“Your sister?” I asked, confused. “What about her?”
“She’s been begging me for a project for ages,” Amara said, face brightening. “I think this would be perfect for her. She’s a marketing whiz and has been looking for a way to become more involved in the family business. Right now, she manages our social media, but I can tell she’s getting restless. This isn’t quite what she had in mind, I’m sure, but I think you two would work well together.”
“No.”
It came out harsher than I intended, but there was no fucking way I was working with Delia Delatou.
Amara raised a brow. “No?”
“She’s too…young,” I said, wincing at the weak excuse. “And don’t think I forgot about the shit she pulled at my cabin over Memorial Day.”
I didn’t fuck with people who fucked with other people for sport. In my eyes, Delia Delatou was a loose cannon, and I wasn’t getting within fifty yards of that shit.
“She’s only a year younger than me,” Amara reminded me. “And that’s all water under the bridge.”
I snorted. It may be water under the bridge between sisters, but I couldn’t forget the way Delia had dared Amara to make out withme, knowing our history,while my best friend and the man who was ass over boots for her sat right next to me. The whole thing left a sour taste in my mouth.
“I’m not doing it,” I said firmly. “I’ll find someone else.”
Maybe Cal would want to be my business partner. Just go full send on working together.
“Just meet with her,” Amara said. “Please.”
“No.”
“I’ll sell you the land if you do.”
“Are you…bribing me?”
The fucking balls on this woman.
“No,” she said, though we both knew she was. “I’m making you an offer. Meet with Delia, and I’ll sell you the land. I’m assuming you’ve got your eye on a particular parcel.”
With a sigh, I shifted and withdrew the piece of paper from my back pocket, tossing it onto the table between us. Amara picked it up and unfolded it, studying the copy of a plat map of the other end of the peninsula, where I’d outlined the land I wanted in red. It was the perfect spot. High on a bluff but flat enough to construct the distillery and a parking lot. It’d offer a two hundred and seventy degree view of the water, and wasn’t too far off the main road.
“How much?”
“I’ll have to ask my dad and get back to you.”
“See that you do,” I said, rising to my feet.
“Get that meeting on the books with Delia and I will,” she shot back.
“You drive a hard bargain, Delatou.”
“I’m more than just a pretty face.”
“Don’t I know it,” I murmured as I dropped a kiss on her cheek. When I straightened, I added, “For what it’s worth, kid, I’d give Cal a chance to explain. When he talked to me about you, he was completely spun out, and that was months ago.”
Amara perked up, clearly surprised. “He talked to you about me?”
I gave her a sad smile. I wasn’t playing the go-between here. “Just talk to him, Mar.”
And then I was gone, pausing only briefly at Amara’s assistant’s desk to get contact information for Delia. As she handed it over, I was gripped by the sense that she was passing along my death sentence.
I nearly spat mycoffee all over my computer screen when I found an email from Owen Lawless waiting in my inbox Tuesday morning.
What the hell couldhepossibly want fromme?
