“You’ve got five minutes to tell me the whole story about why you’re here. And don’t think that I’m going to believe that when you spotted me this morning, you decided to take it upon yourself to be my Prince Charming.”
Pane drums his thick, masculine-looking fingers on the table.
They’re really very nice fingers—strong and lean.
What is wrong with me? When did I get a finger fetish?
Right about now, it seems.
“My mother is retiring from the Maddox Group.”
“She is?” Cristina asks, clearly startled by this revelation about a woman whom neither she nor I know personally. “But she’s run the company for, like, forever.” I shoot her a look and she shrugs. “What? Of course I follow them.”
I shake my head. “Go on.”
Cristina hands him a cup of coffee. He looks up and smiles grimly, as that’s the only emotion he’s intimately familiar with. “Thank you.”
I tap the table impatiently. “Your mother?”
“Right.” He waits until my bestie gives me a cup of coffee, which I doctor with cream. My mama raised me right, so I push the pot toward him, but he waves it away.
Apparently, the man likes his coffee like he likes his attitude: strong and bitter.
“It’s between myself and my brother as to who becomes head of the company, and my mother can’t choose.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
He drags his gaze from his coffee to meet my eyes. “I don’t really know.”
The way the skin around his eyes tightens makes me think there’s something he’s holding back. But whatever it is doesn’t concern me.
I sip my drink—noting scornfully that the world is spinning less than it was when I was happily slurping down a margarita—and listen as he continues.
“Since my mother can’t choose between me and my brother, she’s decided to hold a competition. Whoever saves a business from near death, and does it the most successfully in sixty days, will become president and CEO of the Maddox Group.”
Cristina plops in a chair. “The whole thing? Like, the whole company?”
“The whole company,” he corroborates.
“Wow.” She sips her coffee. “So that’s why you’re here.”
He sighs, scrubs a hand down his face. “My brother had to pick the business for me, and I had to pick his. After seeing the farm this morning, he decided this would be a good challenge.”
“He’s right about that,” Cristina says. I clear my throat and stare at her. She shrugs. “What? Heisright, Rowe. Even you can’t disagree.”
Of course I can. “What business did you give to your brother?”
“A hot dog restaurant. He hates hot dogs. But to be honest, I think we’ve got the most potential here.”
“Great!” Cristina claps her hands. “How much money are you planning to put into the place? I mean, you’re rich, after all. You throw several thousand dollars at Wadley Farms, and Rowe will be able to get out of foreclosure.”
His head swivels to me. “What?”
I cringe. “Yeah. My mother told me that this morning before she left on an extended vacation. We’ve got two months before the bank takes it.”
He exhales, absorbing that. “So if I can’t save the place, you lose it,” he says, for the first time sounding something other than insufferable.
“Right. We lose it all, down to the last piggycorn.”
