had really been one at all, disappeared. “Anyway, your hive right now is...weakening. It’s not completely fallen apart, but it’s got some structural damage from the last few months.” He brought up the accounting program and started leading her through the reports she’d already pored over herself. Every percentage he gave her, every figure he pointed to, told her the same thing.
She drew up a chair and perched on the edge. The numbers on the screen blended together, a confusing jumble that she barely understood on her best day. There were so many working parts to a business this size. Too many, it seemed, for one person to control. At least this particular person.
But if she didn’t sit in her father’s chair, then who would? Certainly not Mac Barlow, who would sell it off in pieces, dismantling the last remaining bits of Willy Jay Hillstrand. She was the only one who loved her father enough to keep it moving forward, to keep the legacy going.
When Mac had finished reviewing the reports with her, and thus depressing Savannah even more, she pushed back and let out a sigh. “Then what would you do if you were me?”
A grin quirked up the side of Mac’s mouth. It was a nice grin, made his eyes light up, softened everything about him. He went from being the evil corporate raider to...a guy. Just a guy. Okay, just a very handsome guy.
Which was the last thing she needed in her life. She’d fallen for more than one Southern charmer, only to realize charm didn’t equal gentleman. Savannah had sworn off dating, at least for the foreseeable future.
“I see what you’re doing.” The grin widened. “Are you asking me to help you rebuild your company so that you can keep it running?”
“And out of your evil clutches.” She smiled. Maybe if she asked him nicely he’d help her. Be the mentor she needed. Okay, so maybe she was being way too Pollyanna here, but Savannah was desperate for some guidance. Might as well be honest. “Yes, I am doing exactly that.”
“And why would I help you?”
“Because there is more to life than tearing down companies, Mac Barlow.” She leaned toward him and caught his blue-eyed gaze. She wanted to believe the nice guy she had glimpsed really existed. That he could be persuaded to help instead of destroy. “How about building one up instead?”
“You are reading me wrong, Savannah. I am not in the business of building things. I make money, plain and simple. As quickly as possible. I don’t nurture struggling firms along,” he said. “I buy, I sell, I make a profit and I move on.”
Yet he hadn’t sold the three firms he’d bought in the past six months. Nor had he said he was going to. And then there was the one tiny company he’d bought several years ago and restarted, a company he still owned as far as she could tell. She’d done her research on him, too, and she’d found it interesting that Mac was shifting gears. Why, she wasn’t sure, and he clearly wasn’t about to explain. But the information opened a tiny window of trust and hope for Savannah. Maybe there was a chance—a teeny one—that given enough time, she could convince Mac that his relentless pursuit of Hillstrand Solar was a waste of time. “Wouldn’t you like to do a good deed for the day?”
He chuckled. “Do I look like the Boy Scout type to you?”
“Maybe the renegade Boy Scout.”
That made him laugh again. She liked it when he laughed. It seemed to ease everything about him, and make an already-attractive man ten times more attractive. Not that she was interested in him, of course. Just his brain.
Uh-huh.
Amusement lit his features. “And what is this good deed you want me to do?”
“Just offer me some business advice.”
“That undermines my intentions.”
She shrugged. “Call it corporate goodwill.”
He scoffed. “You haven’t been a CEO for very long, Miss Hillstrand. In business, there is no such thing. Everything is driven by—”
“Money, yes, I know. You said that already.” She took a sip of the soda. She may be too late for all this, and in the end forced, as her father used to say, to sink the ship in order to save the passengers. But she had to at least try, or she’d hate herself for letting the company fall apart. “You already own several other green companies. Maybe those could partner with mine and—”
“That...wouldn’t be a good idea. I’m not trying to build a green empire here, just do what I do best. Buy and sell.”
She worried her bottom lip. “Okay, then how about this? While you are here in town, you meet with me, talk about the business, give me advice I can implement, and I will give it one month. If at the end of the month the business is still sinking under my direction, I will sell it to you at a very fair price.”
He considered her, his face dark and unreadable. Mac should have been a poker player, because nothing in his eyes or set of his mouth gave away what he was thinking. A long moment passed while she stood there trying not to fidget with the soda bottle.
“Help you. This week.”
“Yup.”
“I am supposed to spend time with my family while I’m here in Stone Gap.”
So Mac Barlow was from Stone Gap. His corporate bios she’d found on the web had mentioned the state, but not town he hailed from. She hadn’t lived in Stone Gap very long—only the past couple of years—but never had she thought that corporate raider Mac Barlow could be related to the nice Barlows she had met, including Luke, who ran the local auto-repair shop. “I didn’t realize you were related to the Barlows who live here.”
“Let me guess. You thought there was no way my charming brothers could have anything in common with someone like me, a coldhearted bastard who is all about the bottom line.”
A mind reader, too. “Well...if the description fits.”
He laughed. “I assure you, we are related. And as much as I love my family, I’d rather limit my time with them. My family is perfectly great, but there are some...issues I’d rather not address right now and my brothers have a way of ferreting out anything I don’t want them to know.” A ghost of a smile whispered across Mac’s face.
For a moment, that smile made him look handsome, desirable. The kind of guy you’d sit down with at the end of a long day with a glass of wine and a view of the water. The kind of guy who would decorate the Christmas tree with you, then turn off all the lights in the house so you both could lie underneath it, bathed in the glow.
Good Lord. Now she was waxing romantic about the corporate raider who wanted to destroy her family’s pride and joy. She really needed to focus on something other than his quick smile. Because even a lion could smile—right before it devoured you whole.
She wanted to hate him. She really did. And a part of her sort of did. But the part that had been intrigued by that smile wondered if perhaps a beating heart lurked beneath the button-down shirt and leather jacket.
She perched on the edge of the desk. “You know, if you agree to my plan, people might start to call you nice and charming, too.”
He chuckled. “That’s your best reason for why I should help you? To change public perception?”
