His frown eased. “Word is she notified the judge she was alive and provided verification of her identity. A DNA test and other paperwork, which led to the emergency hearing being scheduled, but then Aubrey’s attorney, a guy from the city, asked for a continuance.”
“Sounds like Aubrey came back prepared to fight. But for what?” The image of her smug face under the stark courtroom lights wouldn’t leave my head. “You should have seen her today. She strutted into that hearing. It would have been nice to have a warning.”
Not that I could have prepared for that moment.
Lukas hummed but let the comment pass. “How did Isabel take the unexpected news about having another living relative?”
“As well as you might imagine.” Mom considered Xavier her primary bank. I was her secondary source of income. Aubrey being alive created a problem because her breathing impacted what Mom might get from Xavier’s estate going forward.
Lukas nodded. “That’s what I thought.”
A panicked scream raced up my throat and begged for release. “We need to figure out what Aubrey’s going to say about... anything. Everything.”
“We need to neutralize her, I agree, but we need more information first.”
The chilly edge to his voice set off a warning bell in my head. “Be specific.”
“We survived the worst. I have no intention of letting her ruin us now.”
Part of me hoped he’d say something like that. Step in and take over. Ease my worries. The other part hesitated over the words he didn’t say. “We could set up a meeting with her. An informal get-together. She’s family. Not that I think biology matters to her.”
“We’ll watch and wait.”
A terrible idea. The worst. “For her to attack? For us to be arrested?”
This time his loud sigh bounced around the room. “We’re not going to be arrested.”
Tough talk from a man whose entire judicial future depended on the whims of a woman who dropped out of the sky and into the center of town at the worst possible time. “You act like she’s in control.”
The humming sound came back. “She is. For now.”
“I refuse to accept that.” The idea made me want to yell the house down. “She needs to stay quiet and leave—fast—whatever way she came in.”
He didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “I’ll handle her.”
Right answer? Wrong answer? I’d lost perspective and couldn’t tell if I had too much information about his plan or not enough. “You mean you—”
“Stella, you know exactly what I mean.”
Chapter Five
Hanna
The heavier-than-usual lunch rush ended, and not one second too soon. My head pounded from clenching my teeth and holding in the loudest primal scream ever uttered. The pulse in the café had been frenetic. Overly excited. People kept piling in, then they lingered. Aubrey and the rest of the Tanner family dominated the chatter at every table.
If Aubrey thrived on attention now like she did back then, she should feel very satisfied with the response to today’s surprise antics. The whole town trembled with nonstop questions. I had a few of my own, like what she might say that could ruin us all... and byallI meant me.
“I don’t get it.” Jeremy shook his head as he spun his almost empty coffee mug around on the table.
The two of us sat alone during the break. Well, us and Aubrey. She might be gone but her presence lingered. She might as well have plunked down between us and munched on a cookie.
I needed a few minutes of non-Aubrey time. “Jeremy, maybe we could—”
“She acted like you two were friends.” He sat back in his chair with his arms resting on the wooden tabletop sourced from a crumbling barn that once stood a few miles away. “What was that about?”
This conversation topic refused to die. “We are not friends. Not then. Not now.”
Done. End of story.
