Chapter 25
BECKETT
“Pull over before I throw up in your extremely expensive car.”
We’re just five minutes out from Mercer Records, somewhere between the second red light and a billboard advertising Grant Mercer’s October stadium dates beneath a photograph of his face large enough to haunt low-flying aircraft.
I don’t ask whether she’s serious. Her skin has gone pale under her makeup, and one hand is flattened against her stomach, so I take the first turn I can find and pull into a gas station beside a nail salon and a mattress store with prices suggesting money laundering.
Laurel has the door open before the SUV stops moving.
She stands beside a trash can with both hands braced on her knees, takes three slow breaths, and says, “Well, that was dramatic.”
I get out, take a bottle of water from the back, and hold it toward her. “You just removed your husband from his own company and filed for divorce. You’re allowed one parking-lot episode.”
She straightens and accepts the bottle. “This is a gas station.”
“Even better. Lower standards.”
Her laugh breaks halfway out, and she winces, pressing two fingers against her throat. I notice because I know what Levin told her about vocal fatigue, but I keep my mouth shut until she drinks.
“Hurting?”
“A little.”
“Then maybe stop spending your afternoon verbally murdering people.”
“He was asking for it.”
“Still counts as talking.”
She gives me a look over the bottle, but she stops. Smart woman.
Her phone has been vibrating continuously since we left the building. Vivian. Dean. Monica. Evelyn. Three news alerts. Someone named Aunt Margot has sent eleven messages and one GIF involving a burning dumpster.
Laurel sits on the low concrete barrier beside the parking spaces and opens her mother’s first.
Vivian: Did he weep?
Vivian: That wasn’t the important question. Are you all right, baby?
Laurel stares at it, and the humor leaves her face. “I think so.”
Her voice is so soft that I’m not certain she intended me to hear. After another drink, she looks across the road at a drive-through with a giant red sign.
“I want fries.”
Ten minutes later, Laurel Bellamy, who has just helped suspend one of the most recognizable men in country music from the company carrying his name, is sitting in the passenger seat of my SUV with her shoes off, eating fries from a paper bag and arguing by text with her mother because she wants to fly to Nashville “just to look at Grant.”
I pop one into my mouth.
Laurel looks offended, her brow crinkling as her lips push into a pout. “Hey! Those are mine.”
I steal another.
Her cute little pout morphs into an open-mouthed gape, and she slaps my hand. “Quit stealing my fries, you thief!”
I burst out laughing.
My phone rings as she digs through the bottom of the bag for another ketchup packet, having pivoted into an angle that puts the fries safely out of my reach.
Jonah Reed, Vale House’s CFO.
Laurel immediately reaches for the radio and turns the volume down without asking, which tells me she expects business rather than privacy.
“Talk to me.”
Jonah skips hello. “Heartland reopened bidding. Seller terminated Mercer’s exclusivity ten minutes ago. Goldman wants indications by Monday. We can have a number tonight.”
I glance sideways and find Laurel watching me. “Who else?”
“Crescent, Hollis, us. Maybe Northline.”
“Conflict review?”
“Mara says there’s no legal prohibition, but this is going to look predatory as hell after the Mercer board action.”
“It is predatory.”
“That has never upset you before.”
“Difference between predatory and stupid.”
Jonah laughs. “Board call in an hour?”
“Schedule it. I’m recusing myself from any part of the discussion that could involve information I learned during Bellamy diligence.”
Laurel’s brows lift, surprise flickering across her face.
Jonah goes quiet. “You sure?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Mara will document the firewall.”
We hang up.
Laurel waits until my phone is facedown. “Why are you recusing?”
“You really need me to answer that?”
“Yes.”
“Vale House is now bidding for an asset Mercer spent seven months trying to acquire while I’m simultaneously conducting diligence on your catalogue, receiving information from your counsel, and being photographed carrying your guitar around Nashville.
I enjoy aggressive acquisitions. I’m less enthusiastic about securities lawyers using the phrase conflicted transaction while pointing at me. ”
“So the board handles it.”
“Yes.”
