Page 13 of Middle Ground

“I’ll stay here,” Beatrice continues, addressing her daughter. “After your walkabout, you can treat me to lunch and then drive me home.”

Beatrice’s words drip with finality. And despite how angry Meyer may be with her, she doesn’t plan to go against her mother. She stands from her chair and strides into the hall without so much as a backwards glance.

I say my farewell to Beatrice and then I follow Meyer out of the office. When I spot her standing with her arms crossed, I sigh. “Listen, you don’t have to?—”

She holds up a hand. “Don’t take pity on me, Vaughan. We’re not going to be friends. You don’t want to be here, and I don’t want you here. So,” she says, “I’m going to give you this tour and then we’re going to stay out of each other’s way as much as possible. Got it?”

No, I want to say. As much as these initial interactions have been one clusterfuck after another, I don’t want to be at odds with her. Working together would make the process much smoother.

But Meyer is stubborn. I can tell she’s in no mood to hear me out, so I simply nod. “Got it.”

Fuck, it’s going to be a long six months.

CHAPTER 6

MEYER

Jackson fucking Vaughan.

At first, I admittedly found him charming. His easy grin and his nice-to-look-at face drew me in. And when he asked me to tell him my favourite thing about working at the inn, my heart felt a little fuzzy. Because no one had ever asked me that question before, let alone cared about the answer. Then he had to go and ruin it by stomping on my dreams.

During our disaster of a meeting this morning, he managed to charm both my mother and our lawyer. Neither one of them seemed put off by the unfairness of my new reality.

Then, to top it off, Louis Montaigne had to go and try to hug me when Jackson got a handshake. What’s more, helittle lady’d me. It was cute when I was five, but two decades later, I’m over it.

All in all, it hasn’t been a good day.

What I should be doing is finding a way to distract myself. Instead, I’m ruminating. I stare disappointedly at thedocuments in front of me—the original ones that spell out Cherie’s involvement with the inn. Up until yesterday, I truly thought she was simply a guest.

When Mom arrived earlier, I pulled her straight into the office. Because someone had sent those emails to Jackson, enabling him and his outlandish insinuations about ownership, and I knew there was only one person it could be.

The conversation devolved from there, and now I’m pissed as hell that she didn’t tell me about all of this sooner.

Pippa has been trying to get ahold of me for the past few hours, but her texts and calls have gone unanswered. She was the first person I told about my encounter with Jackson, and we both laughed at the absurdity. I don’t have the guts to tell her we’ve been made fools. Or, more specifically, thatIhave been made a fool.

I take another swig of wine, straight from the bottle. The sweet taste slides smoothly down my throat.

“Meyer?”

I slump in my makeshift seat—an old crate I found in the corner of the storage room. “You found my secret hiding spot.”

Declan looks down at me, hands tucked in his pockets, a concerned frown on his face. “Pip’s been trying to call you,” he says. “She asked me to stop in on my way home from work. Winona told me you were back here.”

Damn. I guess my secret hiding spot isn’t so secret after all.

“You can tell Pip I’m okay.” I wave him toward the door. “Now, begone. You’re interrupting my wallowing.”

Instead of listening, he drags another crate across thefloor until it’s in front of me. Then he plops down, bracketing my feet with his. He holds a hand out for my bottle. I relinquish it, watching as he takes a drink.

“What the hell is that?” he asks in disgust, wiping a hand over his mouth.

I snatch the bottle back and hug it defensively. “Strawberry wine.”

“Christ, Meyer. That’ssweet.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

He shakes his head. His blonde hair, usually held back under a baseball cap, is flying free tonight. A longer piece falls onto his forehead. It distracts me so much, I almost miss his next question.