CHAPTER 5
Jake
“Have you made a decision on buying the Sioux Falls plant?” Kelly asks me.
I glance up from the balance sheet I’d been reviewing to my chief operations officer, Kelly Marshburn. She’s in a chair opposite my desk, one long leg crossed over the other, swinging her foot casually.
Except it’s not really a casual move. Kelly can’t sit still and always has to have some part of her body moving.
I know this and a hundred other things about her because she’s my ex-wife. She’s also brilliant, beautiful, and, because we parted amicably, she still works by my side at MCD Ventures.
“Outside of the build-out costs, it’s a no brainer,” I tell her. “The question is what will we do with the plant in Tuscaloosa?”
My main manufacturing plant for computer motherboards is in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Kelly brought a plant for sale in South Dakota to my attention, and it’s of interest to us because there are no corporate taxes in that state. We’d have a big expenditure of costs to build-out the plant to produce our product, but we’d make up for it within a decade because of the better tax benefits.
“Break it apart and sell it,” she says with a shrug. “Or just keep a nominal operation there and run it at a loss for the deductions.”
Damn taxes. Seems like all I do is maneuver around them, looking for any loophole that will help me save money. It’s why I bought Farrington Farms, although not the only reason.
“Have Dan run some numbers on selling it versus running it for a loss,” I tell her as my gaze drops back down to the balance sheet. “Then give me your recommendation.”
I’ll most likely rubber stamp it because when I said Kelly was brilliant, I mean like genius-level brilliant. She was one of my professors at Kellogg when I was getting my MBA, and yeah… I slept with my teacher. I was twenty-five, fresh off an injury ending my pro-football career, and wanting to enhance my undergraduate degree. I was one of those rarities in that I completed my degree before I entered the draft. Kelly was twenty-nine, and she was the sexiest professor I’d ever seen.
I’d married her by the time she turned thirty.
When Kelly and I decided to split, it was definitely amicable, but that didn’t mean we weren’t heartbroken it couldn’t work. But as my mom told me the day I signed the divorce papers, “Marriage is a long game where you play by the same rules. But as people, we are always changing… evolving. You either grow together, or you grow apart.”
It was the best advice she ever gave me, as it made me realize it was okay that Kelly and I didn’t work. We were married for ten years and the fall of our marriage rested on the fact I wanted to have kids, and Kelly did not.
This wasn’t something we realized in just one day. Our marriage first started out based on a keen mutual attraction. That developed into a solid companionship, and then we went into business together. Kids weren’t something we really discussed, although it turns out I just assumed she’d want them one day, and she just assumed I did not.
Still, I regret nothing. Kelly was my first real love, and I continue to love her in a brotherly way now. I’m so damn lucky that we have the ability to work side by side.
“So how goes the farm life?” Kelly asks, and my head pops back up to look at her. She’s got a smirk on her face, because she thought it was adorable I bought a farm. This is the first time I’ve had a chance to talk to her since I got back to Chicago yesterday.
“Well, my foreman quit before I even got there, the goats got out, and I ruined my clothes trying to run them down. I got the local vet to help me out, but she demanded I work off my bill in her clinic rather than take my money.”
Kelly snickers, and I glare at her.
“What did you do about your foreman problem?” she asks, getting back to business. She is a business woman at heart.
“I hired someone else luckily,” I tell her.
“Someone you trust?” she inquires.
“Come on, Kell,” I tease her. “We hire people all the time. We don’t have time to do thorough psychological evaluations to determine if they’re trustworthy.”
I then pick up the balance sheet to hand it across the desk to her. “Tell Dan this looks fine.”
Standing from her chair, Kelly snags the balance sheet from my hand. “Want to grab dinner tonight?”
“Yeah, sure,” I say and then, as an afterthought. “Where’s Doug?”
Doug is the man she’s been dating since we divorced. He’s an entrepreneur himself, older than her by almost fifteen years and doesn’t have children on the agenda. I bet they’ll marry soon, probably something low key. I won’t be surprised if she comes into the office one day and just announces she did it.
“He’s in New York,” she says, and it should sting a little over the wistful sound of her voice, but it doesn’t. I’m glad she’s happy.
“Seven o’clock?” I ask her.
“Sounds good. Meet you in the lobby.”
And with that, she’s gone. Back to her corner office on the opposite side of the building where she will be elbows deep into the grind for the rest of the day. We share the same work ethic.
I turn to my laptop and start going through emails. I normally will have these puppies cleaned out by the time I go to sleep Sunday evenings, as I like having a fresh, empty email box on Monday morning. But I was exhausted by the time I got back yesterday.
Or rather… Laken Mancinkus exhausted me.
