Page 142 of The Guy Who Stole My Ranch

More tears came. I had the proverbial two wolves inside of me fighting one another. One of them wailed that William was the best thing that had ever happened to me, and the other shouted that he was just like my brothers. “You’re probably right.”

“Do you have a ride coming?” he asked.

“Yes.”

William sighed, and for a moment, his business exterior cracked. “This is not how I wanted tonight to go.”

“Me neither.” Knowing this might be the last time I ever saw William, I walked to him, raised up on my toes, and brushed my lips on his cheek. “Don’t cancel the sale. Not on my account. Go after your dream.”

William said nothing as I turned and walked away.

Chapter 38

-William-

It had barely been twelve hours since I’d seen Brooke, but it felt like a week. Every fiber of my being wanted to walk out of this meeting and call her. Instead, I sat in a room with my father, Matthew Grant, his lawyer, and Adam Fowler, arguing over how much we were going to have to spend to make this infraction my father had committed go away.

Rational thought after the party had been impossible, so I’d dragged Courtney—who had been berating our mother more than normal—away and we’d started to dig into the incident. I hadn’t thought to do it before, because my father hadn’t denied any wrongdoing, but since I’d had time and couldn’t text or go to Brooke, I’d taken Courtney, and we’d gone down a rabbit hole.

One that had proved to be fruitful.

Every office had cameras these days, and Courtney had called in a couple of favors to get the footage from the building in Chicago along with one other piece of information.

After Matthew had accused me of having a type at the party, plus the fact that he knew what kind of woman my father preferred, I’d got to thinking. Matthew knew exactly what would distract my father.

Katrina fit his type to a tee. She was slender but shapely and had long hair.

She’d claimed that our father had propositioned her without any provocation on her part.

That was a bald-faced lie.

Courtney, who had been sobering up when we’d seen the video, had been dancing and pointing at the screen like sports fanatics when their team scored.

Katrina had been all over our father. Leaning toward him, touching him with much more than just her hands, and at one point she’d whispered in his ear close enough that she’d left lipstick behind.

Our father had, of course, been interested, but he’d never initiated any of it. Either he’d only been mildly intrigued, or he was smart enough not to do anything where a camera could see him.

The footage of her advances were likely enough to win a court case against her, since she’d lied, but the best part was that, after talking, we’d discovered that neither Courtney nor I had recognized her. We’d both been to Luxury Holdings multiple times and hadn’t noticed her.

And that was because she’d been hired two days before my father was scheduled to be there. One of our people had acquired a list of employees for the buyout, and she hadn’t been on it.

Courtney and I had decided to keep this between us. We hadn’t even told Adam yet, but he’d eat it up and spit Matthew out.

I still wasn’t sure what to do about Adam. I needed to confront him about Brooke, but I couldn’t think about her without getting emotional, so I shoved all of that away to deal with later. I’d likely be looking for a new lawyer after this matter was settled.

Courtney had spent the early morning putting together some sort of presentation and was ten minutes late.

“We all know you can’t keep your hands to yourself,” Matthew said.

“I never touched her,” my father growled.

The two men had been going in circles for an hour already, and I’d stopped paying attention. Adam kept glancing at the clock, and Matthew’s lawyer, Richard, was looking at his phone. Apparently, Richard thought he had this one in the bag.

He was in for a rude awakening.

“Enough!” Matthew bellowed so loud that the air shook. “We all know you did this, Kevin. Fess up, and we’ll get to the rest of the business for today.”

“No.” My father stared hard at his longtime rival. “I won’t.”

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