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He was the only source of reason in their life.
Kendall Proctor’s wide, shattered eyes flamed up the anger brewing inside him again. More secrets, and more lies from his father.
When Gerry stumbled out the door, Shane whispered, “Fuck,” and followed. “Gerry, wait.”
Gerry got as far as the front door before he stopped, his hand on the doorknob. “Don’t, kid.”
Shane shrugged out of the suit jacket and tossed it on the bench beside the door. “Dad fucked up. But you know he always tried to fix things.”
“He didn’t talk to me about this at all, Shane. Not one fucking word.”
Shane closed his eyes. “He didn’t talk to either one of us.”
“I’m fifty-eight fucking years old. It’s too late for me to start over.”
“Come back inside. There’s got to be something more to this will thing.”
Gerry shook his head. “I need air and a smoke. I’ll be in touch.” The door slammed behind him.
“God dammit, Dad. What the fuck were you thinking?” He yanked at the noose around his neck. Formality was fucked at this point. He rolled up his sleeves. None of this made sense. He headed back into the room. “Jonas, I need more of an explanation. Obviously Dad talked to you.”
Jonas’s friendly eyes flicked into lawyer mode. No emotion, not even a clue to the knowledge he held. “Larry didn’t want you to know the specifics, Shane.”
Shane pointed at Kendall. “Evidently. A fucking daughter?”
“Do not point at me like I’m a dog, Mr. Justice.”
He looked down at her. All hints of the docile woman who had been shaking beside him during the will reading were gone. “You don’t get to talk yet.”
She stood. “Okay, that’s enough. I’ve been sitting here listening to you people talk about taking my home—the only thing that man ever gave me, mind you—like you have any right to it. Where the hell were any of you for the last twenty-two years?”
Shane stalked forward until they were millimeters apart. “Just because my father paid your mother off with a house doesn’t mean you have—”
Thecrackof the slap across his cheek echoed through the room.
Her eyes filled with tears as she covered her mouth with her hand.
His cheek burned, and his anger struggled around in his chest like a wild animal. It would be so easy to take every ounce of pain out on her. She was nothing to him. “You get one freebie, Miss Proctor.”
She flung her shoulders back. “That’s my mother you’re talking about. She loved your useless excuse for a father. He’s the one who left us.”
Lock it down.He stared at her. She was a buck fifteen with her clothes on and didn’t even reach his chin, but she might as well have boxing gloves and a title belt around her waist. Men twice his size shrank from him in a fight, and this little one wanted to take him on? “There must have been good reason.”
She stumbled back a step, but her dark eyes never lost their fierce glare.
That one little step sliced at him.
Dammit.
He took a step back of his own and focused on Jonas’s surprised face. Shame crawled up his shoulders and settled like a blanket, stamping out most of his rage. This wasn’t her fault, and his mother would have had his hide if she’d ever heard him speak to a woman like this.
“I want to read the will myself.”
Jonas pushed the smaller stack of papers his way. Instinct made him shake his head. “No, I want the full document, not the layman’s-terms version.”
“You might be good with contracts on the surface, Shane, but this is all courthouse jargon.”
Every job they’d ever had that had gone hinky gave him the same tingle in his palms. “I don’t care.”
