Page 17 of His Cowboy Heart

“Listen, if we don’t get the vineyards established in the right location, this deal might not pencil out for us and the old man who owns this property is mean as fuck and refusing to negotiate. The oldest son Ben runs things. Seems competent but there are some red flags that may be helpful for us. I’m trying to do some digging into the financials see if we have any leverage.”

Red flags. This didn’t sound good at all.

“What do you mean by leverage?” I asked.

“A lot of this property is mismanaged through generations. We might be able to get some visibility into financials that help us understand if . . . you know.” He shrugged and smiled reminding me of a shark.

“If they are desperate to sell.” My stomach turned. It took me a split second to decide what to do. “I’m in. Let me look into it.”

“It’s already started.”

“I’ll take it over. I think I remember this family. Let me do the digging. I can make some calls and see what I can learn.” No way did I want one of Ardent’s MBA Grad school nightmare assholes digging into Shea’s family business. I felt protective like a guard dog.

“You may need to travel.”

“Yeah,” I said, shrugging and managing to smile. “It’s been too long since I’ve been back there anyway.”

“Excellent,” Kyle smiled and patted me on the back. “If you make this happen for us Van Rossum good things will come to you my friend.”

“Sounds good,” I said, my smile never wavered.

And just like that I had broken my promise to Abigail. I was going to have to come clean about my past and why I was staying involved in the deal. But first, I needed to find out what was going on with the O’Toole family business before someone else got to the information first.

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