Page 14 of Must Love Mistletoe

“So I heard.”

Forewarned was forearmed. “If you’re fixin’ to laugh, you might want to consider that I have no sense of humor about this at all.”

“For the record, I didn’t laugh forlong.” Seth’s amusement morphed into wary concern. “Can’t have been easy saying no to a woman you’ve admired for such a long time.”

“Wasn’t that hard.” Okay, so maybe Sethalsoknew where his affections lay. Mason, Mom, and now Seth. Still a small enough number as to be manageable. It wasn’t aherd. “What’s this all about?”

“The family buying the Evans ranch.”

“Is Mason joining us?”

“Mason’s on his way to North Dakota to buy steers, but I hit him up earlier and he’s on board with the plan I’m about to table. I’ve spoken with TJ, Jett, and Mom, too.”

Busy man. “I take it you’re the family representative?”

“Head wrangler at your service. Did you really expect us to send Mason here to negotiate this? Because, dude, no one’s that stupid.”

Point. “Did you tell everyone Beth proposed, and I refused?”

“Of course. Full disclosure for all the business partners, guaranteed. I was in the kitchen when Beth was confessing all. Beth’s convinced you think she’s a horrible, no good, very bad person. You might want to do something about that.”

“Like what?”

“Do something friendly.”

“Like what?” Maybe he was a man of little imagination after all.

Maddie returned bearing kitchen gloves and a casserole dish and sent Seth out to bring in the rest. Minutes later she was unwrapping home-cooked beef casserole, mashed potatoes, and sweet corn. Cal contributed by laying out the sourdough and sharp cheddar he’d bought in Marietta, and providing knives,forks, plates, drinking glasses, butter, and a roll of kitchen paper if anyone wanted napkins.

He didn’t run to tablecloths or placemats and certainly not to table napkins. There was a limit to his admiration of home fabrics.

“You said you had a plan for buying Red’s place,” he said after he’d eaten his fill in silence. “Spit it out.”

Seth took his time pouring bourbon for them all, not even wincing when Maddie topped hers with cola. “Several plans, but here’s the current favorite. Mom splits Casey and Sons into six equal shares: one for her, one for each of us kids. We’d be worth about five million each on paper, but there’s a catch—we can only trade property shares between ourselves. The Evans property is worth twelve million and Beth has around ten percent equity left in it. If she keeps that in trust for Sam, we only have to come up with eleven million, give or take.”

Which was still an awful lot of money.

“Beth will move to Marietta and continue her nursing career,” Seth continued. “TJ’s in for ten percent as a silent partner. Jett for twenty and he’s willing to help out whoever’s in charge if they need a hand. I’ll take nine percent. Mason is all out, and by that, I mean he’s considering an offer I made to buy him out of Casey and Sons completely.”

“No way.” Surprise loosened his tongue. Surprise, good food and very good bourbon. Mason wouldneverwalk away from his birthright. He sat back in his chair. “Mason wants the ranch.”

“Mason wants to start his own beef genetics business, buying and selling the best bloodlines in the world. He needs startup cash. A lot of it.”

“Or he could start small.Smaller.” He and Mason butted heads a lot over the everyday running of the ranch, but that didn’t mean Cal wanted himgone.

Seth shrugged with the confidence of a successful, self-made man. “Hard to impress Cara by starting small.”

“If she’s that shallow, why would he want to impress her at all?” Cal thought it a fairly convincing argument, but Seth just shrugged.

“Both Seth and Mason have delusions of grandeur,” Maddie stated as she reached for the last cob of corn. “Seth would like to buyyouout of Casey and Sons, too.”

“No.” He didn’t feel the need to expand on that.

“Hear me out,” said Seth. “If you sold your sixth of the family ranch you’d be able to buy fifty-one percent of the Evans’ place and have majority say in how it’s developed. We thought you’d go for that. I, for one, want to see what you can do when you’re managing a ranch your way rather than by committee or because it’s how dad used to do it. Once it’s back to turning a profit—and it will—you use your profit portion, and the wage you’d pull for managing both ranches, and you either buy back your Casey share or increase your majority stake in the Evans ranch. Which we’d now be calling your place.”

Except it wouldn’t be. Not completely. There would always be Beth’s share, or Sam’s share, and their wants and needs and feelings to be considered. “Sounds a lot like being responsible for Beth’s financial wellbeing and Sam’s future without any thought for my feelings in the matter whatsoever. I already said no to that once today. I’m not interested in abusinessunion with them!”

Maddie leaned forward, her eyes alight with curiosity. “Does anyotherkind of union have a chance here?”

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