Chapter 4
FOUR
MEREDITH
My hands shake as I text my best friend, Sawyer Booth.
I met her on my first day of eighth grade in Scandal, and we’ve been like sisters ever since.
Holly was already in her late twenties by the time I was born.
To say I was an oops baby is an exaggeration, but it didn’t stop my parents from ditching me with her.
Sawyer was the friend I needed instead of the mother Holly acted like.
Ransom hired Sawyer in high school to help around the ranch, especially during calving season for the cow-calf operation.
Then she left for college and became a veterinarian, but she continues working chores at the ranch even to this day, as a way to pay back the financial help Ransom gave her to get through school after her parents passed away.
Meredith: He’s here.
I brush the back of my wrist across my forehead. I left the big, brooding man upstairs and went to work. I have yeast to purge and packaging to start, but I’m hiding between the fermenters. This area is hidden from the stairs, and from where Molly is mopping in the taproom.
My phone buzzes, and I almost drop it.
Sawyer: Which one? McBossy, McNerdy, or McModel?
Meredith: McBossy, and he lives up to his name. Molly thinks he eats souls.
The problem is, if he does, a girl might enjoy giving hers up.
I caught some real emotion from McBossy up in the office. Anger, naturally. Surprisingly, some remorse when he recalled his words about Holly. For an instant, I even caught a flicker of grief. He may feast on souls, but he also possesses one, whether he acknowledges it or not.
Sawyer: Need me to come over?
Meredith: No. He tried to take the laptop.
Sawyer: Good. He can shrivel his balls.
Why do I feel that losing those balls would be a shame for much of womankind?
Meredith: He’s not budging on the funeral.
Sawyer: Jackass. Did he say when the other princes are showing up?
Meredith: No. Did Ransom tell you they talked?
Sawyer: He’d get calls and texts sometimes and wouldn’t tell me who.
Calder said his dad would’ve mentioned something about changing his will. Were they talking? I would’ve been happy for Ransom, but why didn’t he tell me?
Ransom was in his head before the accident.
He’d pop off during the day, be on his phone—which he usually hated—and field calls in private.
He was normally the guy who answered calls in the middle of the bleachers at a ball game, making sure at least three rows around him heard the conversation.
He’d keep his phone on speaker in the grocery store.
It would have been his and Holly’s twentieth anniversary this year. He must’ve been planning something big, but also compartmentalizing, to keep his sons from holding it against him. Perhaps that was the case.
Steady footsteps echo on the stairs as I shrink into the shadows. There are no valves back here for me to check, so I’d obviously be hiding if he caught me. The steps grow fainter, and my relief cools the heat left behind from the office confrontation.
Molly’s singing stops when the front door opens. “Have a good day,” she says cheerfully.
It goes quiet. I sneak out. Did he glare at her and incinerate her on the spot?
I peek out from around the tap wall. Molly’s scratching the back of her neck and spots me.
“I do believe that man is an asshole,” she says.
“Yeah.”
I rush to the window closest to the recessed door to peer outside. He’s already in a big SUV, the sun gleaming off the black paint. His confidence in me having no say in the brewery wipes out my confidence that Ransom secured my position as brewmaster and manager at Jules Creek before he died.
But I’m the much younger sister of his second wife. Not one of his kids. “I’m afraid that man is going to be the ass in charge now.”