Chapter 5
Five
I’m starting to think I’ll never be old enough to know better.
—Nettie’s secret thoughts
Nettie
I figured I’d run into her eventually.
However, I didn’t expect to run into her the moment that I left her son’s house.
Nor did I expect to have to fight two of the snakes off at once.
“Well, lookie here,” Felicia, Boone’s sister, cooed. “Mom, it’s the mother of the first Julep.”
The first Julep?
What the hell was that supposed to mean?
“Dear.” Gail smiled conspiratorially. “Now’s not the time, nor the place, for such an altercation.”
Funny that she knew there’d be an altercation.
I didn’t think there would ever be a good time or place for any altercation involving the two snakes.
I decided to be the bigger person and walk away before I could say or do something that would get me thrown in jail.
I figured I had a better than even chance of not being put in a cell seeing as Boone was in the same motorcycle club as the sheriff and one of his deputies, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
Plus, if I got into a fight with them, I wasn’t sure that I could conceal my weight gain.
Fights tended to have hair pulling and shirt yanking.
And I just knew they’d figure it out before I was ready.
I might never be ready.
But until I needed to announce it to the world, I’d keep it my little secret.
Maybe I’d be able to hide it during the entire pregnancy.
I wasn’t that lucky, but one could hope, right?
“Mom, we better get to the monogrammer.” Felicia eyed me out of the corner of her eye, a small smile on her face. “We need to get Julep on everything I own as soon as possible.”
I froze.
Literally, I froze.
Right there in the middle of Main Street.
A thousand different thoughts went through my head, but only one of them solidified.
Kill them.
Before I could act on that murderous need, however, Weaver Grant, my sister’s man, rode up on his bike and got off.
His eyes took in the scene, and he frowned.
He came to my side and threw his arm around my shoulders. “Nettie. I didn’t realize you were back in town.”
“Just got here,” I lied.
I was actually here last night, but I stopped to fuck your club brother’s brains out first.
He didn’t need to know how little control I had when it came to Boone Windsor, though.
“Ahh, if it isn’t the delinquent.” Gail eyed Weaver. “Tell me, how is it dating this one’s better half?”
Weaver squeezed my shoulder and held me to him.
The funny thing was, Gail hated Eddy, too. Just not as much since Eddy hadn’t latched onto her son and “ruined” him.
“I’m not sure who you’re referring to,” Weaver drawled as my phone rang. “Excuse us. We’re a bit busy.”
Weaver didn’t let go of me until we were well away from the two monsters.
I ripped my phone out and pressed it to my ear, not bothering to read the screen.
My phone did that dreaded vibration again, making me cringe because I knew it would be another email from my old team.
I ignored it and answered the call.
“Hello?” Wrath filled every syllable.
“Nettie?” Boone said hesitantly. “Is everything okay?”
I gritted my teeth. “I just ran into your mother and sister.”
There was a long moment of silence and then, “She will not use that name.”
I instantly relaxed.
I knew he wouldn’t let them. He would figure out a way to fix this.
Because if I had to listen to Felicia call her child Julep, I just might lose it.
That was my baby’s name.
Mine and Boone’s pride and joy.
Fuck them.
“What did you need?”
Seeing as we’d just left each other an hour ago, I never expected him to get in touch with me so fast.
We usually tried to give it a day or two.
We liked to pretend like we weren’t as addicted to each other as we actually were.
“I was hoping that you could come to my dad’s office for a little bit,” he said softly. “There are some things I need to tell you.”
Color me intrigued.
“I was about to have lunch with my sister and Weaver.”
“Bring them,” he suggested. “We’ll order food in.”
I looked over at Weaver, then offered lunch with Boone to him.
He eyed me curiously, knowing how we didn’t get along at all, but ultimately nodded his head. “You know your sister won’t care.”
“We will be there in ten minutes,” I said. “No fried food. It makes me want to vomit.”
There was a moment of silence and then, “Not pepperoni this time?”
“Nope. Pizza is perfectly fine this time,” I said, swallowing hard.
I hated that he remembered stuff like that.
I hated even more that I liked that he remembered stuff like that.
“What about steak?”
My favorite meal ever.
“I’d love it, but maybe next time,” I whispered quietly. “Done. Tell Weaver to text me what he’d like from Harvest.”
My brows flew up.
Harvest was my favorite place ever, but over an hour away.
