“There are a lot of question marks floating around the office these days. I can’t just assume these guys know what I want to do with the company.”
“Assumptions are always a bad idea.” Like assuming your best-friend boss had your back. Not cool.
She pointed the marker at the tabletop. “We should take them to lunch.”
“Isn’t that considered a bribe?” He was only half joking, but it tasted sour in his mouth to even come close to the subject of bribery. That was one line he hadn’t crossed; Jeremy had never even tried to bribe him. He didn’t have to. Nash was naïve enough to do his dirty work without a second thought.
“No. Is it?” Her brow furrowed, and then she quickly waved her hands in the air. “I need to talk to them, feel them out and see where they stand on the issues facing Hazel’s. I need to know what they’re thinking.”
He scooted forward on his seat. “You can’t be too obvious.”
“It could scare them off if I was forceful.”
“And tip off your sisters that something’s up.”
She gave him a pointed look. “I’m wearing your ring—they’re aware that something is up.”
“Fair enough.” Oddly, that made him feel better about this closed-door meeting. Still, there was something bugging him. “Why don’t you just talk to your sisters about keeping the company in one piece?”
She tossed the marker onto the table. “Lunette and I had a falling out a few years ago. It was … difficult. I’d worked so hard to be the big sister they needed, especially after my mom died. Raquel took her side in the whole thing, and we didn’t speak for six months.”
Nothing she said surprised him. What did surprise him was the hope her story sprung in his heart that families could heal. That they could go from not speaking at all to living in the same house—even if the house was more like six houses that happened to share walls.
“In some ways, we’ve come far. Like, we’re here, we sat through counseling sessions with my Dad, we show up to work in the same building. We look close … but we aren’t. There’s always a level of mistrust, a questioning of one another’s motives.”
“This could be your opportunity to change all that.”
She chewed her lip, drawing his eyes to her mouth. She had a scrumptious mouth and surely tasted like cookies.
He schooled his thoughts. There was no sense going down that road when he was on a turbulent freeway at the moment. Who was he to even consider kissing someone like Kensington Donegal? He was a nobody—or worse, he was a nobody with a rap sheet.
“Let’s call that Plan A.”
“You’ll talk to them?” He blinked in surprise.
“Maybe. I’m not sure it will do much good—and it may even hurt things in the long run—but you’re right that I should at least try to discuss the future of the company with them. They have as much at stake as I do.”
New and unexpected warmth surged through him. In all the time he’d spent with bigwigs, he’d never witnessed as much humility in all of them put together as he did in Kenzi’s willingness to heed his advice. His eyes dropped to her lips again, the desire to brand her with a kiss burning strong.
Kenzi glanced away first and reached for the dry erase marker once again. “If Plan A doesn’t work out, we’ll need a Plan B.” She pointed to the whiteboard. “Leon Rostro.” Fondness spread across her face. “I used to work summers with Leon when I was in high school. His parents managed the dairy farm my grandpa started.”
“Yeah?” He leaned back in the chair and kicked out a leg, ready for a good story.
“He is the one who taught me how to drive a tractor.”
“Get out.”
“It’s true. I used to clean the corrals and holding pens with the scraper.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Somehow, I can’t put you and manure together. You’re much too refined and it’s much too smelly.”
She chuckled, but the sound was muted. He understood: she was still feeling the effects of losing her dad. It’d taken him over a year to laugh after his sentencing. While the losses were quite different, they’d both lost something dear. She’d lost the man who raised her; he’d lost his family and freedom. “Manure does not stink.”
“Whaaaat are you talking about? Manure is the definition of stink.”
She shook her head so hard her ponytail whipped her cheek. “You’ve got it all wrong.”
He held up his palms. “Agree to disagree.”
