“He doesn’t need people food,” Nico countered.
“It’sbacon. It’severyonefood.”
Stone smiled, watching the interaction. He grinned even more when Nico caved, dropping Jäger a small piece of bacon.
“Four hundred’s a lot of acres, is it not?” Nico asked him when Jäger was content.
“Dependin’ on what you wanna do with it. If you’re lookin’ to raise cattle, you can get about one head per three acres. If you wanna work the land, it’s enough to do pretty much anything.”
Stevie waved her fork, not bothering to look up. “He wants to put some bulls out there.”
Stone saw the concern in Nico’s gaze. It was obvious he was worried about the shift in Stevie’s demeanor.
“Actually,” Stone said. “I was thinkin’ about doin’ somethin’ else with it.”
He set his plate aside and reached for his coffee.
“That’s where you come in,” he told her, waiting for her to look at him.
Stevie’s eyes slowly lifted. “Me?”
“You’re right,” he continued. “Raisin’ champion bulls was my goal at one time. Not necessarily my dream because I never quite nailed down what I wanted to do, but it felt like somethin’ I’d be good at.”
Stevie’s eyebrows dipped low. “Not anymore?”
“I was thinkin’ I’d rather farm it.”
Her eyebrows popped toward her hairline. “As in what? Corn?”
“We could do that,” he agreed. “Right now, we’d probably yield about a hundred bushels per acre.”
Stevie looked at Nico, then back to him. “We?”
Stone swallowed hard and met her gaze. “The three of us.”
Nico frowned, but he didn’t speak.
Stone kept his focus on Stevie. “I heard you talkin’ to Byron the other day. You were talkin’ about greenhouses.”
She waved her hand, but before she could interrupt, he continued.
“I was wonderin’ if maybe the three of us could work together to come up with a plan for how to use the land. I’m thinkin’ it’ll give you enough room to build the greenhouses you want so you can produce whatever you want. Then maybe we could use some of it to open a farmers’ market. We make it large enough to allow other vendors to sell their produce.”
Her eyebrows were practically at her hairline. “Farmers’ market?”
He nodded. “For the town. I hear they’re all the rage.”
She huffed a laugh, and the noose on his chest relaxed a little.
“I don’t know if I’d go that far.” She glanced between him and Nico. “But we could do a lot with it. Four hundred acres would be plenty to work with. But if you want to grow corn, we’d have to use quite a bit for that.”
The fact that she used the wordwegave him hope.
She rambled on, throwing out several ideas. Stone made a mental note of all of them, figuring he could easily work it into a business plan. It wouldn’t take much to research the area and develop a market analysis and financial projections.
“You know that’ll cost a lot of money,” Nico added when Stevie exhaled with a sigh.
“I’ve got money,” Stone noted. “More than I need to get this underway. What I don’t have is the know-how. That’s where you come in,” he told Stevie.
