Slow Ride Home (The Grady Legacy)

by Leah Braemel

  “I have already informed my superior of our history and she’s decided that since I know you’ll expect me to be biased, I’ll work that much harder to prove your case. But since we both anticipated your objection, she’s attending this meeting too. She should be arriving any moment.”

  Damn that huge freaking truck that had cut in between them on the interstate. For all she knew Kathy had missed the cut-off. Or worse had gotten lost. Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing—it might give her a reason to get out of here and find her. Rescuing her boss would look good on her next yearly report. In the meantime, she had to play nice with the enemy.

  Her eye caught on a photo that someone had pinned to the corkboard. Ben and his brother Jake stood grinning on either side of their father and mother, a Happy Anniversary banner hanging behind them. Some of her ire faded. Her father might choose not to see her, but he was still alive. Ben and his brother had suffered the ultimate loss eight months ago when Ed Grady had been T-boned by an eighteen-wheeler.

  “I was sorry to hear about your father,” she said softly. Both Ed and Cissy Grady had always been pleasant to her. After the incident she wondered if Ben’s grandfather George had acted on his own or if they had approved the decision to kick her and her father off Bull’s Hollow. “How’s your mother doing?”

  Ben took off his hat and ran his fingers along the rim. “She’s having a tough time dealin’ with it.” He cleared his throat and met her gaze, grief filling his eyes. “It wasn’t like he’d been sick and we had any warning to give us time to prepare.”

  Having time, watching her mother get weaker every day and seeing her in pain hadn’t made losing her any easier. She cleared her throat against the old loss. “Give Cissy my condolences will you?” Ben’s mother had been one of the few Gradys who had liked her hanging around with Ben. “Will Jake be joining us today?”

  “No. Since Pop died, he’s left the business side of the ranch to me.” A hint of frustration crept into his voice. Obviously sharing responsibility with his brother wasn’t going as well as he’d hoped. “Logan should be here shortly though—he wants to sit in on the meeting.”

  Oh shit. She’d expected to have to face Jake again, but never figured on having to face Ben’s best friend again. “Why does he need to be here?”

  “Lo’s my lawyer.” Pride filled his voice. “When he heard someone from SSTG was coming out to discuss the claim, he wanted to be here.”

  “Lo made it through law school? That’s...great.” Wasn’t it bad enough that she had to face Ben today, but that his best friend and possible co-conspirator would be here too? Torture.

  You’re a lawyer too. There’s no reason to go on the defensive. “Right.” She pulled her tablet out of its case and flipped to the document she’d started, the routine helping her focus. “So, while we’re waiting for them, why don’t you tell me what’s going on? Get me up to speed.”

  “All I know is the bank manager hauled me into his office two days ago telling me that she was upset to learn that half of Bull’s Hollow had been sold considering the spread had been used as collateral for some loans they hold. That she could have called some of the notes immediately but she was giving me the benefit of getting things in order before they went to such drastic measures.” He rolled his eyes. “I told her it was bullshit. That neither Jake nor I had sold one damned inch only to be shown some paper that some yahoo filed with the registry office.”

  “A Memorandum of Land Sale,” Allie supplied.

  “Whatever it’s called, it’s a fraud. Since your company holds our title insurance, Logan recommended we file a claim and let you guys handle it.”

  “So here I am. Handling it. Saving your family’s ass even though your family kicked me off your ranch.”

  * * *

  The flash of pain in Allie’s eyes had Ben snapping his mouth shut. Animosity rippled off her like heat off asphalt in July, though why she blamed him for her father being a thief, he had no idea.

  He heaved a breath and forced himself to concentrate on how to handle the situation. Unfortunately the breath he sucked in contained a hint of perfume. Allie’s perfume. An intimate and mysterious scent. Not the drug store stuff he’d bought her as a birthday present on their third date. From the subtlety of the new scent, more expensive.

