She hadn’t gone into detail about what those rules were, but I certainly didn’t want to step in it on my first day. I still had small-town PTSD from living in a tiny Alabama town until I was eight. I remembered all too well just how ruthless and devastating the gossip could be.
I was new to this firm, and since I’d spent the past five years working for partners that I knew I’d never get any sort of recommendation from—because one of them was supposed to be my future father-in-law—the last thing I needed to do was mess this up. That alone was a good enough reason to stay away.
When I took into account the way this man affected me on a visceral level, though… Well, then I knew I should stay away.
Billy, totally unaware of the inner turmoil his invitation had caused in me, sauntered out of the conference room like he didn’t have a care in the world, and I kept my eyes steadfastly forward.
Do not look at his ass. Do not look at his ass. Do not look at his ass, I chanted inside my head.
I was almost successful. But in the end, I couldn’t help but steal one small peek as he rounded the corner to head off down the hall, and I was not disappointed.
“Thank you.”
I heard a soft voice, snapping me back to reality, and I turned to Cheyenne.
“I was really nervous about today, and you being here made it so much easier.”
“Of course. That’s my job. You didn’t mention that your brothers…” I trailed off as I thought about how to word it. “Didn’t know you’d be here,” I finished.
Color sprang up on her cheeks. “I wasn’t sure what to expect and I didn’t know how to explain it.”
I flashed her a grin. “Understandable.”
“Do you have a minute? To talk privately?”
I looked around the conference room. We were the only two people there but apparently she was looking for even more privacy. “Sure. Why don’t we go to my office?”
As we walked down the corridor, Daisy approached us, coming out of the break room. “Oh, is the meeting over?”
“Yes.” I nodded.
“Did everyone leave?” She craned her neck to look into the conference room.
“Ms. Comfort is still here,” I stated the obvious as I motioned toward Cheyenne.
“Oh right. But everyone else left?”
I had a gut feeling that Mr. Cocky might be the “everyone else” in this line of inquiry. I had no proof that was the case, but from the expression on her face, I was fairly certain. It got me wondering if there might be a connection to her not being at the front desk when Mr. Cocky was missing.
A nagging irritation rose up in me that I quickly filed under his lack of consideration for both his family’s and my time, but if I were being totally honest, the source might be more accurately attributed to jealousy. Which made zero sense and was not acceptable in any way.
“Right this way.” I stepped past Daisy and ushered Cheyenne into my office, trying to shake off the lingering thoughts of a certain cocky Comfort brother and his sexy half-grin. It was proving very difficult.
CHAPTER 5
Billy
Heat rose from the asphalt as I walked out to the parking lot with Jimmy and Hank. It was springtime and the weather was changing. Days and nights were getting hotter.
We were all silent. That wasn’t unusual for Hank, but it was strange as hell for Jimmy and me. I wasn’t sure if the cat that had our respective tongues was the finality of the will reading or the reappearance of our long-lost sister.
When we reached the point in the lot where it would’ve made sense to break off in different directions to our cars and still none of the three of us had said anything, we stopped in our tracks and just stood there, awkwardly.
It was a damn strange situation. I’d never been at a loss for what to say to my brothers, and they’d certainly never been short of words around me. It wasn’t like we always talked things out in the most civilized or levelheaded ways. Hell, sometimes we yelled until the walls shook, or worked out our differences with our fists. Pretty normal testosterone-driven stuff, especially for three brothers who’d been raised (more or less) by a drunk who had trouble taking care of himself, let alone them.
Yeah, it was clear from our normal mode of interaction that we’d lost the one civilizing influence in our lives when we’d lost our mother, and that any impact she’d been able to impart had been too early to overcome our more rough-and-tumble instincts after she was gone.
But this… Hell. This strained silence was something altogether new.
“Why the fuck did no one tell me that we have a sister?” Jimmy broke the silence in an uncharacteristically harsh tone.
Jimmy was the most laid-back, easy-going, good-natured human being on the planet. He was the “flirt” out of the Fs used to describe us. He didn’t get riled up easily, but looked downright pissed off now. I didn’t blame him, but I also didn’t have an answer for him. It might sound ridiculous, but I’d never thought to bring it up. The day of the funeral, I’d locked away all my emotions and memories and thrown away the key.
It wasn’t just Cheyenne that we didn’t talk about. We never discussed Mama either.
Hank’s jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed. “Family meeting. At the house.”
Family meetings were held in one of two places, the bar or the house, depending on where Pop was holed up drinking. If he was at the bar, we’d meet at the house and vice versa. It was strange not having to take that into consideration.
An unwanted emotion began to fill my chest. To be fair, any emotion other than pleasure was unwanted. I tried to live my life maximizing the good and ignoring the bad. It had worked out pretty great for me so far, but I was beginning to think I might need to start facing some of the not-so-pleasant aspects of life. Still, the last thing I wanted to do was relive any more of the past than we already had today. “I’ve got things to do,” I said.
At the same time, Jimmy piped up with, “What food ya got?”
The phrase the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach was more true of Jimmy than any man I’d ever known.
