Asher and Cole continued their conversation, the phone held aloft between her and Asher, and with each word, the knots in her stomach tightened. She couldn’t imagine how he felt, hearing that someone was not only trying to go against his sister’s final wishes, but that, if they were successful, the bastards would be able to rip June and Owen away from him. The last of his blood family.
Asher could tell by the look Cole had shot him in the courtroom that he’d made a mistake.
Then there’d been the stern, no-nonsense, “My office. Now,” that really drove home the point.
Which, true, he probably hadn’t thought things through nearly enough before blurting out something that could potentially change the course of his whole life. But he’d been facing the barrel of a gun, the very real possibility of June and Owen being taken away from Havenbrook weighing on him as heavily as if a herd of rhinos had taken up residence directly on his chest. They were the only family he had left, and he’d be damned if he was going to let that slip through his fingers without doing everything in his power to stop it.
It hadn’t helped that the judge overseeing the case didn’t exactly look favorably upon Asher. In fact, Judge Seville been the one to sentence him and Nash to two hundred hours of community service instead of letting them off with a warning like he had Nat, and the judge most certainly hadn’t ever forgiven Asher for the…transgression. But, shit, at the time, he’d been an idiot seventeen-year-old who lived for trouble. He’d changed a lot in the years he’d been gone. Had grown up…matured. There was no way he’d be caught running naked through the man’s backyard again. Probably.
And then there’d been the Haywards… They’d shown up with the most expensive lawyer money could buy, but that hadn’t surprised him. Whathadsurprised him was how hard they were fighting for custody. Cole hadn’t prepared him enough for that battle—not for facing off against two people as well-off as them, not to mention their attorney, who acted like he ate less affluent people like Asher for breakfast.
“You didn’t think you should mention to me that you’re engaged?” Cole said as soon as they were behind the closed doors of his office.
Well, to be fair, he…wasn’t.
Asher blew out a breath and ran a hand through his hair. “And you didn’t think to mention to me that I had to compete with some ten-point something or other?”
Cole tossed his keys on his desk and expelled a sigh before settling in his chair. “Ten-point analysis.”
“Doesn’t matter what it’s called. Only thing that matters is I’ve got, like, one point, Cole. That leaves nine up for grabs.”
Even with Aubrey’s and Nathan’s wills, plus the video of her asking Asher to take custody of June, the odds were stacked against him. He was a single man without a steady paycheck. He couldn’t provide private schools and nannies and personal chefs for June and Owen, but he could keep them in the only home they’d known and not uproot them any more than they needed to be right now. And truthfully, neither Aubrey nor Nathan had wanted the life for their kids that the Haywards presented. If they had, they would have been living in Connecticut instead of back in Havenbrook, two blocks from her childhood home.
So, when Judge Seville had asked how Asher could possibly compete with everything the Haywards offered, he’d blurted out the first thing that came to mind. Never mind that he wasn’t seriously—or even not so seriously—dating anyone. And never mind that someone could probably get away with doing something like that in Nashville, but here, in a town the size of a peanut—not to mention everybody in everybody else’s business—he didn’t have a hope of fooling anyone, let alone the judge tasked with awarding final custody.
He’d completely and utterly fucked up.
But even knowing that, he couldn’t say he regretted it. Not when the judge had agreed to award temporary custody to Asher for the interim until a final decision could be made. It’d been the best mistake he could’ve made.
“So, you thought you’d even the field a bit by sayin’ you’re engaged?” Cole asked.
Asher cringed internally, knowing that was on him. “Yeah, about that—”
Cole held up a hand. “In my line of work, I know everything that goes on in Havenbrook. I make it my business to.”
Asher nodded. “I imagine you do.”
“As such, my clients tend not to keep things from me. That, and it’s in their best interests not to do so.”
“I can see that, too.”
Cole sat forward and folded his hands on top of his desk. “Look, Asher, I want to help you. I liked your sister, and I’m going to do everything in my power to see that her wishes are upheld and those kids stay with you.”
Asher was getting dizzy from how his emotions kept flip-flopping. Relief that they were staying with him…then worry over what that meant for his future.
“I appreciate that.”
“That’s my job. But in order to perform it to the best of my abilities, I need to be aware of absolutely everything. That includes someone, say, fakin’ an engagement. Hypothetically speakin’, of course.”
Fantastic. He hadn’t even managed to fool this man for thirty minutes, and he needed to put up a charade for a hell of a lot longer than that.
Asher cleared his throat. “Well—hypothetically speakin’, of course—it may not be fake so much as those someones just aren’t exactly engaged. Yet.”
Cole was silent for a moment that stretched long enough to make Asher shift in his seat. “How not exactly are we talkin’?”
Asher tried to school his expression, but a grimace still slipped through.
“I see. Hypothetically speakin’, would this potential fiancée at least be a resident of Havenbrook?”
