3. Owen
“Equal partnership.”
I couldn’t help it: I grinned.
I had to admit, Delia Delatou had a set of balls on her, much like her sister. Not to mention she definitely knew her worth. I’d fully expected this meeting to be a formality before I politely sent her on her way. What I hadn’t anticipated was for the girl to come in here and surprise me with the careful thought and research she’d put into her proposal.
Honestly, I was impressed, and I couldn’t deny I was genuinely contemplating partnering up with her.
But an equal partnership? That was a slippery slope. She was so young, so untested. Giving half of this business over to her had to be one of the craziest offers I’d ever received. I was dumb to even consider it…right?
God, I wished Cal was here. He’d know exactly how to handle her, to let her down easy.
Then again…he was as good as Delia’s brother-in-law, so maybe I’d be in the minority.
“You do realize taking your land for free but having to give you half the profits would cost me more money in the long run than just buying the piece of land I originally wanted, right?”
“Well, yes…” she said, trailing off. “But my land is better than that piece. Plus, if you don’t take me up on my offer, all of this”—she swept her arm over the papers spread out on the table between us—“goes with me. Good luck finding someone better.”
Honestly, she was probably right, but was taking her on worth the trouble of having to work side by side with her? I wasn’t sure that was a fair trade.
Delia was a wild child. I could see it in her eyes. But there was something else there too. A hesitancy, for sure, as if she was holding a part of herself back from me—though I couldn’t imagine what or why. And then there was her obvious competency.
The whole picture was confusing, the subject hazy and poorly developed.
I hated how badly I wanted to be the one to bring it into focus.
“I need to think about it,” I said at last, garnering myself a chance to collect myself. “And I need to talk to Cal. See if he thinks it’s a good idea.”
Delia grinned widely. “Cal loves me, so I guarantee he tells you to partner with me.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” I said slowly, trying to convince myself more than her.
Delia, who had begun shuffling her papers back together, only rose to her feet. I’d been studiously avoiding letting my gaze linger on any part of her too long, but I couldn’t help myself now. The girl was an absolute stunner. Model-long legs. Hips, waist, and bust curving and dipping slightly into a soft hourglass shape. She wore a pair of shiny black pants that molded to her thighs and ass and cinched at her ankles, a silky, long-sleeved blouse in a light blue pinstripe pattern, and gold jewelry on her wrists, fingers, neck, and ears. Her long, dark-brown hair hung down her back in waves.
But it was her eyes that were the real star of the show. Similar to Amara’s golden hue but darker. Fiercer. Glinting with mischief. When the light slanting through my office window caught them just right, they lit up like a tumbler of really good whiskey on ice.
They were the kind of eyes you could get drunk on if you stared into them for too long.
“How about we agree to a little wager?”
“What kind of wager?” I asked skeptically.
“If Cal doesn’t advise you to partner with me, I owe you a hundred bucks.”
I snorted. “That’s a drop in the bucket for both of us. At least make it interesting.”
“A thousand then.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “And if he does, I’ll give you the same.”
I extended my arm, intent on shaking on our deal, but she slapped my hand away. Her touch lingered on my skin like a phantom, warmth creeping over my entire body.
“I don’t need your money,” she said, gathering her things and heading for the door. When she reached it, she looked back over her shoulder at me. “ When he gives you the go ahead to partner with me, you do it. No questions asked. No negotiating terms or fighting either of us on it. We take a fifty-fifty split, and you sign on the dotted line.”
I sighed, knowing there was no simple way to get out of this—and I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to. I had to hope Cal vetoed the idea outright so I could avoid whatever shit I was about to step into.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll let you know by Monday.”
Delia chuckled as she walked away, as though she was in on a joke I hadn’t figured out the punchline to yet. Her laugh echoed through my office long after she’d disappeared.
I was so fucked.
Once she left, I wasted no time calling Cal and telling him to get his ass to my office. I had a lot to wrap up before the weekend, and I didn’t want this potential partnership with Delia hanging over my head while I tried to unwind. For once, I wasn’t passing my weekend holed up in this office, and I didn’t want to spend a single second of my cabin getaway worried about work. The sooner I got Cal in here to discuss, the better.
