“Nope.” Cash shook his head.
Jace leaned back in his chair and laced his hands behind his head. “Did you think this would be completely risk-free? Maybe Gina here could tell you how businesses work.”
Sawyer laughed and elbowed his cousin in the ribs. “Listen to you. And here we all thought you were just a dumbass cowboy. Jace is right. No pain, no gain. Let’s use the cattle money and build this thing as frugally as possible. Worse comes to worst, we go belly-up and have to borrow a little money to get us through the next year. Just enough to make ends meet.”
“Okay,” Cash said. “Let’s do this.”
“I’ll have Mike draw up plans.” Aubrey scrawled a note on her legal pad.
Gina knew Mike was a local architect and Aubrey’s former employer. Despite her going out on her own, the two still did business together.
“Make sure we get the friends and family discount,” Cash said.
Aubrey reached over and kissed him on the mouth. “You got it.”
“Does that mean this meeting’s adjourned?” Charlie checked her watch. “I’ve got a client who needs furniture for a four-thousand-square-foot home in Tahoe in a few minutes. I’d like to get started pulling things before she gets here.”
“Go.” Jace kissed the top of her head. “Make us rich, baby.”
There was so much love in the air, Gina could choke on it.
The room quickly cleared out, everyone having somewhere to be, leaving her and Sawyer alone.
“You’re up early,” Sawyer said. “I snuck out about five and you were still sound asleep.”
“I have news. But first, what the hell kind of name is Tuff? He doesn’t even spell it right.”
Sawyer chuckled. “According to Cash, he used to ride the rodeo circuit. Tuff, Rope, Slim, Ty. Pretty par for the course. And if you ride seventeen-hundred-pound bulls for a living, spelling’s probably not your strength.”
“I don’t know, he seemed like a pretty smart guy.”
Sawyer hitched his brows, his blue eyes twinkling. “Why, because he knows who you are?”
“No, because he had you at fifteen-hundred dollars a month. You didn’t even blink an eye. Just gave him what he wanted.”
“He said that’s all he could afford.”
She folded her arms over her chest. “What did you expect him to say? ‘I can do a lot more but you look like a sucker.’”
“That’s not the way it works out here, Gina. We take a man at his word. It’s not like the guy is a major leather manufacturer. He probably makes two saddles a year. But your advice on keeping the terms of the lease to one year has been noted. Now, what’s your news?”
“I’m not pregnant,” she blurted.
He was quiet for a long time. Almost stoic. “That’s good.”
The two words were simple enough but he’d sounded somewhat ambivalent. Though she’d probably imagined that and was hearing what she wanted to hear. She told herself to stop overanalyzing things. Of course he was relieved, elated, liberated.
“Yep,” she said. “And Candace Clay is in production on her new show and is trying to steal my time slot on FoodFlicks.”
“How’d you find that out?” He pulled her out of the sleek cowhide chair, undoubtedly a Charlie creation. “Let’s walk.”
The temperature had more than likely climbed to a less-than comfortable ninety-something degrees. Hardly walking weather. But she followed him anyway. They took the route that led to the creek.
“My agent called. She was at a party with Skyler Rome and he let it slip. Candace and he share the same agent.”
“How good is your time slot?”
“Pretty damn good. I started with the Saturday-night death slot. They thought I was just another dump-and-stir demonstration show and wouldn’t rack up enough ratings to make it past my first thirteen-episode season. They were wrong. Now, I’ve got Sunday and Monday nights, considered prime FoodFlicks viewing time.”