My lips curve up at the sweet and sexy memories of my night with her Saturday. It was an epic one-night stand, which isn’t my usual modus operandi. I’m all about having real companionship in my relationships, but there was something about Laken that made her absolutely irresistible to me. There was no second guessing myself when I propositioned her.
Even when we woke up the next morning and the alcohol had dissipated, I had no regrets. None on her part either, and I know this because she was all laughs and joking about our hookup, which may have only been for one night, but it wasn’t only one time if you know what I mean.
I thought it might be hard to tear myself away from Laken that morning, but she gave me no choice. She hopped out of bed remarking she had a ton of stuff to do that day, starting with receiving a delivery of lumber at the house. I had no choice but to follow her to the door when she told me I needed to get going.
She gave me a quick, hard kiss on the mouth. Eyes all sparkling with playfulness, she patted me on my ass and said, “That was fun, Jake. Maybe we should do that again if you ever come back to town.”
And then I was out on the porch and she was shutting the door to Mainer House, which I learned was actually an ancestral home for her, the name Mainer being her mom’s maiden name.
I would be back to Whynot eventually, but not any time soon. Still… if the offer’s there.
I shake my head and refocus myself on my email. I’ve got a multi-million-dollar business to run here. It takes me almost two hours to clean out and respond to everything in my inbox. I spend another thirty minutes with my secretary, going over the week’s agenda, and then it’s time for lunch. Except I don’t leave my desk for lunch because I have too much to do. I usually munch on a protein bar or my secretary will grab me a sandwich.
Today it’s pastrami on rye, which is much better than a protein bar that tastes like cardboard and has the same texture.
I browse my stock portfolio while I eat and respond to a few more emails. I’m not overly deep in thought so when my cell phone rings, I make a grab for it. Normally if I’m deep into work, I’ll ignore it knowing if it were ever my mother and it was an emergency, she would call the office to get ahold of me.
Looking at the screen, I don’t recognize the number but I do the area code. It’s from North Carolina.
Tapping the connect button, I answer hesitantly, “Hello?”
“It’s Laken.” My body immediately tightens at hearing her voice. I have no clue why she’s calling or how, as we did not exchange numbers after our one-night stand. Only a quick goodbye kiss.
“What’s up?” I say casually, trying to sound as if her calling me out of the blue doesn’t have my heart racing.
“You need to come back,” she says, and for a split second, I actually think she’s talking about me coming back to her.
In fact, I almost say, “Whoa there, girl. That’s moving things a little fast, but we’ll see what we can do.”
But then, I really let the tone of her voice infuse me and I can tell she’s not coming on to me. “What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong,” she says with irritation, and a slight pause for emphasis, “is that your foreman, Jenks Peterson,” and this is said with such derision, I actually jerk, “dropped off a very sick, pregnant goat to me and promptly gave me his resignation to pass on to you.”
“He did what?” I practically yell as I come flying out of my chair.
“You don’t need me to repeat it,” she snaps back. “But you have a dehydrated animal here because I’m thinking he didn’t water them over the weekend. I’ve got her on an IV for now. I have no clue what shape the others are in, but I’m heading out there now to check on them.”
A string of curses flies out of my mouth, and Laken doesn’t interrupt me.
But when I finish, she puts the knife in and turns it. “And for your information, I cleaned my desk off yesterday and went through every piece of mail there. Your boy, Jenks, never left me a letter of resignation, so that’s what you get for trusting someone like him.”
I scrub a hand through my hair in frustration. “Look… any chance you can watch over the farm until I can get a new foreman hired? I figure—”
“No,” she says adamantly. “That could take you days or weeks and I’ve got my own business to run. You need to come back. I’ll go out today to make sure everything’s okay, but if you aren’t back here by tomorrow, you’re in very close danger of being accused of animal neglect. And if you don’t know what that means, let me fill you in. It’s a criminal offense.”
God, she’s pissed. And rightfully so.
“I’ll be there,” I mutter. Before I can thank her for the help she is willing to give, she hangs up on me.
“Damn it.” I sigh, and then yell out through my open office door. “Bonnie… get in here.”
Bonnie comes scrambling in, a notepad in her hand, ready to write down any instructions I might impart.
“Schedule me on the next flight out of here to Raleigh. Cancel all my appointments this week or see if Kelly can handle any of them. And let Kelly know I can’t make dinner tonight. I’ll call her later.”
Scribbling furiously, Bonnie nods. When she’s finished, she asks, “Anything else?”
“Yes,” I say as an afterthought. “Put an ad in any paper within sixty miles of Whynot, North Carolina for a farm foreman. Minimum of five years of experience and impeccable references. Salary and benefits commensurate with experience.”
“Yes, sir,” she says before spinning on her heel to leave.
I grab my suit jacket from the back of my office door and head out. I have to get packed up for Whynot. God only knows how long I’ll be there, and I’m realizing that no tax break could be worth this trouble right now.