didn’t know there were two other people in the hallway with them.
“Persuasive or not, that’s my sticking point,” Jenna insisted.
“Hmm … Maybe I’ll just have to try to figure out how to get you unstuck …”
“Good luck with that,” she said as if she were impervious to anything he might come up with. Even to the hint of flirting in his voice.
He laughed. Not boisterously, but a small, light laugh that almost seemed if they’d shared a private joke. And again, Jenna couldn’t help being a bit drawn in by the man.
But maybe that was how he got what he wanted, she told herself, unwilling to think that sparks might actually be flying between them—which was the way it somehow felt.
His gaze remained on her a moment more before he angled his head in the direction of the closet. “We should let you and Meg get back to what you were doing,” he said then.
“Yeah, I won’t have her help for much longer this afternoon, and I want to get as much work out of her as I can,” Jenna joked.
“It was good to finally meet you, though, Jenna Bowen,” Ian Kincaid said as if he meant it.
“You, too,” Jenna responded.
And while she’d intended that to be only as perfunctory as her gratitude for his condolences had been, it had somehow come out as more than that. As genuine.
Good to meet the man who would very likely be instrumental in dashing her late father’s one wish?
She wasn’t sure how that could be.
And yet the truth was that as he said goodbye to Meg, as Jenna watched him turn and walk out her front door with the Realtor, she was a little sorry to see him go.
“Didn’t I tell you?” Meg whispered from beside her. “He’s nice, isn’t he?”
“Nice to look at,” was all Jenna would admit to as she drank in the sight of the tall, straight-backed, commanding man going outside again.
But whether she admitted it or not, there hadn’t been anything unlikeable about Ian Kincaid.
In fact, a little part of her that she didn’t want to acknowledge had liked him quite a bit …
Chapter Two
Sunday was unseasonably warm for early spring, and Ian decided to take advantage of it and go out to the Bowen property without the Realtor.
The farm wasn’t far from the Mackey and McKendrick compound where he was staying, where he’d stayed on all the occasions he’d come to Northbridge since his long lost brother and sister had contacted him at Christmas. In fact, the Bowen place was almost next door. But he wasn’t going from the compound to the farm.
He was headed out to the Bowen place from Northbridge proper after attending a church pancake breakfast with his brother Chase, Chase’s wife, Hadley, and seventeen-month-old Cody—the nephew who had reunited Ian, Chase and Shannon. The nephew Chase was raising.
Shannon and her soon-to-be husband, Dag McKendrick, had also been there, so the town event had turned into a family breakfast for Ian, which was part of why he liked coming to Northbridge now.
The family component was also part of why he’d chosen the small town as the site for the training center for the Montana Monarchs football team.
He’d known that Northbridge existed, that it was where he and Hutch had been born, where their birth parents had died, where he and Hutch had been adopted. But he and Hutch had been barely two months old when that adoption had occurred and they’d been taken away from Northbridge. Since they’d never returned, Northbridge had been nothing but a name on a map.
Then Ian had received an email from Chase and Shannon telling him that Hutch wasn’t his only sibling. He’d reconnected with the small town in the course of reconnecting with his brother and sister.
Not that it wasn’t the perfect place for the training center, because it was. It was far enough from Billings to reduce distractions, but close enough to make it easy for the players, the staff, the coaches and trainers and the press to get to. It also didn’t make for a bad drive for visits from families left behind in Billings.
And Ian liked the idea that, as Chief Operating Officer for the Monarchs, he would spend plenty of time in Northbridge where Chase, Shannon and Cody lived.
After a rift had healed between Ian and his adoptive father, they were once again close. He was also close to his adoptive sister Lacey. But he and his twin brother Hutch? That was a different story. They hadn’t seen each other or spoken in over five—almost six—years.
Maybe that was why developing closer relationships with his newfound blood relatives was all the more important to him, and it was important to him. Bringing the training center to Northbridge would aid that cause.
He had his father onboard with Northbridge, so that wasn’t a problem. And there were two possible sites within the Northbridge area—the Bowen farm and another, slightly larger location several miles farther out of town.
But of the two, the Bowen place was the most ideal. At seventeen acres it was a better size than its twenty-four acre contender which would leave excess acreage. It also lacked the large hill the McDoogal property had that would have to be leveled to accommodate playing fields. Plus, even if Jenna Bowen took him up on the extra ten thousand dollars he’d sweetened the pot with yesterday, the price on the Bowen place was still far better—it was priced low in hopes of a fast sale.
But Jenna Bowen was holding out, trying to keep the place a working farm, even in the face of an enormous debt in unpaid taxes. It was that enormous debt that had the property scheduled to be auctioned off in ten days if she couldn’t raise the money before then.
What that meant to the Kincaid Corporation was that they could get the property one way or another. If it went to auction, the Kincaid Corporation would likely end up getting it for a song, in fact. But buying the place at auction wasn’t really the image the Kincaid Corporation or the Monarchs wanted to foster. Even if it did save some money.
About half of Northbridge was against bringing the training camp to the small town, against losing farmland to it, and certainly against one of their own family farms being bulldozed by a corporation that, if they bought at auction, would ultimately end up seeming to be on the side of the IRS. That same half wanted to help the Bowens keep the property long enough to sell to someone who would honor their wishes for the land.
So ultimately, Ian had two factions to win over to his side—that half of the town. And Jenna Bowen.
He was up for it, though. He was even looking forward to it.
Convincing half of Northbridge that it was a good idea to bring the training center in would be a challenge, but that was okay. He liked challenges. And when he showed people that he did business with honesty, integrity and straightforwardness, when he pointed out the positives, he felt certain he’d be able to rally even the unenthusiastic portion of Northbridge.
But Jenna Bowen?
She was a different story. She obviously