Cal had only been working for me for about a week, but I had to admit, we’d fallen into a routine easily. I supposed it helped that he’d been my best friend for the better part of the last five years, and he was extremely good at his job.
By the time he knocked on my open office door, I was practically crawling out of my skin, ready to dump this on him and pray he agreed with me. I felt a bit like a child waiting for a parent to swoop in and make it all better.
“What’s up?” he asked, dropping his messenger bag on the floor and sitting down on the couch—right where Delia had been a half hour ago.
I grabbed the proposal she’d given me and handed it over .
“I met with Delia this morning,” I explained.
“The meeting Amara bribed you into?” Cal asked with a chuckle and a raised brow.
“The very same,” I grumbled. “Anyway, she…surprised me. Came fully prepared with this, admittedly amazing, proposal. And offered to let us build on her land instead of the piece I was going to buy from Delatou, Inc., which is admittedly better. I checked. Still, I’d be stupid to turn her away, but I also think I’d be stupid to agree.” I removed my ball cap and hooked it over my knee, dropping my head into my hands and burying my fingers in my hair. A slight tug at the roots had my scalp stinging, but I welcomed the pain. Welcomed the brief distraction from the turmoil in my chest.
“I need your help,” I mumbled to Cal.
“Why, exactly, do you think you’d be stupid to partner with her?”
“Because she’s…Delia,” I said dumbly. “A total wildcard and not someone I should be getting into be—business with.”
I almost used the colloquial “getting into bed with” but damn, I did not need that image in my head. Didn’t need the thought of those long legs wrapped around my waist, her hair around my fist…
Goddamnit, Lawless. You had to go there.
I thought of all the ugly things I could. The photos of burn victims my brother Crew had shown me. Same with the car accident victims from Lane, the cop. The birth of calves on the ranch. The one time growing up when my dad attempted to cook chicken while Mom was out of town and tried to feed it to us with the center still raw .
The last one did the trick, and I swallowed down a gag as the blood diverted away from my cock.
“So what do you need from me?” Cal asked. “You can make your own choices, O. I’m not your keeper.”
“I need you to tell me it’s financially irresponsible to partner with her.”
His brows rose. “And if it’s not?”
“Just…take a look at the damn proposal,” I said, gesturing to the papers in his hands.
With a slight shake of his head, Cal did as I asked. While he studied the figures and thoroughly examined everything Delia had brought me, a restless energy settled on my bones. Unable to sit still any longer, I stood to pace the length of my office.
I didn’t do well with silence.
I’d spent too many years in locker rooms being hounded by teammates, coaches, and the press to feel comfortable in the quiet. Not to mention, I was the eldest of seven kids, including five younger brothers, so I’d never really known a moment of peace in my lifetime. That was largely why I spent my weekends locked in my office at the club instead of home alone.
I loved my brothers and sister, and of course all my teammates, but constantly being surrounded by people made it a little difficult for me to relax into any sort of stillness.
As I idly twisted my dad’s wedding ring, which I wore on my pinky, I wondered what he would say if he could see me now, if I could call him up and hear his voice on the other end of the phone. Would he be proud? Offer advice on ways I could improve? Beg me to come home and take over the ranch?
I’d never know, because he’d taken up residence in the Lawless Ranch Cemetery a long time ago.
At last, Cal looked up at and cleared his throat, expression unreadable.
“Well?” I prompted.
“I’m…impressed. But also not?” I raised a brow in question, and he continued. “I mean, I’ve seen the work she’s done on the winery’s social media accounts, so I know she’s talented with this sort of thing. But these ideas?” He brandished the presentation. “I hadn’t realized she was capable of this . It’s well thought out, the budget is manageable, and the marketing ideas are, for lack of a better word, genius.”
“So you’re saying I should work with her.”
“If you’d asked me that a few months ago, I would’ve told you no. But I’m officially the poster child for judging a book by its cover and it blowing up in my face.”
I snorted. Cal had spent an awful long time choosing only to see the worst in Amara, even after multiple people had told him to give her a chance—myself included. It was nice that he’d finally come around to recognize the shrewd business mind and talented, intelligent woman she was.
But Delia and Amara were not the same.
The stupid, logical part of my brain argued, But what if they were ?
If not the same then at least…similar. They were sisters, after all.
