One Taste

by Cari Quinn

  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 Winchester Falls 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 Proctor?” 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.

  But she also remembered him driving away without a good-bye. And she remembered her mother’s tears. There were a lot of tears. A lot more tears than kisses good night. “I’ll know more after we go through the will today.”

  “Does that mean you’re not coming home tonight?”

  “No, I won’t. And my ticket is nonrefundable. I have no idea what’s going to happen.”

  “If I could strangle your father, I would.”

  “Get in line.”

  “The B and B is quiet right now, but I’ll go over and help your mom with whatever she needs.”

  “Thanks. I don’t want to be a bother.”

  “Shut up, Kendall. What are best friends for?”

  “I—”

  “Seriously. Shut up. It’s slow at the office, so I can take an hour here and there to go check on her.”

  “I love you, Bells.”

  “Oh, crap. Don’t get gushy on me. We don’t do smush.”

  Kendall smiled into the shadows of the chair. “I’ll call when I can.”

  “Okay. Chin up and kick ass. That’s what we do.”

  “That’s what we do,” she agreed. “Bye.”

  She fisted her hand around her phone and dragged in a steadying breath. Her shoulders prickled, and she looked up. Shane stood in the doorway. His shirt was open at the throat, and a thin line of beads showed at his neck. Another anomaly. He didn’t seem the jewelry type. She sat up and put her feet back into her shoes. “What happened to privacy?”

  “It lasted thirty minutes.”

  “I still haven’t called my mother.”

  His full lips flattened into a frown. “What exactly were you doing in here, Miss Proctor?”

  She stood. “Look, let’s get this Mister and Miss crap out of the way. I’m Kendall. We’re going to be in each other’s face all night.”

  “Who were you on the phone with, Kendall?”

  The way he said her name awakened the damn firefly. She pushed the odd feelings aside. “I called my friend. I needed to talk it out with her and figure out what to do with my mom.”

  “I don’t want to waste any more time.”

  “Nice to know that my mother is a waste of time. I’m sure your mother would love to hear the same thing.”

  “My mother’s dead.”

  Kendall slammed her molars together. Stupid, Ken. Of course his mother would have been at the will reading if she were still alive. “I’m sorry.”

  “Happened a long time ago.”

  She frowned. “How long ago?”

  “And why is that your business?”

  “I’m sorry to pry.” She didn’t even know what to tell her mother. And getting her mom off the phone when she was worried was nearly impossible. With quick fingers she tapped out a message to her mother that she was safe and that her flight had changed. “I’ll call my mother later. After we figure out the will.”

  “We’re on West Coast time. It’s already well on its way to seven your time.”

  “My mother’s settled in to watch television for the rest of the night. I’ve got a few good hours.” Her phone buzzed in her hand. She looked down and saw that her mom wasn’t worried and jammed her phone back into her purse. “Let’s get this done.”

  “After you.”

  She shrugged out of her jacket and went back into the conference room. A tray of coffee and fruit sat in the center, and the papers were lined up.

  “I broke up the piles into a few different sections. This bigger pile covers all his assets. I want to look through this part and see what’s going on. Something feels hinky.”

  “Hinky?”

  Shane nodded. “Based on the debt we supposedly have, there’s no way the house and the sale of the business could cover what we owe. Something doesn’t add up.”

  “Who bought out the business?”

  “That, Kendall Proctor, is a very good question.”

  She sat down across from him. “I really wish we had access to a lawyer who understood this and was willing to talk to us.”

  “I’ve never had to trust anyone but Jonas. And the fact that everything monetarily is locked down because of the will, I don’t have access to anything.”

  “I wish I could cover you, but if there’s any reason for savings, now would be it.”

  “I have about four hundred dollars in my personal account.”

  Surprised, she smo
othed her hands over the papers. “For a rich boy, you’re certainly money poor.”

  “I’m not a rich boy, Kendall. I’m a working man just like anyone else. And just like for most people, the economy has sucked the hell out of my free cash.”

  She frowned. His gaze slid away at the end of the sentence. He wasn’t telling her something. “We should be able to demand that Jonas give us the details of the will.”

  “He’s following Larry’s directive. I honestly don’t know how much we can demand without finding our own lawyer and having him or her read the paperwork. And with the size of this tome?” He sighed. “That’s a grand or so that I don’t have.”

  Kendall stood and reached for the carafe. “Looks like we’re going to need a lot of this.”

  He grunted a response, and they both settled in to read. Shakespeare was easier to read than the contract. Three hours later they had six separate stacks of papers, and she knew way too much about the construction business. Every blessed tractor, backhoe, truck, and trailer was explained in detail. Her eyes were crossed at the staggering amount of machinery that Justice Construction had. Hell, even the client list was part of the sale.

  She dragged her hair out of her face and pushed across the sheet she was reviewing. “Can your client list actually be sold?”

  “What?”

  She twisted the paper so he could read it. “Right there. At least I think the legal jargon means that.”

  He stood and leaned over the table. His large, tanned fingers splayed across the table as he read. She pulled her hand back. She did not need to pay attention to how big or small any of his damn body parts were.

  “Son of a fucking bitch.”

  She came out of her chair. Excitement thrummed through the room. She rounded the table to stand beside him. “What?”

  He riffled through papers. “I saw something—where…” He pushed one stack aside and handed her another. “There’s something in here about the client list as well, but I missed the importance.”

  “So it’s not me. That’s weird?”

  “That’s hinky.”

  There was that word again. She flipped through the pages and scanned for a similar phrase. She couldn’t skim the documents. There was so much hidden in the legal-speak she was afraid she’d miss something. “Wait. Here it is again.”