27. Sawyer
Sawyer
M y jet landed in Whispers about an hour ago, and I still haven’t seen Annabelle.
My first stop had to be the distillery, where I’m now sitting in the boardroom across from Valerie Van Cleef, her husband AJ, Tanner, and Connor, discussing the new distribution of a limited edition line of whiskey, only available through her hotels.
I look at my watch, knowing that being the middle of the day, Annabelle and the kids will still be in school, but my knee bounces under the table in anticipation regardless.
“So we’ll have limited stock, but that just makes it all the more exclusive,” Connor explains.
He and I have known Valerie for a while now, seen her out and about in New York a bit.
She and AJ now keep a quieter life, although her company is thriving, and the two of them make a great team.
Their future may be clouded by the new hotelier family that’s pushing into the country, the Grant brothers making major moves in property development for the past few years.
But Valerie is smart; she knows what she’s doing.
“Sounds great. I love having anything that’s special or exclusive.” Valerie smiles wide, the contracts now all signed. I take in her words, and my mouth opens before I really think about what I’m doing.
“What about Gertie’s?” I ask the table, and they look at me. Tanner’s eyebrows rise before he nods, obviously not having thought about it himself.
“What’s Gertie’s?” Valerie asks curiously, while Tanner and Connor try to hide their shit-eating grins.
“Well, we’re talking about Whiteman’s single malts distributed through your bars. How about Gertie’s Soaps distributed within your bathrooms? Amenities at your hotels? Gertie’s is a locally made and owned brand of organic soaps, not sold anywhere else… yet.”
Her eyebrows rise. “The timing is interesting…” Valerie looks at AJ, who doesn’t give much away.
“Gertie’s is Victoria’s side hustle. She’s in business with a local woman, Annabelle, whom Sawyer has been working with,” Tanner says, giving me the nod to continue.
“Gertie’s isn’t currently available to everyone. It’s sold here at the distillery and locally in town, some at the next town over, so it’s exclusive and high quality, which is what you’re looking for, for your hotels. Plus, it’s all organic, made by hand right here in Whispers.”
“We had to cancel our contract with our current amenities’ supplier due to a conflict of interest, so your timing with this one, Sawyer, is impeccable. It’s a cute idea. Want to run me some numbers and send them over?” she asks, and Tanner practically beams, but I decide to push.
“Can you offer exclusivity?” I know being exclusive in her business means a strong, steady income for Annabelle, something she desperately needs.
“I'm sure we can arrange something,” she says easily.
I look at Tanner, who nods, looking at me appreciatively.
“Great.” My grin is wide, not able to be tamped down.
“Well, let's eat. I'm starving.” Connor jumps up, and we all walk to the restaurant for lunch.
“Good work, Sawyer. Good fucking work… This is why I hired you. Can’t believe I didn’t fucking think of that,” Tanner says to me quietly, and I chuckle. “Thanks for keeping Victoria and Gertie’s in mind.”
“We need to get it over the line first,” I tell him as we walk through the hallways. I’ve been here so many times, I could tell you the number of lines in the wood that’s under my feet. “And… I was thinking of Annabelle, actually.”
He gives me a knowing look. “Well, after lunch, before you go running over there to see her, I need you to stop by Bob’s place. He wants to show you that parcel of land he wants to sell.”
There’s no point complaining. This is the work that needs to be done in a small town.
“Sure, no worries.”
Tanner stops dead in his tracks and looks at me. “See, I told you, you’re a changed man.”
I wave him off, but I’m still smiling. The minute my jet wheels hit the tarmac on the Whispers airstrip this morning, the tension eased from my body, and I think that tells me all I need to know.
“Your brother is coming in tonight. Victoria has him meeting her in the jet on the tarmac later this evening. It sure must be serious if you need my jet at nighttime.”
I blow out a breath. “Yeah, not sure exactly, but he’s fleeing and doesn’t want anyone to know where he is.”
“I’ll get the word out. The town will cover for him,” Tanner says, and I still.
“What do you mean?” I’m clearly missing something.
“Whispers is small, everyone body knows everybody. They’re going to know pretty quickly that there’s a new person in town and people talk.
But if we tell them it’s your brother and he needs to hide, the town will hide him.
They’ll call you when the media are in town so he can stay at home and lie low.
Rochelle usually gets them first, since all new people go to the diner and start sniffing around.
She’s brilliant at steering them off course.
But she’ll call you the minute she sees anyone new, and Tony, the sheriff, is usually good too. ”
My jaw almost hits the floor. “Seriously?” I was thinking how I would need to keep him indoors, wondering how he was going to get around whenever I’m in the city, and this makes it so much easier.
“Yeah, well, he might still need to wear his cap low and not have photos taken and things, but once the town knows, he’ll be able to roam around pretty freely.” Tanner makes it out to be no big deal.
“Small towns talk, you even said it,” I question him.
“To each other, not to outsiders, especially ones who may harass our own. That’s what being part of a small town means. They look after their own. That's what you’ve become, their own. Now you just need to have their backs as well.”
