by Jillian Neal
“Maybe,” Finn shrugged. “But we’ll never really know the answer. That’s the thing with people who decide that it’s easier to just keep the peace and never stand up for what’s right. His existence is never on the line. There’s no personal cost to him, so he has the luxury of playing nice. It’s not like mine, or Drew’s, or even Jack’s now that he’s thrown it all back in Dad’s face. There’s nothing louder than their silence. That’s why we’re sitting here debating his motives instead of believing what he said.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Jack kept an eye on the road as Meridian happily drove them back to River Chase in the Cheyenne.
“I’m sorry about the hickey,” she offered with a delighted grin.
“No, you’re not.” He laughed.
Her giggle broadened his grin. “I’m a little bit sorry.”
“You are lying through your pouty lips, princess.”
That elicited more laughter. “Okay, how about if I let you give me one?”
“Now that kind of negotiation will get you a whole lot further.”
“I still don’t think I’m a princess,” she informed him a few minutes later.
“Not even my princess?”
Her entire face transformed as her smile reached her eyes. “Maybe that.”
“Definitely that. Take the next right and follow the river for the next few miles. You’ll see the entrance gates. We want the third entrance.”
“Who is the first gate for?”
“The staff.”
“And the second?”
“My parents’ private garage.”
“Fancy.” She rolled her eyes.
“Ridiculous,” Jack countered.
They parked the truck, took a few minutes to indulge in each other a little more, and then headed into the house. Jack’s hopes that his parents might have already gone to bed were dashed as soon as they entered.
His mother’s long-suffering sigh, the background music of most of his childhood, greeted them quickly. “Did you two enjoy yourselves?” It was clear from her question that if they did enjoy themselves they should be ashamed.
“Very much so,” Jack informed her.
“I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that Tiffany has cancelled the bridal tea.”
Jack stared at the woman who’d given him birth and wondered for the thousandth time how they were so different. “Why would I be pleased with that?”
His mother took a quick sip of water. “You seem to enjoy disrupting our lives. I assumed this would fit into your plans.”
“What plans, Mother?”
“I let Tiffany know that you and,”—she waved her hand dismissively toward Meridian—“she would be happy to attend dinner tomorrow evening at Bellemenson.”
Jack’s head throbbed with everything wrong with her statement. “You did what?”
“Greer assured me that you’d be fine with that,” she threw in his face.
Rage ignited in Jack’s blood. “And since when do you and Greer keep my social calendar?”
“You are in my home, and even though you always brush off your responsibilities to this family and our obligations, it is your fault that this has happened.”
Meridian gripped his arm rather hard. “Jack.” She shook her head, but he wasn’t going to be held back.
“I brush off responsibility? Me?” he shouted. “You can tell Tiff that I’ll be happy to dine with her when you can remember my fiancée’s name. Otherwise, you can all take a yacht straight to hell.”
Fury pulsed in his vision all the way down the lengthy hallway to his room. He almost ran over his brother as he burned a path forward. “What the hell are you thinking committing me to dinner with Tiffany? Who are you really playing for, Greer?” Jack seethed.
“I’m not playing for anyone. When I got back, Mom asked me if I thought you’d mind having dinner with Tiff and Brent. It didn’t seem like that big of a deal. You were engaged to her.”
Jack managed a few nods. “Did it ever occur to you to tell her to ask me if I minded having dinner over there?”
“No. What are you so pissed about? They have a great chef.”
“Un-fucking-believable.”
Unable to remain still even when they reached his childhood bedroom, Jack continued to pace. Meridian sat quietly on the bed watching him. She seemed to understand that motion was how he clung to sanity.
“How do they always manage to make me feel like I’m the one who’s lost my mind?” he finally asked her.
Understanding weighted the nod she gave him. “People always think of themselves as the exception to the rule. If they’re the most important thing in their own lives, then they must be the most important in yours. People can’t see outside of their own heads. The favor they ask is just one favor, so to them it’s no big deal. No one ever gets that there have been years of favors and just this or just that. Everyone has a breaking point. Everybody gets to a place where what’s being asked of them is more than they can give because they’ve already sacrificed so much to keep the peace.”
He stared at her and allowed himself to fully grasp the amazement that she allowed him to hold her in his hands. “How’d you get to be so goddamn smart?”
She grinned. “I come from a long line of people who always try to bend over backwards so they can fulfill all of the favors everyone asks for. Sometimes we can’t. So, through the years, I’ve watched my family get dragged because we have to reinforce boundaries or flat out tell people no because what they’re asking for only serves themselves and not the community.”
“We’re not going,” he assured her.
“I don’t mind going as much as I mind the fact that Greer prefers to make excuses for your parents’ lies because that makes his life easier than acknowledging the truth.”
Her words sparked a thought in Jack’s mind. “Greer and Brent are pretty good friends.”
She grinned. “So, if we do have dinner with them, maybe we could get a little insight into just what your brother is up to.”
“Maybe, but I’m not dragging you out to Bellemenson. You hate it here. I can’t imagine what you’d think of their estate. If they want to eat with us, we’ll do it on neutral ground.”
