Page 19 of Clayton (Bourbon & Blood #2)

Ten

CLAYTON

I ’m sitting in my office with my attorney. John has known what I had in mind for a long time now, so when I called him to ask for the documents, he brought them over along with a celebratory six-pack.

“You do realize it’s only ten in the morning?” I ask him.

“You’re about to hand your crooked SOB of a father his proverbial ass, and your wife’s attorney called me this morning to call a halt to divorce proceedings…

not cancel them, just put a hold. Still, I figure that means you wormed your way back into her good graces.

If that doesn’t call for celebration, what does? ”

I grab one of the beers and pop it open. “You make an excellent point.”

John pulls a folder from his briefcase and places it on my desk.

“That’s everything you asked for. Transfer of guardianship, a deed of transfer for the house, and a deed of transfer for the remaining forty percent of Fire Creek.

Get his signature, I’ll file everything with the clerk and then that son of a bitch can fall off the face of the earth. ”

I frown. “I know why I hate him…but why do you?”

“I’ve handled a lot of divorces in this town,” John admits. “And he comes up…again and again and again. Let’s just say that I knew long before you showed up at my door that he was poison.”

I nod and take a sip of my beer. Day-drinking at the office is probably not the smartest thing I’ve ever done, but I’m still riding on a high. Waking up with Annalee wrapped around me was one of those perfect moments that you just want to hang on to.

“So when does this all go down?”

I check my watch. “I’ve got about ten minutes before he strolls in.”

John takes his beer and chugs it before getting to his feet. “In that case, I’ll see you around. I don’t want to be anywhere in the vicinity when that shitstorm happens. ”

“Coward,” I say with a grin.

“Damn straight,” John agrees and heads for the door.

As he leaves, I look through the paperwork to make sure everything is in order. It’s all falling into place, but Samuel Darcy is no one’s fool. I can have everything in place, but that doesn’t mean he won’t still manage to weasel his way out of it.

With a few minutes to spare before he shows up, I take my phone from my jacket pocket and send a text to Annalee.

Keep thinking about how you looked this morning. Naked. In my bed.

I turn to the window and watch the parking lot, waiting for my first glimpse of Samuel’s car, but the second my phone buzzes, I’m checking to see what she said. Please, let it be dirty.

I’m standing in MY walk-in closet trying to decide if you’re worth giving up half the space for.

I can’t help but smile at her reply, even as I’m tapping out my own.

We could just give up clothes altogether. I’m a big fan of nudity where you’re concerned.

Samuel’s car pulls in. Play time is definitely over. I leave my phone on the desk and grab the forms that John dropped off along with my laundry list of my father’s sins. He won’t go quietly. But he’ll go. Whatever it takes.

I’m sitting in his office when he walks in. The sneer on his face is telling. He’s still ticked at being outmaneuvered last night, which means that this is really going to set off a bomb.

“You’re in the wrong office,” he says. “You don’t get this one till I die.”

“I’ll get it a little sooner than that,” I reply. “You should sit down. You’re not going to like this conversation very much.”

He tosses his briefcase onto the desk and takes off his jacket before walking to the antique breakfront cabinet that has been in there since the beginning of time.

He pours himself a healthy dose of some of our best bourbon.

I’m not really surprised when he doesn’t offer me one, not that I’m interested in having a drink with the old man anyway.

I’ll do my drinking when he’s finally gone for good.

“Get on with it then,” he says. “More extortion and blackmail from my eldest son? ”

“Am I? Your eldest? I know Quentin and I aren’t your only sons, or so rumor would have it.”

“My eldest legitimate son,” he corrects. “You shouldn’t be so quick to acknowledge the bastards. They’ll only try to take a piece of what’s yours.”

I’m shaking my head. It’s a typical response for him, always putting himself first. Greed and avarice are the things he understands.

The idea that I could have brothers and sisters out there I don’t know leaves me with a sick feeling in my gut.

But all he cares about is the cost of acknowledging them.

“Without you digging your fingers into the pot to lavish gifts on yourself and your gold-digging, side-side bitches, we should have plenty to go around,” I reply.

“And for the record, that all stops today. Today, you’re leaving Fontaine, Mama, the house, the distillery…

today will be the last time any of us have to deal with your worthless ass. ”

Samuel laughs as if he’s actually amused by this. “Son, you greatly mistake the amount of power you have here.”

It’s my turn to be amused. “Oh, it’s not my power, Samuel. It’s the power of the truth…and th ere’s a little matter of evidence. I know all about how you and your worthless father cheated the Hayes family out of Fire Creek. Not only do I know about it, I have documentation.”

He’s not smiling now. “It’d never hold up in court. I’m the only person in that room who’s still living.”

“Yes, but the president of First Bank of Fontaine is still living. He had some pretty interesting things to say about how you coerced, bribed and intimidated his employees into holding the Hayes’ mortgage payments instead of applying them to their account.

Then there’s the tax issue…or ten. You forcing other people’s property taxes to be raised while the taxes on Fire Creek and the house mysteriously dropped. ”

“Is this what your sister whored herself to Bennett Hayes for?”

