Her voice wavered a little, her composure wobbled, a momentary break in the businesslike facade of Savannah Hillstrand. “He would be heartbroken if I sold it off.”
“And like I said, this isn’t personal.” He said the words, but there was something in him that was bothered by the tears welling in her eyes, that forlorn pencil on the floor. It had to be being back in the Stone Gap, because never before had Mac been so bothered by the decisions he made. Or the condemnation of one stubborn CEO. Stubborn and beautiful, he amended.
“The best time to sell is before the company runs itself into the ground,” Mac said, his tone growing gentle. “I understand you are trying to keep it afloat, and I admire you for that. I really do. But it’s better for you to give it a chance to keep on going with me than to watch it dissolve in the next few months.” He hesitated. “Look, I’d like to make you a fair offer based on the financials. Why don’t we go over the books together?”
Then he could deal with columns and numbers, instead of this heartbroken woman who wanted to hold on to an already-fading family legacy.
Her face fell, and Mac felt like a jerk. “I’m not saying you’re right, because I don’t think you are. But...” The fight had gone from her shoulders, the fire in her eyes extinguished. For a second, Mac wanted to take it all back, get on his motorcycle and leave town. But then he remembered his own mantra about this not being personal and steeled himself against that look in her eyes.
“Maybe it would be worth at least hearing you out,” Savannah said. “In case—and I mean that as a very slim just in case—I have a change of heart in the future.”
“It’s always better to be armed with information before you make a decision.” He was winning the argument but it wasn’t giving him any kind of satisfaction. Why? This was what he lived for—the pursuit, the capture, the success. But this time he didn’t want to win so much as he wanted to...
See Savannah Hillstrand smile again. Crazy thoughts.
She nodded. Then her gaze cut away. “My father’s computer is this one.”
“That mess is your father’s workspace?”
She smiled ruefully. “It’s organized chaos.”
“You got one word right,” he muttered. “He doesn’t have his own office?”
“My father never liked offices. He wanted to be with the people who worked so hard for him. So he opted to have a cubicle just like everyone else.” She ran a hand over the back of one of the chairs, almost as if Willy Jay were sitting in it right now. “He said he did it so he never forgot what was important.”
“And what was that?” Mac asked. Because, for some reason he couldn’t fathom, the answer to that question was impossibly important to him right now.
Savannah lifted her gaze to his, her deep green eyes reminding Mac of the dark, mysterious woods of North Carolina, where everything was lush and full. “That none of this was about business. It was personal. It was...family.”
Savannah took the elevator down to the fourth floor, then went into the break room and stood in the darkened space for a long time beside the picture of her father, taken years ago at an employee picnic, before he’d gotten sick.
She had known this day would come, known it from the moment she had sat in her father’s chair and realized she had no idea what she was doing, but a part of her somehow had kept thinking maybe Mac Barlow would give up and she would find some miracle CEO knowledge in the back of her brain.
Not that she hadn’t thought about selling the company. Every time an offer came in from Mac Barlow, and the couple others that she had fielded from her competitors, she’d weighed it against the worries on her shoulders. From the day her father died, Savannah had been grieving and overwhelmed. Stepping into her father’s shoes had been a Herculean task. She’d loved her father dearly, but he had been the one person who knew how this company ticked. He’d always promised to take her under his wing and show her the ropes, but the heart attack that killed him had come while he was still relatively young and not ready.
Not that Savannah had ever really planned to be a part of the company. Her father had asked her time and time again to be a part of his dream, but her heart had led her in other directions. Savannah had worked in all facets of the company at one time or another, but had never been the one in charge; never wanted to be the one in charge. It wasn’t until she’d actually sat at her father’s desk that she’d realized how many millions of decisions had to be made on a daily basis. Tiny decisions that could alter the course of the profits, and big decisions that could send the business off a cliff.
And it was too late to ask him how to handle it all.
Now, four months later, she still hadn’t really found her groove. She was trying, but it was far harder than she’d expected to live up to her father’s example. To keep his Hillstrand Solar family together.
And that was what it was—her father’s family. Not hers. His dream—not hers. But she’d made a promise, and whatever it took, Savannah would keep that promise.
Now Mac Barlow wanted to break up the family. And he refused to give up, no matter how many times she told him no.
The problem was he had a point. When he’d talked about the company sinking and the lifeboat he was offering, she’d finally admitted the truth to herself. Her four months of floundering around like a fish out of water had done their damage to the bottom line. Thus far she’d held off laying off any employees, but truth be told she was losing money and customers at an alarming rate, and she wasn’t sure how to recover.
Maybe Mac was right. Maybe the company would be better off in his hands. But the people who worked here...
She leaned against the counter and took in several deep breaths. She needed a plan. Some time to think. She hadn’t taken off so much as an afternoon since her father died—hence being here on yet another Sunday—and that had left her feeling even more snowed under by a growing workload.
What she needed was a trip to the old house. A few hours along the water, where the air was clear and the worries seemed far away. Some time sanding down the damaged deck or scraping off the old paint on the dining room wainscoting. In those moments when she was deconstructing and rebuilding, uncovering and restoring, she found a kind of Zen. There was something calming about taking a house that was ready to crumble at the slightest gust of wind and bring it back to its former glory. Even now she itched to be there, to take a few minutes or a few hours to breathe life into those old, familiar walls. There she knew she could make some decisions. Maybe even come up with a plan to save everyone’s job going forward.
Except how was she supposed to do that? She could save historic homes, but she had no idea what to do when it came to saving her father’s legacy.
Promise me, you’ll keep it running, Willie Jay had said before he died. Those people depended on me, and now they’re gonna depend on you.
She touched the picture of her father. “Oh, Dad, I wish you were here.” She desperately needed a mentor, someone to help her navigate the choppy waters. Someone who had turned around companies before. Someone who knew how to make their profits grow.
Her
