Chapter 8 Rowe
Rowe
“Who was that?” Cristina asks when I swagger victoriously into the living room.
“No one.”
Tallulah glances up from her spot on a quilt. There’s a lot of hurt feelings in her eyes. She wanted to let that liar pet her, and she’s mad I wouldn’t allow it.
“Traitor,” I mumble.
The nerve of my favorite pet, approaching my newest enemy like he’s her friend.
“Rowe?” Cristina asks.
I plop back on top of the quilts. “Yes?”
“Who was that?”
I wave away her question and turn back to my margarita, which is now melting into a sad, sloshy mess. “I don’t know. Some guy who said he wanted to help me with the farm.”
She sits up quickly, which makes Buster the Cat, who’s been lying at her feet, flinch. “What?”
“Don’t get excited. He was obviously a spy sent by Sally and Luke.”
A wrinkle worms its way across her forehead. “What if he wasn’t?”
“Oh, he for sure was.”
“What was his name?”
“I don’t know. Maddox something. Pane Maddox? Something weird like that. Said his family’s famous.”
Cristina’s eyes nearly pop out of her head. “Pane Maddox? Like, from the Maddox Hotel family?”
“Maybe?” I say around a yawn.
She grabs her phone and starts typing. A moment later, Cristina shoves the device under my nose. “Was this him?”
The phone is way too close. I push her hand away and squint at the image.
It’s a picture of a man leaving a restaurant with a woman on his arm.
He looks to be in his early thirties, and he’s got the same dark hair and knee-buckling green eyes as the man from the front porch, who is now officially the third person on my shit list, right behind Luke and Sally.
Wait. Those two are tied at number one. Okay, stranger is number two.
“Um. Yeah, that looks like him.”
Her jaw drops. “Rowe, this is the Pane Maddox from the Maddox Hotel chain. He’s, like, superrich. What’s going on?”
I blow my bangs out of my face. Man, does my breath smell like alcohol. “First of all, he’s the guy from this morning, the one who was so rude and awful.”
“You didn’t say anything about him being rude and awful.”
“Well, he was. And he was snobby.”
“Of course he was snobby. He’s, like, a gazillionaire.” She straightens, looking down her nose at me. “So what did he want?”
“Just what I said—to help the farm.”
There is an incredibly long pause, which makes me think that Cristina has forgotten how to talk. “You are kidding me.”
“No.”
“Oh my God! Go back and get him!” She grabs my arm and pulls me up. I barely have time to save my margarita before it sloshes over the side of the glass. “Now! He’s your miracle!”
“No, he’s not, and I don’t need a miracle.”
“You will excuse me if I completely disagree with you.” When I don’t move to run after him, she says, “If you’re not going to get him, I will.”
Before I can argue with my best friend, she races to the front door.
Wait. She cannot. I mean, she cannot be seriously thinking that the guy on my front porch is this Pane Maddox guy.
No way. Probably a stunt double. Or just a guy who looks freakishly similar and who goes around impersonating him so that he can swindle unsuspecting women out of their hard-earned money.
Well, I am not unsuspecting. I am trés suspecting, thank you very much.
Cristina’s got the door open. “Wait!” she yells.
No! She’s really doing it. She’s really getting this guy back. He’s so horrible. Awful. He called my piggycorns swine.
Though, technically, they are, but it was the way he said it, with his nose lifted and his voice sounding all snotty.
I reach the front door and grab Cristina’s arm, yanking it down to her side.
Pane Maddox is bent down at the fence, arms extended. I charge out in my hot sauce–themed fluffy slippers. “What are you doing?”
He lifts a piece of rope. “Securing this so that your pigs don’t get out.”
My gaze drops to where he’s tightened the fencing. He’s done a decent job of it, and my chest squeezes around my heart at this random kindness. “Thank you.”
He cuts the rope with a pocketknife, rises, drops the extra in his back pocket. “You’re welcome.”
Cristina runs down the steps. The feathers attached to her jammies wave in greeting. “You have to excuse my friend. She’s had a terribly hard day, and even though she doesn’t know who you are, I can see that you’re obviously Pane Maddox. Rowe said something about you wanting to help?”
He eyes me coldly. “If she’ll let me.”
“Of course she will.” Cristina grabs his arm and drags him up the steps, elbowing me so hard that I wind up in the bushes. “Come inside. Let’s hear what you have to say.”
The bushes spit me out. Twigs poke through my hair and into my face. I pull out the sticks and drop them to the ground. “Hold on a second. I’d like to see some identification. Make sure that you’re really who you say you are.”
He pulls a wallet from his back pocket and fishes out an ID. “Both of you know who I am. Whom do I have the pleasure of speaking with?”
He’s talking to her but looking at me. When I don’t answer, my bestie rolls her eyes. “I’m Cristina, and my silent friend is Rowe Wadley.”
“Nice to meet you,” he says.
“Pleasure’s all mine,” Cristina says, smiling brightly.
He hands the ID to Cristina, who stares at the picture for way too long.
Oh, I get it. Not only is his face pretty, but it’s irresponsible the way he fills out his clothes, making us stare at his steely thighs and well-defined pecs.
After a long moment, Cristina rips her gaze from the pic and hands the ID to me.
According to this, Mr. Donalpane Aloysius Maddox is six two, weighs 190 pounds, has green eyes, and is .
. . thirty-five years old. He’s not smiling in the picture, but there’s a sparkle of smug arrogance in his eyes that he has even now.
I really don’t like this man.
“All right. You appear to be legit. Why this farm? Why now?”
He takes the ID and says gruffly, “Let’s talk in the house.”
Soon as Pane steps inside, my home seems to shrink around this man as if he’s too bulky to contain. It’s like the house can’t breathe because he’s sucking up all the space.
Cristina seems oblivious, jumping into action as she plays hostess, ushering us into the kitchen.
As we make our way there, Pane sneers at the sight of Tallulah lying on the quilts.
Her brothers and sisters are piled up on both sides of her, aimlessly kicking as they’ve fallen back asleep.
Pane also takes a long look at the rooster decor, and I swear his mouth dips into a scowl.
One that, yes, he does eventually direct toward me.
While the coffee brews and Cristina bounces around grabbing mugs, cream, sugar, and placing them all on the table, I focus on the man sitting across from me.
“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? He is right, 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.”