Secret Lies
(BOOK ONE)
A STEALTHY BILLIONAIRE ROMANCE
GABRIELLE SNOW
Copyright © 2019 by Gabrielle Snow
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are product’s of the author’s imagination and used in a fictitious manner. Any similarity to actual people, living or dead, places, or events is entirely coincidental or fictionalized.
Table Of Contents
The Ranch
Reading of the Will
Spoiled
An Arrangement
Making Mistakes
Mysterious Buyer
The Ranch
Nick.
The elevator pinged obnoxiously as it arrived on the top floor. The best floor. My floor. Sunlight filtered in through the tall windows of the penthouse suite, shining down on an immaculately-decorated apartment – an apartment decorated by a professional to whom I’d left every decision. I didn’t have time for something as trivial as decorating, particularly since I mostly used my apartment as a place to rest my head and nothing more. Besides, the interior decorator, a leggy blonde whose name I couldn’t recall, was perfectly good at her job. The fact that it cost me a pretty penny didn’t matter. All that mattered was that I had the best. And anyway, I couldn’t exactly complain when she had helped me break in practically every new piece of furniture she’d chosen for me when all was said and done.
I stepped out of the elevator with my phone pressed to my ear and my teeth clenched so hard I was giving myself a headache. As my irritation grew, the muscles in my jaw twitched. I was too far gone to give a damn about the pain.
“Can’t you just put in an offer?” I snapped. On the other end of the phone was a graying man with more patience than I ever gave him credit for, and for the first time possibly since we’d started working together almost nearly a decade ago, he was delivering bad news. “I mean, it’s not like money is an object.”
“I’m sorry, Nick. I don’t know what else to tell ya’,” Matt, my financial advisor, sighed. “The executor is pretty clear about the terms of your grandfather’s will. If you want a chance at the ranch, you’ve gotta go out there and get it.”
“This is ridiculous.” I made my way over to the windows, pacing up and down the hardwood floors as I looked out over the chaos below. The streets were crawling with cars so small they resembled ants in the rush-hour traffic, but I was too high up to actually hear the hustle and bustle. I lived in the tallest building for the simple fact that it had the best view in the city, but at that point in time, it did nothing for my state of mind. “When’s the reading?”
“Tomorrow at twelve p.m. I’ve already booked you a ticket, and your flight leaves tonight, so you’d better get packing.”
For a second, I froze, unsure of what to do. Did I want to roll my eyes, or did I want to laugh at Matt’s audacity? I wondered. My nose settled for a derisive snort, and I ran my hand through my dark curls in frustration. “Yeah, okay, I guess I really don’t have a choice in this, huh?”
“Nope, ‘fraid not.” I could almost see the old man shrugging in his cracked leather seat. “And, the clock is ticking. I emailed you the details.”
“All right then. Thanks, Matt.”
“Good luck.”
I ended the call and heaved a sigh as I checked my emails on my phone. Matt never missed a beat and my ticket was there, just as he said it would be. I didn’t have much time to pack if I wanted to get to the airport in time. The last thing I wanted was travel all the way out to the ranch. I didn’t want to be on it. I just wanted to own it. Why was that proving such an elusive desire? I asked myself. There was no point asking the question. After all, my grandfather had given me a pretty clear idea of when I would get my hands on the lucrative piece of property.
‘Over my dead body will I sell to you, boy.’ Isn’t that what he’d said?
The memory brought a sour taste in my mouth, and I knew from my own involuntary grimace that I probably looked as though I’d just taken a bite out of a lemon. It hadn’t been the greatest moment of my life and, unfortunately, it also happened to be the last time I saw my grandfather alive. I pushed those thoughts away as roughly as I could. The memory haunted me enough as it was. Now, the man was dead and there was nothing I could do about it.
Besides, my anger at that point in time was far stronger than the memories.
Long before my bank account revealed more than six zeroes, I approached my grandfather with an offer for his ranch. To my great disappointment, I’d underestimated how stubborn he was. Though he hated the ranch and hated living there, he refused to sell it to me and refused to leave for one simple reason: my grandmother, Lorraine Parker. In her lifetime, my grandmother had adored the ranch. Actually, in my grandmother’s lifetime, my grandfather had adored the ranch, too. The only reason he ever stopped was because of the circumstances surrounding my grandmother’s death.
Keeping the thoughts from coming to mind proved impossible as I ventured up toward my room to begin packing. With each pair of socks I added to the pile of neatly folded clothes — courtesy of the housekeeping staff in the building — memories of the ranch returned to me. There were too many to count, but that was to be expected. The better part of my childhood was spent out in those fields, generally on the back of a horse. My grandparents had taken me in when I was nine years old after a terrible house fire took everything in my life away, including my parents. The second I was old enough, I left for college and never looked back.
Packing was a struggle for the simple fact that I had no idea how long I was going to be out there for. I packed enough clothes for a week, certain that I wouldn’t need to be there for longer than that. The reading of the will probably wouldn’t take long and, while I was there, I could check out the condition of the place — two birds with one stone. It seemed like a good idea, all things considered.
