Chapter 18
Avery
Nothing could bring me down from that high of getting Brandon to agree to grab dinner with me tonight.
Not the horrible traffic coming back into Ellington Heights, or the guy who cut me off at the red light pulling into Ted’s office, and not even the Russian model that was more than likely going to try and fight me for my inheritance waiting inside said office.
All right, maybe that last one was a little more annoying than the rest.
But right at this moment, though, I hardly cared outside of a mild flash of feelings.
I had nothing actually planned for tonight, however, as soon as I got out of this meeting, I’d get to calling around to the high-end restaurants in the area to see which ones were open to taking reservations and plan from there.
Tonight needed to be special. I needed to show Brandon that last night wasn’t some fluke in my judgment and that I was open to exploring whatever insane chemistry that was brewing between us further.
I’d put my own personal reservations about my sexuality on the back burner for the time being, knowing that if I got too caught up in the label of things, it was only going to cause me to make a fool out of myself in front of him.
Leaning into my desires in an uninhibited manner was allowing me to stretch my wings in ways I never thought possible. Giving into the temptations instead of forcing myself to behave and move on felt more freeing than I had been in years.
I wasn’t about to go psychoanalyzing myself just yet. Not when I’d just started to erase the distance between Brandon and I.
Popping open the door to my car, I climbed out into the afternoon sun and felt the tension bleed back into my body almost immediately.
Going into this meeting, I was preparing for the worst. Without having any background as to who this woman was, there were only a few realms of possibility that I could see this moving in.
Was it fair of me to judge someone I hadn’t met yet based solely on who I knew my father used to surround himself with?
Of course not.
But the unfortunate truth was that my father’s habit in picking out the worst kind of people to entertain himself extended to this circumstance, too.
Why else would this woman being coming out of the woodwork?
Heading inside, I slipped my sunglasses off of my face and tucked them into the inside pocket of my suit jacket.
Ivy, Ted’s secretary, lifted herself from her chair, greeting me with a wide smile. “Good afternoon, Mr. McAllister. I can take you back. They’re all waiting for you.”
While she scooted around the desk, I lifted my arm to check my watch. There were still over ten minutes before our meeting was supposed to start. How interesting that this woman and her lawyer were already trying to establish dominance by beating me here.
Ivy’s clipped footsteps against the tiled floor led me down the hall to one of the larger conference rooms at the back of the building. The blinds were drawn over the glass wall, giving the room a nice amount of privacy that we’d absolutely need.
After knocking twice, Ivy swung the door open and stuck her head in. “Mr. Evans? Avery McAllister is here for you.”
She stepped to the side and swept her hand into the conference room, flashing me a brief smile.
“Ah! Mr. McAllister. Good afternoon,” Ted greeted, waving me over to a seat next to him.
The top of his head was shiny and bald with dark curly hair wrapping around the rest of his head. He wore a pair of wire-rimmed glasses with the center nosepiece a black plastic compared to the steel of the rest of the frame. He was on the thinner side but had long limbs that gave him his height.
Across from him was another man with sliver hair that was coiffed back from his face and deep wrinkles that were etched into his skin. He was a little on the heavier side but carried it well, making him appear more muscular than overweight.
Alexander Steele, no doubt.
As I grabbed my seat, my gaze pinned right onto the woman sitting next to Steele.
She was around my age and had that kind of beauty that was classic.
No overly done lip filler or face injections, no over the top makeup or lash extensions.
Just a sweetheart shaped face, high cheekbones that were dusted with a faint sheen of blush, full, pouty lips, and platinum blonde hair that looked well taken care of despite it definitely not being her natural color.
Honestly, she was exactly my type.
Which was a disturbing thought considering she’d been entangled with my father.
I didn’t want to think about what the two of us shared in common when it came to our taste in women. As the say went, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, but in all respects, I really fucking wished it did.
“Thank you for joining us.” Ted fanned out the files in front of him, sliding them across the way for both Ana and her lawyer to look through. “As you know, we’re coming to the table with an offer already set. Whatever else you’re interested in will need to be negotiated.”
