Which left the problems with the build site. Thankfully, nothing as bad as she had feared. Nothing as minor as she'd hoped.

A sinkhole had opened up, and until it had been completely stabilized, they couldn't exactly put down foundation, could they?

They were already well under way working on that, but it wouldn't be finished for days. Possibly as much as a week. There was a little s.p.a.ce for error. Probably enough s.p.a.ce, and if there wasn't enough s.p.a.ce, then plans just got changed.

Morgan tried to remind herself that they'd set aggressive goals for themselves. There was no reason that every goal had to be hit, as if they were some kind of supermen.

If you fall short of an 'aggressive' timeline by a few days, you're still months ahead of the compet.i.tion. But there's a good deal of embarra.s.sment involved with not being able to say that you were completely on track the entire time.

And as the new head of a national company, with no public experience running a company-regardless of what happened behind closed doors after her father got sick-her reputation needs to be stainless.

Which is why, even though it's hardly a big deal, she's not going to leave this detail out of the weekly call back to the board in Nevada.

Maybe she should. Maybe she'd just be spooking them. But it's a decision that needs to be made, and she's just made it.

Her heart thumps loudly in her chest. No problem. No problem. She can do this. She picks up the phone and dials in to the conference call.

A minute later she's in.

"Who do we have?"

A round of voices respond. She ticks them off in her head. Peter's here, James is here, Ron is here, Shane is here, Andrea's here. Which leaves Will, Lana, and Craig.

n.o.body talks. It's not a friendly chat. No doubt every one of them is looking to get this over with, but it's something that needs to be done. n.o.body likes to have these talks; it takes time out of the day, and involves a serious risk that they're going to hear something that they very much don't like.

But on the other hand, it's better to know what's happening at Lowe Industrial than to not know, and it's better for Morgan to make sure that they're not freaking out at the first media reports that reach their ears, because they already know what's happening.

Because she's already made her bi-monthly report on how things are really going around the build site, around the factory, and on the financial side of things.

Lana arrives next. She's perhaps the bubbliest of the lot of them; the only knock-on effect it has is that she sounds a little more energetic when she says h.e.l.lo.

Will and Craig arrive minutes later.

"That's everyone here, then?"

Everyone goes through again. It's all of them. Morgan takes a deep breath and holds it in. Her heart beat speeds up a little with the extra oxygen, and when she breathes out, it slows down again.

"First order of business," she begins. "The Wyoming factories."

She looks down at the notes in front of her. She knows what they say, and the words make good sense in her head, but it feels like her eyes aren't reading them correctly somehow. She does her best to ignore the nerves that keep threatening to crop up.

"I can confidently say, we haven't hit any major snags. We've got a small delay, in the form of some unstable ground on the Western campus, but we've already identified the problem. A fix shouldn't add more than two days to the total build time, and our men are confident that they won't find any further issues."

Her fingers tap on the table, waiting for someone to break the silence. She should be getting some sort of reaction... right?

"Good news, then?"

"I mean, you always hope for the best, but you prepare for the worst. In this case, I think we're closer to the best-case than the worst-case."

The ton of the conversation seems to be in general agreement.

"Second. I've taken on a little bit of a side project, but one that I think will pay out significant dividends when it pays off."

She takes a breath in and hopes that n.o.body asks specifically how it's going.

"You'll all be aware of what I'm referring to when I say that I'm looking at purchasing the Callahan ranch. I'm not quite to the stage of negotiating on price yet, but I'm confident-"

"Your father was adamant that the man wouldn't sell. What makes you think that this time is any different?"

It takes a real effort for Morgan to swallow the response that pops into her head first.

The biggest difference is that he was a sh.e.l.l of the man who she knew growing up. He'd been knocking on heaven's door for months up to that point. It was amazing that he managed to get out of bed every morning, and Morgan was thankful for every second that she had with him.

But he was in no position to try to do any negotiating. It was an absolute and utter wonder that he'd bought what property he had. But he wasn't at his best, and he wasn't prepared to deal with a difficult case like Phil Callahan's.