Hank looked at both of us, his expression flatter than a stretch of Kansas highway. Finally, he intoned, “I ain’t askin’.”
With that, he turned and marched to his truck, never looking back once to see if we were following. It wasn’t necessary. He knew that if he used that tone, we listened. It was the way things were.
Hank had stepped up after we lost our mom to a car accident and our dad to the bottle. He’d made sure that we went to school, had clean clothes, and ate. He’d gone to parent-teacher conferences, rushed us to the emergency room when we broke bones or were running high fevers, and bailed both our asses out of jail. Jimmy was picked up when he was seventeen for trespassing when he and his friends broke into the high school to play a senior prank. I got arrested at age sixteen for public indecency when the police chief caught me having sex with his daughter behind the Dairy Queen.
Hank had more than earned the right to call a family meeting and us to show up.
Jimmy and I exchanged looks, and then he flashed a wry smile. That was just how Jimmy was. It didn’t matter the situation, he’d find some way to grin at it. It wasn’t like he thought everything was flat-out funny. But, there was always some angle for the smile to latch onto.
If there was a way to laugh about something, even if there was a mountain of sadness or fear or whatever the hell else underneath it, then that’s the road Jimmy would take.
He raised his brow. “Well, damn, looks like his panties are in a bunch.”
I grinned, still a little too shell-shocked to joke around. Sure, I’d put on a good show in the office, making it seem I wasn’t bothered. I didn’t want Cheyenne to see how shaken I was, and I definitely didn’t want our very attractive attorney thinking I was thrown for a loop.
In front of just my brothers, though, it was a different story. We had pretty well-calibrated bullshit meters when it came to each other and pretending wit
h them just wasn’t realistic.
“Seriously, though,” Jimmy said, his demeanor becoming somber. “I do have one question for you before we head out to Hank’s. And I need you to be totally honest with me.”
I braced myself, hoping that I would find the words to explain why in the hell I’d acted as if Cheyenne was never born. “Shoot.”
“Should I rely on Hank to feed us or should I get a burger on the way?”
I shook my head as I headed to my truck, answering him over my shoulder as I went. “Do what you want. Just get your ass out to the house. Hank was serious, and you know how he gets when he’s serious.”
As I pulled out of the parking lot and headed down the long road that led through downtown and then out into the country, I let the truck meander at a leisurely pace. Back roads were normally what one would take for a short-cut, I was doing the opposite. This was my long-cut.
There was no hurry. If I knew Jimmy at all—and I sure as hell did—he’d be getting food before heading out to Hank’s. He’d figure, what was the harm? It would be a win-win situation. If Hank didn’t provide us with food, he’d already be full. And if Hank did have lunch for us…well, hell. Eating twice in one afternoon never killed a man.
And since I had no desire to sit in silence with a seething Hank while we waited for a carefree Jimmy to come waltzing in twenty minutes late with beef on his breath, I was taking my sweet time.
CHAPTER 6
Reagan
As we entered my office, I couldn’t help but notice Cheyenne’s nerves. It wasn’t hard to read, they were radiating off of her. She sat in one of the two chairs facing my desk and wrung her hands in her lap, clearly anxious, and I put all thoughts of Billy to the side and began to wonder what this impromptu meeting might be about.
“So what can I do for you?” I finally asked when she didn’t speak.
“Um, well. I was wondering if you know who handled my mother’s will?”
“Your mother’s will?”
“Yes.”
“No. I have no idea.” When I’d looked over the Comfort file it was noted that Sabrina Comfort died in a car accident twenty years ago, but that was the extent of my knowledge.
“I only ask because I heard my grandparents mention that there was some sort of a trust.”
That was news to me. “What did they say?”
She was quiet once more and I could sense her discomfort in discussing the topic mounting.
“I only heard bits and pieces, but from what I gathered, my brothers are entitled to the inheritance.”
I hadn’t seen anything about any sort of inheritance but I’d solely been working with Mr. Comfort’s affairs. Her phrasing was interesting, though. “Your brothers? Not you?”
She blinked at me as if that was the first time she’d thought about that. “Oh…I don’t know. They just mentioned my brothers.”
“Did you ask them about it?”
Cheyenne’s baby blues widened. “No.”
My impulse was to ask why not, but I curbed it. Although I’d taken an immediate liking to Cheyenne, this wasn’t two friends getting to know one another. This was a professional setting and I was being paid for this conversation.
“We’re not exactly close,” she offered in way of explanation.
Again, I had questions. I found it strange that she wasn’t close to the people that had raised her, but again, it was none of my business.
“Okay,” I answered evenly.
Her lips flattened into a straight line as she inhaled through her nose. This was obviously a topic she was uncomfortable with and for some reason, I felt protective of Cheyenne. Which was odd since she was only a few years younger than me.
The blonde-haired, blue-eyed young woman sitting in front of me was twenty-five years old but there was a distinct naïveté in her demeanor. From the limited background information I had, I knew that her maternal grandparents had raised her from the age of five. I could only imagine that her childhood must’ve been drastically different than her brothers. She grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut and, from what I’d gathered, she’d had zero contact with her brothers or father. I couldn’t imagine how complicated that must be.
