Shane pointed at Kendall. “Evidently. A fucking daughter?”
“Do not point at me like I’m a dog, Mr. Justice.”
He looked down at her. All hints of the docile woman who had been shaking beside him during the will reading were gone. “You don’t get to talk yet.”
She stood. “Okay, that’s enough. I’ve been sitting here listening to you people talk about taking my home—the only thing that man ever gave me, mind you—like you have any right to it. Where the hell were any of you for the last twenty-two years?”
Shane stalked forward until they were millimeters apart. “Just because my father paid your mother off with a house doesn’t mean you have—”
The crack of the slap across his cheek echoed through the room.
Her eyes filled with tears as she covered her mouth with her hand.
His cheek burned, and his anger struggled around in his chest like a wild animal. It would be so easy to take every ounce of pain out on her. She was nothing to him. “You get one freebie, Miss Proctor.”
She flung her shoulders back. “That’s my mother you’re talking about. She loved your useless excuse for a father. He’s the one who left us.”
Lock it down. He stared at her. She was a buck fifteen with her clothes on and didn’t even reach his chin, but she might as well have boxing gloves and a title belt around her waist. Men twice his size shrank from him in a fight, and this little one wanted to take him on? “There must have been good reason.”
She stumbled back a step, but her dark eyes never lost their fierce glare.
That one little step sliced at him.
Dammit.
He took a step back of his own and focused on Jonas’s surprised face. Shame crawled up his shoulders and settled like a blanket, stamping out most of his rage. This wasn’t her fault, and his mother would have had his hide if she’d ever heard him speak to a woman like this.
“I want to read the will myself.”
Jonas pushed the smaller stack of papers his way. Instinct made him shake his head. “No, I want the full document, not the layman’s-terms version.”
“You might be good with contracts on the surface, Shane, but this is all courthouse jargon.”
Every job they’d ever had that had gone hinky gave him the same tingle in his palms. “I don’t care.”
He could see the indecision in Jonas’s face and knew he’d made the right call. There was something in the papers, even a small thing that would help make sense of this ridiculous will. Jonas laid his hand on top of the stack, then finally let it go.
“I want to read it as well.”
He turned to Kendall. “This is none of your concern.”
“Considering you now own fifty percent of my house, it sure the hell is my concern.” Spite and anger coated every word.
Jonas gathered his briefcase and jacket. “I’ll leave you to it. Call me if you need anything explained.”
Shane had trusted Jonas in every way but this. If his father asked Jonas to do something, he’d do it. No matter how close Shane and Jonas had become, he knew the man’s loyalty was with Larry. Even in death.
He followed Jonas out, stopping him at the door when they were alone. “Why didn’t he want me to know?”
“You know your father. There was always a reason for the things he did.”
Shane stared down at his too-new shoes as they blurred before he put the grief aside, letting anger back out. At least anger got things done. “He should have trusted me.”
“Please don’t press this issue, Shane. Let it go.”
“I can’t.”
“What he did was for the good of his employees and to make sure you could have your freedom someday.”
Shane’s shoulders stiffened. “What does that mean?”
“Lawrence knew about the furniture business. He knew your heart wasn’t in the construction business.”
He stepped back, folding his arms, digging his thumbs into his chest to keep from shaking Jonas. No one knew about his workshop. The pieces he sold were mostly out of state, out of his father’s realm of influence. They were just his, built and sold under his mother’s last name—without the charm and easy salesmanship of Lawrence Justice. He’d wanted—no, needed—to do something for himself. Not because he was a Justice of California.
“This is a way to start over. Away from all this. Lawrence’s people will be all right. I promise.”
Shane frowned. “What does that mean?”
Jonas shook his head. “Just think about it.”
Shane closed the door after him. He needed a drink, needed a way to extinguish a little of the insanity that crawled under his skin. Everything he’d ever known was being taken from him. He wandered the lower level and found himself in his father’s study. The heavy scent of leather and the tang of lemon were so familiar they were as effective as a blow. He grabbed the decanter of whiskey off the bar and fled the room.
He found her in the conference room. The heavy mass of curls that hung over the back of the chair surprised him. Her head was resting on her hand as she flipped through the papers. She seemed at ease, until he noticed the fingers gripping her hair. His palm tingled in reaction.
A fondness for long hair could be ignored. Plenty of women had long hair, but the pale, almost white strands shot with gold lured him closer. Like moonlight and sunshine rippling together. He banged the decanter down on the table. The fanciful thoughts died with the clatter.
She jerked to a sitting position, steel rebar replacing her spine. She didn’t turn to face him. Instead, she pushed a half dozen pages down the table. “When Mr. Murray said this was full of legal jargon, he wasn’t kidding. It’s like reading Shakespeare with a side of Latin for footnotes.”
He bit back a biting comment and sat down next to her. None of this was her fault, and he had to control himself. The only way they could make it through this mess was to cooperate with each other. “We’ll have to do the best we can.”
“Yeah, well, I forgot my legalese decoder ring.” She didn’t meet his gaze, keeping her eyes on a spot near his hands.
