“I didn’t think you’d be back in Royal until December,” Uncle Keith said after they’d retired to his study to watch ESPN.
It seemed to Brian that they’d made the move so that his uncle could be closer to the whiskey, and he wondered if losing Ava was still an open wound for Keith the way losing Piper as for Brian.
He poured them both another Jack and Coke, and took a seat across from his uncle. The room was dark and masculine, smelling of cigars and pine. There were stacks of paper on the desk and the large-screen TV dominated one wall while floor-to-ceiling bookcases occupied the other.
“I followed Piper, hoping...” Brian trailed off. Truthfully, he didn’t really want to get into it again. He was turning into a sad sack, first with Leon and now with his uncle.
“Piper Holloway?”
“Yes, sir,” Brian said, leaning back and propping his ankle on his knee. “We had been dating, but she ended things abruptly.”
“She dumped you?” Uncle Keith asked incredulously.
“Yeah,” Brian admitted. “She’s so unsure of me. She’s afraid she’ll lose herself if she’s with me.”
“Really? She never really struck me as the forceful kind,” Keith said.
“Oh, there is a lot more to Piper than most people see,” Brian said. That was probably why he’d been so convinced that what they had was special. She’d let him in, and had looked past his barriers and seen the real him, as well.
“Same with Ava. Everyone sees her as a force to be reckoned with, and she is, but after Trent got so sick, she just couldn’t hold it together any longer,” Keith said.
“That had to be hard for you to see. Losing your best friend and then seeing his widow at the breaking point—I would have been wanted to step in and fix things too,” Brian said.
“Damn, boy, we have more in common than I would have guessed. I did the best I could. I love her,” Keith said gruffly. “I just wanted to take care of her.”
“If she’s anything like Piper, she probably wanted to do it on her own.”
“Yeah. Just like college,” Keith said, getting up to pour himself another drink.
“I thought y’all were just friends in college. Was it more?”
“I wanted it to be, but Trent cut me out. He had more money back then and didn’t hesitate to splash it around. Ava soon started spending more time with him,” Keith told him, his voice heavy with emotion.
“That must have been hard, but you were young and moved on,” Brian reminded him. “I know you had some good times with the women you married.”
Keith turned around, his eyes bloodshot and his steps a little unsteady as he made his way back to his armchair, bringing the bottle of Jack Daniels with him. “That I did, but none of those women were Ava.”
Had his uncle been pining for Ava Holloway Wingate all those years? That didn’t seem like the kind of man that Keith Cooper was. But emotions were something that most men in their family didn’t like to talk about.
“Then Trent got sick and she needed me,” he said, almost to himself.
“That was a tragedy. I know you were there for them both through the illness,” Brian added.
“Least I could do.”
“I would do the same for Piper,” he said. Would he? He wasn’t sure he’d be able to be friends with Piper if she married another man. He’d eventually drift out of her life. But Keith hadn’t been able to get that distance.
“I know you would, son.”
“So what really happened between you and Ava?” Brian asked. “I thought you two were getting really close.”
“We were,” he said. “But once we were back from Europe...no one can compete with Saint Trent and the holy Wingate/Holloway kids. They didn’t like me and urged her to move out once the business started having trouble,” Keith said. “I’ve reached out to her, but she’s made it clear she doesn’t need me anymore.”
“She might need you, Uncle. They think it was an inside job.”
“Do they?” Keith asked. “That would make sense. Only someone with access to the login information of someone at the top of the corporate structure would have been able to set that up.”
Brian leaned back, taking another sip of his drink. “Do you have any idea who that could be?”
“I have an idea,” Keith said. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Who do you suspect?” Brian asked, leaning forward, but his uncle had turned his attention to the basketball game playing on the big screen. Keith mumbled something under his breath and Brian leaned in close to catch it.
He shook his head, unsure he’d heard the muttered comments correctly. But it had sounded like something that Brian hoped like hell wasn’t true.
“Did you say you did it?” Brian asked, horrified.
“What, boy?” Keith murmured.
Brian stood up and walked over to his uncle. “Who do you think is responsible?”
“Given how Ava recently treated me, I suspect it was someone who was close to the family and got cut out because of small-minded assholes,” Keith said.
Brian stared at his uncle. Was Keith saying he’d done it? The only person who was outside the family and had the kind of control that Keith mentioned was...Keith.
His uncle finished his drink and Brian made his excuses and left, getting into his car and sitting there for a long time. He’d probably heard that all wrong. Maybe he’d wanted to hear Keith say something so that Brian would have a reason to go back to Piper, seem like he was the hero.
Yeah, that was it.
He drove home, but the next morning he couldn’t keep from remembering what his uncle had said. After all, Keith had been on the inside for a while. It could have been anyone close to the family.
Suddenly Piper’s reservations about his uncle made more sense. Had she picked up on something from Keith that the rest of them had missed?
Brian made up his mind to go to the investigator and mention that Keith thought it could be someone who’d been close to the family. Zeke had mentioned they were working with the FBI to track down leads.
Should he go to them? Could he trust the ravings of a drunk?
At best, his uncle would be investigated and cleared...
Brian’s conscience wouldn’t allow him not to report this. He knew what he needed to do. Piper had said her family was the most important thing to her, and loving her as he did, he wanted to help them in any way he could. Even if that meant turning in his own uncle.