A pang of unexpected guilt hit me in the pit of my gut as I locked my apartment door behind me, but I ignored that, too. I had no reason to feel guilt. My grandparents were both gone. What could they do with the ranch? Nothing. I, however, had plenty of plans in mind.
After all, ranches were my business. I owned several of them across the country. And, I owed them my billionaire status.
***
The moment the plane landed, I was hit with scents I’d never encountered in all my years in the city. I’d all but forgotten that the country hit my senses in a different way. All around me, I could see the wide open spaces and greenery, rather than the skyscrapers I had become used to. The air hit me differently, too, hotter, with a breeze coming directly off the trees. It was hard to pinpoint the smell, but it was somewhere between plants and animals, the smell of land cultivated for horses and cattle.
The second I walked into the airport terminal, I spotted a driver holding a sign with my name on it and made my way over to him, a sense of surrealism running through me. It was hard to believe I’d grown up out here. Somehow, it felt as if I’d never left, but I knew it had been years since I visited.
“Hey,” I grunted, tired after the long flight.
“Howdy. I’m Michael,” the man responded. He was tall and wore a cowboy hat. He tucked the sign beneath his arm, took my suitcase, and began walking toward the parking lot. “Didja have a good flight?”
“Yeah, it was as good as can be.” A glance at my wristwatch told me we had two hours to get to the ranch. That was fine. It wasn’t far from the airport, if memory served correctly.
“It’ll take
us a couple hours to get to the ranch from here,” Michael confirmed what I’d been thinking.
As he loaded my suitcase onto the back of his old pickup, I couldn’t help but think that taxis out here were an entirely different creature from ones in the city. I was pretty sure there were other services. Knowing Matt, he probably called someone at the ranch to pick me up personally. He had it in his head that people from the country were backwards, and that if I gave someone directions, they wouldn’t know how to get there if I didn’t tell them exactly which rock they had to turn at.
I rolled my eyes as I climbed into the backseat and pulled out my phone, dialing up Matt himself.
“Nick,” he answered on the very first ring.
“I’ve landed. We’re on the way to the farm.”
“Great,” he chuckled. “Update me on the reading, will ya?”
“Will do,” I murmured as Michael climbed into the front seat and started the truck up with a hiss and a jolt.
He gave me a sheepish glance in the rearview mirror, and we were off as I ended the call, still in disbelief that I was on my way to my childhood home.
Reading of the Will
Nick.
The ranch hadn’t changed much since the last time I was there. Right before the long driveway on the very outskirts of the property, an old arch carved out of oak told me that I’d arrived on the Parker Ranch. I could hardly recall the days when it was new. Ivy grew up its sides and on either side; the trees of the surrounding woods had overgrown to the point where the branches hung low over the arch, practically hiding my family name from sight. Shadows fell over my face as we passed through the overhanging branches. Any thoughts I might have had were silenced by the coughing and spluttering of my driver’s truck, barely holding onto life as it struggled up the gravelly path, desperate to bring us to our destination.
Michael’s beat-up pickup pulled up to the ranch house at exactly five minutes to twelve. I didn’t have a second to waste. He’d barely pulled the key out of the ignition when I threw open my door and darted up the stairs. I didn’t have the chance to take in the peeled white paint of the old porch — nothing like it had been when I was a child. Of course, the ranch had only just been built when I moved into it over twenty years ago, so that made enough sense.
The front door was open, and my hasty footsteps echoed off of hardwood floors. Though all my grandparents’ furniture was still there, the house had a sense of emptiness to it as I made my way toward the living room. Despite the fact that my grandfather had only recently passed, the house felt unlived in in more than one way; the smell of mothballs hung in the air, a smell my grandmother would have fought against if she were still around to combat it. I could almost hear her voice, telling my grandfather off for not caring as much as she would. It was as if the walls knew that their owners were no longer around, knew that they were about to fall into new hands. That was what I told myself, taking the strange empty feel as a positive rather than a negative.
When I passed the living room, my eyes passed right over the empty armchair in the corner, the one that my grandfather sat in. The memories of a young boy hanging onto his every word — sitting on the floor in front of that same maroon leather — bubbled right beneath the surface, but there was no time to linger.
I was racing a deadline. My watch was ticking, and I daren’t look down to check the time; every nerve in my body was worried that my biggest desire was about to be dashed. And, I could already hear the voices coming from the dining room just beyond the living room, a sound I recognized from all my time spent in boardrooms discussing business.
The conversation halted and all eyes shifted to take me in as I appeared at the door. I forced down the lump that formed in my throat, clearing my throat and straightening my tie before I walked over to one of the empty seats. The wooden chair scraped against the wood, seeming louder than was comfortable in the deafening silence of the room, as I took my place at the table.
“Sorry I’m late,” I forced out. “Have I missed anything important?”