“Why do you care?” He fisted his fingers. “I mean, I know why I do.”
Her attention finally latched on to his face. The fierce light was back in her eyes. “I don’t want you near me or mine, Mr. Justice.” The shaky woman from earlier was gone as if she’d never been.
“Then it’s in your best interest to find what I need to know, Miss Proctor. Because if this will is right, you and I will be living out of each other’s pockets until we come to a decision on what to do with our property.”
She pressed her lips together in a tight line before relaxing. Her mouth was a touch too wide, her lips soft and distractingly full. It was a far too sinful mouth to belong to such a tiny, fine-featured woman. Add in the hair, and she could have climbed out of a mythology textbook. The sirens had nothing on her power. The tip of her tongue flicked out to wet her lips as if she knew where his thoughts had gone.
He turned away, focusing on the papers in front of him. “Until we figure out what’s going to happen, you’ll be my guest.”
“No, I have a flight to catch in three hours.”
“Then change it.”
“They’re nonrefundable tickets,” she said between clenched teeth.
“Then we have a problem.”
“No”—she stood—“you have a problem.”
He clamped his fingers around her wrist. She could walk out the door, and he would follow her—eventually. He’d have to find the house they now co-owned and figure out what to do with it. But he needed to settle the will first. And he didn’t trust her not to do something stupid back in Fuckbum, New York, that would screw him over.
Hell, she could sell the house to a friend for a dollar and give him fifty cents if she was crafty enough. He didn’t know anything about Bradley Lake, New York, to know what the housing market was like. “How can you trust that I won’t find a way to screw you out of your house, Miss P
roctor?” He could feel her pulse fluttering wildly under his fingers. He had her on the hook. Instead of forcing his hand, he let her spin her own worst case. He could see it in the set of her shoulders, the way she stiffened.
Then her eyes went flat and cool. “You’re good.” She stared at his hand pointedly. “Scare tactics with a side of adjective changes. Better men than you have tried to manipulate me, Mr. Justice.”
He let her go and sat back, crossing his arms. No, she was no pushover. Charm had been Lawrence’s gift. And while they were father and son in all but blood, he definitely didn’t have that particular talent. Shane had been responsible for the work done after the schmoozing. He held the respect of over eighty men on various crews, but it had been through hard work, not charm.
“Straight talk, then.”
She sat back down. “I’d appreciate that.”
He laid his hands on the table. “I’m sorry you were dragged into this, and I’m sorry that my father put this in your lap.” He gentled his voice at the flicker of hurt in her eyes. Larry had been her father too. “We’re going to have to work together.”
“I want to help you, but I’m afraid my finances don’t allow me to flush an eighteen-hundred-dollar plane ticket down the drain.”
“So change the flight.”
“Nonrefundable, remember?”
He couldn’t let her go. Not yet. Not until he knew more. “It’ll be on me to get you home.”
A slim honey-colored brow lifted. “Thirty seconds ago you told me I couldn’t trust you, Mr. Justice.”
“Thirty seconds ago you called my bluff.”
“I don’t trust you.” She emphasized each word.
“You’re smart.” He shuffled his chair to face her, dragging hers around so they were face-to-face.
Grabbing instinct by the balls, he clasped her hands until they were knee to knee and palm to palm. He tried to ignore the way she fit him. As small as she was, her slim fingers curled around his. Christ, she felt good. Too good, but he didn’t drop her hand. Even if every self-preserving part of him struggled to do so.
Making her understand was more important. “Whether we like it or not, we’re in this together. We,” he paused, making sure their gazes locked. “Us.”
“I have a business to run.”
“Is November a busy time in the B and B business?”
Her chin lifted. “My—our—house is on a lake. We have year-round bookings.”
“I’m assuming you don’t run the entire place by yourself.” She tried to untangle their hands, but he held her still.
“No, my mother does the day-to-day in the house, but I run the boat tours and trails.”
“And you don’t have any other help?”
Her gaze slid away. “No.”
“Do you really have customers lined up?”
“It’s a light week,” she said evasively.
“Talk to her. This is important to both of us.”
“No.” She stared unblinkingly at him. Huge brown eyes full of confusion and indecision. “This is important to you. I need to get home.”
“But…”
“But I don’t trust you, and that’s more important than showing a few fishermen the right watering holes.”
He needed to let her go before he gave in to the stupid side of himself that wanted to drag her closer. The part of him that wanted to see if she fit him perfectly everywhere.
That would be a mistake.
Chapter Two
Kendall twisted out of his grip. The heat of him was like a grease burn. Even when she peeled her skin away from his, the burn still tore deep into the tissues. “I need to contact my mother.”
He nodded to the phone at the end of the table.
“Alone.”
His hazel eyes gave away nothing. “Something you don’t want me to hear, Miss Proctor?”
She lifted her chin. “I have to go tell my mother that your father is a bastard. Again. Do you really want to stand here and listen to that?”
He stood. “You don’t know my father.”
