Page 72 of Billionaire Undeceived - Devon

We had right now.

We were crazy about each other.

For now, that would have to be enough.

Devon

“Where’s Reese?” I asked my mother as I entered her kitchen the next day.

We were having a family dinner tonight at my mother’s place, and Reese had come over early to help Mom.

Since they were going to be cooking, I’d stayed behind for a while to work on a song that I was co-writing with Anna.

Reese had subtly hinted that she wouldn’t mind having some girl time with my mom, and I certainly wouldn’t be helping them cook dinner.

Reese was slowly starting to learn to manage her PTSD with the help of her new counselor, and I was fairly sure it helped her to talk to my mother, too.

The two of them had gotten even tighter since the truth about Reese’s past had been revealed.

Mom looked from the food she was stirring in a big pot and smiled at me. “Reese and I went for a walk earlier to see the progress on Cole and Asher’s land. We sat for a while at the property border by that big Ponderosa Pine. I think I left my phone there. She offered to get it while I watched our dinner. You just missed her, but it shouldn’t take her long.”

I’d lightened up a little about Reese being alone while she was in Crystal Fork.

I still didn’t let her ride alone because the trails were pretty remote, but she should be safe enough going to the Ponderosa Pine and back. It wasn’t like that big pine tree was miles deep into Mom’s property.

“We’re all in the dining room,” Kaleb said as he strolled into the kitchen. “So what’s the latest news about Cole and Asher?”

Cole and Asher Remington were our cousins.

They’d left Crystal Fork years ago and had never really stayed in touch.

I’d connected a few times with Cole in the last few months because they were building homes on our uncle’s old property and planning on moving home now that they’d sold their multi-billion-dollar tech company in Austin.

Asher was a mystery to me.

My communication had been sparse with Cole, but at least he’d been cordial.

Asher had never bothered to answer anyone in the family when they’d tried to contact him.

Since their father had been an asshole and an alcoholic, we’d never really mingled with our cousins much when we were younger.

My father had been estranged from his brother, and my cousins hadn’t seemed to want to have much to do with us, either.

Cole and Asher had always had a hard edge to them and were pretty anti-social. As far as I knew, they hadn’t changed much.

Looking back on that as an adult, I was pretty sure their behavior had a lot to do with their father.

I suspected he was an abusive dick.

I wasn’t quite sure how they were going to be accepted back into Crystal Fork.

A lot of the townspeople still believed that they’d murdered their own father, but I’d never really believed it was true. Unfortunately, I had no real proof that they hadn’t done it because the murder had never been solved.

That property next to Mom’s had been abandoned for a long time, and in my mind, it was past time that it was occupied again.

“We could really only see Cole’s home,” Mom said. “Asher built his on the other side of the property. Cole’s home is lovely though. I’m glad that they’re both coming home. That property is their birthright.”

“I doubt they care,” I said drily. “They’re both filthy rich.”

---