Fuck. My head hurt.
“Shoot me straight, Cal,” I blurted, my exasperation with this whole situation getting the better of me. I didn’t like feeling out of control, and somehow, in one short meeting, Delia had tilted my world on its axis. “Do you think this is a good idea, partnering with her?”
Cal sank back in his seat and scrubbed a hand over his face. “I understand your apprehension. But even as someone who doesn’t give a shit about that stuff, I’ve seen the impact her marketing strategies have had on the winery’s bottom line. And have you seen her personal content?”
“What personal content?”
“Brooooooo.” Cal dragged out the world annoyingly, and I grimaced. He’d been spending too much damn time with me. “After she graduated college and moved back, she bought a fixer-upper and documented her entire renovation process.”
“What does that have to do with opening a distillery?” I asked.
“She’s incredible with marketing, she’s personable online, and she’s definitely got an impressive flair for design. Amara told me she also has a business degree, and she’s been successfully running her own business with brand partnerships and all that shit for years. You could do worse.”
I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my knees. “I need a yes or no answer here, Cal. Make the decision for me.”
I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to work with her. What I couldn’t figure out was why .
“In my expert opinion…yes, you should work with her. You’d be an idiot not to.”
A lead weight sank into my stomach, but I nodded. I’d do it because I wanted to, and because I trusted Cal not to steer me wrong.
But I had a feeling I’d be an idiot either way.
Monday morning, after a relaxing weekend at my Torch Lake house where I’d managed to shake my melancholia and get my head back on straight, I reluctantly returned to the office. The first item on my agenda was a call to Delia. I’d promised her a response by today, and I was nothing if not a man of my word.
“Hello?” she said tentatively when she answered.
“Hey, Delia. It’s Owen.”
“Hi, Owen. What can I do for you?”
“Would you be able to come down to my office today? Whenever it works for you.”
“I can be down in twenty minutes,” she said quickly.
“I…yeah, that’ll work. See you soon.”
Delia arrived in record time, trimming the twenty minutes she’d promised me down to fifteen.
“Thanks for coming in on such short notice,” I said when she stepped into my office. Her perfume enveloped me as she brushed past, the scent something warm and inviting, like cookies fresh out of the oven, and I stiffened.
I held my breath, waiting for the cloud to dissipate, then sucked in a lungful of fresh, clear, Delia-free air. I had to keep my wits about me, couldn’t allow something as simple and innocent as her perfume to go to my head like this. I couldn’t let my little head make the decisions where this woman was concerned.
“I take it you’ve spoken with Cal,” she said, sitting on one of my couches and crossing one of her legs over the other. She wore some sort of stretchy pants today, the pale blue fabric pulling taut over her thighs with the position.
“I have,” I said, “and he encouraged me to partner with you. So I’d like to officially offer you a deal. We use your land, and you sign on as an equal partner.”
A slow smile unfurled on Delia’s lips, and I fought the urge to match it. I couldn’t indulge her. Not yet. I still wasn’t entirely sure this was a good idea, and I needed to maintain some level of stoicism and professionalism in the face of this woman who, admittedly, had knocked me a bit off my game.
I mean, she was a knockout. The very definition of a smokeshow. She could give some of the models and actresses I’d tangled with in my early years in the league a run for their money. Particularly my ex, who had that old money, aristocratic kind of beauty. Delia’s was less conventional, but far more intriguing and captivating. Her Greek ancestry bronzed her skin, and her hair was a deep mahogany. I’d learned through a perusal of her social media that she rarely showed her face in her content, and I guessed it had something to do with the creeps that left leering comments the few times she had. Personally, I’d like to find those men and shove their balls down their throat, but it wasn’t my place to protect her. The fact was, this woman—she wasn’t destined to hide. She was better suited for billboards and magazine covers than behind the scenes.
Which was why her competency had come as such a surprise. That line of thinking was incredibly sexist, but my personal experience with beautiful women had me wary of a pretty face that masked an intelligent mind. I’d been fucked over by gold diggers too many times not to be.
“I’ve taken the liberty of having my attorney draw up a standard partnership agreement for us,” I said, moving to my desk and lifting the file folder off its surface, then walking it over to her. “Review it and let me know of any changes.”
