Chapter 5
Avery
Walking to my car, I tucked the thought of Brandon’s hesitation toward my offer away in the back of my mind.
It wasn’t really any of my business that, instead of jumping at the opportunity to work on a known passion of his while not having to worry about the cost of a paycheck, he was digging his heels into the proverbial dirt for whatever reason
Even if it severely bothered me.
Him having a life in Edgewood, far removed from the one we shared together in Ellington Heights, was understandable.
As was him wanting to run his business without someone like me coming in and bulldozing everything to shit.
He clearly had a system going and disrupting the flow of that wasn’t exactly winning me any favors.
Why doesn’t he want to spend time with me?
That traitorous thought.
It plagued my fucking mind uselessly.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, distracting me from my thoughts. I dug it out and punched the green icon with my finger.
“This is Avery,” I said into the phone.
“Mr. McAllister, it’s Ted Evans.”
“Hey, I was just about to send you an email. I’ve got someone looking at those cars.”
“Ah,” he cleared his throat. “Well, that’s good. I take it you’ve got an expert with you, then?”
My brows knitted together.
What was with the weird tone?
And asking me an obvious question like that?
Sure, Ted was typically one for small talk but not in the way that it made him almost seem like he was trying his best to avoid bringing something to my attention.
Alarm bells went off in my head immediately.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
He chuckled. “Astute, as always.”
Turning to glance over my shoulder, I spotted Brandon poking around the third car, his flashlight moving along the trim of it while he squatted toward the rear on the passenger side. Watching him work up close like that had been both nostalgic and a little eye opening.
He’d always had an eye for the smaller details—taking in the bigger picture and then breaking it down into smaller, more digestible pieces. I’d adopted and used that technique countless times in my professional life. But nothing would compare to the master of it.
“There’s been some... news,” Ted finally said.
“About?” I needed this man to spit out what he was clearly stalling on telling me. Either way, whatever information was going to come next was going to upset me. How much was the real question.
Ted calling out of the blue without so much as my follow up email regarding anything about my father’s estate was troublesome, to put it lightly.
He sighed. “I just got off the phone with Alexander Steele’s law office. It seems one of their clients has just filed to contest your father’s will.”
“What?” I snapped. “Who?”
Were they out of their fucking mind?
I was my father’s sole heir. Unless he had a bastard child without me ever finding out about it, his entire estate was owed to me. Not to mention I’d been the one that had to deal with all of his bullshit for the past thirty-plus years.
No one else would ever get to claim that ‘privilege’.
“Her name is Ana Liapovich,” he said. “She’s a Russian model that claims she and your father were married when he passed and is now seeking to claim some of the estate as a surviving spouse.”
My mouth dropped open, rage pouring through me.
Of fucking course.
Why had I never expected this?
People coming out of the woodwork the second my father’s passing was made public news in order to try and get some kind of claim to whatever it was that they thought was owed to them was absolutely ridiculous.
None of them—his inner circle, women he’d dated, people he’d promised fortunes to—were entitled to jack shit. No one but me and the staff back at our family home.
“The only woman that man was ever married to was my mother,” I said.
“She claims she has proof of their relationship. If she’s able to produce a valid marriage license, then she might have a case.”
My jaw ached from how hard I was clenching it. “And how much do you believe this woman?”
“I can’t say for sure but the way her lawyer spoke, it seemed quite legitimate.”
Jesus fuck...
Digging both of my fingers into my eye sockets, I let out a long sigh.
Leave it to my father, that even in death, he would complicate my life more than he already had so far. Of course, his reputation for being a notorious playboy wasn’t something that ever went unnoticed. Not to the public and certainly not to me.
He wasn’t one to take his ‘retirement’ years and spend them alone, sitting in a mansion behind the tall gates of our family mansion while drinking himself into an early grave.
Though at the same time, he’d also never had any interest in sticking around for long in the lives of whomever he was dating. Even the woman he’d brought to my wedding had been dumped within the month and soon, he was spotted with someone else—an Ibizin princess, if I recalled correctly.
So who was to say that any of what Ted was telling me could be proven?
The issue was this: if this Ana Liapovich was able to produce a legal document or marriage license that stated she was now my father’s widow, I’d be forced to negotiate with her.
The money wasn’t the issue—lord fucking knew I had enough of it already. It was the principle of the matter that someone coming in and staking their claim over a piece of my family’s legacy without actually having to bear the burden of its weight for as long as I had was downright infuriating.
Who the fuck did this Ana Liapovich think she was?
“Listen,” Ted cleared his throat. “I’ll keep you updated.
I don’t expect to hear from them for a few days.
Once the documents are sent over to me, I’ll run through them and then we can go from there.
I only wanted to call you to give you a head’s up in case this woman tries to show up at your doorstep. ”
I dragged my hand over my face. “Thanks for the warning.”
“Of course, Mr. McAllister. Send me the details of those car estimates, too, and I’ll have them put together with the rest of the files.”
I let my hand drop from my face, my eyes instantly locking on to the back of Brandon’s body again.
He was bent over the hood of the third car, waist deep in checking something out on the side of the engine with his flashlight and some other smaller tool that I couldn’t exactly make out was what from here.
However, that’s not what my eyes were focused on. It was the fact that his ass was perked up in the air, the round shape of it pronounced with the way the fabric of his pants were pulling tightly over it.
