A Kiss to Seal the Deal by Nikki Logan Read Free Book Online

and we hold the evidence in our hands.’
    â€˜I’m a contracts lawyer, Kate. I don’t do the whole “scales of justice” thing. I lock down minor details, I screw down better deals, I hunt for loopholes and make sure no-one can get out of something they’ve committed to. Or, in this case, I’ll be doing my best to get out of the agreement my father had with you.’
    Kate paled. ‘But how can you, now that you know? You can protect these seals. Help save them. Your whole property could become a sanctuary.’
    Her naïve idealism was like a foreign language to him. ‘I can’t protect anyone, Kate. They won’t be mine to protect.’
    She blinked. ‘What do you mean? I’ve been watching you improve the place. Getting it back in shape. Giving Tulloquay its life back.’
    â€˜To sell, Kate. I’m doing it up to sell it as soon as it passes into my name.’
    She seemed to stumble briefly but caught herself on a rocky outcrop. ‘You’re selling your farm?’
    She said it as though he’d announced he was going to slaughter the seals for their coats. ‘My father’s farm. It was never mine, even when I lived here. I’m not a farmer. I’m a lawyer. I never wanted this.’
    And Dad knew it. The final irony—leaving it to a son who wouldn’t want it, making all of this his problem.
    â€˜But the seals…’
    â€˜Three months, Kate. I did warn you. You’ll just have to wrap up early.’
    The panicked glitter to her eyes wheedled its way straight into his subconscious. He didn’t like distressing her. ‘We can’t wrap up early. Breeding season starts in two months and we need to establish where that happens. It’s a key piece of the cycle to ensure we have a full year of foraging behaviour established for this year.’
    â€˜Then you should have done it before now.’
    Colour roared high along her cheekbone. ‘Do you think we didn’t try? We’ve been searching for two seasons to work outwhere they go. It’s unusual for any group to breed somewhere other than their rookery, but these ones do. The TDR’s don’t record positioning, only depth. We’ve lost the colony two seasons running during breeding season.’
    â€˜Then who’s to say you wouldn’t have lost them again this year? I’m sure the bulk of your research will still stand. Whatever you have now has got to be more than science has ever had before. Two years is not a bad innings.’
    She stared at him with eyes as big as the seal pups’. ‘How can you be so different to your father?’
    His head came up like whiplash, his gut sucking up as tight as the vacuum-seal lid on the eskies. ‘Whatever you think you know, Kate, you’re wrong. My father gave his life to this farm. He wouldn’t have stood by and watched it get carved up.’
    Her mouth gaped. ‘Yet you’re going to sell it off to some stranger?’
    â€˜As a going concern. To someone who’ll work it the way it was meant to be.’
    Her colour rose with her voice. ‘It wasn’t meant to be a farm. It’s meant to be a delicate coastal ecosystem for all creatures to enjoy, except we came along and colonised the south coast for ourselves and filled it with hard-hoofed livestock!’
    â€˜People don’t buy delicate ecosystems.’
    Hurt and disappointment washed over her face. ‘Shutting us down early makes it harder for me to get my results finalised, but it doesn’t invalidate the study completely. The research will still go through. You can’t stop it.’
    In the moment when he should have been saying something, he saw the lightbulb come on over her head.
    She gasped. ‘But it will stall ratification by the conservation commission. You’re going to rush this sale through before the conservation status changes.’
    His choices were reflected