Oh no. She thinks I’m here for her. This is so bad.
“Andy?” She pulls back when my body tenses and searches my face, but all I manage is a look between pleading and panicked. What I want to do, what I should do, is fall on my knees and beg for her forgiveness, but her inquisitive gaze roots me to the spot.
Two male voices are right outside the door, bellowing with laughter, and Phoebe jumps back, hastily picking her phone off the floor and smoothing her already immaculate dark hair, pulled up in a meticulous bun.
“Ah, I see you two have made your acquaintance.” A man in his fifties enters the room and approaches with his arm stretched out to me. “Mr. Atkins, I’m Albert Hirsch.”
I nod meekly, unable to tear my gaze from Phoebe’s face as understanding dawns on her, and the soft clouds in her eyes are replaced by hard steel.
Here I am, standing in front of the only woman I have ever loved, the one I left shattered five years ago, and yet, she somehow still waited for me, it seems, only to have me break her heart all over again.
“Phoebe…” I try approaching her, but she turns and calmly walks to the other side of the conference table, sitting down next to Hirsch and opening her dossier, sliding a copy across the table.
“Jenkins,” she informs me with a wry voice. “Take a seat, Mr. Atkins, and we’ll get this over with.”
“All business.” Hirsch laughs with delight, not that I can blame him. Phoebe has always been a force to be reckoned with. Anybody would be lucky to have her fighting on their side. And I don’t pity the fool—a/k/a, me—in the opposite corner.
“Right.” I take a seat across from her, forcing myself to look at the hard set of her jaw, telling me she’s fighting back tears and punishing myself with the knowledge that I did that to her. Again.
“Claire Lindt, age eighty-four, died in her sleep from cardiac arrest,” Phoebe reads in a dry tone from her file, though I know she knows it by heart, she just needs an excuse not to look at me. I push away the pain to concentrate on the mission at hand, pulling out my reading glasses and flipping my own dossier open, scanning over the pages she’s reciting. “No living relatives except for a distant nephew, Hamond Zane, our client.”
“Claire left him The Lantern Lodge, her inn,” I provide. "It’s the only earthly possession she actually cared about.”
“You were close to her?” Hirsch asks in interest, and I shrug.
“Everyone in town was,” I explain. “But, I guess I was closer because my mom worked for her.”
Phoebe’s eyes soften for a fleeting moment at the mention of my mom. They were always very fond of each other, which makes this entire scenario so much worse as another grim realization dawns on me.
“Is that why she named you estate manager?” Hirsch continues his line of questioning, and my Spidey senses are tingling full force now.
“Can’t think of any other explanation.” I note Phoebe’s silence throughout the conversation, the way she’s avoiding my gaze, and I don’t know what to make of it.
“Interesting.” Hirsch scratches his stubbled chin. “She couldn’t have known you that well considering you’ve been serving overseas most of the time.”
That’s about the point the coin drops, and I realize what he’s trying to do. He knows about mine and Phoebe’s previous relationship.
Gabe warned me they might try to kick me off the case by claiming I somehow coerced the management of Claire’s estate out of her for monetary profit. I wouldn’t have minded except the truth he’s squeezing out of me makes his endgame very clear—he’s going to turn Phoebe against me, make her hate me so much she’ll use her personal insights to force my hand to whatever their client wants.
I want to fight, but I recognize a battle I can’t win.
“I’ve been back for almost nine months.” I steel myself for Phoebe’s reaction, but it never comes. That in itself scares me more than anything she could have said or done.
“So, we’ve established you had a close relationship with the deceased.” Phoebe finally lifts her gaze to my face, and the emptiness in it freezes the blood in my veins. “Now, let’s talk about selling it.”
“One year,” I state flatly.
“That isn’t going to happen, Mr. Atkins. Our client is determined to sell.”
“Well, Miss Jenkins, he can.” I lean forward and push my copy of the Will in their direction, tapping my finger on the relevant clause. “In one year, under the condition that during this year, the establishment stays fully operational and well-maintained and managed, which, considering your client is a real estate mogul, should be a breeze.”
“I see.” Phoebe’s smile is cold. “I guess we’ll meet in court, then.”
With that, she stands, not giving me so much as a second glance, and walks out of the room with a rigid back, a hint of her coconut scent tickling my nose as she blows past me.
“Welcome back, states-side, son.” Hirsch gives me a wink and gestures to the door.
“I look forward to seeing all of you again.” I wink back with a broad grin and stretch my hand, enjoying how confused he looks as he hesitantly shakes it.
This sniveling man in a suit thinks he can scare me off by trying to use Phoebe to wage war on me. I have over five years’ worth of tours in the hottest spots of hell on earth under my belt, and even if this battle is lost, there will be more. I have no intention of losing again.
Phoebe
“Sugar?” Leanne, my floor’s receptionist-slash-work-bestie, rushes after me into my office, closing the door behind us. “You okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I have,” I answer, attempting to control my ragged breathing. “And I hugged him and smelled him, and my stomach was full of butterflies, and it felt so right, he shouldn’t still feel so right!”
“Phoebe, you’re not making any sense.” Leanne clasps my shoulders and forces me to look at her face, worry lines visible at the corners of her mouth. “Who did you see?”
“Andy Atkins,” I whisper with a quivering voice, jumping with a start when there’s a knock on my door, knowing full well who’s on the other side.
“I’m okay,” I declare, forcing bad the memories to the front of my mind—how he left me, how he’s been back for nine damn months and never bothered to try and find me, how much it hurt to learn he stumbled back into my life by pure chance—using them to steal my resolve that he will never see how rattled I am by his sudden appearance.
“You sure?” Leanne prods, and I nod, taking a seat behind my desk.
“Come in,” I call, Leanne slipping out of the room when the door opens.
“Hey.” Andy walks in, meeting my gaze head-on without shame, his turquoise eyes unreadable. “Can we talk?”
“Is it about the case?” I look him over as he makes his way to one of the guest chairs.
He’s filled out. The once lean boy with a skip in his step is now all hard muscle and moves like a tiger ready to pounce. Even his chiseled jaw looks harder than I remember. And even after almost a year of being back, he keeps his flax-colored hair in a neat, slightly long, buzzcut, and maintains a clean shave. And he looks good, all six-feet-three-inches of him.