Not that I had a lot of experience with family dynamics, complicated or otherwise. My father had never been in my life.
I’d only spoken to him once, it hadn’t gone well. He was married and had his own family when my mom got pregnant. For the first eight years of my life it had been me, my mom, and whatever guy my mom happened to be dating.
Then, when I was eight, my mom met Harold York. That was when everything changed. From the first day I met Hal, I loved him. He was funny, smart, and treated me like his very own.
They had a whirlwind romance, marrying only a month after meeting. On my last day of third grade, Hal and Mom picked me up and we flew to Manhattan.
Hal was an attorney who came from an affluent family. He was twenty years my mom’s senior, and he treated her like a queen and me like a princess.
For the first time in my life I didn’t have to worry about whether or not I’d come home from school to find an eviction notice on the door, or whether or not there would be food in the cupboards, or if the lights and heat would be on.
He was strict but fair. He gave me rules, which was something I’d never had, since my mom had always treated me more like a friend than a daughter.
I felt safe in the world for the first time in my life. He adopted me on my tenth birthday and even talked my mom into allowing me to legally change not only my last name, but also my first.
Then, the summer before my senior year of high school, he was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor and told he had weeks to live.
He survived for ten more months, and was even able to see me walk across the stage at my high school graduation with honors. My mom showed up late, but he was there on time.
I was more thankful for those last few months with him than I was for anything else in this world. Before he passed he knew that I’d gotten into his alma mater and was planning on studying law.
He made sure that my mother would never have to worry about money again, and that my college education was taken care of. He took care of us, even after he was gone.
Hal was wealthy, but nothing close to Cheyenne’s grandparents. Not even the same ballpark.
Her maternal grandfather, Leonard Wentworth III, was the heir to a pharmaceutical company. The Wentworths were easily millionaires, and perhaps even billionaires. It wouldn’t shock me to find out that Sabrina’d had a trust which would be passed down to her children.
“I’ll see what I can find out, but I’m not sure how much help I can be.”
A little tension seeped from her face, but then she met my eyes solemnly. “I should warn you. My grandparents are influential people and if there is a trust, they’ll do anything they can to stop my brothers from inheriting a dime.”
The warning was as vague as it was ominous. “Why do you say that?”
“Because that’s what they said. From what I gathered it’s a significant sum and they are adamant about keeping it from, and I quote, James Comfort’s demon seeds.”
I raised one eyebrow. “Noted.”
It was so strange to me that these people would cherry-pick which grandchild they deemed worthy of their love and attention. Was it some sort of reverse sexism? Unlike royalty, did they not want any male heirs? When she still didn’t relax, I assured her, “I’ll tread lightly.”
“Thanks.” Her shoulders lowered and she appeared visibly relieved as she stood. “For everything.”
“Of course.” I pushed my chair back and rose, reaching my hand across the table. “It was very nice to meet you face to face, Ms. Comfort.”
I’d spoken to her over the phone the day I’d arrived in Firefly to notify her of the will reading, and unbeknownst to me, of her father’s passing. I’d never had to notify next of kin that a loved one had passed.
Adding another surreal layer to the c
onversation was the fact that she hadn’t seen her father in twenty years. We’d touched base a few times over the next two days, and she felt like an old friend.
“Call me Cheyenne, please.” She shook my hand and I could sense her hesitation to leave as she dropped it. “There’s one more thing. One more favor I wanted to ask.”
I grinned, not sure of what else I could do. “What’s that?”
“I know you said that you might come to the bar tonight, but can you? I’m kind of nervous to go by myself. It would be nice to have someone to sit with.”
Looking at her vulnerable, hopeful face, all of my excuses flew out the window. Saying no to her would be akin to kicking a puppy.
I forced myself to smile. “That sounds great. I should be done here around six, I’ll meet you there at six-thirty.”
“Thanks!” Her face lit up like the sky after a summer rain and she gave me a brief hug before practically skipping out the door.
I, on the other hand, felt a lot more trepidation. In fact, I felt like I was walking into enemy territory, and the only weapon I had at my disposal—my self-control—was shaky at best, thanks to the mental breakdown I may or may not be having. Billy Comfort was having quite the effect on me.
I took a deep breath. I didn’t quite know what I was getting myself into, but I was quite sure I was getting into something.
CHAPTER 7
Billy
When I did finally pull up to the house and turn off my truck I noticed that my long-cut had not worked. Jimmy still wasn’t there. I sat in the cab for a moment, just looking at the house.
“Hank’s house,” I said to myself.
That still felt strange rolling off my tongue. This was the house I’d grown up in with Hank and Jimmy. When Hank had told us to come over to “the house,” there had been no need to specify which house. This was it. The house.
And it was Hank’s now. Which, don’t get me wrong, I had no resentment about. I’d left the day of my eighteenth birthday, not able to stand one more second under the same roof with our alcoholic, verbally—and sometimes physically—abusive father. Hank had moved back home within a week of my departure to look after not only Pop but also Jimmy, who was only twelve at the time.
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