  After years and countless discussions with his mother and Logan, Ben finally accepted he hadn’t been in love with Allie, what he’d felt for her had only been lust. The type all teenage boys felt around a teenage girl, especially one as vibrant and fearless as Allie. Not that it had felt like “just lust” at the time. Nor from the way he’d felt his world had crashed and burned without Allie there. But as Logan repeatedly pointed out, she couldn’t have been in love with him either. If she had, the last afternoon they’d spent together never would have happened.

  She’d grown from a pretty girl into a beautiful woman. The auburn curls she used to pull into a ponytail were now swept into a fancy ’do. Gone were the blue jeans with the rhinestones on the pockets, the heavy bling on her wrists and neck. An elegant silver necklace replaced the multiple beaded ones she used to favor, sparkling over a white cotton blouse, set off by a red linen jacket. A straight navy skirt completed an outfit that wouldn’t be out of place in a fancy-schmancy boardroom.

  More than just her clothes had changed about her. While she was every bit as striking, her vibrancy had diminished, like someone had installed a dimmer switch and cranked it down low. Of course, it might be blamed on returning to the place where her father had been caught stealing. Maybe everyone was right, and she’d helped him and was now feeling guilty.

  He glanced at her business card, blinked and read it again.

  A. J. O’Keefe, Claims Investigator

  O’Keefe? She’d been Allison Jane Daniels when they’d dated. He glanced down at her left hand. Her previously ragged short nails were now long and a glittery dark red. There was no sign of a ring, not even a tan line. “What’s with the name change?”

  “I got married,” she said flatly. “And since you checked for the ring, I got divorced. Eighteen months ago.”

  Her lips pressed into a straight line. Lips that were usually full, lush. Delicious. Her hazel eyes, with their gold streaks that usually flashed with merriment, now hinted at suspicion.

  Yeah, that’s not helping you stay focused, Grady. “Sorry to hear it.” What else could he say? The guy was a jerk for letting Allie escape? Because she’d just throw it right back in his face. He pinned her card onto the corkboard above his desk. “So how’d you end up in the insurance industry? Last I remember you were planning on being a vet.” On going to A&M. With him.

  “Plans changed. Thanks to your grandfather kicking me off the ranch two days before we graduated, I lost my scholarship.”

  Shit. “I’m sorry you got caught in the crossfire. You weren’t to blame.” Or did the lady protest too much? Had she been using their relationship to distract him from her father’s thefts?

  “Damned straight I wasn’t to blame. Or at least not just me. You and Logan were just as much partners in that crime as I was.”

  What the fuck was she talking about? Through the window he saw Logan’s car pull up beside Allie’s. Thank God. Maybe he could make sense out of whatever bee was in Allie’s bonnet. “Lo’s here.”

  He dashed outside and was beside Logan’s Mercedes before he realized he’d made the decision to move.

  The moment Logan opened his door, Ben lowered his voice so she couldn’t hear. “Hey, you’ll never guess who just showed up.”

  “A. J. O’Keefe. AKA Allison Jane Daniels.” Logan said, letting his gaze drift past Ben to where Allie stood in the office doorway. “Wow, she looks great.”

  “Yeah, she does.” He blocked Logan from moving toward the stairs. “How come you didn’t warn me it would be her we’d be meeting?”

  “Because I only just found out myself.” He raised an eyebrow at Ben. “Do you mind moving so I can get my briefcase out of the bac
k seat?”

  Ben stepped back and grinned at his friend’s dark blue suit. “Wearing one of your fancy cat hair and hay attractors today, huh? Thought you’d learned your lesson last time you wore one of them out here.”

  Logan grimaced and glanced down at his mirror-shiny shoes. “I didn’t have time to change. Besides it might give SSTG a reason to support your claim if they know you have legal counsel backing you.” He turned his body so Allie couldn’t see his face. “What have you two been talking about so far?”

  “Not much. She asked about Ma. Asked about the claim.” He held up his hand at Logan’s thunderous look. “Don’t get your panties in a twist. I know you said I shouldn’t say anything until you got here, so I told her Tammie had told me about the damned claim and how someone’s bought part of Bull’s Hollow and now the bank was threatening to call in their notes. That’s all.”

