Bounty (Colorado Mountain 7)

“You do know I heard nothing but blah, blah, blah, so sure. We can figure something out.”

His lips tipped up and his hazel eyes lit.

I did a mental, Yee ha!

“Bro, sorry to interrupt,” the delivery guy interrupted and Deke looked to him. “We’re done. Gotta check this and sign off.”

“Right,” Deke replied and moved his way as my phone rang.

I pulled it out of my pocket, saw the display said Mr. T was calling and I sighed before taking it, ticked even more Mav and Luna were making me dread calls from Mr. T. They weren’t always the delight of my day, but he’d been a staple in my life since I started it. I cared for him deeply, in the only way he’d allow me to do that. So I’d never dreaded his calls.

Now I did because now there was never anything but bad news perpetrated by my brother and his shrew of a mother.

Regardless of this, I took that call how I usually took all of them, with a, “Hey, Mr. T.”

“Justice, how are you?” he asked.

“Hanging in there, you?” I asked back, beginning to move to the door to the back deck.

“Unfortunately, I’m calling to inform you we’ve had official communication that Maverick is contesting your father’s will.”

“That sucks,” I muttered, thinking this would be it so the call wouldn’t be long and glancing at Deke to see he was in the middle of counting sheets of drywall with the delivery guy standing close so not paying a lick of attention to me and my call.

Therefore, instead of going outside and leaving his presence (I’d been fucked and was getting more fucked, not even wanting to walk out of a room Deke was in—he was like a goddamned drug), I leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb and stared out at the calming view.

“This means those assets are frozen, Justice. I know they’ve already been distributed but you can no longer use them until this has played out.”

“Awesome.” I was still muttering but now I was doing it sarcastically.

“This means your brother also can’t use his,” Mr. T pointed out.

I thought about how Luna had used her son to keep her living the good life, using him by flying through the divorce settlement in a couple of years, not getting a job and consistently threatening to take my father back to court in order to increase already substantial child support for a son they shared custody of so she could live off her kid’s back.

Dad didn’t make her take him back to court. To make things easier on Mav, he just increased the money.

That legal agreement had ended when Mav turned eighteen and didn’t go to college.

The situation didn’t end, however. Mav used his share of Granddad’s royalties as well the trust fund Dad set up for him to keep not only himself but his mom living the life they’d become accustomed to, but mostly, I figured, the life she’d become accustomed to.

To my knowledge, that trust fund was quickly dwindling, which was why Dad augmented Mav’s funds frequently, something Dana let slip one night before Dad died when she’d gotten a bit tipsy. Something Mr. T allowed to happen and followed through on because Dad said it would be so. Not like what had happened with Aunt Tammy and Rudy when they’d not only cut off Rudy’s access to his trust fund when he’d started pissing it away, they’d used a caveat in Granddad’s will to cut off his access to his share of Granddad’s royalties.

This, I suspected, was one of the reasons Luna and Mav were making the foolish play to try to get half of Dad’s estate.

The other reason was that Luna was just a greedy bitch.

“Hope someone’s paying attention because that’s not gonna happen,” I noted.

“We’ll do our best to pay attention,” Mr. T confirmed and went on, “Now, you won’t feel that pinch but I’m sorry to say that, although your father provided a healthy stipend to Dana when he was still with us, and she didn’t use it indiscriminately so she has some resources, cases like these can drag out and those resources are not limitless. It may cause financial strain if we can’t get a judge to throw this out expeditiously.”

This, likely, being Luna’s plan. She hated Joss. She hated Dana. She hated Dad. She hated everybody except herself, and on occasion, she could show affection to Maverick, but only when she could use him to get something she wanted.

“I’ll cover Dana,” I said on a sigh.

“I suspected you would. I’ll share that with her and we’ll keep an accounting of that should it occur so you can be reimbursed when this sorry business is concluded.”

“Thanks, Mr. T.”

“I’m afraid I have more bad news.”

I kept my eyes on my view, the rays of the sun shafting through the trees, twinkling on the water of the river.

I still braced.

“And that is?” I prompted when Mr. T unusually did not dive right in. No procrastination for him, he got the bad stuff out of the way or any stuff he had to do and he did it with no delay.

“The documents we received have made special note that your brother is laying claim to the entirety of your father’s collection.”

My mind seized, every nerve ending screamed, I straightened away from the door with utterly no thought to where I was and who was with me as I shrieked, “You have got to be joking!”

“I’m sorry, Justice,” Mr. T said quietly, a careful edge to his tone which was almost soft with understanding. “I’m not joking.”

“That…is…fucking insane!” I shouted.

“Justice—”