“We’ll stop work until we resolve all legal issues,” Sam said, as if it were a huge concession.
“You better,” Law replied. “I have plans, and Jake was one hundred percent in agreement with those plans before he died. We lived in the same house and talked about it at length.” He should shut up, but these two con artists needed to know he wasn’t some casual acquaintance of Jake’s hoping to score some prime real estate after his death.
Libby blinked at him. “You lived with Jake?” she asked, sounding more hopeful than skeptical.
“He was getting older,” Law explained. “I kept an eye on him.” Except Law had been at work when Jake had his stroke.
“Do you still live there?” she asked, sounding more than casually interested.
“No, but that doesn’t matter.”
“But you did, and that means—”
Sam cut her off with a hand on her shoulder. “We’re not going to discuss this any further,” he said firmly. “Call that number next week, and we’ll strategize our next step.”
Law eyed him with pure disgust. “The only thing Jake hated more than a liar was a lawyer. He’d roll over in his grave if someone told him his ‘so-called’ son was both.”
He didn’t wait for a response, but turned and strode across the deck with one thing pounding in his head, the sound of Jake’s voice and some of his very last words.
You’re only as sick as your secrets.
Holy shit. Was this Jake’s secret?
Chapter Four
Libby watched Law leave, unable to take her eyes off his broad shoulders until they disappeared. Shoulders that could crush her plans. Shoulders that looked like they bore the weight of the world.
She tried to wrap her head around the fact that Law was that close to Jake Peterson. And shared a house with him. Not only did that mean he could have something they needed desperately, it meant…Law just dropped a few notches in her estimation. Who could he be friends with a man like that? What did it say about Law that he was?
“He doesn’t have a will,” Sam said quietly.
Libby whipped around. “What makes you say that?”
“Evasion, avoidance, turning the conversation around.” Sam slipped back down on the barstool. “I’ve cross-examined enough witnesses in my life to know.”
“So if you’re right, that’s good. Because, let’s face it, Sammy. We aren’t exactly bathed in an open-and-shut claim here. We have birth certificates but no other proof. And…an imaginative mother.”
Sam shot her a look. “She’s telling the truth.”
“That’s what we thought the first two times she told us who our father was. Or wasn’t.”
Sam puffed out a long, tired breath and picked up a flat beer. “Damn, we were so close to the one-year mark.”
“Can’t you use your lawyerly wiles to rush the courts a little?”
He shook his head. “When we hit the one-year mark on Jake’s death, our legal wheel spins into high gear. We have to produce enough proof to win over a judge, or at least have no contest. I’ve pushed probate and property laws to the absolute limit, but if some dude waltzes in with so much as a few lines on a napkin and Jake’s signature?”
Libby took the seat where Law had been, turning to glance back in the direction he’d gone, replaying the conversation. “He’ll win, right?”
Sam snorted. “Excuse me, Lib?”
“I know you’re the best, Sam, but if he has a will and we have forty-five-year-old birth certificates that have been replaced with a different father’s name?”
Sam shook off the argument. “How well do you know this guy, this Lawson Monroe? Wasn’t he some kind of loser at Mimosa High?”
“Hey, we were all some kind of losers at Mimosa High,” she said, not quite understanding the need to defend him now. “But he was at the all-class reunion asking everyone if they knew who’d taken over the Pelican. I didn’t want to get into details with him, so I kept him at arm’s length and never answered, but he’s been in the restaurant, poking around.”
“If he has a will, he’d file it.” Sam rubbed his square, handsome jaw, his razor-sharp brain and photographic memory no doubt calling up every property case he’d ever handled. “There’s no reason to keep that secret. Especially if he lived with the guy.”
“And you know what that means, don’t you?” Libby asked, a new idea dawning. At the note of excitement in her voice, Sam looked hard at her.
“It means he has an even stronger case.”
“And,” Libby added, “it means he could have something—a hairbrush, an envelope, a damn nail clipping that we could use to do a DNA test. That would help our case. Could cinch it.”
“I thought of that,” Sam said. “But I didn’t want him to know we’re that desperate.”
She slumped a little in silent agreement. “We certainly couldn’t find anything in the Pelican that could be used for DNA. But, Sam, if we had access to personal belongings of Jake Peterson’s, we could get what we need. And Law Monroe might have that.”
“So…what are you saying?” Sam asked, smart enough to not like where she was going.
“I’m saying he has something I want, and I…” She casually grazed her fingertips over her décolletage. “Have something he wants.”
Sam’s jaw practically hit the bar. “What? You’d…do that? I’ll kill him if he touches you, and then I’ll kill you for letting him.”
“Oh, Sammy, my hero of a brother. Do you think I’m so stupid to sell my body for a toenail clipping? Of course not. But I can…tease and torture and take what I want.”
“Stop it,” Sam said. “I won’t let you put yourself in that situation.”
“You won’t let me?” She choked softly. “I’m forty-five years old, and I can do what I want.” And it wouldn’t be a hardship, she added silently, already anticipating the pleasure of the challenge. Nothing consummated, of course, but her pledge to stay celibate didn’t include a little fooling around to get what she needed. “If I go back to his place, who knows what I could find?”
