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I braced my hand against her leg to try and turn a little bit, and the skirt of my black suit hitched up, revealing the thick black fabric of my shapewear. I tried to pull the skirt down and ended up spilling tea on myself.
“Veronica?”
God. Yes. Of course Clayton would show up now.
“What?” I snapped, twisting myself nearly in two so I could put my cup down on the side table.
“The lawyer is ready to read the will.”
Bea and I shared one look and then struggled to stand up out of the old love seat. Clayton offered his hand and we both ignored it.
My sister’s solidarity was righteous and warming.
We followed Clayton into the study and I stumbled at the door. It was the same in there. Same as it always was. The big leather couches. The fireplace. The animal heads. Dad’s big plank of a desk.
This was where my heart had been broken so badly the only way to recover was to become someone else. The only way to keep moving was to burn off all those memories, like a trash pile.
“You coming?” Bea asked from just inside the door. She dropped her voice. “Because you don’t have to.”
Oh, if only that were the case. But I did have to. Not just for her, but for me. To prove to myself, and maybe to Clayton, that those memories couldn’t hurt me anymore.
It was full in there. Sabrina, Bea, Clayton. Trudy and Oscar. The lawyer was a gorgeous, cool woman with dark blond hair, thin and sharp, and she stood in front of the desk like an ice sculpture. I kind of wanted to vomit.
Clayton turned to look at me, and for a second there was a look in his eyes, a kind of sympathy or regret. Or maybe that was just what I wanted to see. I wanted him to be sorry. Human.
But he wasn’t.
I gathered myself, stepped into the study and quickly joined my sisters in the corner.
“We’re all here?” the lawyer asked, and we all glanced around and nodded.
“Do you think Dad slept with her?” Bea whispered.
“That’s the rumor,” Sabrina whispered back.
“She’s his type,” I said. Young. Beautiful. Icy but sexy. Deeply rooted in a conflict of interest.
Trudy shushed us and we ducked our heads, embarrassed.
“I’m Madison White,” the lawyer said and launched into some legalese that I barely listened to. The will, as I understood it, after Dad’s divorce from Jennifer, would give my sisters and me each a fairly healthy chunk of change and controlling interest in King Industries.
And, of course, the ranch.
Maybe Bea wanted it. Sabrina and I definitely didn’t.
Or we could sell it. The thought, vicious and bright, actually made me smile.
The question for me was—what happened to the Shelly King Foundation?
And could I get it back?
My mom had started it when she and my Dad got married, and when she died I took the money she left me and put it back into the foundation. Bea gave me hers, too.
But Clayton had convinced me to tie the foundation to the company as a way to keep it funded. And to give King Industries a healthy tax break—but that hadn’t been one of the selling points.
Stupidly in love, I’d listened to Clayton.
Just another one of my mistakes.
If you don’t get it, it’s all right. You’ve got work to go back to. A home. A life.
But part of me wanted that foundation back so bad I could taste it.
The lawyer opened a folder and handed out papers to all of us. “Hank King changed his will a year ago and I am handing out copies of that new will to everyone. It’s exceedingly straightforward.”
Sabrina, Bea, and I looked at each other and I could see their stress.
Literally anything could happen.
“I understand that Dylan King is not in attendance, correct?” Madison asked, looking over the audience with her cool blue eyes. I could tell she already knew the answer to the question. She must have known who Dylan was, what he looked like.
“No,” I said. “He’s not here.”
“Then this will be simple. In the absence of Dylan King, the ranch, controlling shares of the King Industries, and all assets, with the exceptions I’ll tell you about in a moment, are left to Clayton Rorick.”
5
VERONICA
Sabrina was shaking her head, and beside me Bea went white as a ghost.
I wasn’t sure what my face was doing but I struggled to control the completely inappropriate urge to laugh.
Nice one, Dad.
“This is a joke,” Sabrina cried.
“It’s all there in the will,” Madison White said. Or tried to before Bea interrupted.
“I don’t give a shit what this will says,” Bea said. “We’re his kids!”
Now this was getting weird. Why in the world did Bea care? But she looked like she was going to cry so I put my arm around her.