  All of which was the truth and couldn’t come back to bite him in the ass. None of this should. He’d not sold any land. Neither had Jake. Either some lowlife was deliberately trying to cause trouble—which they’d succeeded in doing—or whatever lawyer filed the damned land sale claim had listed the wrong land by mistake.

  Dust rose like a rooster tail behind a bright red sports car bucketing toward them at far too fast a speed.

  “Your boss, I’m guessing?” Ben called to Allie.

  “It would.” She slipped past them to await the newcomer at the free space on the other side of Ben’s truck.

  Logan grabbed Ben’s arm. “Wait for a minute. I need to talk to you before we get started.”

  Biting the inside of his cheek so he wouldn’t comment on the dust settling over Logan’s suit like a fine mist, Ben nodded. “Then talk fast.”

  “Charlie’s researchers told me that Allie’s not just a claims investigator, she’s a lawyer.”

  Why hadn’t she told him before? Mystified, he shook his head. “You say it like it’s a bad thing.”

  “It’s good and bad. Good because she’ll know all the ins and outs of title claims, and bad because she’ll know all the ways to reject your claim.”

  “Why would she reject it? I didn’t sell any land and that’s what all those payments for title insurance are for.” Though if SSTG were like some other companies they’d be looking for a way to walk away without paying out if something screwy had happened. Not that it had. No Grady would have sold any part of Bull’s Hollow.

  “Just bear in mind, she holds Bull’s Hollow’s future in her hands. So play it cool. Don’t do anything to rile her up. And for God’s sake, don’t think with your dick around her. Keep her at arm’s length.”

  “Give me a fucking break. She’s been married and divorced and is a different person from who I remember. I’m not going to sleep with her.”

  Logan’s jaw dropped. “Oh fuck. I never said anything about sleeping with her, which means you are thinking about it, aren’t you?”

  “No.” He glanced toward the sports car and found Allie leaning into the window, speaking to the woman inside. Man, he shouldn’t have looked. Her skirt pulled tight over her delectable round ass. “Okay, maybe I am. But at the moment it’s just a fantasy.”

  A fantasy about getting her naked in his bed wearing only those fuck-me high heels.

  * * *

  Sweat coating her neck as the sun blazed down on her, Allie waited through Kathy’s complaints about how Lucy, as her boss had nicknamed her GPS unit, had steered her the wrong way once again. If she hadn’t driven out on calls with Kathy on occasion and seen firsthand how the unit repeatedly gave wrong directions in its breathy porn-star-sounding voice, she might not have believed it.

  “You got here just in the nick of time. I wasn’t looking forward to having to make small talk with both of them while we waited for you.”

  Kathy tilted her head as she observed the two men in a heated discussion near Logan’s shiny sedan. Her lips tilted into a very rare smile. “Gotta love a guy in chaps. Always want to ask them to model them for me without their jeans, you know what I mean?”

  Allie looked away as the memory rose up of Ben giving her a private viewing when she’d asked exactly the same thing. “That’s Ben.”

  “I bet you had to beat the other girls off him with a baseball bat.”

  “He’s not worth it.” The time she’d gotten in a fight over Ben with Tiffany Stokes, she’d used her fists, not a bat, simply because that’s all she’d had available at the time.

  “Going by his suit, I’m guessing the other guy is his lawyer?”

  “Logan Vance, yes.” Who, from the fancy designer suit, silk tie and matching silk handkerchief jauntily sticking out of his breast pocket, had been much more successful than he’d dreamed back in high school. Gone were the hand-me-down jeans and shoes, along with his glasses, replaced either by contacts or laser surgery. It pained her to admit the high school nerd who’d been one of her best friends had become a sophisticated stranger. It hurt worse that they hadn’t maintained their friendship to cheer the other with each accomplishment.

  “Nothing turns me on like a guy in a good suit and tie.” Kathy grinned. “Hell, they’re both pretty damned good-looking. I wouldn’t mind being the jelly in their sandwich.”

  Allie was grateful Kathy had turned to grab her briefcase from the back seat and didn’t see her wince. Her briefcase wedged between her ample bosom and the steering wheel, Kathy checked her phone, skimming through her emails and checking her text messages.