“Nothing you find there is going to help us, Lib,” Sam said. “We need a legal paternity test with a witness to the collection and quality testing. You can’t slip into his garage after a hot make-out session, find Jake’s stuff, and grab an envelope he might have licked. That won’t hold up in court.”
“But what about DNA that doesn’t hold up in court?” Libby asked.
“What good would it do?”
She leaned back and studied her brother. “Don’t you want to know?” she asked. “Don’t you have to know?”
“I know. I believe her.” He looked straight ahead, silent.
“Well, I believed her when we were little and thought Mike Chesterfield was our father. Then I believed her when she got caught in that lie and some other nonexistent guy was our father. And then, wham! Hello, kids. Some guy who owns a restaurant on Mimosa Key is your father, and he’s dead.” She huffed out a breath of frustration and skepticism. “I’m sorry, but Donna Dearest lives her life as though the script keeps changing. While that’s fine for her when she’s running around Europe performing plays for underprivileged people like she is now, but it doesn’t work when I would very much like to know who my birth father is. For real this time.”
“She told us for real, and we have legitimate birth certificates with his name on them. Until someone else says we can’t have it, his property is legally ours. If that guy has a binding last will and testament, then we have a fight on our hands.”
She didn’t want that fight, she thought on a sigh. “I finally have my life in order after two craptastic marriages and the challenges of motherhood. I have time, money, hope, and a future. And if I have that property, I have my dream. I want to live on this island, in the house we renovated, and run my yoga studio in town until I’m old, ugly, and Jasmine has a bunch of kids who call me Meemaw.”
He slid her a smile. “You’ll never be ugly, Lib.”
“I can try.?
??
“Okay,” he said, patting her arm. “I’ll do my legal best to make some of that happen. I hope that Law dude calls us, because if I have some time with an actual will in my hands, or even a copy of it, I might be able to build a case that says it’s not legitimate and that Jake Peterson’s posterity—that’s you and me—get his estate in full. In the meantime, you stay away from him. I don’t like the way he looked at you.”
She snorted. “Like he wanted to kill me?”
“Not exactly.” He finished his beer and stood up, grabbing his suit jacket. “Let’s go up to the house. Is Jasmine home?”
She shrugged. “Probably not, and may not be home until morning.” At his look of surprise, she added, “She’s really getting serious with Noah.”
“That bodyguard who works at the security firm here at the resort?” Sam asked, frowning. “She’s sleeping with him? Jasmine?”
She laughed. “She’s twenty-three, Uncle Sam. And I like him.” But it sure got lonely at the house she and Jasmine shared on the north shore of Barefoot Bay. “Your room’s ready, though,” she said, her gaze drifting around and stopping when she spied shiny silver hair and a pale blue shirt over at the tiki bar.
Well, what do you know? He hadn’t left yet.
Damn that vow of celibacy she’d taken when she signed her last divorce papers. If ever she were to break it, he would be the guy to do the job.
Except instead of lifelong acquaintances who’d been flirting with the idea of sex since they were kids, now they were both after the same property, and he’d probably be just another man she ended up facing in court.
“So, you coming?” Sam asked.
“Nah, I need to…” Dig for DNA. “Stop back at the Pelican and make sure the teenager I put in charge really knows how to lock the door and not steal any cash.”
“You’re down to the dregs of employees there now, I take it.”
“Of course I am.” Libby tried not to make it too obvious she was keeping Law in her line of vision. “You told me I had to keep the place running exactly as Jake did for one year, and I have.” She’d spent as little time there as possible, but she’d had enough of a staff to keep it alive. “But I had to let those employees know their days are numbered so they’d have plenty of time to find new jobs. Most of them have.”
“You still have two weeks.”
“I can manage on a skeleton crew for two more weeks.”
“It might be a little more than that,” Sam said, leaving money on the bar. “Because when I go to court in two weeks, we have a tricky case. The provisional remedy the judge agreed to while the property is in abeyance is proving an intention to maintain the status quo through adverse possession.”
Libby dropped her head back with a moan. “Speak English, Counselor.”
“You have to run that business exactly like Jake did and cannot change a thing until it is well and truly ours, and then you can gut it, clean it, knock down walls, and build your yoga studio. But not one minute before I have that final order in hand.”
“All right, Sammy.” She stood and gave her brother a cursory kiss. “I hear ya. Hey, I’m teaching a vinyasa flow on the beach tomorrow morning at sunrise. Want to come and let me torture you with sun salutations?”
“I’d rather die. Or, at least, sleep. I’ll have coffee with you when you get back. Will Jasmine be working or still MIA?”
“She’s not exactly MIA. She’s in B-E-D. With a G-U-Y.”
He hammered his heart with a fist and invisible knife, grunting softly.
“You think it’s bad when it’s your niece?” She raised a brow. “Just wait until Ainsley is twenty-three.”
“I’m locking her up when she turns twelve.”
“Good luck with that.”
“Anyway, I pity the man who takes on that little pistol,” Sam said with an affectionate smile. “I heard her telling Chase that she was thinking the F-word really hard. Not saying it, just thinking it. Of course, he marched in to inform me that his little sister was swearing.”