“Boone…”
“Tell him to text me, Net.”
I swallowed hard and turned to Weaver once Boone had hung up. “He wants you to text him what you want from Harvest.”
Weaver’s mouth twitched. “Will do. I’ll get Eddy. You meet us there.”
I headed back to my car, not missing the two women who were watching me from a shop just down the road from where I’d parked my car.
I gave them both a finger wave and got in.
Gail turned her back on me.
Felicia flipped me off.
Bitch.
The drive to Sawyer’s office wasn’t long.
It was actually right in the middle of town, front and center right next to town hall.
Sawyer Windsor was a financial advisor and made so much money that it was scary.
He was the one that also helped me invest my own money, though I was sure I was small potatoes compared to his normal clients.
I parked next to Boone’s motorcycle and got out, heading for the front door.
I smiled at the receptionist but didn’t stop to talk to her.
She frowned at me questioningly, but I didn’t stop to explain.
I walked into Sawyer’s place of business so much without announcing myself that it was comical.
He might as well be my own father at this point, that was how much I visited him.
I loved Sawyer, and sometimes, I wished he were my own father. I liked to pretend sometimes what it would be like to have a father who cares, and not one that constantly told me I was going to hell for my sins.
But the shocking thing in all of this was that I would never want to take Sawyer away from Boone. Boone already had the fight of his life on his hands with his mother, and he didn’t even know it.
At least, I thought he didn’t know it.
I was shocked and surprised two minutes later when Boone explained the reason for my visit, “We’re setting up a sting that will catch my mother in one of about a hundred lies and fraud schemes that she set in motion when she married my father.”
I blinked.
Weaver and Eddy shifted in their seats, listening but not adding any input.
Weaver wouldn’t know what this meant, seeing as he didn’t know Gail Windsor. My sister and I, on the other hand…
“Start over,” I said. “Go to the very beginning.”
“After you left.” Boone’s voice broke, and he cleared it before continuing. “I listened. I looked into what you said.”
I frowned. “What did I say?”
I mean, logically I remembered some of what I said the day that I told Boone this wouldn’t work.
But I couldn’t remember exact words. I’d said a lot of stuff.
That, and I’d been highly emotional and refused to talk to him at all after I’d made the announcement.
Mostly because I knew that if I heard him out, I’d stay.
And I couldn’t stay. Not for my mental health.
“You said ‘she’s not who you think she is.’”
Yeah, I remembered saying that.
“Okay.”
“Dad had already been looking into her for a while,” he said. “But I hadn’t realized that at first. I was so broken inside that it took me a while to pull my head out of the darkness. I think it was about a year after you left that my mother said something that caught my attention.”
“What?” I breathed, my heart pounding.
“She made a comment to one of her doctors. She said, ‘just because you helped me out once doesn’t wipe the slate clean.’”
My stomach rolled.
The baby inside of me fluttered.
I placed my hand against my belly, then immediately removed it because I was even keeping this secret from my own sister.
Though, I had been planning to tell her today while we were at lunch.
“Okay.”
Boone’s eyes studied mine for a long second before he said, “I did some of my own research in between classes. Vet school kicked my ass. Plus, I was trying really hard not to take any of the money Dad allotted me those first few years.”
“Why?”
“Because you called me a spoiled rich kid.” He snorted. “And I was trying to prove that I could make it on my own. I could pay my own way and fund our life together if you ever decided to come back.”
My stomach somersaulted again.
I had said that.
I hadn’t meant it, of course.
Boone was the least spoiled rich kid in the world.
I’d met him while he was volunteering at the wildlife preserve where injured wildlife were sent to recuperate after they were hurt.
He not only volunteered there, but he volunteered at the public library on Wednesdays, helping some of the senior citizens of Jesper County work their electronics.
He also volunteered at the soup kitchen to feed the homeless.
He didn’t drive a flashy car, though his mother berated him constantly for embarrassing her with his old “rust bucket.”
I fell in love with him in that rust bucket.
It made my heart happy every time I saw him driving in it these days.
“I spent all my extra money to first look into my dad.”
I looked over to Sawyer.
He shrugged. “It was something I would’ve done. I mean, we were very close. He had to know that he could trust me.”
“And I could,” Boone sighed. “It took me another year to figure out that I could trust him. And when I finally came to him about my suspicions about what my mother had done to you, he’d been shocked, but not surprised.”