Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 69794 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69794 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
He’d been a great fountain of information, giving me any advice that I could think to ask for.
He’d helped me find players. He’d helped me trade players. He’d helped me figure out how to talk to the professional soccer league.
He’d pretty much been a lifeline.
One that I was about to bring even further into it with me. Oh, and somehow dig myself out.
“I need help.”
He picked up his Coke Zero and took a sip before turning to me, placing his back against the wall. “What’s up?”
I had no clue how to word this, so I figured…fuck it.
“I want you to buy the majority share of the Cowgirls.” I paused. “And the Condors.”
He blinked. “What?”
I rubbed at my temples with my fingers.
“When my mom and dad divorced, she got thirty percent of the company.”
He waited.
“My sister, brother, and I each have fifteen percent,” I continued. “My brother, my mom, and I are willing to sell you our shares for a hell of a steal.”
He leaned back, his brows furrowing. “But why?”
I scrubbed at my face. “We fucking hate the teams.”
“That still leaves forty percent, though,” he pointed out. “I’d still have to deal with your family, and to be quite truthful, Beau, all that you’ve shared with me makes me not want to deal with that hassle.”
I knew he would say that.
But I had a secret weapon that I knew might convince him.
“It wouldn’t just be my dad and Seraphina you’d have to share the teams with.”
His brows rose. “Because there’s one more person in all of this that also shares ten percent. With hers and yours, that would make you majority owner at seventy percent. More than enough to override any of her decisions with the board.”
“Who?” He frowned.
I grinned then.
“Charleigh.”
He look like I’d struck him.
Charleigh was my younger sister, Sonja’s, best friend.
They’d been inseparable from a very early age. Thick as thieves. You never saw one without seeing the other.
Hell, she’d been at our house so often back before the accident that she might as well have lived there.
Charleigh had also been in the car that day with Sonja and Seraphina.
In the aftermath of the wreck, Charleigh had been seriously injured. So injured, in fact, that we thought we were going to lose her, too.
In hopes of circumventing her parents from suing their pants off, Mom and Dad had decided to gift Charleigh Sonja’s percentage in the companies.
Her parents had accepted on her behalf, of course. It may not have brought her best friend back, or made up for her accident, but it was something. And her parents knew that.
“She owns ten percent of two professional franchises and still dresses and acts like that?”
Court’s lips tipping up were slow and hilarious.
One day, Charleigh and him were going to figure it out. And when that day came, they’d be inseparable.
What better way to get them close than to get them in the same business?
Speaking of Charleigh…
“What am I doing here, loser?”
I twisted on my barstool to find Charleigh behind me.
“Hey there, pumpkin.” I smiled and held out my hands.
She walked into my arms, burying her face into my neck.
She trembled for just a few short seconds then stopped.
A short time of vulnerability was all she would allow herself.
She pulled away from my hug, and I saw over her short head the way Court was absolutely murdering me with his eyes.
My lips twitched as Charleigh stepped away, but not toward Court. Away from him, putting me in between the two of them.
“I have need of you,” I admitted.
“For what?”
I sighed. “Seraphina’s at it again.”
Her scowl was dark. “What the hell did she do this time?”
I told her everything, not leaving out a single thing.
Usually she would know everything that was going on in my life in real time, but she’d been acting a little off lately. Like she was upset with something going on with her life, preoccupied even. She tried to meet up with Lysander and me a couple of times a month, but that’d slacked off right around the time she’d taken her new job at the dog food factory in town.
I had a feeling it had to do with her new boss, but chose not to push her on it.
When she was ready, she’d open up about it.
“I’m down,” Charleigh declared immediately. “Anything that’ll piss off Seraphina is an automatic yes in my book.” She looked between the two of us. “What do you need me to do? Sell my shares to him?”
Court looked at her calculatingly.
“How much does Seraphina hate you?”
Charleigh blinked. “A whole, whole lot.”
Court looked at me to confirm.
“She hates Charleigh most of all,” I agreed. “She hates us—Lysander and me. But she really hates Charleigh.”
“But why?” Court asked. “The worst thing she did was have the nerve to survive her attempted murder.”
“We never really figured that part out,” Charleigh admitted.