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He paused when she shook her head at the unfamiliar term.

“That’s cow shit, honey,” Badde put in, then in an attempt to illustrate, held his hands up about a foot apart. “When they go, it’s pretty wet, and it makes a big brown—”

“I get the picture, Rapp,” she interrupted.

“My apology, Jan,” Santos went on. “I shouldn’t have started with that. It’s just that I felt comfortable enough in your company to use my usual explanation.”

She smiled. “No apology necessary, Mr. Santos.”

“Please. As I said, it’s ‘Mike.’”

He smiled warmly again.

“Mike,” she said, and also smiled warmly.

Badde looked somewhat suspiciously between them again.

He thought: I made a point to call her “honey”—for his benefit as much as hers—and she about chewed off my head with that reply.

Santos went on: “What I meant to say was that I grew up working on the ranch, and didn’t want to spend the rest of my lifetime around the odor that seems to permeate everything.”

She nodded and smiled.

“But,” he continued, “a bigger reason was that after graduating TCU, I still was a Colombian national with a just-about-expired student visa. If I wanted to stay in the States—legally stay in the States, since many simply overstay their visas after they expire and risk deportation—I needed a Plan B. I had my MBA, and crews running the ranch, and decided venture capital looked appealing. When Bobby was in law school, he was learning the ins and outs of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service’s visas.”

“The HB ones we talked about, right?” Badde said.

Santos, being careful not to directly correct him, said, “Right. The specialty occupation H-1Bs are for architects, doctors, engineers, fashion models. They’re good for three years, with a three-year renewal. H-2Bs are the seasonal jobs, like for migrant farm workers. And he was introduced to the EB-5 green card program that fast-tracks you to permanent resident status. He told me about it, and we decided to start OneWorld Private Equity Partners. One of the first things OneWorld did, as a test case you might say, was to get me my citizenship through the EB-5.”

“You mind me asking what you did to qualify for the program?” Badde said.

“Not at all. I thought we’d touched on that in Dallas,” Santos said. “I created the ranch on the Texas border. I had the two already, then bought three smaller ranches and combined them all to create Rio Grande Organic Farms. We grow citrus—grapefruit, oranges, lemons, limes—and run an average of two thousand head of cattle.”

“How did that qualify for the EB-5?” Badde said, then chuckled. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you can’t count the cows, right?”

Santos smiled.

“You’re right. But any foreign national investing at least a million dollars in a U.S. business that creates and maintains at least ten jobs for existing Americans, plus ones for himself and his family members, gets a green card for himself, his wife, and his kids under twenty-one. Which is what we did.”

“You’re married, Mike? And have children?” Jan said.

Santos looked at her and shook his head.

“Still looking for the special someone,” he said.

“Mike, have you ever heard that marriage is like a deck of playing cards?” Badde said.

“Rappe . . . ?” Jan said, her tone warning.

“No, can’t say that I have heard that,” Santos said.

Badde grinned.

“Yeah,” he said, “in the beginning of a marriage you just need two hearts and a diamond . . .”

“Ha,” Santos said.

“. . . But in the end you want a club and a spade.”