AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“How much are you going to pay?” she fires back.
I know how much alfalfa costs. The number I quote at her? Easily double.
Nora balks. “No.”
“What?”
“No freaking way,” she snaps.
My chest sinks. Here it is. Now that she knows I have money, she’s going to try to fleece me for it…
“That’s double the market rate. I don’t need your charity or your pity money. If you want to buy my alfalfa, you’ll buy it from me at what it’s worth,” Nora says, looking down her nose at me.
The tightness in my chest lifts. I look over at her, and from her stubborn expression, I can see that she’s absolutely dead serious.
I can’t help it. I grin. “You’re turning down a fifty percent profit, you know that, right?”
“I don’t like doing dirty business.” She blushes a little and looks away. “If you’re going to… buy the hay, I want it to be fair and square, and not for any other reason than it’s a normal transaction between people.”
I tilt my head. “Normal?”
“You know. Not because we’re… neighbors.” She looks down.
It hits me then. Nora thinks that I’m trying to take advantage of what happened last night. That I’m only offering her double because we fucked.
“Nora,” I say calmly. “I really would pay that for the hay, if it was high quality.”
“This hay is average, at best.”
“Okay then,” I sigh. My eyes narrow. “You know that I can afford it, right?”
Nora blinks. “I know that you’re rich. No need to rub it in my face. The Wild Spur is obviously doing well, and my guess is that you’re the one who financed some of it and brought in investors for the rest.”
“I did.”
She sighs. “I’m mostly just jealous I didn’t think of the idea myself.”
Interesting. “Why’s that?”
“Because it’s such a good model. Trail rides are big business, and everyone with a horse background can take a well-broke horse on a trail ride. Tourists love to come to Montana and pretend to play cowboy. It’s brilliant,” she says, her nose wrinkling. “Horses are expensive and hard to maintain. But if someone else was in charge of their care for most of the year, it would be easy enough to run the trail rides with a rental cost for the horses.”
I let myself smile again. “You figured that out fast.”
She shrugs. “I did major in business at CU.”
“Did you?”
“Yup. I was going to start my MBA in the fall when…” Her voice trails off.
My chest aches for her. “You had to come home.”
Nora nods. “I did.”
“Did you defer or decline?”
“Deferred,” she says, looking at me. “I was hoping that I could get the ranch to a better place and then go back.”
Oh, Nora. “Well, maybe if you let someone pay you double the cost of alfalfa…”
