Those Texas Nights. Delores Fossen

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СКАЧАТЬ the hall to take it. Maybe because he didn’t think it would be wise for them to get another dose of bad news so soon after the last one.

      But it was too late for that.

      Brantley’s name was on her phone screen.

      She debated letting it go to voice mail. Debated answering it just so she could curse him. Debated the getting drunk option again. But after five rings, Sophie hit the answer button.

      “Are you all right?” Brantley blurted out before she could curse him.

      No, she wasn’t, but her pride prevented her from saying that. “If you’re calling to grovel, it won’t work. I won’t take you back after what you did to me. How could you do this to me? How?” Now, she added some of that profanity.

      “I’m not calling to ask you to take me back,” Brantley interrupted. His words sounded a little slurred or something. “I meant it when I said I can’t marry you.”

      That stomped on her pride and her heart some more. “Then why the heck did you ever propose to me?”

      Silence. Which was just another form of heart stomping. The least Brantley could do was apologize and call himself some of the names she’d just called him, but the silence dragged on and on.

      “Look, I’m busy,” she finally said in the same moment that Brantley said, “I thought I loved you, Sophie. But I was wrong.”

      Mercy. Each word was like another little dagger. He hadn’t loved her? “You did a darn good job of faking it, then.”

      “I know. I’d fooled myself, too. It’s because we’d been together so long. I kept thinking it was time for the next step, but the next step should have been for me to break things off.”

      That stomach ball started to bounce against her other internal organs. She was definitely going to puke.

      “I should have never let things get as far as they did,” he said. At least that’s what she thought he said, but he was slurring.

      “Are you drunk?” she snapped.

      “Uh, no. It’s nothing. I’m fine, really.”

      “I don’t care a rat’s butt if you’re fine or not. And I have to go,” Sophie insisted.

      Brantley blurted out something just as she hit the end call button. Something about a belt. She probably should have been concerned that he was about to hang himself, but her concern meter for him was tapped out. Besides, Brantley had plenty of faults, but he wasn’t the sort to kill himself.

      Sophie put her phone in her pocket, looked at her brother, and that’s when she realized he had his attention nailed to her. Marcum did, too, though he was still talking on his phone.

      “Anything about Billy Lee?” she asked Garrett as a preemptive strike. Sophie definitely didn’t want to talk about Brantley and what he’d just said to her.

      He hadn’t loved her.

      The anger ripped through her. A better feeling than the soppy tears because she didn’t need to blow her nose, but she needed to blow off some of this rage. She yanked off her two-carat engagement ring and threw it against the wall. Probably not the smartest idea she’d ever had because it hit the oil painting of their great-grandfather and made a dent in the canvas just below his left nostril.

      “I’m guessing that call didn’t go well,” Garrett said on a heavy sigh.

      “But please tell me your call went better.”

      Garrett lifted his shoulder. “It was Chief McKinnon. He was checking on you.”

      Great. Now, her date was chiming in on this. She didn’t want anyone checking on her. Especially anyone who’d seen her make a fool of herself. At the moment, though, that included pretty much everyone in Wrangler’s Creek. Later, in a day or two, she’d need to call him and apologize. Perhaps blame what she’d done on the tequila and temporary insanity.

      Marcum finished his call, glanced at the two-carat ring that was now on the floor, before his gaze volleyed between Garrett and her. “You want the good news or the bad news first?” he asked again.

      “Bad,” Garrett and she said in unison for a second time.

      Marcum nodded. “The company’s assets will be frozen while the feds investigate the money laundering charges.”

      Sophie’s mouth opened but no sound came out.

      “Frozen?” Garrett snapped. “For how long?”

      “I’m not sure. These things can take awhile.”

      “Define awhile.” Garrett’s snap was even snappier that time.

      “Months. Maybe years. And it’s possible everything will be seized if Billy Lee really was using this company as a money laundering operation.”

      Still no sound. Her breath had vanished, and she figured it was a good time to sit back down on the floor again. Good thing, too, because the bad news just kept on coming.

      “The frozen assets include both your apartments here in Austin since they’re company holdings,” Marcum added. “Your cars, too.”

      No car, no apartment. It wouldn’t be as great of a loss to Garrett as it was for her because he split time between Austin and Wrangler’s Creek. And she doubted he’d ever even started the company car since he still drove their late dad’s truck. But for her, the apartment was, well, home.

      “The investigators will be going through everything in the offices,” Marcum continued. “The vehicles and apartments, too.”

      They wouldn’t find anything. Well, they wouldn’t unless Billy Lee had truly gone bonkers and stashed some stuff there. Though with the way her luck was running, there’d be a counterfeiting machine, a kilo of cocaine and Jimmy Hoffa’s body beneath her bed.

      “Your personal bank accounts are also frozen for the time being,” Marcum went on. “But I feel that’s something we can resolve faster than the company assets.”

      There was no way for the ball in her stomach to get any tighter or bounce any harder.

      “So, basically everything we own, including where we live, has just been taken away from us, and we might never get it back?” she asked.

      “Pretty much,” Marcum agreed.

      “I’d like to hear that good news now,” Sophie grumbled.

      “The ranch.” And apparently Marcum thought that was enough of an explanation. It wasn’t. Sophie motioned for him to keep going. “The ranch and the operation there aren’t part of the company or your own personal assets. That’s because Roman legally owns it, and he has no connection to the company.”

      She gave Marcum a very blank look.

      “So, you know what this means, right?” Marcum asked.

      Sophie thought Marcum might be trying to tell them something more than the obvious СКАЧАТЬ