He let out a soft snort. “In the time it took you to take your phone call?”
I winced.
All right, maybe that was a little too soon for me to be asking. But sue me, I was eager to have Brandon back in my life, if only in a short-term capacity. I missed this, the energy between us. It felt both like coming home and breathing in a fresh lungful of air after having been kept stagnant for so long.
How he was able to do that to me—to make me feel like this—I’ll probably never know. Dissecting it to death like the rest of the relationships in my life felt taboo, like I would be somehow breaking a magical illusion that I wasn’t quite ready to peek behind the curtains and figure out just yet.
“Sounded serious,” he said, nodding to me. “Your phone call.”
“It was.”
He eyed me carefully but didn’t press me further for details. I appreciated that about him. He was clearly curious about the situation but wasn’t so crude that he’d go out of his way to dig the information out of me.
I hated when people did that.
Seemed Brandon hadn’t forgotten that.
“My lawyer, or my father’s I guess, just called. Told me that apparently there is some woman claiming to be his widow. She’s contesting the will.”
His eyes widened. “Do you know her?”
“No. She’s some Russian model. Honestly, as much as I don’t want it to be true, it doesn’t surprise me. You know how he was after my mother died.”
Brandon nodded slowly, his gaze drifting back toward the car in front of us. “What are you going to do? You think it’s legit?”
“Possibly. And I’m not sure. The information has to be verified first to start any kind of legal battle.”
“So... you’re going to fight her, then? If it is true.”
Normally, if any other person were to phrase it that way, I would’ve taken it as an attack. A ‘so you’re actually going to deny that poor woman her right to the estate? What an asshole’type comment that would’ve no doubt set me right off.
For him, that’s not quite the way it was meant and I knew that. This was more so Brandon’s way of subtly fishing for answers, wanting to get into my head and figure out what my course of action was. He’d done it countless times when we were kids, reframing my thinking in a way that was more constructive and less emotional—as I tended to get when things were overwhelming me.
Back then, I’d hated it. I’d hated how he’d full-stop me from lashing out and raining my fury down on everything that was in the way on my war path like I’d wanted, like my instincts were screaming at me to.
That was how my father had been, and learning by osmosis, I’d become quite the little tyrant myself. Until I met Brandon.
His approach to life wasn’t soft, it was firm. There was no hand-holding orthere theresthat would eventually end up coddling whoever it was he was trying to work with. For me, he’dkept me from turning into a person that I would one day hate looking into the mirror and facing.
He’d changed me and molded me into someone who was forced to step out of my anger and look at the bigger picture. Even when I vehemently refused to at first.
Brandon would never know how much him doing that impacted me—changed me for the better. And in turn, I’d never be able to thank him enough for it.
“I want to see what she’s asking for,” I finally said. “If it’s money, whatever. She can have it. But if it’s anything more than that, then I’m going to fight her. Her being entitled to anything regarding my family’s legacy is off the table.”
He nodded slowly. “Makes sense.”
The bitter ‘she hasn’t earned it’burned on my tongue.
No amount of me trying to explain those feelings would make sense. Even to someone like Brandon, who probably knew far better than anyone what my childhood had been like.
He lifted his hand to check the watch strapped to his wrist, frowning at it. “I need to get back to the shop. If you can have these towed, that would be great.”
My eyes widened. “So, you’re taking the job.”
He froze, only for a moment, before quickly shoving his flashlight and the other small tool back into his uniform pockets. “Yeah. We’ll discuss terms later once you’ve gotten the cars to the shop.”
Oh man.
