Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 70566 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70566 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
HOLLY
I was in a room full of motorcycle men, and every one of them was looking at their president and me making assumptions.
They were, of course, making the correct assumptions. But assumptions they were making.
And I didn’t like being the center of attention like this.
But, alas, the men who were at that table were men that needed to be there.
In an hour, I would be walking into a courtroom to fight my mom on my dad’s life insurance.
My lawyer, a sexy looking man with sharp eyes and a jaw like granite, had gone over my case just yesterday and had some questions before he represented me in the courtroom this morning.
There were several others of Denver’s club in the room, but none of them interrupted or interjected as my lawyer lobbed questions at me one after the other.
“Does your mother come into town often?” Jedidiah asked.
I shrugged. “About twice a year, maybe. She’d show up in town, visit with Dad, then leave. I’m not sure what they visited about. But she always came to see him.”
“How long would she stay?” Jedidiah asked.
“A half a day, max. She’d fly in on a private jet, rent a car to get here. Visit with Dad. Drive right back to the airport,” I answered.
“And when did she leave for good?” he continued.
“When I was eleven,” I answered.
He wrote some more information down on his legal pad. “Did she pay child support?”
I snorted. “Absolutely not.”
“Do you know if your dad filed for child support to be paid?”
I rubbed at the back of my neck. “Dad was forced to when he was diagnosed with cancer. He couldn’t work sometimes, so he had to start doing what he could. One of those things was applying for child support. But she never paid. I heard them arguing about it on the phone a lot.”
He hummed as he wrote, his dark, deep voice slightly melodic.
“Denver, you said you bought most of his herd, right?”
“Right.” Denver leaned back in his seat.
“Did you happen to hear anything of what went on with them?” he asked. “Did her dad share anything with you? Were you aware of any debts?”
“A bit,” he admitted, looking at me apologetically. “They were drowning. When he left the land to me, he’d left me a sizable amount in unpaid property taxes. It was enough to cover three of the inheritances that Georgina is fighting over.”
I winced.
Denver squeezed my hand, because I was sure he thought I was still in the dark about what he’d done for me and my father.
I winked at him, and his eyes widened.
Denver turned back to Jedidiah, calm as ever, yet still holding my hand. “He talked to me over the years about how bad it was. Didn’t exactly share all that he had to do, but on the outside looking in, I could see the change that took place in his operation. He went from thousands of livestock to just enough that Holly could take care of. All the horses and tack were sold at an auction that I went to.”
I remembered that auction.
I’d cried the entire time silently in the back with my hoodie pulled up over my head.
But not nearly as bad as when Harry Trotter was sold to help pay for medical bills.
“After the fire, though, there was a lot of issues.”
“Fire?” Jedidiah asked.
I snorted. “One of my mother’s fancy lamps that she left behind caught fire in the barn’s office. Burned the whole back wing of the house along with the entire barn.”
“And the insurance for that?”
I was shaking my head. “We didn’t get any. Dad thought we had some, but no check ever came.”
Denver’s head turned my way, and Jedidiah’s eyes gleamed. “Oh, really?”
I nodded. “It was really bad. That was also the same year that Dad got diagnosed. Almost directly after the fire.”
Jedidiah continued to ask questions and take notes until someone tapped on the door and said, “It’s time to leave, sir.”
“Thanks, Anna.” Jedidiah sighed. “Let’s go. I think we’ve got this in the bag…but don’t freak out if you think it’s not going your way at first. I have a plan.”
Denver pulled me to him and walked with his arm around my hip, but he did take the time to say, “Boone told you, didn’t he?”
I snorted. “That’s something that you should’ve told me. I wouldn’t have been so mad at you.”
“He asked me not to,” he admitted as he gave my hips a squeeze.
I sighed. “My dad treated me like a child until he died. But I haven’t been a child in a very long time. I had to grow up way too quickly, and he shouldn’t have taken that away from me. I would’ve understood.”
The walk from Hopps, which was where we were having our meeting, to the courthouse was all of three hundred feet.