She stood up off of his bed and wrapped her arms around him. Her touch soothed his weary body and anger-riddled mind. “You know, I don’t hate it here because of the monuments to stupid amounts of money your mother decorates with or because all of the staff are still curtsying to me. Although, I do hate that,” she added quickly. “I hate it here because they can’t see what an amazing man you are.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Jack scoffed.
“Trust me. I know what I’m talking about. You know pool. I know you.”
Another round of guilt turned to concrete in Jack’s gut. “Speaking of me knowing pool, I owe you an apology.”
“For what?”
“For tonight. My brothers made some lewd comments, and I didn’t do a very good job of keeping what we shared to myself.”
The grin that he was falling so hard for—equal parts mischief and delight—formed on her features. “You have met my brothers, right?” She laughed.
Chuckling at that, he nodded. “I have.” It was distinctly odd to be laughing after everything that had happened in the last ten minutes.
“That’s dinner conversation every night with Maddox and Jericho. Just remember, I’m way more cowgirl than princess. I sure as hell don’t want to be treated like some corncob-up-her-ass southern-fried debutante. I loved tonight. All of it.”
Jack took her hands in his own. “Good. I loved it too. But…if I ever do something you don’t like, you’ll tell me, right? I want the chance to fix it before you call this off.”
“Cowgirls ride. Come hell or high water or blistering heat or knee-high snow. No matter what. When I decide I’m going to do something, I don’t give up, and I won’t give up on you or us.”
He wished he could believe that, but it seemed entire
ly too good to be true. Nothing good ever lasted in his life because his life had been built on lies, just like this relationship had been. He’d brushed off her pointing that out at Watershed, but now the question ate him alive.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“It’s just odd,” Meridian commented as Jack drove them toward the agreed-upon restaurant the following evening.
“I’m going to need you to be a little more specific, sweetheart.” Jack winked at her.
“We’re going to dinner with your ex-fiancée, and you care so little about her it would be ridiculous for me to even be jealous a little bit. But for most couples, I think jealousy over this would be profoundly normal.”
Jack squeezed her thigh. “I would have to have felt something for her when we were actually engaged for me to have any feelings other than annoyance about this evening.”
“I can’t imagine agreeing to marry someone that you have no feelings for. Maybe that’s the weird part.”
He offered her an apologetic glance. “Have you ever heard the folktale about the frog in boiling water?”
“Yeah. If you put a frog in boiling water it will jump out, but if you put it in pleasantly warm water and slowly raise the temperature, it will stay in there and cook?”
“Right. The lesson in that tale is true. What you live day in and day out becomes your normal. Nothing about it seems odd from inside that scalding pot. I had to propel myself out of it to even really grasp just how insane it all was. Up until the moment I was staring down grossly fraudulent tax claims that I was expected to make appear legal and watching them slowly erase Finn’s existence, it all seemed normal to me.”
Meridian considered that. “But surely you recognized that things weren’t exactly above board before they sent Finn away.”
“They raised the temperature on the water so slowly I was able to make excuses for each individual thermostat adjustment until I had to get out or be burned alive. When you want to believe what you’re being told, it’s harder to step back from it all and take a hard look in the mirror.”
Meridian shook her head. “I still think it’s amazing you were able to get out. Greer isn’t as strong as you are.”
“Don’t make excuses for him. There’s always a way. Although, I will admit I’m not sure I would’ve landed on my feet if it weren’t for Thad’s help.”
“Who is Thad?” Meridian felt like she was missing key portions of Jack’s story.
“Senator McCoy’s son. He was a frat brother of mine at Duke. I told you about him.”
“Yeah, you just didn’t use his name, I don’t think, but don’t give him all the credit. You would’ve gotten out somehow.”
Jack’s phone rang before he could respond to that. “Would you mind answering that? It’s difficult to talk on the phone while driving a stick.”
“Sure.” Meridian picked up Jack’s cell from the old pull-out ashtray in the Cheyenne. She stared at the screen. “It’s Tiffany.”
“Good luck.”
Pleased that he hadn’t tried to figure out a way to keep her from answering the call, Meridian went on with it. This was going to be fun. “This is Meridian.”
“Oh, um, hey,” Tiffany sang. “Listen, can you tell Jack that Brent didn’t get off the golf course in time, so let’s just eat at Hearst Stone tonight. We already have a table.”
“Hang on one second,” Meridian said as she tried to make sense of what Tiffany was asking. Blocking the speakers on the phone with her thigh, she hoped Jack could make sense of the message. “Tiff says that Brent couldn’t get his ass off the golf course in time for the dinner they arranged, and now they have us a table at Hearst Stone, whatever the hell that is.”
Jack shook his head in what seemed like disbelief. “Turn it on speaker.” Meridian followed his order. “No,” was the first and only word Jack spoke as soon as Tiffany could hear him. Meridian bit back laughter.
“Oh, you are such a stick, Jackson. It’ll be fun. We’ll see you soon. Our table’s at The Hunt. You remember. See you soon.” She made a few kissing noises before the call ended.
