Why doesn’t he want to spend time with me?
That traitorous thought.
It plagued my fucking mind uselessly.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, distracting me from my thoughts. I dug it out and punched the green icon with my finger.
“This is Avery,” I said into the phone.
“Mr. McAllister, it’s Ted Evans.”
“Hey, I was just about to send you an email. I’ve got someone looking at those cars.”
“Ah,” he cleared his throat. “Well, that’s good. I take it you’ve got an expert with you, then?”
My brows knitted together.
What was with the weird tone?
And asking me an obvious question like that?
Sure, Ted was typically one for small talk but not in the way that it made him almost seem like he was trying his best to avoid bringing something to my attention.
Alarm bells went off in my head immediately.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
He chuckled. “Astute, as always.”
Turning to glance over my shoulder, I spotted Brandon poking around the third car, his flashlight moving along the trim of it while he squatted toward the rear on the passenger side. Watching him work up close like that had been both nostalgic and a little eye opening.
He’d always had an eye for the smaller details—taking in the bigger picture and then breaking it down into smaller, more digestible pieces. I’d adopted and used that technique countless times in my professional life. But nothing would compare to the master of it.
“There’s been some... news,” Ted finally said.
“About?” I needed this man to spit out what he was clearly stalling on telling me. Either way, whatever information was going to come next was going to upset me. How much was the real question.
Ted calling out of the blue without so much as my follow up email regarding anything about my father’s estate was troublesome, to put it lightly.
He sighed. “I just got off the phone withAlexander Steele’slaw office. It seems one of their clients has just filed to contest your father’s will.”
“What?”I snapped. “Who?”
Were they out of their fucking mind?
Iwas my father’s sole heir. Unless he had a bastard child without me ever finding out about it, his entire estate was owed to me. Not to mentionI’dbeen the one that had to deal with all of his bullshit for the past thirty-plus years.
No one else would ever get to claim that ‘privilege’.
“Her name is Ana Liapovich,” he said. “She’s a Russian model that claims she and your father were married when he passed and is now seeking to claim some of the estate as a surviving spouse.”
My mouth dropped open, rage pouring through me.
Of fucking course.
Why had I never expected this?
People coming out of the woodwork the second my father’s passing was made public news in order to try and get some kind of claim to whatever it was that they thought was owed to them was absolutely ridiculous.
