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“Forty-nine percent of the business, Charlotte, to do with what you please. But in exchange for, let’s say six months, you’ll pretend to be whatever I need you to be, publicly. A girlfriend, a fiancée, the works.”
Chapter 7
Hunter
My fingers tapped in time to the music against the steering wheel. I hadn’t quite worked up the nerve to get out yet, knowing Brody might be inside.
Lottie had insisted on taking some time to think about my proposition. Every passing second was time she could be learning on the field from the retiring manager, but instead, she wanted to sit in her two-story wood-cabin on her father’s small ranch. The same one I was sitting outside of, trying to muster the guts to knock on the door.
The bottle of wine resting on the passenger seat was half peace offering and half liquid courage.
I turned down the speaker system, leaving myself alone with my thoughts and the gentle sound of my truck’s engine. With a deep breath, I slid my phone from the pocket of my jeans.
I needed to text her at least. Showing up unannounced was one thing, but the idea of Brody sitting in there, relaxing in his lazy-boy, assuming I was there to see him, was enough to fill me with dread.
If he found out we’d slept together, he’d kill me. Brody wasn’t the soft type. He loved his daughter fiercely, enough to cock that shotgun he kept above his mantle at anyone he deemed unsatisfactory. But if Lottie agreed to the deal, he’d have to know at least something about it. That was enough to make this harder than it needed to be. If it was any other woman with any other father, I’d be at the door without an introduction, without a warning.
Come outside.
I hit send without letting myself dwell on it any longer and grabbed the bottle of wine from the passenger seat. Kicking my door open with one boot and flipping the key, I hopped down from the high body of the truck, landing in the wet grass with a thick thud. Every step toward the door squished, each one in time with my breaths.
Please don’t let Brody be home. Please don’t let Brody be home. Please?—
The front door creaked open. Hair up in a messy bun and pajamas covering every inch of her body, Lottie stood glaring at me from her porch, her phone clutched in her hand and a heavy blush warming her cheeks.
“My dad’s not home. Why are you here, Hunter?” she asked, the words echoing off the trees that surrounded the front of their property. I’d been here so many times to meet with Brody, but Lottie was never present. And I’d certainly never come before just to see her.
“Because I’m not a patient man,” I answered. Kicking the bit of mud off my boots, I climbed up the four steps until I was directly in front of her. “And you haven’t given me an answer.”
“I told you I’d email you.”
“Three days ago. Look, if you have questions, concerns, whatever—I can answer them. Just have a damn conversation with me, Lottie.” I held up the bottle of wine, pushing it toward her empty hand.
“What the hell is this supposed to be?”
“A peace offering.”
She looked between me and the bottle, slowly wrapping her thin fingers around the neck of it. “Is it fancy?” she asked, lifting it from my hand. Her eyes scanned the label, front and back, searching for some kind of sign that it wasn’t just something I’d picked up from the local Trader Joe’s.
“It’s worth more than a horse.” I shrugged and shoved my hands into my pockets, watching the way her brows narrowed in irritation from the comment. “You know, I wasn’t expecting a girl like you to still be living with Brody. You seem very?—”
“Independent?” She cut me off. The door behind her creaked again as she stepped backward. She turned her back to me, a silent invitation to follow. “I am. That doesn’t mean I don’t consider this home.”
I caught the door with my foot and pushed inside, likely brushing off some of the chipped paint from its frame. Brody made enough money from me alone to keep this place in order. I’d asked him at least twenty times over the last ten years we’d worked together why he didn’t spend the money to have the house renovated or do it himself. All he ever said was that it was Allison’s specialty. His wife, Lottie’s mother, had died sometime long before I was around. A part of me wondered if that was Lottie’s job now, and if the house had deteriorated while she was gone in Hawaii.
But once inside, it looked the same as ever.
Only a handful of lights were on—one by Brody’s lazy-boy, another in the kitchen at the back of the house, and one lighting the windowless stairs. The floors were old, a polished hardwood that had seen years of wear and tear, of mucked-up boots covered in soil and toys with moving parts scratching it to high hell. They were clean, but you wouldn’t know it from the state of them. Rugs of varying shapes, sizes, and designs covered the majority of them, almost as if in an attempt to cover up the drabness. But I’d always liked the comforting feeling of Brody’s house. I’d never understood the reason to hide something like that.
It was far more cozy than my parent’s pristine, all-white mansion in the foothills of Rocky Mountain National Park.
The faintest sound of music played gently from somewhere upstairs, almost inaudible due to the low, electrical humming of what I could only imagine was the ancient heating system. Lottie stepped over a stray cushion and went behind the dividing wall that separated the living space from the kitchen, wrenching a drawer open and sending things clattering around inside.
Despite the countless times I’d been here over the last ten or so years, it had always been on business. Granted, this was technically business, too, but the urgency of Brody to discuss whatever needed discussing, jumping straight into planning mode, meant I’d never gotten the chance to have a good look around.
Tiny embers barely kept themselves alive in the wide fireplace. I spotted a few framed pictures on the mantel above, one of them a family photo of a much younger Brody, a little girl no older than five with long, black hair and blazingly blue eyes, and a woman that very much resembled an older version of the woman currently extending a very expensive glass of wine toward me.
“That was meant to be a gift,” I said, plucking the glass from her hand. “Not something to share.”
