Black Sheep Heir (Texas Cattleman's Club: Rags to Riches 2)

Miles smiled a little to himself as he parked his car and sauntered to the club’s main entrance. In the last two days he’d felt closer to Chloe than ever. Admitting to his feelings for her—it was something he’d never done before with another woman. In fact, he’d begun to wonder if he’d ever find the right gal for him, but there she was and all because of an accidental meeting in the park.

He spied his mom and Uncle Keith at their usual table in the restaurant and walked toward them. They were talking earnestly, heads bent together. Miles didn’t quite know how he felt about the development of his mom’s relationship with the man who used to be his father’s best friend. He knew Beth wasn’t completely happy about it, either. But his mom wasn’t easily fooled, and if she found comfort in Keith Cooper’s almost constant presence by her side, then so be it. Goodness only knew she’d been faithful and loyal to her husband for all the years of their marriage. Maybe it was his own newfound joy in love that was coloring his way of thinking, but if Uncle Keith made his mom happy, then Miles could accept it, even if he’d never been particularly fond of the man. Besides, if anyone could keep a rein on the man’s temper, it was Ava.

His mom looked up and gave him a brief wave, beckoning him over to join them. At the table, he shook hands with Cooper and bent to place a kiss on his mother’s cheek before sitting down.

“You two look as if you’re in cahoots about something,” Miles said as he picked up his water glass and took a long pull at the icy liquid.

“Miles, darling, Keith has brought something to my attention that I think you really need to hear.”

It was the use of the word darling that did it. His mother wasn’t the kind of person to use terms of endearment.

“Oh?” Miles said and looked straight at the older man across the table. “And that would be?”

“No need to get your hackles up, boy,” Cooper said. “Your mother and I are merely looking after your interests.”

His proprietary tone when he mentioned Ava and calling him a boy irritated Miles on a level he didn’t want to study too carefully. Instead, he put his game face on. The one he used when he was about to deliver serious news to one of his clients about their safety.

“Perhaps you’d like to enlighten me?”

“Now, Miles, don’t be defensive. Keith, tell him what you told me about Chloe.”

Chloe? What did she have to do with Cooper?

“Yes, Uncle Keith, How about you tell me.”

Miles kept his barely banked irritation firmly under control.

“Well,” Cooper started, reaching out a hand and taking hold of Ava’s as if to comfort her. “Your dad wasn’t always the best kind of man when it came to business.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Miles bit out.

His father’s approach to business and Miles’s ethics had never been on the same page. It was what had driven him to make his own place in the world thirteen hundred miles away from where he’d been born and bred.

Cooper nodded his head in acknowledgment. “There was a situation a little under twenty years ago where Trent behaved particularly badly. He entered into a verbal agreement with an acquaintance of his who was in the business of making aircraft seats and supplying them to private jet manufacturers.”

Miles began to feel a creeping sense of uneasiness at the tale.

“Sounds like a reasonable thing to do.”

“Well, yes, it would have been. Except when this acquaintance of his invested heavily in the materials to supply WinJet exclusively, Trent decided to pull the plug on the arrangement. As they’d never entered into a written contract and only agreed to their partnership on a handshake, the poor guy didn’t have a leg to stand on. His suppliers started demanding payment for the stock he’d bought in anticipation of the WinJet job, which he obviously couldn’t pay for and he went bankrupt.

“Trent just stood by and watched a man, who’d trusted him, dig himself deeper and deeper in debt, and when the guy was forced to walk away from his business, your father swooped in and bought the remains of the company out from under him and amalgamated it into WinJet, where it remains today.”

Miles pursed his lips and considered what Keith had told him. None of it came as any surprise. It was just the kind of underhanded thing he knew his father was capable of. The man had always wanted to win at any cost and damn the consequences. Miles had long believed his father was devoid of any social conscience and had often wondered how his mother, who’d once been heavily involved in philanthropic works, had coped with that. But then again, he rationalized, maybe that’s why she’d worked so hard for charity—to offset his father’s less stellar attributes.

“I don’t see what that has to do with Chloe.”

“I’m getting to it. Just listen. After being let down by the very man who’d promised to grow his business and being made bankrupt, then seeing his company sell to the one person who could have prevented his downfall, the poor guy committed suicide.” Keith sighed heavily. “I went to his funeral. I’ll never forget seeing his wife and daughter. They were bereft. They’d not only lost their husband and father, they’d lost everything. He’d cashed up life insurances and cleared out his bank accounts all in a desperate attempt to keep his business afloat and to pay back his creditors. His name was John—” he paused before continuing “—John Fitzgerald. And his daughter’s name is Chloe.”

Miles felt his stomach drop and the chill of arctic waters ran through his veins. His father had cheated Chloe’s dad?

“Why didn’t you say anything sooner?” he ground out when he could trust himself to speak. Miles looked at his mother, who looked equally shocked.

“I didn’t know,” she uttered in a strangled whisper. “I would have done something, anything. I had no idea Trent had done something so vile. He never told me about the initial agreement, but I remember him being very smug about acquiring the aircraft seat manufacturing plant and absorbing it into WinJet.”

“And I wasn’t certain until now,” Keith said, patting Ava comfortingly on her hand. “I thought Chloe looked familiar at the Fourth of July barbecue. You even heard me say as much. But she denied ever meeting any of us before she met you. Remember? So my questions to you, Miles, are, what’s her agenda and why is she keeping her family’s earlier involvement with us a secret?”

Fourteen