[Kate's Boys 04] - Travis's Appeal Read online

  Bryan took her hands, creating a bond that transcended his professional standing. This, he sensed, could be his future daughter-in-law, if only he could break through her hurt.

  “No,” he told her, “I’m only reversing positions.” He paused, then added, “Would it help you to know that Travis told me the other week that he was having one terrible moral dilemma honoring his ethical principles?”

  Startled, she looked at him in surprise. “He told you that?”

  Bryan nodded. “He laid it out hypothetically and didn’t go into any specific details, but I knew Travis was privy to something that was killing him not to reveal.” His smile was encouraging. “I’m guessing that this was the secret.”

  Maybe yes, maybe no. She really didn’t have the strength to debate that right now.

  Since Travis’s father was being so honest with her, she laid out the confusion she was experiencing. Maybe, by saying something, she could feel better about the situation.

  She raised her eyes to his. “Do you know what it’s like to find out that everything you’ve ever believed was a lie?”

  “I don’t,” Bryan admitted. “But I do know what it’s like to discover that something I believed to be true wasn’t.”

  He was thinking of his first marriage. A marriage he’d believed to be happy, only to discover that his late wife felt herself trapped not just by him, but by their four sons. When she’d finally admitted her feelings to him, told him that she needed to leave, perhaps permanently, he’d felt as if his world had completely caved in on him.

  He could only guess that Shana was going through something similar.

  Bryan offered her the same kind of hope that Kate had given him when she came into his life. Love went a long way to helping someone heal.

  “Travis isn’t very vocal about his feelings. But I can tell that he cares for you a great deal, Shana. If he didn’t tell you it was because he couldn’t, not because you didn’t mean enough to him. Hold off giving him his walking papers—privately and professionally,” he added. “If this lawsuit does take off, Travis is the best one to win this for you—not just because he’s familiar with the case, but because he’s passionate about winning it for you. And for Shawn O’Reilly,” he emphasized. “Travis cares about the cases he works.”

  Shana hesitated. Logically, she knew Bryan was right. But she didn’t know if she could handle this emotionally. She still felt raw, shaken, especially since there was a huge part of her that still loved Travis.

  “I don’t know,” she said slowly.

  “Think about it,” Bryan urged, squeezing her hand before he released it. His eyes still held her in place. “That’s all I ask. Just give yourself a little time to think about what I just said.”

  They’d been good to her. To simply brush him off seemed thankless. She supposed that he was right. Surrendering everything to Susan would dishonor her fath—her grandfather’s memory. Susan would just spend the money recklessly and be back to where she was now. It would be just a matter of time. Shawn O’Reilly had taken care of her. He wasn’t obligated to, but he had. She supposed she did owe the man something.

  “All right,” she told Bryan, “I will.” Shana rose to her feet and forced a smile to her lips. “Thank you for seeing me.”

  “Always a pleasure,” he assured her, walking her to the door.

  Once outside Bryan’s office, Shana squared her shoulders and turned toward the elevators.

  Only to stop dead as she nearly walked right into Travis.

  Stunned, Travis could only stare at her for a long moment. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  He seized the opportunity to reason with her again. To try to make her understand why his hands had been tied. “Shana, I couldn’t tell you—”

  Shana held up her hand. There was no point in going over this again. She still hurt, and it would take time for her to get over it. But she would. Eventually. “Your father’s already been all through that.”

  “My father? What’s he got to do with it?”

  “I went to see him this morning to explain that I was going to be terminating your firm’s—your,” she amended, “services.” A small, enigmatic smile came and went from her lips. “He talked me out of it. Because of the lawsuit.”

  Thank God for small favors, Travis thought. “Why don’t we go into my office?” Travis suggested. His morning was relatively free. The first client was coming in at eleven. That left him over an hour to begin to work things out with Shana.

  He began to take her arm, but she drew it away, walking ahead of him until she crossed the threshold to his office. When she did, she turned around to face him.