The razor slice was quick and deep. Painless on the first layer, but the wound bled. She was so tired of bleeding for Lawrence Justice. She thought she’d been well past it, and now with one letter, she was at his mercy again. “No, I didn’t, and I never will.”
When he’d leaned in and tried to charm her, there had been pain and life in his ever-changing eyes. Now they were blank. “Let me show you to the study. You can have privacy there.”
She hooked her purse over her shoulder and followed him out. Wide shoulders tight with muscles shifted under his dress shirt, tapering down to a dip in his back. She halted her perusal. The man now owned half her entire life’s work. How the hell was ogling him going to help matters?
Instead she opened herself to the anger that rode just under the surface. Anger would make things happen. She’d used it before, and she could use it again. The urge to reach out in front of her and touch him, to feel those muscles bunch and flow under her hand was a simple chemical reaction. Living in her small coastal town had been isolating in the best of times, but ever since she’d had to use every last ounce of energy to keep the Heron running, she hadn’t had time to remember she was lonely.
Until now.
Until an admittedly attractive man was put in front of her.
Thinking about Shane Justice naked was normal and natural. Stupid, but normal. And her life had held little normalcy for the last eighteen months.
He opened a door for her, but instead of stepping back, he stood in the doorway looking down at her. Intimidation seemed to be his default reaction to everything. She would not be cowed by him. She turned, then brushed against his chest with her own. When he sucked in a breath, she simply raised a brow at him. Her heart pinged around in her chest like a firefly in a jar, but she held her ground.
She was close enough to catch the scent of cedar chips. She frowned. Why would a suited-up guy smell like fresh wood?
“Don’t be too long. We’ve got a lot of reading to do.”
She slid into the room and sank into an overstuffed leather chair. This room was personal. Her gaze drifted to the desk and the ledger that was still open on the leather blotter. Her father’s desk. The lingering hint of butterscotch made her eyes sting. She remembered her father always having butterscotch in his pocket. She juggled her phone out of her bag and swiped it to life. There were three text messages from her mother and another two from her best friend, Bells.
There was far too much to say in a text. She dialed Bells first. She needed her laughter and her sanity.
“Belinda Grayson.”
“Bells?”
“Oh, Ken, I’ve been so worried. You always text me back so quickly.”
Kendall fussed with her purse strap. Usually a text from her best friend was the highlight of her day. Talking to men who grunted about game and fish was definitely not the kind of conversations she longed for. “It’s been a little crazy.”
“Well? How’d it go?”
“He did it to me again, Bells. Just when I think he can’t be more of a shit, Lawrence proves me wrong.” She swallowed hard. No tears. That man did not deserve a single tear from her. Not now, not ever. He’d lost the right to any of her emotions over twenty-two years ago.
“Why the hell did they have you come out for the will reading, then? I don’t understand.”
“Because they’re taking half of the Heron.”
“What?” The worry and the outrage came across the line as clearly as if her best friend had been sitting beside her.
Kendall slipped her heels off and curled her feet under her legs, pressing her forehead into the buttery leather arm of the chair. Everything tumbled out. She didn’t know if half of it was coherent, but Bell listened and didn’t interrupt once.
“Bastard.”
Kendall choked out a laugh. “Yeah.”
“But I don’t understand how. He gave that house to you and Lily when you were a kid, for
God’s sake. There’s no way they should be able to take the property.”
“Mom never took his name off the deed.”
“God dammit, Lily.”
There was no surprise in Bells’s voice, just the same resignation Kendall felt. They both had years of conditioning at Lily’s hand. No man could or would ever be as wonderful as Lawrence Justice. Even if he’d left them high and dry, there was always some excuse her mother would pull out to justify what he’d done to them. In the end, the fact that Lawrence had given her Kendall was a lasting reason not to hate him.
She wished she could be so forgiving.
Any attempt at that forgiveness was long gone now.
“So you have to share the house with your father’s son? What the hell, Ken? That’s fucked-up.”
“No, what’s fucked-up is that Shane Justice isn’t even his biological son. Lawrence remarried and raised him as his own.”
“He left—” Bells cut herself off.
But the words were out. The same words that had run around Kendall’s brain for the last two hours. He’d left her and raised another child. She hadn’t been good enough. Why hadn’t she and her mom been enough? “Yeah.”
“Bastard.” This time Bells’s voice was watery.
“No crying, dammit. You’ll make me cry, and I don’t have time for tears. I have to figure out how this is going to work.”
“So you’re just going to accept this?”
“Shane and I are going through the will to see if there’s anything we can do to fight it.”
“Are you sure he’s doing it with your best interests at heart? What if he wants the Heron for his own?”
“That’s why I’m staying here and reading over everything with him. Things aren’t good for either of us. All the money’s been frozen. Shane went from rich to poor in a snap.”
“And lost his father.”
Kendall’s voice gentled. “And lost his father.” As little as she cared about Lawrence, she understood that Shane had loved him. She’d loved him once upon a time. She could still remember his booming laugh and the way he held her tight. She remembered the nights he read to her and the sweet scent of his breath when he kissed her cheek good night.
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