Emma slowly resumed her seat. “Is it just me, or does anyone else notice how screwed up this is?”
“Me,” Madeline said, raising her hand. “This is… this is not what I thought, Jackson. I can’t stick around for this. I have a life and a business in Orlando. There has to be another way.”
“No,” Jackson said quickly and firmly. “Unfortunately, no, at least not in the immediate future. And there are a few other issues that Luke alluded to we should probably discuss at another time. You know, once you’ve had a chance to absorb this.”
Madeline rubbed her temples. “This is crazy. Crazy! There is no plan, no organization.…”
No highlighter, Luke thought.
“What other issues?” Emma asked. “Get them out. I don’t want to hear about them later, I want to know what the hell is going on here now. All of it, Jackson.”
Jackson looked at Luke.
So did the women, three pairs of suspicious female eyes trained on him.
Luke sighed. “There were some mitigating circumstances in the deal our fathers made. They were friends, supposedly—or at least my dad believes that they were—and he believed that your dad was helping him out.” He shook his head. He was making it more complicated than it had to be. “So Grant gave my dad the cash he needed for some financial issues, and the deal was that when my dad repaid the loan, he’d get the place back. At the same price.”
Libby and Emma looked at him blankly. But Madeline’s brows dipped.
“It was a gentleman’s agreement. Mine needed some cash. Grant had some cash and offered to help him out.”
“He didn’t have as much cash as he thought,” Jackson muttered.
“Nevertheless, the agreement was that as soon as my dad could pay him back, Grant would sell the ranch back to him at the same cost. But then Grant died and left my dad in a bind.”
“Is there a contract for that agreement?” Madeline asked.
“Nope,” Jackson said, clearly knowing where she was going with it.
“Not to put too fine a point on it…” Luke said, “but this is my family’s home. This is where I grew up.”
Madeline suddenly smiled. “Well then, great! That solves our problem, doesn’t it? You can buy it back.”
Luke clenched his jaw. “Can’t buy it yet,” he said tightly and stared into Madeline’s blue eyes. She held his gaze, but her expression went from hopeful to stoic. She understood. She was a realtor, a negotiator, she was used to this. And Luke guessed she was not the type to be swayed by sentimentality.
“Well!” Jackson said brightly. “Like I said, lots to sort out.”
“For God’s sake,” Emma said, and got up, sauntering off with a Diet Coke in hand, apparently in search of bourbon.
TEN
It was almost dusk when Madeline made her way back to Pine River. She was exhausted, light-headed, her head pounding and her stomach rumbling with hunger almost to the point of nausea.
It was true that she did not deal well with stress. Not her own, anyway. She was great at talking Trudi off a ledge, and soothing little girls who felt slighted on the soccer field. But her own stress was a different matter entirely. She tended to internalize it.
She usually avoided it with careful planning. It was Madeline’s experience that when things were planned, when events unfolded according to schedule, that expectations were managed. Yes, it was all about managing expectations, and Jackson sucked at it. For example, this day would have gone a lot smoother if he’d just put some thought into how to present the issues. But between his glib attempts to appease them, and Libby’s enthusiasm for that damn reunion, and Emma’s cool indifference, Madeline had felt like she was treading water.
At some point, they’d agreed to take a break—Emma was determined to find some booze in that house. Madeline had sat on the porch, rubbing her temples, and Luke had come to sit next to her. God, but that man was good-looking. He looked like he’d jumped right out of an ad for Dinty Moore stew. He sat closely, his leg lightly touching hers. Madeline was fixated on his leg. Thick and powerful, dwarfing hers, and oh, so sexy.
He’d bent his head to look at her. “Are you okay?”
Beside the fact that her head was exploding, her feet were numb, and she couldn’t shake the feeling of fatigue or chill, she was perfectly fine. “I’m good,” she’d said, and forced a smile.
He’d nodded, squinted out over the landscape and had said, “I gather this is a little like having a tornado touch down in your life.”
“Yes,” she’d said, relieved that someone understood. “Yours too?”
“A little,” he agreed.