  “Is there a lawsuit?” Shana asked in disbelief. “Is Susan really contesting the will?”

  “You know her better than I do,” he answered. “What do you think?”

  “She was always out for herself,” Shana admitted sadly, then raised her eyes to his. He saw the disappointment. “Some mother, huh?”

  Gesturing to the chair before his desk, he took the other and sat down, rather than placing himself behind his desk. “Mine was running away because she couldn’t handle being the mother of four boys,” he told her. “If she hadn’t died in the plane crash, I have a hunch she might have just kept going.”

  Shana sat down in the first chair. “But you had Kate.”

  “And you had Grace,” he countered, recalling her grandmother’s name.

  “Yes,” Shana acknowledged. And her grandmother had been wonderful. As had her grandfather, she thought ruefully. She really couldn’t have asked for a better pair and she knew it. “Yes, I did. But I just really wish they had trusted me enough to tell me the truth.”

  “Maybe trust had nothing to do with it,” Travis suggested. She looked at him quizzically. “Maybe they just didn’t want to see you hurt. It’s never easy, finding out that you weren’t wanted by someone you believed should have wanted you on sheer principle.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” she admitted.

  She sounded better, he thought. And calmer. Travis looked at her for a long moment, trying to gauge her state of mind. “So, are we okay?”

  “Not yet,” Shana replied honestly. “But I’m working on it.”

  Relief swept over him. It was going to be all right, it was just going to take time, that’s all. He had a feeling he owed his father one. “I can live with that.” Rising, he rounded his desk and pulled up Shawn’s file. “Now, I’ve got an hour or so if you’d like to go over the case with me.”

  She had nowhere else to be and if she was alone, Shana knew her thoughts might get the better of her. Better to be busy, to have something to do, something else to think about than what had kept her awake all night. “I guess since I’m here, I might as well.”

  Score one for the home team, Travis thought, doing his best to suppress a relieved, triumphant grin.

  “Good,” he told her using his most professional tone while everything inside of him was cheering, “because we’ve got work to do.”

  Chapter 15

  S hana had never been one to threaten someone in order to get her way. A civil court case was tantamount to a threat to her. It made her think of people being pitted against one another in a fight where there could be only one winner. She didn’t want to go to court to get the lawsuit resolved.

  Moreover, she really hated the idea that Susan was going to publicly attempt to prove that Shawn O’Reilly had essentially not been in his right mind when he changed his will.

  To say that, to try to discredit and dishonor a man who had tried so many times to resolve their differences, was close to the ultimate sin as far as she was concerned. Dealing with it, with the doubts and rumors that might be raised among the people who knew her father, took a toll on her.

  That, and maintaining a polite, working relationship with Travis and nothing more was taxing her to the nth degree. Especially during times when they were preparing the case, all she want
ed to do was throw herself into his arms and cry. Or vent.

  She didn’t know how much longer she could keep it up. Or if she even wanted to. She missed the way they were.

  A fortunate piece of rescheduling had them moved up on the court calendar. Suddenly, they were on the fast track and set to go in the following day.

  Nerves multiplied within her even before she got the call from Travis asking her to come down to his office. She’d already been through everything several times and sincerely believed that if she was any more rehearsed, she would come across as stilted.

  But she kept that to herself until she got to the office.

  Travis greeted her in the hallway. Shana only got halfway through voicing her concern before Travis cut her off. He hadn’t asked her down to go over the details or the testimony of the people he had lined up. All could testify that Shawn O’Reilly had been of sound mind up to and including the very moment of his death and certainly long after he’d had the revisions made to his will.

  Shana didn’t understand. “Then why did you call me here?” she asked. Was it to try to patch things up between them? She’d been over that dozens of times in her head, regretting her stand but not quite sure how to backtrack. Any olive branch that he would hold out at this point, she would take.