Alexander Steele flipped his folder open, flipping through the top few pages with a quick flick of his wrist. “I take it that the expert you contacted to look at the marriage license came back?”
Ted nodded, slipping something my way as he continued to speak. “Yes. Thank you for sending that over. Since the license was determined to be authentic, we’re going to go ahead and put that offer I was talking about on the table.”
Glancing down at the paper in front of me, I realized it was a copy of the marriage license in question with annotations on it stating that it was verified to be legitimate. For some reason, out of any of this, that fact bothered me the most.
While my father was never a faithful man, I’d romanticized the idea that his marriage to my mother was the only one he’d ever have.
Not for any particular reason outside of some strange sense of pride that we were the only things in his past he couldn’t exactly erase, no matter how hard he’d tried to do so.
His life would always intrinsically be tied to my mother in some capacity, and obviously, mine by bloodline.
But with this, that idea began to sour. Somehow tainted by this woman my age who had apparently been successful in convincing the man that after twenty-six years of running around as a single man it was time to tie the knot once again.
Leaning back into my chair, I folded my arms across my chest while both our lawyers spoke.
She was already watching me, a carefully neutral expression on her face.
There was something about her that was setting me off outside of this being the kind of encounter I never wanted to have.
Meeting my father’s flavor-of-the-weeks had stopped quite a long time ago, only rearing its ugly head once at my wedding and I subsequently banned it from ever happening again right then and there.
My father’s messes never truly ended. No matter how much time and energy had been put into trying to avoid this very scenario before all of this.
Now that we were here, though, I hoped she was smart and just took the money and never looked back on whatever shit my father and her got up to while they were together. It would be easier on all of us that way.
“So, Mrs. McAllister, formally Ms. Liapovich, is requesting an additional few things on top of the money that’s been offered.” Steele slid two packets across the table at us. “One, she’d like access to the estate.”
I snatched the packet up.
Absolutely fucking not.
“Two,” Steele went on. “She’s requesting compensation for moving to the States while she searches for a sponsor for citizenship.”
Unfuckingbelievable.
“Why not stay in your country? Why come here? Is there family over here?”
She shook her head, her accent thick as she spoke. “No. No family. All back in Russia.”
Looking over to Ted, I said, “She’s not getting past the front gate.”
“We’re willing to negotiate which portion of the estate she’s interested in,” Steele said.
I turned to look at him next. “I don’t care if she’s looking to simply take over the garage for an art studio. It’s not happening. She can find herself an apartment with the money that’s being put on the table.”
Ted slapped a hand down on my shoulder, silencing me with a tight squeeze.
“What Mr. McAllister is trying to say, is that there’s no reason for Ms. Liapovich to move into the estate when there are plenty of other accommodations in Ellington Heights that are just as nice. The estate is a family home.”
“Yes. Family,” Ana stated, placing a hand over her stomach that I hadn’t noticed was swollen until this very moment. “It’s perfect for the baby.”
The entire room fell dead silent.
Ana’s attention flitted between all of us, her brows growing more furrowed the longer none of us talked.
“I’m sorry,” Ted let out a strained laugh. “Baby?”
Steele cleared his throat, pulling out another set of papers from his stack and passed it over to us. “Yes, my client is just under six months pregnant.”
I didn’t need to look down at the paper in front of me to know that it was a medical form reiterating what the fuck just came out of this woman’s mouth. Or that at the top of it would be her first name with my last name attached to it.
My chest squeezed with anger, barely contained while I hung on by a thread. She was watching me again with that carefully guarded expression, her hand curling protectively over her belly.
He was supposed to be sniped. He’d bragged about it weeks before my mother’s untimely death and had practically celebrated the opportunity to jet set around the world on an international sexcapade.
Reversing it after twenty-six years... was that even possible?
“I want a paternity test.”
She frowned at me. “It is his.”
My jaw ached from how hard I was clenching my teeth. “I want a paternity test.”