how I hate meetings.”
I couldn’t stop myself from laughing.
We might have grown up in the same family and worked for the same company, but our similarities stopped there. Sometimes, it blew my mind how six children with the same parents could have wound up with such different personalities and interests.
Where I was a natural-born leader who was motivated, focused, and could talk to people all day long, especially at work, Copper was the opposite. He, like Liam, preferred the kind of work that was physically demanding.
“Meetings are necessary,” I pointed out.
“Meetings are a waste of time, Wyatt,” he argued. “Nothing ever gets accomplished in meetings.”
I grinned at him before shifting my attention to my dad. “What’s going on?”
“We received a response from the Marks Dairy Farm,” he returned.
When he didn’t elaborate, I surmised, “They aren’t interested.”
“You could say that.”
“Oh, this is wonderful,” Cooper muttered.
Liam remained quiet, as he often did, simply taking it all in.
“What did they say?” I pressed.
My father inhaled deeply, an indication I wasn’t going to like what I was about to hear. “Not much. In fact, we received a one-word reply.”
“What?”
“No.”
I blinked my eyes, feeling utterly confused. “No?”
My dad nodded. “Yes, Wyatt. The answer was no.” He slid a piece of paper across his desk. “Here, look at it for yourself. There’s not much to see.”
I lifted the paper off his desk and confirmed he wasn’t wrong. The page was embarrassingly empty. If it hadn’t been for the formal heading at the top and the signature at the bottom, there would have been a whole two letters on the page.
No.
“This seems hasty. And foolish. I mean, they haven’t even received an official offer,” I reasoned. “We only expressed our interested in the land and the desire to talk about it.”
I didn’t want to think the worst in this situation. Surely, there had to be room to negotiate, but since we hadn’t made any mention of the specific numbers and had only communicated our interest in obtaining a several-acre tract of land at the edge of their property, this single-word response didn’t give me any warm and fuzzy feelings. They hadn’t even included a reason for not being interested. It was as though they were trying to make a statement—they didn’t want to be bothered.
“All the more reason I think this is a big problem,” my dad replied as I set the letter back down on his desk. “This response tells me they aren’t even remotely interested in hearing what we have to say. Even if the initial thought in their mind is to refuse an offer, that they aren’t willing to even hear what the offer is or what we would like the land for is telling.”
My gaze shifted between my dad and my brothers. Where my dad was concerned, Cooper was just irritated, and Liam was… well, Liam wore the same expression he always did—indifference. He never got worked up one way or the other about stuff like this. Hell, he’d stopped getting worked up for about two years now. I hated seeing his lack of excitement about things he should have been excited for, even if I understood his reason for being that way. Don’t get me wrong, he loved his family and would do anything for us, but his spark and zest for life had diminished substantially.
“Are you suggesting we just leave it alone?” I asked. “I mean, we can’t proceed with the expansion if we don’t get that land.”
If there was one thing I could say about our company, it was that we were always looking to grow. We wanted to continue to provide new and exciting experiences for our guests, so we’d planned a major expansion on the theme park. For years, it had been a nice little treat for those who visited Westwood’s, but we wanted to offer something different, something sensational.
“I’m not suggesting we leave it alone completely, but I think we need to be realistic at this point. We could be facing quite the uphill battle with this if we choose to push the Marks family on their farmland. I’m not saying we shouldn’t consider approaching them again, but it might be better to see if we’ve got any other options to expand and accomplish our goal without needing their land.”
“We’ve looked at that already,” Cooper chimed in. “Liam and I spent more time than I care to admit working with the engineers on this. What we came up with is the smartest, easiest, and most reasonable way to expand the park. I don’t know what it’s going to take to convince them to sell, but trust me when I say it’s our best option.”
When our attention was focused back on our dad, he shifted his gaze to me. “If anyone can negotiate with them, it’s going to be you, Wyatt. Maybe it’ll help for them to see you in person and to have a real explanation as to what our plan is for that land. I don’t think it’s the kind of thing to put in a letter. Hopefully, we didn’t shoot ourselves in the foot by starting there.”