  He began leading the way, not to his office but to the general conference room. “Because I thought we could still settle this out of court.”

  Shana stopped walking. “Are Susan and her lawyer here?”

  Very gently, Travis prodded her, silently urging Shana to continue walking.

  “They’re in the conference room right now,” he told her.

  She hadn’t seen Susan since the bombshell had been dropped more than a month ago. The idea of coming face-to-face with her “mother” without any warning and with only a table between them wasn’t one that pleased her.

  “I don’t want to see her.”

  “You’ll be seeing her in court tomorrow if we can’t get this cleared up today,” Travis tactfully pointed out.

  Tomorrow was better than “right now.” Still, she thought of the repercussions of walking into an open courtroom.

  “Could we lose?”

  He was honest with her. “Ninety-nine-point-nine says no. But there always is the point-one percent that says yes. It wouldn’t hurt to try one last time to make Susan back off. I know you don’t want your grandfather’s name dragged through the mud and there’s no telling what she might try as a last-ditch attempt.”

  It was still hard for her to accept that there was such malice within Susan. “You really think she might do something like that?”

  “I do.” He could see that she was wavering. “Ready?” he asked, his hand on the doorknob.

  Shana took in a deep breath, bracing herself. She would have rather been anywhere else. But if she had to be here, she was glad Travis was with her.

  “Ready.”

  For the most part, Susan’s lawyer, a quiet, subdued, tall, thin man in an expensive suit and precision haircut, did most of the talking. Which surprised Shana. She wasn’t accustomed to Susan holding her tongue for longer than a single heartbeat if something annoyed her.

  The lawyer, Harry Wilkinson, was thoughtfully studying the latest list of character witnesses that Travis had provided him. There were more than twenty, with the promise of ten times that if the situation made it necessary.

  Wilkinson raised deep brown eyes to look at Travis. “And they’re all willing to swear, under oath, that Shawn O’Reilly was of sound mind?” There was no trace of emotion in his evenly modulated voice.

  “Every last one of them,” Travis assured him. “And they’re going to blow your case out of the water.”

  “But I’m his only daughter.”

  All eyes turned toward Susan.

  It was the first time that she’d spoken. The other woman’s tone wasn’t argumentative so much as pleading. And there was hurt in her eyes.

  “I’m sure Mr. Wilkinson has already told you,” Travis said patiently, “that doesn’t have any bearing on the situation. Your father could have left all of his money and his restaurant to a charity dedicated to preserving gopher holes. If he was of sound mind when he made that change, there is no legal basis to contest his wishes. He was free to leave his money to whomever or whatever he wanted.”

  “Can he do that?” Susan demanded hotly of her lawyer. Wilkinson made no reply but his expression answered her question. “Then what do I have you for? Never mind,” she snapped before he could say anything. Rising, Susan pushed back her chair along the textured carpet. “I need to get out of here.” Grabbing up her purse, she hugged it as she made a beeline for the door.

  “Half.”

  The doorknob in her hand, Susan stopped dead and then slowly turned around. She looked at the child she had never wanted, the woman whose existence now threatened her. “What?”

  “Half,” Shana repeated. “You can have half of everything he left to me.”

  “Shana—” Travis cautioned. She held her hand up to him, asking for his silence. He went along with her wishes.

  Stunned, Susan walked back to the rectangular negotiations table. “Okay,” she said slowly, unable to believe that it could be this easy.

  “Under two conditions,” Shana added once Susan was seated.

  Susan blew out an angry breath. “I knew it. What’re your conditions?” she demanded. “You want me to wear a hair shirt? Write you a thirty-page apology, singing your praises? What?”

  Shana ignored the sarcasm. “We keep the house for six months and if one of us wants to buy the other one out at the end of that time, that’s the way it’ll go.” They both knew that if it came to that, she would be the one doing the buying. God willing, in six months, she’d have the money to do it.

  There was something more at stake here than the house where she’d grown up so badly. “What about the restaurant?”

