Surely a move into the bedroom couldn’t be far away. It was inevitable, except...he couldn’t do it until he got out from under the only dark cloud in his otherwise blissful week. And that’s what he’d come to tell these guys, whether they liked it or not.
“What’s so funny?” he demanded, taking a sip of a spicy Bloody Mary.
“It’s just...” Zeke tried to keep a straight face but failed.
“It’s you,” Nate supplied. “Knowing about goats. If you don’t think that’s fucking hilarious, then you’re dead inside.”
But he wasn’t dead inside. And that was the problem. For the first time in recent memory—and that went back years—Elliott felt completely alive. He wanted a woman in a way he’d never imagined possible. And he couldn’t have her until his ill-conceived plan to screw her out of her land got killed.
“Goats happen to be very cool,” he said. “And there’s good money in goat’s milk and the products. They’re among the fastest-growing domestic animals in the world.”
Zeke had to bite his lip, nodding, mirth dampening his eyes. “I’m sorry, Becker, but...goats?”
Ire and defensiveness zipped up his spine as he thought of all Frankie had been teaching him about goats this week. “They aren’t just cute little weird animals, you know. People like to visit them. Kids love to pet them, and women buy the goat’s milk products. And goat’s milk—”
Zeke held up two hands in surrender. “Sorry, you’re right.” He couldn’t wipe the smile off his face, though. “Really, that’s good. You’re right.”
“Damn right I’m right,” he said, reaching for his drink but choosing cold water instead. His throat was parched with the pressing need to say what he had to say, hear them piss and moan about the change in plans, and get back to Frankie.
Nate seemed less amused by the goats, though it was hard to tell with his shades firmly in place in his never-ending effort to hide in a crowd. He rarely appeared in public without sunglasses, knowing every iPhone in the joint would be taking pictures and videos, and the line for autographs would form at the right. Maybe not in a classy place like Junonia, the outdoor restaurant near the pool at Casa Blanca, but for the most part, fame and the Ivory family fortune haunted Nate.
“You know what I think?” Nate said, leaning down just enough so his hazel eyes peered over the rims of his Ray-Bans. “I think something doesn’t smell right, and it’s not just the goats.”
Nate might have been bad to the bone, spoiled rotten, and competitive to the point of death, but he was also surprisingly intuitive.
“What makes you say that?” Elliott asked, although he knew the answer, and he was grateful for the door his friend had opened for him.
“I think you’re getting a little too cozy with the goat girl, and you’re dreading the moment she finds out you screwed her in more ways than one.”
“Just one,” Elliott admitted. “I’ve only screwed her on paper.” So far.
Nate and Zeke shared a look that said they didn’t buy it. Well, too bad. It was the truth. He hadn’t slept with her, but...he wasn’t going to be able to hold off much longer. She’d made enough overtures and responded to enough kisses to know the feeling was more than mutual. The only thing stopping them now was the look on her face when she found out he’d slipped Ol’ Comb-Over a deal on the side and stolen her property.
A white hot splash of self-loathing rolled through his gut.
But these weren’t men who responded well to letting emotions get in the way of profit. Especially Nate. There had to be another way, an easy solution. Elliott always found the easy way...no matter how hard it was to spot.
He blew out a slow breath and turned to look at the beach and horizon on his right. “When you did the first site reviews, Zeke, did you talk to the owner of the land exactly to the east of the top end of her farm?”
Zeke shook his head. “It’s scrub, utterly useless land.”
“But who owns it?”
“I never bothered to look it up because the land didn’t pass the most fundamental feasibility study. You’re in the real estate business. You know useless land when you see it. You’re the expert.”
Someone had once told him a particular piece of land in Massachusetts was worthless because it was too hard to dig a foundation, and so far, that land had made him a very rich man. Feasibility studies could be proved wrong.
“I want to talk to the owner,” he said.
“Don’t bother,” Zeke said. “The cost to clear that kind of land and make it usable for our needs would be astronomical.”
Good. If a problem could be solved with money, it wasn’t a problem. “But if we used that plot, she could keep her farm.”
“No, she couldn’t.” Nate was pissed enough to take his glasses off to make the point. “I was just in Miami with Flynn and saw a preliminary site drawing of the whole stadium complex. There is no physical way to follow any configuration that Flynn has had drawn up without putting parking somewhere on her land. And that’s where it’s going unless you’re too whipped by a goat leash to put it there.”
“Look, couldn’t the parking somehow include her goat farm?” He’d been thinking about this, but hadn’t yet put it into words. “It could attract tourists.”
Nate hooted softly. “Yeah, ’cause people always want to stop at a goat farm when they go to a baseball game. Geez, Becker, I know we give you shit about being a moron, but in this case, it might be true.”
“But I—”
“He likes her,” Zeke said, all the amusement gone from his eyes now, replaced by understanding and rationality. Thank God. “And he’s trying to make her happy and give her what she wants.”
Nate must have agreed, because he fell back in his chair and threw his hands up in resignation. “Well, there you go. Another one bites the dust.”
“What dust?” Except Elliott knew exactly what dust he meant.
“Might as well start recruiting new team members for the Niners right now. Oh, hell, why don’t we just change the name of the team to the Bucks? In honor of our goat-lover and former third baseman.”
Elliott knew what Nate’s comment meant. No one played on their softball team at home who wasn’t rich and single. A walk down the aisle meant a walk off the team.