Page 8 of Blue Jean Summer

“Hopefully, things will settle down once lunch is over.”

“I can’t fucking wait,” she muttered.

A resounding boom carried from the house. Hallie and I peered around the corner, watching as Lewis, Hayes’s half brother, stormed out the front door.

That door was solid wood and weighed something like five hundred pounds. Anyone familiar with the estate used the side entrance.

For him to have been able to slam the door, he must have been pissed.

“What’s that about?” I asked.

Hallie eyed Lewis with a bemused expression as he stomped like a petulant child.

“Hayes and Lewis met with Walt’s attorney to go through the will,” Hallie said.

“I’ll take a wild guess and say that it didn’t go well.”

“Nothing ever goes well when Lewis is involved,” she muttered.

I didn’t know much about Lewis Halstead, just the town gossip that Hayes’s father had a brief college fling that resulted in Lewis. They had never married. Hayes’s father met his mother a few years later, while Lewis’s mother had married a different man and moved across the country with her son and new husband.

Walt had always spoken kindly of Lewis and often told me how he invited Lewis to stay at the estate whenever he pleased, though Lewis rarely did.

I used to run into Lewis on rare occasions, but he paid me no mind, and I generally avoided him.

“Do you know who’s running the foundation these days?” I asked while we watched Lewis throw a legendary, profanity-riddled temper tantrum as he pressed his phone to his ear and screamed at some unfortunate soul.

“No. Walt was still overseeing it until he passed, though I think the board did most of the big-picture stuff. I’m not sure who will take it over.” Her gaze cut to me. “Still job hunting?”

“Trying to, along with everything else going on,” I grumbled. “I’ve got the organization breathing down my neck about my social initiative and a sickly savings account.” I smoothed down the front of my dress. “I reached out to the Wilder Foundation a few months ago about a grant for the initiative, but I never heard anything back.”

Hallie lifted an eyebrow. “Did you ask Walt? He would’ve written you a check himself.”

I shook my head. “He had just had another stroke, and I didn’t want a handout.”

She nodded in understanding, then glanced at her watch and pushed away from the wall to head back inside. “I need to get this show on the road.”

Hallie jogged up the two short stairs and slipped into the kitchen, but I decided to wait a few more minutes before joining the luncheon crowd. In the distance, Mason Bishop and Levi Caldwell lingered outside the stables. I was half tempted to join them, but there were deep pockets inside that I needed to schmooze.

The moment I opened the door to the kitchen, I ran smack-dab into a black suit that was laced with something that smelled divinely expensive…and a little like a horse.

I looked up and found Hayes staring down at me. That sharp gaze was filled with fury and frustration. But the moment our eyes locked, his stormy eyes settled into gloomy grays.

“Sorry,” I blurted out as I backed away so he could step out of the doorway. I stumbled, stepping on the little blue flowers again. “Shit.”

Hayes sauntered down the stairs and took up the spot against the white brick that I had just vacated. He leaned against the house and closed his eyes. “Just need a minute.”

I glanced through the door into the kitchen and across to the formal dining room where twenty bodies sat around a mile-long table. “Need me to get rid of everyone? Apparently, making a scene is one of my special skills.”

Hayes cracked a smile as he let out a single-beat chuckle. It was more of a breath, but I counted it as a laugh.

“Can I get you anything?” I asked. The poor guy looked like he was buckling beneath the stress of the day. I knew that feeling all too well.

He peered out of one eye. “Do you know where Hallie hides her whiskey?”

“Let me guess, she let you take a shot and then hid the bottle somewhere new?”

He closed his eyes and exhaled. “It was just a sip.”