  “That’s the second condition,” Shana told her. She glanced toward Travis and saw admiration in his eyes. Warmth spread through her, encouraging her to go on. “We don’t sell it.”

  “Then what’s the good of having it?” Susan asked.

  “Profits,” Shana replied simply. “That restaurant meant a lot to your father. He’d be heartbroken if we sell it.”

  Susan made an impatient face. “News flash, honey, he’s dead.”

  Shana looked at her for a long moment. “Only if you don’t believe in a heaven,” she answered quietly, then got back to business. “We split the profits. That’s the bargain,” she told her calmly, her mind made up. “If you find it unacceptable, I’ll see you in court. Just remember, of the two of us, I’m a far more sympathetic plaintiff than you are,” she added matter-of-factly.

  Good for you. Travis was both surprised at and pleased with this new, more forceful Shana who had unexpectedly emerged.

  “She’s right,” he said, addressing the remark to Wilkinson. And then he decided to do a preemptive strike. “Especially if you play the ‘family ties’ card and the jury learns that Susan is Shana’s mother. A mother who essentially abandoned her years ago. There’s a lot of dirty laundry there,” Travis reminded him. “And it’s all on your client’s side.”

  Temper flared in Susan’s eyes, but it was clear she knew when she was outmaneuvered. “You win,” Susan snapped angrily. “Again. You always win,” she lamented, her voice momentarily cracking.

  “It was never about winning and losing, Susan,” she said. Shana’d decided that the word “mother” sounded too foreign to her ear. “Never,” she emphasized.

  Susan glared at her. “Then what was it about?”

  “About being a family,” Travis interjected. Both women looked at him. “The way Shawn and his wife wanted you to be. If you couldn’t take responsibility for her as her mother, then they wanted you to at least be the sister she needed in her corner. They wanted you to be part of the unit. Both of you,” he emphasized, looking from one to the other.

  �
�Pretty speech, lawyer-boy. She paying you by the word?” Not waiting for him to give her an answer, Susan snorted, dismissing what he’d just said. “They didn’t want me to be part of anything. They were all only too happy when I left.”

  This time it was Shana who contradicted Susan.

  “If it looked that way to you, it was only because you kept insisting on hurting them. Every time they saw you in an abusive relationship, it hurt them,” Shana insisted when Susan seemed unconvinced. “Dad even wanted to try an intervention. That was just before you ran off with that band roadie. He felt guilty that he waited too long and missed the opportunity to try to turn you around.” It hurt her just to think about how much that affected the man. “It bothered him for years.”

  Susan opened her mouth to make another retort, then closed it again. There was an odd expression on her face, as if, after all the thousands of words that had been hurled at her, she was finally hearing them for the first time.

  And then, as if collecting herself, Susan waved her hand, dismissing everything. “You win. I’ll drop the lawsuit.”

  Inwardly, Shana breathed a sigh of relief. “I meant what I said about half of everything,” she said out loud to Susan.

  “Yeah, we’ll talk.” But this time, it didn’t sound as if Susan was just shining her on the way she normally did. Looking at her lawyer, Susan tucked her arm through his, urging him to his feet. “Let’s go, Harry.”

  “Yes, we’ll talk,” Shana echoed, calling after her as Susan left the room.

  Was it her imagination, or had Susan’s lawyer blushed just a tad when Susan had threaded her arm through his to hurry him along?

  Susan and Wilkinson? If only. The man seemed to have a calming influence on Susan and heaven knew that the woman was in desperate need of that. As well as a strong, even hand.

  Maybe miracles did happen.

  “Well, looks like it’s over,” Travis said, finally breaking the silence. “You won,” In more ways than one, he added silently. “This means you won’t have to go to court.”

  Shana took in a long breath to steady herself. She hadn’t realized that she was trembling inside until just now. “It’s really over?” she heard herself asking incredulously.