She's not willing to say that, though. Not in the least bit. Because that would mean throwing her father and his memory right under the bus. And not only didn't she want to do that, but it wouldn't even serve any purpose.

"Well, to start, as I said I've been treating this as a long-term project. As a matter of course, Mr. Callahan doesn't intend to sell. But that's only a starting position, of course.

"There's no reason to a.s.sume that under the circ.u.mstances, he might not change his mind, or that I might find some situation in which he might be more willing to part with the land.

"If I can find that circ.u.mstance, then I can try to triage the situation and put us both into positions where we're happy with the outcome. In our case, buying that specific plot of land, which enables easy and convenient housing for Lowe employees, as well as more direct transportation between the Eastern and Western factories."

She lets her shoulders slump a little forward. No problem. No reason to be stressed. It's fine. It's easy. She answered the question sufficiently. No doubt about it.

The voices on the other end of the line don't respond right away.

"Any thoughts or objections?"

"None on my end," comes the first response. n.o.body counters it with objections of their own. Perfect.

"Now, if that's all for the new business, I'd like to bring your attention to our other locations, which you'll be more familiar with. I'm confident that there aren't going to be any surprises for any of you here, but let's go through some of these reports together..."

She turns the page on her notes.

The good news was that she couldn't have done any better than that. The bad news was, now she'd promised the Callahan ranch, and she had no way to be sure she could deliver on that.

Chapter Seventeen.

Glen always has a big smile on his face. It's not the least bit genuine, but then again, n.o.body who knows the man expects it to be. He's never been genuine in his entire life.

Everything he's ever done has been a con masked behind a friendly smile and a pretty face. It's not that he's hard to read. He's easy to read, as long as you believe his act that he likes everything and is always happy with the results you're showing.

He's brought along a couple of guys. It's hard to know for sure how they're going to respond to the Black, especially with how wild he is. He should've been trained by now. But the physical pieces of a champion thoroughbred are all there.

They introduce themselves with names that immediately leave Philip's mind, in one ear and straight out the other.

The scout is short-ish and has a penetrating sort of look to him, while the guy there to look through the doc.u.mentation is taller and wears a suit with arms that are way too short for him.

"Morning," he says. The weather is good. If it had started raining, all that Philip knows for sure is, he would've been p.i.s.sed. Because sight-unseen would spell the death of this sale, and because now he needs to get the money a h.e.l.l of a lot faster than he did before. "The horse is through here."

They head through the stable entrance. There's an animal smell in the air, but it's the same one that they're all used to in the first place.

"He's a big one," Callahan offers as they stop in front of the stall. The stallion isn't being quite as rowdy as he usually is. They might not even get bit this time, if he's feeling particularly generous.

Then again, maybe he's not feeling particularly generous. Philip's hand shouldn't have been reaching into the stall, but the positioning, leaning in like that... it had just seemed fine at the time.

"He's an ornery b.a.s.t.a.r.d, ain't he?" Glen offers that one. The same smile. As if that were perfect. And, to an extent, it is. You want to have an ornery son of a gun if you want a good horse. A horse that can't stand to lose.

"Sure, but you get yourself a solid trainer, and you can work that out."

"He's had his shots? All up on that?"

"Sure. I should've had you in here a year back, but fact is that-"

"Don't mention it," Glen says. He's still smiling. "We understand just fine, Phil. How's he run?"

"Like the d.a.m.n wind. And if you don't have a place for him on a race track, he bucks like a son of a b.i.t.c.h, too."

Glen looks in at the horse. His fingers are carefully placed just out of reach of the horse's teeth, and the Black is watching to make sure that they stay there. Or, more likely, to make sure that if they don't, he'll be ready.

"Do we get to see him out of the stall?"

"Would you like to?"

"Yeah, sure. Let's see him."

"Well, I'll warn you-he ain't too good with a saddle. We got him to stay still, more or less, but that's about as far as it goes."

"It'll have to do. Go on, now. I don't make deals on horses I ain't barely even seen yet."

