Page 13 of The Renegade Billionaire

I keep my gaze lowered—something tells me he needs a minute to collect himself. Removing my wallet from my front pocket, I sort through the credit cards until I find the one I’m searching for.

“You lookin’ to make a deposit?”

“No, sir. I’ll pay in full.”

His gaze narrows, scanning my face as though he doesn’t know if he should trust me or not.

“Well, son. We don’t get many of your kind around here. Are you planning to stay a while?”

I don’t get the sense he’s gossiping or that he has any idea who I am, so I lower my guard a little.

“I’m thinking about it.”

“Word of advice then?”

I wait while he runs my card for $4200.

“You’ll want to hit up the Walmart on Main Street and buy some regular clothes. Walking around as some sort of fancy pants is the fastest way to get the gossipers circling for your story.”

Walmart. Right. I’ve seen their commercials—I’ve just never actually been in one.

“Thank you. I’m trying to keep a low profile.”

He laughs a thick smoker’s laugh that tugs at my sadness. Ace used to laugh that way.

“Good luck with that around here.” He hands me a stack of papers to sign. “You ever lived in a small town before?”

“No, sir,” I say while reading the contracts.

“Well, you ever need some advice, you come see me. This town will eat you up and spit you out, but they’ll also be first to pick you up when you stumble—after you’ve proved yourself loyal.”

“That’s quite the oxymoron.”

“You got no idea,” he says. The nametag sewn into his overalls says Roger, and it suits him. “Let me get you the keys. And ignore my son—he has a fairy tale planned around that truck that ain’t never gonna happen.”

Great, making enemies on my first day in town. Not exactly the way to fix a broken heart and soul now, is it?

Roger returns and walks me to the truck, presumably to keep Harry from picking a fight. But he’s right about one thing, I’m going to need some new clothes—I wasn’t exactly thinking whenI packed a suitcase yesterday. Somehow, I don’t think I’ll be needing many suits around here.

“Good luck.” He knocks on the side of the door and walks away. Glancing around at the interior, I’m thankful for my minor obsession with sports cars in my early twenties, and even more grateful I was determined to learn to drive a stick, or I’d have just bought a truck I can’t drive.

I open the map app on my phone before I start the truck, then press down on the clutch and gas as I shift into first. There’s a violent lurch that has me reaching for my seat belt as the engine stalls.

Well, shit.

I try again, and this time manage to get out of the parking lot, but in the four-mile drive to Walmart, I stall six more times.

Exhaustion slaps me across the face, but I force myself into the store. I only hope I can recover from the loss of Ace and figure out what he wanted me to do here before the Montgomerys attempt to destroy everything I’ve ever worked for.

4

MADISON

“Oh my gosh,guys. I’m so sorry I’m late,” I say while rushing up the front steps of the Chugaloo. “Things got, well… It was a messy morning, and then I had to turn around because I forgot Pops had a doctor’s appointment, and then he was hungry, again, so I made him a snack, and before I realized it, I was later than I thought.”

“No worries, Miss Madi. You’re always worrying about other people, but we haven’t been here long. Practice ran late ’cause Coach was all shades of mad at the D-line this morning,” Ethan says in his thick Southern drawl.

He’s a hometown kid so I’ve known him since he was little, and now he’s a superstar on the local college football team.