“I don’t get,” Rix corrected. “You being Jameson Oakley’s son, AJ Oakley’s grandson, I think you get it. Or you get it more than me and maybe more than most folk she could meet. Does she know who your dad is?”
He nodded. “She asked if she needed to sign an NDA.”
“She knows who your dad is,” Rix murmured. Louder, he asked, “Does she know you got enough money to buy a fleet of Cherokees?”
Judge looked away.
“Well…fuck,” Rix repeated. “You haven’t told her she has nothing to worry about with that shit?”
“I want her to trust me because she trusts me. Not because my dad has offered to lay enough money on me I could buy a city block in downtown Phoenix and my granddad declared I’m the only ‘real man’ left of the Oakleys, so he’s cut everyone else out of his will.”
“Fun times for you when that old guy kicks it,” Rix observed on another chug of his beer. And when he finished swallowing it, went on, “That happens, that family of yours is gonna land on you like the pile of stinking shit they are.”
“Probably a decade of lawsuits.” Judge chugged his own. “But they can have it. I have no interest in sucking more blood from the earth to perpetuate the cataclysmic damage of fossil fuel.”
Rix grinned and tried to joke. “Because you’ll already own a city block and then inherit the state of New York when your old man kicks it?”
Judge shook his head in disgust.
Rix chuckled.
But then he got serious again. “Vulnerable?”
“Yes.”
“Man, I’m not sure you should go from finding the ones that want to take over the world and drag you along with them to hold their purses and eat their scraps to ones you gotta fix.”
“Protect,” Judge corrected.
Rix gave him a look.
Yeah.
It wasn’t one or the other, it was both.
Fix and protect.
Like he’d failed to do with his mom.
Zeke settled back down between them with a groan.
Judge looked to his phone and then he typed in, That email. Not cool.
He sent it.
“Shit,” Rix whispered.
Judge kept typing.
See you Wednesday.
He sent that too.
Nothing all day, but only a few seconds passed by, and he got something back with that.
I have something on.
He immediately texted, Liar.
No wait at all and then, Something came up. And incidentally, how rude.
Nothing came up except you had some time to work yourself up about how much you like me. Suck it up. We’re exploring this. Zeke and I’ll be hungry when we get there, but he’ll need a bathroom break. Pizza’s on you, I’ll bring the beer. Order it to be there by six thirty, just in case I hit traffic and to give Zeke plenty of time to find his perfect spot.
I won’t be here, Judge.
Your ass better be there, Chloe.
What’ll happen if it isn’t?
Obviously, via text, he couldn’t tell if that was sarcastic or curious.
Knowing her, it was both.
Though she’d only let the sarcasm show.
You don’t want to find out.
You’re terrible with a threat.
No, if you’re not there, I’ll tell Duncan I can’t work with you and I want you off the project.
Radio silence.
He sucked back some beer.
Zeke fell to his side and stretched out.
His phone vibrated.
Not. Gentlemanly. AT. ALL.
And there it was.
No way in hell was she going to give Duncan a headache, and through him, her mother, and through her, her father.
She’d bleed herself dry before she did that.
Regardless that he wasn’t fighting fair and he knew it, Judge grinned at the midnight blue with its sparkling pinpricks outlining the purple-black ridge of mountains before he threw back the rest of his beer.
“Want another?” he asked Rix.
His friend drained his own, held out the empty and then grunted.
That meant yes.
Judge grabbed Rix’s bottle, pushed out of his chair, avoided the firepit he’d lit to keep them warm in the chill mountain air and headed into his townhouse with Zeke coming out of repose to be at his heels.
But he didn’t miss Rix’s parting shot.
“Let the games begin.”
Oh yeah.
Too fucking right.
In his life, he’d experienced the agony of defeat.
Way too fucking often.
But this one he was in to win.
Chapter 14
The Pieces
Chloe
It didn’t bode well that it was physically painful to play Wednesday evening so I would be at the very least twenty minutes late to meet Judge at my place (in the end, checking the clock on my dash, it was twenty-three minutes).
However, it wasn’t just pain, it was agony as I drove down my street, seeing him standing on my front stoop, a cute medium-size dog that was absolutely some kind of shepherd breed (or mix) with brindled fur and tongue-lolling happy grin on its adorable face sitting next to him, and on the other side of the stoop, a small cooler, probably filled with beer.
As he watched me drive by, Judge didn’t look happy.
I wasn’t happy either.