Page 109 of If I Didn’t Have You

“Everything okay?”

“We came to discuss a business offer with you.”

The surprise on his face almost made me laugh, except there was nothing funny about how divided we were.

“A business offer,” he repeated. “You want to do business with me.”

God, I really felt like an asshole. “Gonna invite us inside to talk about it?”

He stood there for another moment, wariness clouding his eyes, but finally, he relented. “Uh… yeah, come on in.”

As we walked up the steps and through his front door, I was reminded of all the times we’d gotten together in the past. This house was like a second home to my kids at one time in their lives. Now, it was nothing but a distant memory.

“I don’t have anything in the house. Um…water?”

“No thanks, John.”

He huffed out a laugh, running his fingers through his thinning hair. Time had not been good to this man, and while I’d never cared about it in the past, now I felt an overwhelming sadness that our friendship had taken such a beating. There was a time when I would have come to this man for advice, or we’d have a beer after a long day.

It had been years since I talked to anyone like a true friend, and I could see now that my change in attitude was half the problem in my marriage. It hadn’t just affected my home life. It had changed how I dealt with everyone.

“We came to talk about the ranch.”

He sighed. “If you’re looking to get back in the cattle game…I’m not sure you’ve come to the right place. It won’t be much longer before I lose everything.”

“We’re not here for cattle.” I looked over at Liam, making sure he was still on board with this before I opened my mouth.

At his nod, I continued.

“The vacation destination shit is actually doing pretty well, but what people want from us is space. They want to come out here and get away from it all, including other people. We have plans to expand cabins on the ranch, but we need more room to grow.”

His face dropped. “You want me to sell more of my ranch to you?”

“No. We want to go into partnership with you.”

I wasn’t sure my words truly sank in. The skepticism on his face, coupled with the lingering anger that he thought I wanted to buy him out, was evident.

“John, we don’t want your land for ourselves. We want to work with you.”

Swallowing hard, the man stumbled back a step, landing heavily in his chair. “I don’t understand. You hate me.”

“Hate is a strong word. More than anything, Clara wants this feud between us to end.”

“So do I.”

I sank into the seat across from him, shoving all my anger and worries aside. If I was going to do this, I couldn’t keep seeing Austin at every corner.

“If you agree to join us, we would split the business. With your property and the access roads from the back, we could really expand and make this a true destination vacation spot.”

“But you already have the land you need.”

Liam pulled out a map of the area, laying it out on the table for John to see. “Over here, we’d like to put a main resort. While most families want to get away and have their own space, there are also many more that can’t afford the rates of renting a cabin. If we were to build lodging here,” he pointed to the front of John’s property, “it would open up another stream of revenue for us. Then, with the back roads at the back of your property, it would make it easier for people to access the mountains. It’s possible we could even add in our own ski lift eventually.”

“That’s a big undertaking,” John said, studying the map. “I don’t know anything about ski lifts and running a resort.”

“Well, Jeff has been buying up businesses in town for years with Krista. He’s got quite a bit of knowledge on his side, and he’s been taking business courses for the past two years,” Liam said.

“We’d have to hire someone with experience on the slopes, someone who can really run things right, but that would be years down the road after we’re more established. For now, we’d like to focus on building the business even further, and making sure we can accommodate the traffic if the business gets to the point where we can make the whole plan happen.”