She folds the fry bag closed. “Good.”
“I sense a little disappointment.”
“It isn’t. I was checking if you planned to abandon a legitimate acquisition because you thought I might feel guilty.”
“No.”
“Good.” Her eyes stay on me. “I don’t want that.”
“Neither do I.”
“Grant made decisions for me because he thought he knew what would hurt me, help me, scare me, keep me. I’m going to lose my fucking mind if the any man starts reorganizing his life around guesses about what Laurel can emotionally tolerate.”
There’s more force in the sentence than volume, probably because her throat won’t give her volume today.
“Understood.”
“Get Heartland if it makes sense.”
“I’m recused.”
“Your company.”
“My board knows what I want.”
“Which is?”
“An undervalued catalogue with thirty-two percent recurring sync income and an owner desperate enough to reopen bids on a Friday afternoon.”
Laurel’s mouth falls open. “You memorized that too?”
“I read financial statements for entertainment.”
“You are a deeply strange man, Beckett Vale.”
The sound of my name in her mouth makes the car feel hotter, even with the air conditioning blasting.
“Coming from someone who just ate ketchup with a fry she dropped between the seats.”
Laurel looks down at the fry in her hand, considers the accusation, and eats it anyway. “I’m going through a divorce.”
∞∞∞
The townhouse Evelyn found for her sits on a quiet Green Hills street lined with crepe myrtles and houses whose owners all appear to share the same landscaper and tax bracket.
I take the document case from Laurel, surprised by the weight; the damn thing has to be thirty pounds. A smile tugs at my mouth when she simply lets me carry it.
As we approach, I spot two cameras above the entry and a keypad on the side gate.
“Evelyn arranged security?”
“A consultant came this morning. Changed the lock codes, checked the windows, showed me how to use the panic button without accidentally summoning Nashville Metro because I sneezed.”
“Sloane?”
“Mostly paparazzi. Partly Sloane.” She searches her bag for the keys. “She hasn’t contacted me again since that night.”
“That doesn’t mean she won’t.”
“I know.”
“Vale uses two private-security firms. I’ll send you the names.”
Laurel glances at me. “The names? You aren’t going to hire somebody without telling me and send a six-foot man named Brick after me at Kroger?”
“I don’t employ anyone named Brick. I’ll send you numbers, you decide.”
Her expression softens enough to make looking directly into her blue eyes a bad idea.
The front door opens from inside before either of us reaches it.
Dean Bellamy stands there holding what looks like a cordless drill in one hand and half a sandwich in the other.
“You remodeling my house now?”
“Thought I’d get a head start.”
His green eyes land on me, suspicion written all over them.
Dean and I have met twice, both times in rooms full of music people and Grant Mercer. Today, he studies me with the particular scrutiny older brothers reserve for men standing too close to their sisters during divorce proceedings.
“Vale.”
“Bellamy.”
Laurel looks between us. “If either of you starts doing that thing where men communicate territorial nonsense through surnames, I will shut the door on both of you.”
Dean takes another bite of his sandwich. “I’m married. My territory is wherever Monica lets me put my shoes.”
Laurel pushes past him. “Why are you here?”
“Replacing the bedroom lock.”
“The lock wasn’t broken.”
“Yeah, but it was doing fuck-all.” He points the drill at me. “You want a sandwich?”
I blink, thrown by the question, but nod.
Laurel drops her forehead briefly against the doorframe. “This is Dean’s love language. Threats, carbohydrates, and unsolicited home improvement.”
“Turkey?” Dean asks.
“Sure.”
Five minutes later, I’m standing in the kitchen eating a sandwich made by the brother of the woman I’ve wanted at varying levels of inconvenience for seven years, smiling like a schoolboy with a crush as she argues with him about why one human being doesn’t need four loaves of bread every week.
Laurel laughs when Dean claims bread is a food group, and something in my chest shifts with enough force that I put the sandwich down.
A life like this.
Her laughing in a kitchen. Her brother giving me shit over lunch. A house with too much bread in the pantry and people who walk in without knocking because they know they belong here.
Fuck.
I want it.