Ignoring me, Delia lifted her phone and tapped away at the screen. A moment later, a light tapping came at the door.
I opened it to find Logan Daniels standing on the other side.
“Hey, Owen!” he said brightly. “Good to see you again.”
“You too, Logan. But what are you doing here?”
“He’s my attorney,” Delia said. When I frowned, she added, “You didn’t think I was signing this without having a professional review it, did you?”
“I mean…no,” I said slowly. “But I didn’t think you’d be doing it right now.”
Delia shrugged as Logan settled at her side on the couch. “No time like the present.”
With a rough sigh, I moved to my desk and dialed my own attorney. Logan got on the line and explained what was happening, and the two men quickly devolved into a lengthy legal discussion, the bulk of which went right over my head. They barely spared me or Delia any attention, save asking if we were on board with one particular term or another.
Surprisingly, Delia had few hangups with the terms of our partnership, and I had fewer still. I would’ve given her anything she asked for if it meant we could start breaking ground as soon as possible, but she made it easy on everyone.
When all was said and done, Logan disconnected and clapped his hands together.
“He’s sending over the updated version right now,” he told us, then turned to me. “Can you get into your email and print it for me?”
Two minutes later, the contract was hot off the printer, my hand poised over the document, ready to scribble my name. Hesitating only briefly, I inked my signature with a quick jerk of my wrist, officially binding myself to Delia. A moment later, she did the same, Logan and Hugo, my head of security who we’d pulled in from downstairs, acting as witnesses.
“There’s one more thing before we disperse,” Logan said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
From his briefcase, he withdrew a document printed on thicker, creamy paper, the logo for what I assumed was his law firm emblazoned in the bottom left corner.
“Delia needs to add your name to the title of the property. I’ve prepared a standard deed conveying the property from Delia’s name as an individual into your partnership,” he said, his fingers tracing the language in the “Grantee” section of the document. “Neither of you can sell or add anyone else to the title of the land without both of you signing off on it. It’s already a two-and-a-half acre split off Delia’s whole forty, so that’s no longer an option. Understood?”
Delia and I both nodded. I’d completely forgotten about the land, and I was a little surprised but also impressed that she’d chosen to split a little piece off instead of signing half of the whole thing over to me. Honestly, I would’ve done the same. Plus, we didn’t need that much land anyway. What she was signing over would be more than enough.
I was about to confirm Delia’s desire to do this—to give me, us , this—to make sure she was truly all in, even with the ink on our partnership agreement drying on the table in front of us, but Logan beat me to it.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked her quietly, shooting a skeptical glance my way.
“I’m sure,” Delia said, offering me a bright smile that would’ve made me weak in the knees had I not been seated.
Damn, I really needed to get laid. One look from this girl, one flash of her bright, perfect teeth, and I was half hard.
Quickly, she signed the deed, Logan notarized it, and that was that. As he gathered his things and moved toward the door, blabbing on about recording and copies and other legal bullshit, I held Delia back from following him.
“A word?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said, then looked to her brother-in-law. “I’ll see you up at the house for dinner this week.”
Logan nodded and dropped a kiss to her cheek before disappearing.
Something was seriously wrong with me, because jealousy flared in my chest at that easy affection. He was her brother-in-law, for fuck’s sake. And even if he wasn’t, Delia wasn’t mine to be possessive of. I needed to get my shit together.
When he’d gone, I cleared my throat and said, “I have a meeting with the architect tomorrow. I’d like you there.”
“Well I would hope so since this project is half mine.”
I fought the urge to roll my eyes, instead meeting hers, their caramel depths all smoke and mischief.
“Meeting is at eleven, Whiskey,” I said, the nickname slipping far too easily from my tongue.
And the regret was instantaneous.
“Whiskey?” she asked, arching one of her perfect brows .
“Because that’s the—“ I bit off that train of thought, not voicing the words rolling around in my head.
Because that’s the exact color of your eyes , I wanted to say.
Instead, I went with something no less true but in far safer territory.
“Because I’m still not entirely convinced you aren’t a bad idea.”
Delia nodded, the hint of a smile tipping up one corner of her mouth. With a mock, two-finger salute, she said, “See you tomorrow, QB,” and left.