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“I think he may know more than I knew,” I concede. “But I spend time with Chance. I know him. I don’t know what happened between your brother and my father, but I talked to Chance about this. He wasn’t involved. Those things that you said were important to you—family and work—that’s what matters to Chance, too.”
“Who does Randall work for, Emma?”
“Chance.”
“And he takes all of his direction from Chance?”
“Yes,” I say, not sure where this is going. “Why?”
“Randall was involved in this situation with my brother.”
Now I know where he’s going with this. Chance is the reason Randall was involved. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“You have to give me more than that,” I say. “How?”
“I saw him at the castle a week before my brother died, and if that’s not enough, I saw my brother’s work notes. They had references to Randall, but oddly, nothing that told me what the hell was going on.”
“Nothing else? Nothing about why my father wanted to buy the castle?”
“Nothing, but the castle is a part of the whiskey operation. He wasn’t trying to buy the castle. He was trying to buy us. There isn’t one without the other.”
None of this matches what Chance told me, I think uneasily. “This is crazy. We need to just talk to Chance. We need to be direct. We’ll just go right at him and find out the truth. It can’t be as bad as it seems or Chance wouldn’t be eager to sit down with us. He wouldn’t be joining us for coffee.”
Jax arches a brow. “You sure you want to do that with me here?”
“Yes. I want you to know the truth. Then we both know that what’s between us is real.”
He turns his chair and pulls me around to him, his hand settling on my leg. “This is real. Remember that.”
“Why do I need to remember that, Jax? What’s going to happen to make me forget?”
My cellphone rings where I’ve left it on the table and I glance down to find Chance calling. I answer the line. “Where are you?”
“I had an emergency at the office. I’m not coming.”
My gut knots with this news and I glance at Jax. “What emergency?” I ask my brother.
Jax arches a brow and with reason. I just declared Chance joining us, supported his good faith. Now, he’s not joining us.
“The kind that comes up all the time, Bird Dog,” Chance replies. “Be careful with Jax North. I’m not sure what to make of him.”
“Don’t hang up,” I order, but it’s too late. The line goes dead.
I huff out a breath, stick my phone in my purse, and say nothing. What is there to say? I stuff banana bread in my mouth and Jax faces forward and does the same. We eat, we drink, we’re silent, and I can almost feel both of our minds working. And mine does work, driving me right into a rabbit hole. I turn to face Jax. “You were taking this meeting now for me. You didn’t want to meet with Chance.”
“And?”
“You hate my father but you came to his award ceremony. You didn’t want to meet with Chance, but you came to that award ceremony. Why?”
Jax stares at me for several beats, his expression unreadable, the heavy weight of my unanswered question between us before he pulls his phone from his pocket, punches in something and then looks at me. “I got us an Uber.” He stands and takes me with him. “Let’s go to the hotel and talk.”
Chapter twenty-three
Emma
“Talk to me here,” I say, catching Jax’s arm as he tries to lead me away from the coffee shop table. “Why were you at the ceremony? And my God, why didn’t I think of this before now?”