Dear god. She was just too much. “I’m going to need you to translate all of that into middle-class,” Meridian informed Jack.
Jack had absolutely no idea what to say. It took him a few seconds to register that Meridian needed him to do something. “Uh,” he tried to sort through the barrage of fury that bombarded his mind. “Hearst Stone is the bourbon families’ preferred country club. The Hunt Grille is one of the four dining rooms in the club. It’s the elite dining room, and of course the Fitzgeralds have a standing table there.”
“But don’t you have to be a member of country clubs to be allowed inside? You’re not still a member, are you?”
Disgusted at the thought, Jack scowled. “No, but my middle name is Hearst. As in Hearst Stone, and I was named that because Hearst is my mother’s maiden name.”
Her mouth dropped open for a split second before she gasped, “Your mother’s family established the elite bourbon family country club?”
“And they most certainly would let me in if I wanted to go, which I do not.”
“So, I take it this isn’t even close to neutral ground.”
“It would be neutral in the same way it would’ve been if FDR’s son had agreed to dine with Mussolini’s daughter in Berlin.”
“No offense, but I think your dad is a far cry from Roosevelt.”
“Agreed. I got lost in my own metaphor. Forgive me.”
“No problem. Did she call you a stick?”
“In the mud would be the reference.”
Meridian rolled her eyes. “You are so not a stick in the mud. She should’ve seen us last night.” Her obvious thrill with their activities in the bar the night before soothed a little of Jack’s sour mood.
“We are not going to Hearst Stone. Would you like to go back to Watershed? Or hell, anywhere else in this godforsaken town?”
“I kind of like Louisville outside of the whiskey river estate sector, and are you sure you don’t want to go tonight? I think we need to go see what we can figure out about Greer and what the hell is going on with Tiffany and Brent. It’s all very strange.”
“Elaborate on that,” Jack urged. He wasn’t certain which parts she found most odd.
“They were supposed to meet her little sister at Watershed last night and didn’t show, and now they’ve basically trapped us into going to this country club that’s basically your mother’s. Greer signed us on for this.”
“Right. We’re walking into an obvious setup.”
“Yes, but not a very good one. This would be obvious from the International Space Station. I want to know what they’re after.”
Jack would’ve been lying to himself if he’d pretended that he wasn’t curious to know that as well.
“My father’s goal is always to bring me back to Louisville, back to the business. He wants me under his enormous thumb. My mother’s goal since my birth has been for me to provide my parents with a strategic marriage that expands their empire.”
“They’re after control.” She grew quiet for a minute, and Jack watched her think. It was one of his favorite things to watch her do. She was whip-smart brilliant, and the way she pursed her lips and furrowed her brow that created a little groove at the top of her nose was sexy as hell. Suddenly her eyes widened. “What if you own more of that real estate between the lines than you think you do?”
“How would that be possible?” Their conversation about his parents wanting to own the space between the lines replayed in his mind. It had only been the day before coming to Kentucky, but it seemed like an entire lifetime ago. Perhaps that was because in the span of just a few days, he’d seen what his life could be if he managed to play all of his newly shuffled deck of cards correctly for once in his life.
“Maybe your parents think you know about something you don’t actually know about. Maybe that’s why they’re acting so awful about me. Maybe there was more to your and Tiffany’s po
tential marriage than you saw. I don’t know. There are a million possibilities. If their goal is to maintain control of you, what lengths would they go to before they feel like they have you safely back in the fold?”
“Are you saying that they’re looking for something to hold over my head?”
“I’m saying it’s a possibility.”
Jack shook his head. “They already have that. They know that I can’t ever report their bad business practices to the IRS because I signed off on some of it.”
“Yeah, but maybe they realize they’re losing ground the longer you stay out of Denton Distilleries.”
“There’s no statute of limitations on tax fraud. You know that.”
“Of course I know that, but that isn’t what I’m talking about. They’re all up to something. They have to be. I want to know what it is. What if Tiffany’s parents’ divorce has some big effect on your family’s business or something?”
Her point brought a thought that had been on the periphery of his mind since the dinner at River Chase to the forefront. “I would love to know why they’re divorcing. You don’t split a marriage like that for something minor.”
“I don’t know, but every single thing about this is just weird.”
“So, you think we should walk directly into the lion’s den and find out what is going on?” The thought of being around the Hearst Stone crowd again made Jack want to vomit.
“In this case, I think we’re smarter than the lions. We are one kickass legal team, after all.”
“I can’t fathom what my parents believe that I know that they think I would confess to Tiffany.” Concern and panic suddenly flared in Meridian’s eyes. Jack’s heart stopped momentarily. “What’s wrong?”
“Me,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Your mom told your dad that she didn’t believe we were a real couple. She’s been awful to me, and your dad hasn’t exactly been kind. They want to see what we’ll tell Tiffany about us.”
Jack considered her points. His family had been extraordinarily horrible toward Meridian. They’d gone long past the point of annoyed disdain and had crossed over into egregiously rude. Perhaps she was right. “I don’t care if they think this relationship is fake. We define what we mean to each other. No one else even matters.”