I want to punch him right in the damn mouth, but losing my cool will only give him the upper hand. “Call her that again and I will gut you like a fish. I have this information for the simple fact that everyone in this town would happily watch you burn. ”

“I’m not giving you any of this…not the house, not the business, and you’re sure as hell not getting guardianship over your mother.”

I lean back in the chair and prop my feet on the desk. “I didn’t put two and two together initially, but then after that little fiasco the other night, it all started to make sense.”

“Get to the damn point, Clayton. You’re trying my patience.”

“I’m referring to the accidental drowning of Katherine Shelby. Was it…accidental that is?”

He scoffs, but I can tell he’s on the run now. The nerves are starting to rattle. I can see it in him as he paces to the window and looks out. “I didn’t hurt that girl. You’re reaching.”

“She fell off your boat, and you didn’t do a goddamn thing to save her. That’s an important distinction that the police have never been able to make. Her body washed up, but no one could say definitively where she’d come from. But I can.”

“No, you can’t! You don’t know a goddamn thing!” he shouts.

“Let’s just get Erica in here and ask her,” I suggest. “It was that pic Bennett had snagged off Erica’s social media that really sealed the deal there. The two of them were thick as thieves apparently.”

“You leave Erica out of this,” he says.

He doesn’t give a damn about Erica. I know that, and so does he. But that answers another question I had. Erica and Katherine hadn’t been on the boat together. Samuel had been up to his same old tricks, wooing one behind the other’s back.

“It’ll go one of two ways…either Erica was on the boat with you and will tearfully confess, or she had no clue that you’d taken her best friend out that day without her. Which of those things is going to get you in the most trouble? That you were fucking her best friend or that you killed her?”

“You want the house and the distillery, you can have them both. But I refuse to turn guardianship of Patricia over to you or anyone else!”

“Guardianship isn’t really what’s holding you back.

” He’s sweating now. I can see it. He needs Erica because she knows too much.

She’s also the missing piece that can incriminate him in what would amount to manslaughter, at the very least. “ It’s that final payment from the trusts that’s keeping you here. ”

He punches the wall, a large hole appearing in the drywall next to the door. “Goddamn you and your snooping! Going through my trash, through my mail? What the hell kind of man did I raise?”

I meet his glare dead on. “You didn’t raise anyone, male or otherwise.

Patricia raised us and she did a damned fine job of it without you ’round…

I’m willing to give you two things. You can have the condo in Boca Raton and when the trust comes through, I will give you one million dollars.

Or, you can fight me on this and I can challenge your guardianship in court…

and win, since you clearly don’t have Mother’s best interests at heart and never have.

I can turn over all the evidence I have to the police about your wrongdoings and let them sort it out. ”

“You wouldn’t dare!” He’s shouting again, his face purple with rage.

“I would and I will. Maybe they can’t charge you with anything, but you’d be done for in Kentucky. Every door would be closed to you. The society, the parties, the clubs…you’d be shut out li ke a pariah.”

“You are not doing this to me! You’re not taking everything I’ve built?—”

“You haven’t built anything .” I’m shouting now too, less out of anger than to be heard overtop his bellyaching. “You’re bankrupting us and it’s going to stop one way or another. Sign the fucking forms, Samuel, or I will make your life such a living hell, you’ll pray for it to end.”

I tap the forms on the desk with the pen. “Sign them and you get one million dollars and the opportunity to live out the rest of your life in a sunshiny paradise. Don’t, and you face financial ruin, social ruin, and possibly prison. It’s not a hard choice.”

He snatches the pen and begins signing the documents by all the numerous flags attached to them. “I will make you regret this.”

I don’t say anything else. I don’t need to. For the moment, I’ve won.

ANNALE E

In between Clayton’s many flirty and dirty text messages, I’ve cleaned house all day.

It’s a coping mechanism. When I need to clear my head, I clean.

Of course, I also need to make room for Clayton to move back in.

Even though I’ve given him a hard time and told him it can’t happen immediately, it won’t be long.

Once we talk to Emma Grace, it’s pretty much a done deal.

I smile thinking of how excited she’ll be to have her daddy back home.

The exhaustion, as I head downstairs, isn’t just about the work I’ve done today.

It’s about the fact I got no sleep last night courtesy of Clayton.

Thinking about it, about him, and the way it felt to wake up in the middle of the night to the feeling of his hands on me, his mouth, I literally have to squeeze my thighs together.

I feel hot immediately. It shouldn’t be possible to want him again, but I do.

The drought is officially ended. Thank God.

I glance at the clock. “Shit.” I’ve got to get Emma Grace from school and get her to dance class. Even if I leave right now, I’m still going to be late. I grab my keys from the counter and head into the garage .

The instant I’m behind the wheel I know something is wrong. The seat has been moved. I glance at the rearview mirror and my stomach drops. Samuel is sitting in the back seat. I don’t even have time to scream before he’s got his hands over my mouth.

The chemical smell is overwhelming. My brain begins to fog immediately. I lay on the horn, but from inside the garage, with the door closed, no one will hear. I’m reaching for the garage door opener, but I can’t lift my arm. It’s too heavy. My vision wavers, growing dimmer. Oh god, no.