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His face melted into a devastating smile. “I was going to go with sense of self-preservation. No matter how attractive you are.”
Her heart thudded. “Thanks. I think.”
“If Shane wasn’t in the picture, my interest would be crystal clear.” He leaned in. “Crystal.”
“Shane and I…” What? They’d had sex. Spectacular sex, but in the end, it was just a reaction to a crazy situation. When death was involved, some people got drunk, and some people got laid.
Shane was currently on the get-drunk portion of the night. And her formerly dormant hormones were still sizzling. That was all. “My interest is purely physical.”
“Oh.” He blinked and crossed his arms over his chest. “Can’t say I was expecting that answer.”
“I might be from a small town, Kain, but not the small-town sensibility. We’re both adults, and things happen.”
His eyes went from friendly to cool. “That wouldn’t include charming my best friend out of his inheritance, would it?”
Her eyebrows shot up, and her spine went rigid. “Of course not.” Shit. She wasn’t some femme fatale.
“The terms of the will don’t do you any favors.”
“No, they don’t. The will has been nothing but a nightmare, but I can’t change things.” Not when it was her own mother who had put them in this position. If her mother had just changed the deed into her name when her father gave them the house, they wouldn’t be in this mess. Her father was and would always be an opportunist. Her mother had her head in the sand, but Kendall had been just as guilty. She hadn’t protected herself or her home either. Kendall clenched her fingers.
“Do you know what you two are going to do?”
“No. We had to spend the last five hours figuring out the finer points of the will thanks to Jonas’s handy legalese.” Her father’s secrets and lies. Why should she expect anything else? She tried to stuff down the anger, but it didn’t want to go back into its box.
“Now I have to share my business with a man who didn’t do any of the work, didn’t worry over it, slave over it, and give his life up to it to support the one person who gave a crap about me. No, I have to share it with a stranger. And that’s the best possible outcome. The worst? We have to sell it and split the money.” She hopped off her seat. “So don’t talk to me about charming anyone out of their inheritance.”
“Kendall, wait.”
“No, you wait. I got this summons to come here—from my home in New York where I wasn’t bothering anyone—to get in the middle of this drama pot? I don’t need it, Kain. I don’t need any of this.”
“Shane lost everything too.”
She tried to rein in her temper. “And I’m sorry for that, but at least Lawrence wanted him. He sure as hell didn’t care about me.”
Shit.
Kain walked around the island, and she backed up. “No. I don’t need you to feel sorry for me. I didn’t mean to say that.”
“No, you mean you didn’t mean to say that out loud.”
She shut her eyes against the tears. She didn’t pine for her father. Her mother had made sure she was loved, and Kendall rarely even thought of him. But this will was a blatant reminder she didn’t need. That Lawrence didn’t care enough to reach out to her except to take. Except to give another piece of her away, this time to the boy who meant more to him than she ever did. “I just need to figure all this out.”
“Take the time and do that.”
“We don’t really have that much time. That will locked everything up for Shane, and I need to get back home.”
Kain plowed his fingers through his hair. “We didn’t have time to get the money straight. I didn’t even know Larry had a new will written up. I would have had everything taken care of by the end of the year. No one would have known how bad it was.”
Pain shimmered in Kain’s fierce green eyes. Her voice gentled. “Do you think Shane would want to be in the dark about this?”
“No.”
She sighed and laid a hand on his ridiculously wide chest. “You really think that Shane wouldn’t have figured it out?”
“All Larry wanted was to give Shane a way out. He didn’t want him to be burdened by the mess that Justice Construction had gotten into.”
“And you wanted to help Shane.” The realization settled down the last of her anger. “He doesn’t seem the type to allow that.”