  “Are you sure you can’t assign someone else? Maybe Jessica? I could take over one of her cases.”

  “It’s your territory, you get to deal with it.” Her boss finally looked up. Her eyebrows arched in a calculating expression. “My momma always used to say when life hands you lemons, make lemonade. Well, now’s the time to start squeezing them lemons.”

  Allie plucked at the zipper pull of her purse to distract herself from rolling her eyes. Unfortunately, her mouth didn’t fall for such diversions and she blurted, “Everyone fails to mention that lemons are sour as shit unless you add sugar. And I’m plum out of sugar these days.” Though Ben would probably have more than enough to spare—he’d been the sweetest-talking boy back in high school.

  Kathy chuckled. “Given your history with these guys, you won’t mind if I have to reject their claim, will you?”

  “No, but won’t they argue that I’ll be biased and you could end up being sued?”

  “Trust me, if you do your job right, they won’t have a leg to stand on if I do turn ’em down.”

  “Trust isn’t a word I’d use when it comes to the Gradys.”

  Lamb to the slaughter ran through her mind as she followed Kathy toward Ben and Logan. After she’d made the introductions, Ben read Kathy’s card, and he passed it without comment to Logan whose brows lifted in surprise.

  “Executive Vice President. Sending in the big guns right off the bat?”

  “A potential loss of almost eighteen million isn’t something my company takes lightly, Mr. Vance. Since I was in the area I decided to swing by so we could talk with your client personally.”

  Logan’s gaze swung to Allie. There was no trace of the warmth and lack of guile that once filled his whiskey-colored eyes. So much for hoping their friendship might have survived. “Can I still call you Allie? Or do you prefer AJ these days?”

  “Hello, Logan. Allie’s fine. AJ works better for the boardrooms.” The lack of surprise at her appearance and his unspoken acknowledgement of her married name told her he’d researched her before she’d arrived. “Shall we go inside and get out of this heat?”

  “Sounds like a plan to me.” Kathy marched up the stairs like a general leading her troops.

  Once inside, Allie realized there were only two chairs in the office, which meant two of them would be left standing. Logan shot them both a veiled glance then sat in the chair behind the desk and set his heels on the desk. He crossed one leg over the other at the ankle, as if he were the owner of Bull’s Hollow, a king at h
ome on his throne. The hesitant nerd she used to be able to read so easily had learned how to hide his emotions as well as gained a confidence that looked good on him, though not when she sat on the wrong side of his desk. Ben’s desk, she reminded herself. Ben, who was standing so close she could feel the heat emanating from him, could smell the scent of leather from his chaps.

  Kathy examined the single wooden chair available to her with a doubtful eye before lowering her designer suit to the well-worn seat. Once settled, she withdrew her tablet from its case.

  “Mr. Grady—Ben,” Kathy amended, “when your grandfather took out title insurance with Stars and Stripes Title Guaranty, he listed all the owners of the ranch. According to our files, there was no George Grady Junior listed on the form which means the claim DBP has purchased almost half of the spread from someone named George Grady Junior is our first line of investigation. So my first question to you is, is there a George Grady Junior who George Senior, as we’ll refer to him for now, deliberately left off the title?” She held up her hand before he could answer. “I must inform you both that we’ve hired private investigators to double check that your grandfather didn’t have any other offspring. If there are any family secrets, now’s the time to reveal them.”

  “There’s never been a George Grady Junior,” Ben growled.

  Logan rested his elbows on the worn wooden arms of his chair and steepled his fingers. “George Grady loved his wife and took his vows seriously, Ms. Berner. He wouldn’t have cheated on her, and even if he’d ever fathered any other children before he married Agnes, he’d have acknowledged them.”

  “Damned straight,” Ben muttered behind her. “Gradys always look after their own.”

  No matter what it cost anyone else, Allie wanted to add.

  “Then we shouldn’t have any problems proving that the Memorandum of Land Sale is bogus, should we? We’re on the same team here, gentlemen. It’s in SSTG’s best interest, as well as yours, to get this matter settled quickly.”