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She smiled and puffed out her chest a little. “Good! Then you need to come back in a week and do it again.” She whisked away into the kitchen before he could protest.
Ben chuckled. “And thus I am bound into another trap.”
“Women are good at those,” Grant mused as he leaned back in his chair and swigged his wine around in his glass. He inclined his head to me. “If you’ll pardon my bluntness.”
A wicked grin slid onto my lips. “Not at all. I take it as a compliment.”
“Now that the pleasantries are over, shall we get down to business?” Ben asked our companions.
Grant set his empty wine glass down and nodded. “We’d be interested to know how much you want to invest in the thunder-”
“Bashful,” Mouse interrupted him.
Grant glared at him. “We’re not naming the damn thing.”
“But why not?” Ben countered as he failed to hide his amusement under a facade of business-like stoicism. “A name would make better advertisement than simply referring to it as a thunder.”
Chase caught Grant’s attention while he waved a finger at Ben. “He does have a point there. People like to name their thunders like their pets.”
A proud grin spread across Mouse’s face. “See? It’s a good idea.”
“It’s a rubbish idea. . .” Grant grumbled as he crossed his arms over his chest. He turned his full attention to Ben and raised his voice. “But what were you thinking of doing for us, Your Excellency?”
Ben shook his head. “If we’re to go into business together I would rather you call me Ben.”
“And you can call us whatever you like, so long as you have the money we need,” Grant quipped.
Chase glared at him. “Don’t act like that, you goon, or he’ll take the money away.”
Ben sat up in his chair and chuckled. “There’s not much chance of that, I assure you. Bashful has revived in me my childhood interest in thunders, and for that I’m eternally grateful.”
The trio glanced at each other before Grant set his clasped hands on the table and cleared his throat. “Yes, well, what were you proposing?”
“I’d like to invest half the money you would need to build and market a half dozen of the Bashfuls.”
All three of their jaws hit the table. I had to hide my smile behind my hand.
Chase clapped his mouth shut first. “H-half, sir? Are you sure about that?”
“Why? How much did it cost to make the first Bashful?” The men squirmed in their seats before Mouse mumbled out a number. Ben leaned in closer to him. “What was that?”
“Twenty barons.”
I winced. That kind of money could be a nice villa.
Ben leaned back in his chair and lifted an eyebrow. “That’s quite a sum.”
Mouse nodded. “Ourentirelife savings.”
“We don’t have a thing to use to build another one,” Grant confirmed.
Chase scoffed. “We barely had enough for the entry fee for that last race. If something like that happens again then we’re out of the business.”
Ben folded his arms over his chest and smiled at them. “Then I will most definitely front three-quarters of the cost.”
I had deja vu when their mouths dropped open again.
“But that’sninety barons!” Mouse pointed out.
