Page 25 of Parading the Cowboy Billionaire (Bluegrass Ranch 4)

“How are you earning profit?” Tim asked.

Cayden typedprofiton the screen and stepped back from his laptop. “We’ve got the sales of the horses, obviously. Concessions, which will be new for us. We’ve never run food and drink through Bluegrass.” He paused, his eyebrows going up. “I might have an idea for that. Anyway.” He gave himself a shake, and Mariah scrawled a couple of notes on her notebook.

“Ticket sales for people to come watch the races. Merchandise.”

She put a check-mark next to merchandise on her paper. “Do you have merchandise?” she asked. “Or is that something you’ll have to produce between now and then?”

“We have a few T-shirt designs,” he said.

“The Gemini Group has a ton of resource for merchandising,” she said. “Just so you know. I believe I emailed Lawrence about this previously.”

“She did,” he confirmed, and she cast him a small smile.

When Cayden didn’t go on, Mariah opened her mouth again. “You could make money from advertising,” she said, glancing at her notes. “Banners along the fences in your arena. Sponsored rows or seats. Ads in your concessions areas. Ads in your parking areas. Paid parking. All of those can bring in additional revenue.”

Cayden had moved over to his computer after her first sentence. He finished typing in her ideas and looked up. “This sounds like a lot. Can we get all of that done in four months?”

“Do you have people who’d want to advertise at an event like this?” Tim asked, glancing at Mariah. “No disrespect, Ms. Barker, but money from advertising is only good if there are people who want to advertise to this crowd.”

Mariah nodded at him, conceding but not giving an inch. “Very true. I’d imagine the Chappells know quite a few people in the horse racing industry to want to take on an event like this in the first place. They want to sell their horses, of course. But they know the people who’d buy their horses already. So what else are you looking to accomplish here? Increased awareness? Other local business partnerships? You could bring in a food truck and partner with them. They bring their customers to you; you bring yours to them. It’s about increasing awareness.” She glanced down at her paper.

“You could partner with a local distillery or brewery,” she said. “For drinks. Their brand brings in their fans, and that crowd might be new to horse racing. Your horse racing crowd might not have heard of Barreled and Brewed. It’s a win-win.”

“Partnerships are smart,” Tim agreed. “It can become more than a single horse race. That can be the culminating event, as you said you only have eleven horses right now.”

“We can bring in money through entrance fees,” Lawrence said. “From other owners who want to be involved in the race and sale.”

“That makes it more of a racing event,” Tim said. “Different ages, genders, lengths.”

Mariah took several more notes as the discussion continued, and the event just got larger and larger. She put a star next to the one question she needed answered.How big do you really want this to be?

With a deadline and a budget, not everything could be accomplished.

“This is great,” Cayden said several times throughout the discussion. At the end, he said, “Thanks so much, you guys. Good work today.” He shook hands all around, and Lawrence did too. They walked Tim, Darren and her out to the lobby and all the way outside.

More smiles. More handshakes. More promises to follow-up on all the items they’d all taken on. She had to get quotes for banners, as well as put together merchandise opportunities. She needed to make a list of possible companies that might want to advertise at an event like this, and Lawrence said he’d help with that.

She’d definitely get to talk to him again, and Mariah shouldn’t be so excited about that. She told herself that she enjoyed speaking to all of her clients, and that she loved planning events, and that was why she left Bluegrass Ranch with a smile a mile wide and her heart thumping irregularly in her chest.

As she thought about Lawrence, though, she knew he was a large reason why too.

I could be your boyfriend so you can go to the party.

She thought about that sentence the entire way back to the office, and when she arrived, she found it very quiet. “Hey,” she said to Jane, the woman who sat only a couple of cubicles away from Mariah. “Where is everyone?”

“Biggers took a few people to the food truck rally,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Look around. Do you see any of his favorites?” She went back to her computer, and Mariah glanced around.

All of Dr. Biggers’s favorites were indeed gone. All those he invited to his parties too. “Two meals in one day,” she mused, wondering who she could possibly call about his behavior. Surely it was unethical, but Mariah didn’t even know who to complain to. Her frustration with her job kept rising with every passing day, though, and she needed to do something about it.

Her phone rang, and Mariah lifted it from the cradle. “Mariah Barker,” she said, glad her emotions from that morning had disappeared.

“Hello, Mariah,” a man said, and she recognized the voice. “It’s Lawrence Chappell. I’d love to talk more about the merchandising without Tim and Darren around. Are you free for dinner sometime this week?”

By the end of his question, a smile had filled her whole face. She leaned back in her chair and gave time a couple of seconds to fill the line. Then she said. “I’m sure I can find an evening for dinner.”

He chuckled, and she could just see the handsome, dark-haired cowboy ducking his head as he did. “Great,” he said. “Should we say Friday?”

“Friday is fine,” she said, knowing full-well that couples went out on Friday nights. She wasn’t going to make him define the relationship right now though, because their relationship had always just been a business one. She hadn’t even thought of him as anything but her biggest client and most important assignment right now. She hadn’t met him face-to-face until today either, and that had changed things.

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