Page 17

“Well, like Maggie asked me, do you want the good news or the bad?”

He regarded her warily. “Hmmm. Bad news first.”

Jill gritted her teeth. “Suit yourself. Promise you won’t shoot the messenger?”

“Shit. It’s that bad?”

She broke into a pained grin and shrugged, and he marveled at how her smile really lit up the place. He didn’t even need the candle anymore.

“You won’t be working for MBE anymore.”

For a second, he rejoiced. Hell yeah. That was what he’d been hoping for. “I’m struggling to see how that’s bad news.”

Jill sipped at her glass of white wine. “You don’t like working for your brother?”

It was Jax’s turn to shrug. “Not so much that I don’t like working for him as it isn’t my calling. I came back a few years ago—damn, nearly ten, actually—to help out when he needed me, and I didn’t ever think I could leave. But can I tell you something I haven’t even told him yet? You have to promise not to say anything to Maggie.”

“Okay,” she hedged, leaning closer to him. It had the effect of her calf touching his, too. God, he felt lighter than he had in years.

“I got another job. So your news is pretty good timing. I’ll actually be—”

“Wait,” she said, putting up a hand. Her frown went all the way to her furrowed brows. He took a long gulp of his malbec and let it slide down his throat.

“You misunderstood me. You and I are going to run Steel Born together, and Bennett is going to handle the paperwork for MBE from home so he can be with Maggie.”

He choked on the remaining wine in his throat, the burn waking him up to what she’d said. “Are you kidding me?” The weight that had lifted slammed back onto his shoulders as she shook her head.

“I’m afraid not.” She put a hand on his knee, light but there. It did the trick to calm his racing heart enough that he didn’t launch straight to panic. “If we don’t do this, they’ll merge the companies.”

“And? Why would that be such a bad thing?”

“Um, because part of our success is that we’re a female-owned and operated business, and part of yours is that you’re three generations of family-run. Did you seriously give up a decade of your life to see things go under in the end?”

He grumbled something about not wanting to give up the next ten years of his life, either. But she had a point. Jax had come back to help Bennett see his dream through; and they’d done that and more. The combined success of Bennett’s insight and Jax’s contacts from the rodeo circuit had led to unparalleled success. To lose it now would be to lose a family legacy.

Shit. “You’d be a good boxer.”

She stared at him like he’d lost his mind. Maybe he had. “No one else I know can throw a one-two punch like you and make it sound like you’re doing me a favor.”

Jill’s mouth twisted into an apologetic smile. “But like I said, I think we can find a way to work for us, especially if you have another job lined up.”

“How the hell are we gonna do that? I start in January, and I’m sure you don’t want to live in Deer Creek.”

“Exactly. The way I see it, if we can get through the Cattleman’s Festival—”

“Cattleman’s Association fair,” he corrected.

“Yeah, that. If we can keep operations improving till then, we can go our separate ways. We just have to show them nothing’s going to change before that. Or better yet, that we’re improving things. By then, they’ll trust us not to run both companies into the ground. Then I can run Steel Born, and you can go wherever it is you’re going.”

“So that’s your goal? To run Steel Born?”

She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. “Half of it anyway. I want to be equal partners with Maggie since I helped her get this off the ground. You’re leaving your brother’s company, so I don’t expect you to understand—”

“No,” he said. “I get it. You just want what you’re due and what you love.”

She nodded. If he could work as a ranch manager instead of in admin, he’d never leave. But Bennett considered it a waste of Jax’s other talents to work manual labor like that. Maybe it was, but he loved working with animals and ranch hands—not on some spreadsheet that chronicled others’ work. Leaving MBE was leaving his own legacy and even though it was his choice, it came with a stinging loss of its own.

“So, you need me to do this as much as Bennett and Maggie do.”