The trainer comes in and helps with saddling the horse up. The boys would probably be a little annoyed they aren't there to see how quick it goes. That's how it works when you let a pro do his work, rather than a couple twenty-year-olds with fantasies of being rodeo stars.

They guide the stallion out. He pulls at the reins, but that's to be expected. He's still not used to the bit, still not used to any of it. But in the end, he comes along. He'd have to, in the end, but he realizes it before they have to drag him out.

The trainer gets up on the horse, and the black immediately starts in with his rodeo routine, trying to throw the man off. He sticks on. It doesn't take near as long as the last time for the black to get the notion that the man ain't coming off.

That's less on account of any special skill-though the man does seem to get the horse calm admirably well-as the black's last experience with the saddle starting to sink in. There's no way out of it, so he might as well just learn to deal with it.

The trainer takes him for a lap around. The horse takes commands surprisingly well, considering his demeanor. And then he gets the horse going faster, faster still. It's rough going, of course.

There's no reason that the horse should know anything about what it's supposed to be doing. It's been trained exactly not at all. Barely saddle-broken. But the way that the tall man, his suit jacket left hanging in the stables, has that big black monster running around- It's still hard to say what Glen is thinking. The smile on his face might be wider, but it might be the same. It's always hard to tell. Philip throws away the idea of trying to get a read on Glen. A read on the trainer-well, that can come, after he gets off the horse.

But the scout's taking notes, either way. Philip knows better than to look at them. He writes something else down a second later, looks back up at the horse.

Phil Callahan lets out a long breath. Easy pickings. No problem. He can handle these guys. Now he's just got to make sure that nothing else can go wrong. Because if it can, it will, and with a horse this mean-spirited, it's bound to happen sooner than later.

Almost in spite of his worries, the horse draws up to a stop, and the trainer jumps off. He confers with Glen in whispers over the fence. Philip does his best not to listen.

That doesn't change the fact that he can see Glen's smile dip, just a little. He's thinking about something. The first read of the day. A serious thought. If he was just going to walk away from the horse, then he wouldn't think about much.

Now the only question is, can Callahan get the money he needs, or is this meeting going to end with him needing to make another round of calls?

Chapter Eighteen.

At this point, it was hard to say what Morgan wanted more-to get drunk, or to have s.e.x. Neither was going to happen. Not if she had her way. But that didn't mean that she wasn't thinking about it, because she absolutely was thinking about it.

The week had been a long one. No doubt about that. And as she wanted, well, whatever the h.e.l.l it was that she wanted, one thought kept occurring to her.

Bubbling up out of her chest. Nothing she could to stop it, in spite of her best efforts. She didn't know how it would go in either case. She'd f.u.c.ked up badly enough the first time she'd had dinner with him.

She'd been afraid to talk to Phil Callahan since the night that they got too intimate for any business relationship. But now, she was too tired for business, and the fact was, she'd promised to get the property in far too public a way to back off now.

She takes a deep breath and gets the phone out, dials a number. Callahan's number.

To her surprise he answers. "Yes?"

"h.e.l.lo, um." She shouldn't have called. Stupid. "This is Morgan Lowe. This is Mr. Callahan, yes?"

"Speaking. What can I do for you, Miss Lowe?"

"I just thought-" I just thought I'd like to go out with you for a bit. Get some drinks. Maybe go back to your place. Or mine. Doesn't matter. "-Maybe we could, I don't know. Get some dinner. Maybe we could talk about your property."

He lets out a long breath. "Alright. Sure. I'm not saying I'm selling, but fine. We'll talk about it."

He lets out a breath again. He's not happy about it, but he's considering it, which is a big change from before. Whatever happened, Morgan's gut tells her that he needs the money.

She should be happier. She should be practically G.o.d d.a.m.ned ecstatic. A single crack in the armor means that she's seventy-five percent of the way there. The hardest part is getting them to admit that they might sell.

Once you've got that, it's like untying a knot. You just pick at the parts you can see until you get something solid, and then you get it to come apart. Piece by piece.

Before that, you just have a big ball of nothing, and you have to hope to h.e.l.l that it turns into something.