Everyone froze. Including Grace.
“W-what? When did you meet my grandfather?”
Risking a chance to look over at Jeff, I quickly turned back to Grace. “We met a few weeks ago over dinner.”
Mark smiled and said, “You’ve got a good catch here, Grace Hope. This young man called me up and told me he wanted to talk to me about the house. Imagine my surprise when he handed me a check for the cost of the house, plus interest.”
Grace’s mouth dropped open as she looked at me. “Noah. How?”
I didn’t really want to tell Grace I had used my mother’s life insurance policy to pay her grandfather back, so I winked and said, “I’ll tell you later. By the way, your grandfather told me how you used the money they had set aside for you.”
The feel of Jeff’s eyes on me caused me to glance over in his direction again. Taking a sip of his beer, he smiled and gave me a head nod. I was hoping like hell I had gained some respect from him by paying back Grace’s grandfather.
The rest of the afternoon was spent meeting and talking to everyone. I sat and talked to Gramps a lot. We talked mostly about the cattle business that his grandson, Gunner, and Jeff, now ran. It didn’t take long for Gunner, Jeff, Will and Luke to start asking me questions about business plans, marketing tools and other things to make a business run smooth. Surely they didn’t need my opinions, after all, they were running a multi-million dollar cattle business, on top of a breeding business.
Jeff sat back and took all of it in, while Gunner hit me with question after question. Especially when he found out I had a minor in finance. “So you don’t agree with paying off the equipment ahead of time? Explain why you think like that?” Gunner asked.
Shrugging my shoulders, I said, “Well, look at it like this. You hold a very low interest rate on those two loans. Why would you want to take your cash and pay them off, when you could invest it in a CD? Carrying some debt is not bad.”
Jeff nodded and looked at Gunner. Grace walked up to me and smiled as she sat down next to me. “Are you talking numbers and all that shit?”
“Grace Hope,” Jeff said as he furrowed his brows at her.
Laughing, Grace shook head and said, “Daddy, please. Don’t act like you have virgin ears. For goodness’ sake, look at your damn T-shirt.”
Glancing down, it was then I noticed what it said. The bright-yellow arrow pointed down and the shirt read:
You know you’re curious.