No one spoke for a moment, and I took the chance to take everyone in. The smell of mothballs was nonexistent in this room, replaced by the perfumes and colognes of the familiar faces staring at me as though I were a ghost. At the end of the table sat a man with a receding hairline, jiggling jowls, and spectacles perched on the edge of his nose. I could only assume he was the executor since he had a folder of neat papers in front of him. To his left was my grandfather’s best friend, a man I grew up calling Uncle Tommy, and to his right was a woman I knew as Maggie, a woman who always gave me a cookie at the end of Sunday school. The other faces were friends of my grandparents, too. I was the only living member of the family left.
“Uh…” The executor shook his head. He shuffled through the papers. When he spoke, it was with a familiar twang. “You must be Nicholas Parker, grandson of the deceased?”
I gave a curt nod, unable to find the words to answer. The muscles in my jaw were twitching again, and everyone at the table was still staring at me. When one was as successful — or even simply as wealthy — as I was, one got used to people staring. This, on the other hand, was an entirely different experience. I would rather have the cameras and news crews trained on me. Any day.
“Right,” the executor nodded. “Well, we can proceed. You are all the chosen beneficiaries. My name is Jack Pierce, the official executor of Joseph Parker’s Last Will and Testament. Now, I must tell you, the practice of will-reading is completely outdated and not something we really do anymore, but Joseph was a traditional man.”
There were gentle murmurs of agreement from the other beneficiaries. I enjoyed that term. It made the people around the table seem distant from me, which made it far easier to be at the table with them. The truth was I didn’t know any of them, at all. I hadn’t for years. Yet, I could see it written all over their faces: they thought they still knew who I was.
“Anyway, I’m not going to beat around the bush. Everything else has been handled, so now it’s simply the property of the deceased.” Jack looked around. “To Maggie, I leave my prized Elvis Presley collection, of which there are three secret plates kept in the bottom drawer in the kitchen.”
“Oh, my!” Maggie, the woman who gave me biscuits as a child, exclaimed. “I’ve always adored his collection.”
“To Jed, I leave my recipe books. To Dana, I leave my silver platter and my three dragon ornaments.” Jack continued.
He went further and further down the list to exclaims from the other six people around the table. All the while, I grew increasingly impatient. It shouldn’t have surprised me that my grandfather saved me for last. Knowing him, it was probably a ploy specifically designed to annoy me. I was surprised I was even invited to the reading, at all. As far as I knew, my grandfather hated my guts. He certainly acted that way the last time I’d seen him, kicking me out of his house and telling me he didn’t want to see my face around here again, his finger wagging at me as if I were a naughty little boy once more.
As the memory surfaced, I gritted my teeth. I’d left, but not without a choice few words. My car was open, and I had been climbing into it as my grandfather shouted his retort. By the time I reversed out of the driveway, he was hunched over in a coughing fit. A few ranch hands raced over to help him inside while I drove away. It wasn’t exactly the best of last memories a person could have.
“To Nicholas Parker, my grandson,” the executor’s voice broke into my thoughts. “I leave a condition.”
“A condition?”
I needn’t have worried about interrupting. Everyone at the table looked as confused as I felt, including the executor. Jack had stopped reading aloud, and his eyes were now skimming over the pages before him.
“How odd,” he murmured.
“What’s odd?” I snapped, pressing on in spite of the indignant glances I received. “What did the old man say?”
“Uh,” Jack looked up at me in shock. “He says that you can have the ranch on one co
ndition.”
“Well? What is it?” I couldn’t keep the agitation out of my voice.
“You need to find a woman who will love the ranch as much as your grandmother, Lorraine Parker, did.”
“Excuse me?” I stood, pushing my chair backwards. It scraped against the wood once more. Maggie flinched, though that could have been due to my sudden movement. Hell, it could have been my tone. “Are you kidding?”
“That’s not all. If you don’t find a suitable partner — a woman to love as the deceased put it — within six months’ time, the ranch will fall to the default manner of dealing with property. It and everything inside will be auctioned off.” He cleared his throat when I opened my mouth to speak. “You will be blacklisted from the list of potential buyers, unable to make a bid.”
My fist had a mind of its own. It slammed down on the table so hard that the wood vibrated, Jack’s papers shifted, and the faces staring up at me had the most appalled expressions I’d ever seen. And, believe me, that was saying something. I didn’t bother sticking around. The last thing I wanted was to be reprimanded by people who could do that as a child.
With my heart pounding so hard that I could hear it in my ears, blocking out all other sound, I stormed out of the dining room. It was tempting to simply walk into another room, but I knew myself all too well and there was no guarantee that I wouldn’t simply throw Elvis Presley plates against the wall until the floor was covered in smashed pieces — though it was my experience that everyone could be bought, and I didn’t think Maggie was any different. For once, however, I’d play nice, even though I was furious. My footsteps revealed that much, stomps with a purpose as I strode toward the front door.
It wasn’t far enough. I didn’t stop on the porch. Walking gave me a sense of direction and distraction. As long as I kept walking, I wouldn’t feel the need to shove my fist through the nearest wall. That was how I wound up heading toward the stables, the dry summer grass crunching beneath my feet.
Secret Lies: A Stealthy Billionaire Romance (Secret Series Book 1) Page 1
