Page 113 of My Best Friend's Mardi Gras Wedding

“Guess not.”Josh didn’t look happy.“But damn, this isn’t a good time for us to be trying to buy someone out.”

“Son of a bitch.”Owen paced to the door and stood staring at it, his hands on his hips.

Tori gave Josh a puzzled look.She’d never seen Owen act like that.

“Owen and Maddie are…” Josh said, “…complicated.”

“There’s a history there?”Tori guessed.

“You could say that.There’s, um…” Josh lowered his voice.“There’s a chance that Maddie might be hesitant to come back to Autre, in part, because of Owen.”

Tori looked over at Owen and wiggled.She wanted to knowallof this history.

“So you need to get your head on straight,” Sawyer said to Owen.“She’s coming to town.”

Owen swung around.“When?”

“Should be here next week.She’s stayin’ for thirty days.That’s how long we have to come up with a solution per the partnership agreement.”

“We have a partnership agreement?”Josh asked.

“Well…” Sawyer shoved a hand through his hair.“There’s a couple of notebook pages that Leo and Kenny wrote up when they first started the business.”

“But that doesn’t apply to us, does it?”Josh asked.

“According to Jack, it’s legally binding,” Sawyer said of their lawyer.“He was, apparently, there when they wrote it up.”

“Let me guess,” Josh said.“They wrote it up at the bar over jars of whiskey after being out fishin’ all day.”

“Almost,” Sawyer nodded.‘They were at the hunting cabin.But there was definitely whiskey and fishing involved.”

Everyone chuckled at that.Except Owen.He was frowning at the floor, seemingly lost in his own thoughts.

Maddie was more than Tommy’s little sister, it seemed.

“What’s it got in it?”Josh asked.

“What to do if one of the partners steals money from the business.How to settle disputes that arise between the partners.That kind of thing,” Sawyer said.“It’s a bunch of stuff they agreed to do before either of them could dissolve the partnership or sell off their portion.”He rolled his eyes.“Apparently Leo and Kenny acknowledged they were both hotheaded, stubborn asses and put some contingency plans in place in case one of them got pissed off over something stupid and thought about messing with the business.”

Josh grinned.“What would they do if one of them stole money from the business?”

“The other one got full ownership of the baseball card,” Sawyer said.

Josh laughed.

“Baseball card?”Tori asked.“Did they write that up when they were twelve?”

Josh nodded, grinning.“Leo and Kenny, especially together, did act like they were twelve a lot of the time.But they both had some really valuable cards.Stuff they’d actually hung on to since theywerekids.They were constantly trying to win one away or trick the other guy into giving something up.But they had a Willie Mays rookie card that they bought together back in 1952.They’ve always co-owned it even though over the years they each tried everything to get the other to let it go.It’s worth thousands now.They’d even talked about selling it to start the business, but in the end they just couldn’t do it.”

Tori grinned at the story.That sounded just like Leo.A little crusty on the outside, but with a heart of gold underneath.

“Does this agreement give you a good way to settle the idea of Maddie selling?”Kennedy asked.

“Well, I’m not sure howgoodit is,” Sawyer said.“But it does say that whoever wants out has to give the other partner thirty days’ notice.And that during those thirty days, the partners have to keep working together.”

“Maddie doesn’t work here,” Owen said shortly.

“Not at the moment, no,” Sawyer agreed.

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