Libby laughed. “The bad sister and the good brother.” She elbowed him. “History repeats itself.”
He put an arm around her shoulders. “She could do worse than be like Aunt Liberty.”
The compliment only made her feel guilty for what she was about to do. She leaned into Sam’s strong side to thank him, but her gaze drifted across the deck just in time to catch a glimpse of Law heading toward the beach.
It was time. “Hey, I’m going to hit the ladies’ room. You go on ahead. I’ll see you up at the house later.”
He gave her a kiss on the forehead and headed out.
The minute her brother was out of sight, Libby headed to the beach, a sense of anticipation tingling in her veins. Of course, that was only because she was closer to getting Jake’s DNA. That had to be the reason for all that tingling, right?
* * *
Maybe he shouldn’t have walked away from that conversation, but Law had to think. At least that’s how he rationalized his exit as remnants of the conversation echoed in the recesses of his brain, the words floating around like little bombs about to detonate. Deed. Bylaws. Articles of incorporation. Estate. Probate. Legal heirs and biological father.
It all made him want to…drink.
Law downed the ice water he’d ordered, but he was still sweating in the sticky summer humidity. He set the empty glass down on the tiki bar, resisting the urge to look across the expanse of the deck at the two people who’d just become his mortal enemies.
Instead, he kicked off his shoes and dropped them on the deck stairs and walked toward the beach, thinking about Liberty and Sam—twins born on the Fourth of July.
He could see their resemblance, even with different hair color. They both had beauty in the bones, as Jake would have said. But not a damn bit of resemblance to the man they claimed was their father.
But what if it was true?
Dragging his hand through his hair, he studied the crescent moon that hung over the midnight-black bay, leading him toward the low-tide surf where there might be a breeze.
Born and raised right here in the southwest corner of Florida and having spent a good part of his adult life in the kitchen, Law wasn’t bothered by the heat. But tonight the oppressive humidity crawled all over him, making him itchy and angry.
No, it was this news that made him itchy and angry. And it would have made Jake cry.
Not that the old man hadn’t been strong. He’d been an ox on the outside, but deep inside that crusty exterior, Jake had been as soft as melted Camembert. Finding out he had not one kid but two? He’d have bawled like a naked newborn.
But then he remembered what Libby said: he did know. So, he didn’t care or tell anyone? Impossible. It was absolutely, categorically, out-of-the-realm-of-reality impossible. A con. A mistake. A misunderstanding.
A lie.
But who was lying? This mythical mother of theirs or…Jake?
Law stood still for a minute, the sand cool under his bare feet, the air finally drying the sheen of sweat on his forehead, feeling…something. A memory. A moment. A glimmer of the past that was, like so many of those that resided in Law’s brain, faded and cracked by the years he poured too much alcohol in his body.
Hadn’t Jake told him about a girl he’d loved and lost? Her name was…
Blank. Like so many pieces of Law’s past, just a blank in his alcohol-drowned brain cells.
“Going skinny-dipping, Lawless?”
He spun at the woman’s voice, inhaling softly at the sight of golden hair spilling over bare shoulders.
Libby walked with slow, steady deliberateness toward him, her face still shadowed from the light, but her exquisite body on full display from the skintight red top and sexy jean shorts all the way down to sweet bare feet. There was purpose in every step, and he knew exactly what that purpose was.
Sex was probably part of their scam. Maybe she thought she could screw Jake’s will out of him. Well, let her try. Dear G
od, please let her try.
“Not alone.” He flicked his collar and added a challenging smile. “Ladies first.”
She came to a stop a few feet away from him. The lightest sheen of perspiration made her skin look dewy and soft. Sure, there might be a laugh line or three around those silvery blue eyes, and no doubt she had a few grays of her own covered with the help of a hairdresser at Beachside Beauty. But overall, this girl he’d gone to high school with twenty-eight years ago had aged to perfection as a woman.
“Don’t ever dare me to do something unless you are one hundred percent prepared for the consequences,” she said.
“The consequences of seeing you strip and swim in front of me?” He scratched the back of his head like he was thinking about that. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
She gave him a sly smile. “We’ll see what you can handle, Lawless.” She waltzed past him toward the waterline, but he stayed where he was, half expecting her to reach down and yank that red tank top over her head and throw it to the side.
But he knew better. She’d make him work for so much as a glimpse of her precious girls. The will, of course. That’d be her price.
If only he could pay it.
Very slowly, he walked closer to the water’s edge where she stood, her back to him, her long hair floating like a golden curtain over her shoulders. Some people might say forty-five was too old for long hair, but like everything else about Libby Chesterfield, she wore it like a pro.
And he had to fight the urge to run his fingers through it.
Shit. If he couldn’t resist her hair, how long could he hold out for that rack?
“Your pants are going to get wet,” she warned, taking a few more steps.
“And tight,” he teased, coming right up behind her, close enough for them to feel heat, but not touch. “Where’s your brother? Lurking behind a palm tree ready to shoot me with a tort?”
She reached back and lifted her hair, pulling it up to expose the sinewy muscles of her back and perfect slope of shoulders. “He went to my house,” she said without turning.