I’m nodding before he’s even finished. “I’ve got them.”
He smiles, patting me on the back. “Good, better celebrate it with a whiskey, then.”
We follow the rest of the team into the back of the restaurant and take our seats. I have a new spring in my step, one that hasn’t been in my working life for some time. The thrill of the chase, of making a difference to a business, to a brand, to a woman I can’t stop thinking about.
If I can pull off this deal with Van Cleef, it would mean increased production for Annabelle, but it also means that she won't need to work so hard at two jobs. She could let go of the teaching and concentrate on Gertie’s.
Maybe with some convincing, she could also hire some help on the farm.
I know she wants to manage quality, but now that she’s in business, she needs to let go of a few things and embrace where her hard work has gotten her.
I’m used to getting deals like this over the line. I do them in my sleep. But none of them have given me this high I’m now feeling, none of them have meant this much until now.
“So you been in Whispers for a while?” I ask Bob as we walk out of his place and hop into his truck. He wants to show me his land, the parcel he’s thinking of selling. Not that I need to see it in real life; I just need the plans, but I’m learning that this is how things go in a small town.
“All my life. Born and raised.”
I nod, knowing that this is how most country land ownership works.
“If you are as good a lawyer as Tanner thinks you are, then finding me a buyer for my land should be child's play.”
I look at my watch. There’s another hour or so before school ends, so I have time to indulge him.
“You got a lot of land out here.” Glancing out his truck window as he drives us over his fields, there are rolling green hills that seem never-ending. I have no idea about land quality, but it looks good to me. The grass is green, and the whole place looks vibrant.
“I have a few hundred acres here, close to the house, that I want to keep, but I’m getting older. The hardware store takes up a lot of my time, and I never use the fields over the back, so that’s what I’m looking at offloading,” he offers.
“How much do you want to get rid of?”
“I have two hundred acres I want to fence off and sell. But there’s a catch.”
I quirk my eyebrow. “What's the catch?”
“There’s no access. The parcel of land I want to get rid of is landlocked between mine and Annabelle’s farm.
” I squint through the windscreen to where we’re going, and sure enough, while I can’t see her house, I can make out the hills and the trees that surround her farm, the familiarity making me smile.
“You’ll need to put in an access road if you want to sell it,” I tell him.
“I know. It would be ideal if Annabelle could buy it. Then she could just extend her farm, but I know she can’t.” He sighs as we drive over the land.
“So is that fence the border?” I point in front of us.
“Just over here… What has she been doing? It didn’t look like that last week when I came for a look,” Bob murmurs, and I follow his gaze as his truck comes to a stop.
I frown as we both get out of the truck and look over to her land.
I see rich brown dirt, right next to flourishing lavender bushes, with scraps of plants in between.
There’s a significant amount of space that’s just raked dirt, something I haven’t seen on the farm before, since every space has a purpose for Annabelle. “Maybe she’s replanting…”
“Off time of year to be doing that. What the hell is that?” Bob’s tone has me on guard, and I follow him quickly as he trudges to the fence line.
“What is it?” I’m not caring that my leather shoes are now covered in grass and dirt, that my suit pants are probably getting muddy as well.
“The fence is cut. I put this fence in years ago, but you can see it’s sturdy and in good condition. No one comes out here. As I said, there’s no access…” He looks up and around.
“Could this have been opened by an animal?” I have no idea what wild animals roam around here.
“It’s heavy-duty steel. There’s no animal on this earth that would chew through it. This was done by a man. And bolt cutters.”
I swallow. Annabelle hasn’t said anything, but by the looks of how well the soil is ploughed into rows, she knows.
“I’m headed over there now, so I can talk to Annabelle about the fence. She’ll fix it, you know what she's like.” I smile, just from thinking about her.
He shakes his head. “I can do it.”
“You offer that?” I ask, wondering if fencing is a service he does in Whispers.
“Not as a service, but I would do it for Annabelle. Neighborly thing to do, especially since she’s on her own,” Bob admits, and I admire that. Their familiarity has me wondering…
“Did you know her husband?”
“No good son of a bitch, that one. Not many people mourned his death.”
“What do you mean?” I press. Maybe he can give me more insight than the guys did.
“He grew up here. Was troublesome. Annabelle grew up here too, one of those good girl falls for the bad guy situations. He was always a bit shady. Drinking, gambling, you know the type.”
“I'm starting to get the picture,” I murmur, needing to talk to Tanner about it all.
“I don’t care about fixing the fence, happy to do it. But I’m never out here; that’s why I want to sell it. Preferably without the added cost of putting an access road in.”
Annabelle can’t afford to buy any more land, yet I do know that if the Van Cleef deal goes through, and with a few tweaks to her finances, she could afford it eventually.
But I can afford it now, and while I know she has a lot of pride, maybe I can strike a deal with her.
“How much do you want for it, Bob?” I ask, and he looks my way with wide eyes as we get into the truck. All the way back to his place, we talk about numbers, and I leave him with the promise I’ll get the contracts drawn up and the money in his bank by Monday.