Page 65 of Acadia Falls

“I just said I could come to New York.” Jack’s voice was gravelly.

I looked him dead in the eye. “You can’t ever do that, Jack. Not ever.”

He stood up again. “Okay. I see how it is.”

“No, no—it’s not that. Sit down, would you?” I pleaded.

He looked at me warily but begrudgingly obliged.

Once I was sure he wasn’t going to run away, I said, “I would be honored if you came to New York to see me, but you can’t. There are rats in New York. And steaming piles of trash. And people everywhere. And dead cats on the sidewalk.”

He watched me. He held very, very still.

“Jack Brennan can’t be wasting a day of his life in a place like that! You need to be here, with the mountains and the ocean and all the clean air.” I inhaled deeply. “Jack Brennan needs to be home. Fishing, just like his father did.”

“I know, but… It’s the kind of money you don’t say no to.” Jack shook his head. “It’s a billion dollars.”

“Woah.” My eyes widened. “You didn’t say it was a billion!”

“Well, it is.” He smiled sheepishly. “So I guess if I came to New York, I could afford to pay someone to walk in front of me on the sidewalk and clear out the dead cats.”

“Ha! Yeah, you could!” I wrinkled my nose. “But New York is so not you. You hate it.”

“I really do,” he admitted.

“I think it’s nice that you offered to visit me there.”

“It wasn’t just nice.” Jack shrugged. “There’s definitely some self-interest involved.”

“But I thought…” A wave of insecurity swept through me. “I thought you weren’t self-interested in me.”

“Well, that’s because I was being a jerk. I am very self-interested in you.” He got up and took the seat next to mine and put his hand on my leg. “Very, very self-interested in you.”

“Oh.” My heart literally skipped a beat. “Huh.”

“I would be a fool if I wasn’t, Maran.” Jack squeezed my thigh. “And this fool finally woke up.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He gazed at me. “So… Is it okay if I hire someone to clean the dead cats from my path and come see you in New York?”

“Of course.” Jack Brennan was going to come see me in New York! That was a big deal for him, and I knew it.

I stared at his handsome face. I hadn’t known Jack for long, but the lines in his forehead, the blue of his eyes, and the inviting scruff of his multicolored beard had already become dear to me. I could stare at him all day, every day.

If I could actually do that? That would be heaven.

But right now, I had to help him. My lawyer radar was going off. A billion dollars was a lot of money, even to someone like Everly Reyes. That meant she was very motivated to get this contract signed. That meant Jack and his family had some leverage and more room to negotiate than they might realize.

“Well, let’s just think about this.” I put my hand on top of his, thrilled to be touching him again. “Everly Reyes is going to pay you a billion dollars for your rights. She wants this manganese pretty bad, huh?”

He nodded. “Yes, she does.”

“But maybe you could just give her the manganese, not your fishing rights. She probably doesn’t want anything to do with lobstering.” My lawyer brain sprang into action. “What about a license, huh?”

His brow furrowed. “I don’t know what you mean.”

My mind started rolling a mile a minute. “A license is when you give someone the right to do something that would otherwise be considered illegal—in this case, trespassing—but you still keep ownership of your rights. In other words, you sell Everly Reyes the right to mine for manganese but you retain sole ownership of your route. Let me think how you could do this…”