Flustered, I turned away. “Uh, can you actually hold off on that? The guy I’m working with says they might need a lot of work. I don’t want to go throwing in estimates if this woman does turn out to be legit.”
“Oh. Yes, that’s true. I’ll keep the information off the books for now.”
“Thanks.”
“Of course. I’ll call you again with any updates.”
Shaking my head, I pocketed my phone and scrubbed my hands over my face a few times. All of this mess with my father was making me fucking delirious.
Since when was I into checking out any man’s ass, let alone my former childhood best friend’s?
I needed to get laid.
That was the real issue. I had too much tension built up in me from work and then coming down here to deal with this mess. The last time I’d had anyone warming my bed was... well, a while ago. Too long, apparently.
When Brandon leaned back from the car again, I found myself heading back over. “How’s it looking?”
He glanced over his shoulder at me and then clicked his light off.
“Well, it’s not horrible. These were certainly kept in good condition when they were first bought.
The problem is that since your dad never came up here or had anyone doing regular maintenance on them, the sitting wear and tear is what’s going to need repairing.
The problem with older cars is that they need a lot of daily TLC to keep running. Modern cars aren’t as touchy.”
Nodding along to his words, I slid both my hands into my pockets. “You think about my offer?”
He let out a soft snort. “In the time it took you to take your phone call?”
I winced.
All right, maybe that was a little too soon for me to be asking.
But sue me, I was eager to have Brandon back in my life, if only in a short-term capacity.
I missed this, the energy between us. It felt both like coming home and breathing in a fresh lungful of air after having been kept stagnant for so long.
How he was able to do that to me—to make me feel like this—I’ll probably never know. Dissecting it to death like the rest of the relationships in my life felt taboo, like I would be somehow breaking a magical illusion that I wasn’t quite ready to peek behind the curtains and figure out just yet.
“Sounded serious,” he said, nodding to me. “Your phone call.”
“It was.”
He eyed me carefully but didn’t press me further for details. I appreciated that about him. He was clearly curious about the situation but wasn’t so crude that he’d go out of his way to dig the information out of me.
I hated when people did that.
Seemed Brandon hadn’t forgotten that.
“My lawyer, or my father’s I guess, just called. Told me that apparently there is some woman claiming to be his widow. She’s contesting the will.”
His eyes widened. “Do you know her?”
“No. She’s some Russian model. Honestly, as much as I don’t want it to be true, it doesn’t surprise me. You know how he was after my mother died.”
Brandon nodded slowly, his gaze drifting back toward the car in front of us. “What are you going to do? You think it’s legit?”
“Possibly. And I’m not sure. The information has to be verified first to start any kind of legal battle.”
“So... you’re going to fight her, then? If it is true.”
Normally, if any other person were to phrase it that way, I would’ve taken it as an attack. A ‘so you’re actually going to deny that poor woman her right to the estate? What an asshole’ type comment that would’ve no doubt set me right off.
For him, that’s not quite the way it was meant and I knew that.
This was more so Brandon’s way of subtly fishing for answers, wanting to get into my head and figure out what my course of action was.
He’d done it countless times when we were kids, reframing my thinking in a way that was more constructive and less emotional—as I tended to get when things were overwhelming me.
Back then, I’d hated it. I’d hated how he’d full-stop me from lashing out and raining my fury down on everything that was in the way on my war path like I’d wanted, like my instincts were screaming at me to.
That was how my father had been, and learning by osmosis, I’d become quite the little tyrant myself. Until I met Brandon.
His approach to life wasn’t soft, it was firm. There was no hand-holding or there theres that would eventually end up coddling whoever it was he was trying to work with. For me, he’d kept me from turning into a person that I would one day hate looking into the mirror and facing.
He’d changed me and molded me into someone who was forced to step out of my anger and look at the bigger picture. Even when I vehemently refused to at first.
Brandon would never know how much him doing that impacted me—changed me for the better. And in turn, I’d never be able to thank him enough for it.
“I want to see what she’s asking for,” I finally said. “If it’s money, whatever. She can have it. But if it’s anything more than that, then I’m going to fight her. Her being entitled to anything regarding my family’s legacy is off the table.”
He nodded slowly. “Makes sense.”
The bitter ‘she hasn’t earned it’ burned on my tongue.
No amount of me trying to explain those feelings would make sense. Even to someone like Brandon, who probably knew far better than anyone what my childhood had been like.
He lifted his hand to check the watch strapped to his wrist, frowning at it. “I need to get back to the shop. If you can have these towed, that would be great.”
My eyes widened. “So, you’re taking the job.”
He froze, only for a moment, before quickly shoving his flashlight and the other small tool back into his uniform pockets. “Yeah. We’ll discuss terms later once you’ve gotten the cars to the shop.”
Oh man.
This was going to be perfect.
“Excellent. I’ll get them towed immediately. Let me drive you back to the shop.”
He seemed hesitant again, but then nodded once. “Sure, thanks.”
Fishing my keys out of my pocket, I helped Brandon yank the garage doors down and locked them behind us. Excitement bubbled up in my chest. Despite Ted’s shitty news, my feelings for Brandon’s acceptance of the project were quickly trumping that.
However long it took for him to work on them—I didn’t care. I’d fund the next five years if I had to.
As long as I got to have him back in my life, no matter how temporary, I’d do anything.