Those Texas Nights. Delores Fossen
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Billy Lee had basically screwed them six ways to Sunday by embezzling a fortune. And after doing that, he’d disappeared.
Much as her ex-fiancé had done.
Too bad her heart hadn’t done a vanishing act along with them because she wasn’t sure how much more she could take. The panic was rising inside her. The pressure in her chest, too, and if this was some dream, she prayed she’d wake up from it soon.
Sophie forced herself to her feet, and while dodging Marcum’s pacing pattern, she walked to the floor-to-ceiling window in Garrett’s office. It was identical to hers, which was just next door. The view of downtown Austin was one of the best in the city, and it normally gave her a jolt of pride.
This was theirs.
The company their great-grandfather Zachariah Taylor Granger had built from the ground up. To remind them of that, there was a massive twelve-foot-high oil portrait of Z.T. on the wall of Garrett’s office. Not an especially good portrait, Sophie had always thought, what with his stern gaze, slightly narrowed eyes and a “don’t screw this up” sneer.
Garrett and she hadn’t screwed it up. They’d nearly doubled the size of what customers affectionately called Cowboy Mart, had put it on the Texas financial map. It’d made them wealthier. Happier. It’d made them who they were.
It had to stay that way.
Marcum finished his latest call, but he didn’t stop pacing. He kept moving until he was right in front of Garrett’s desk. That cued her brother to make a quick end to his conversation.
“You want the good news or the bad news first?” Marcum asked them.
“Bad,” Garrett and she said in unison.
Despite their quick agreement, Marcum still took a couple of moments to answer. “Billy Lee robbed you blind. We don’t know how exactly, not yet, but he embezzled nearly ninety percent of the company’s operating funds.”
Sophie decided it was a good idea to sit down, but since there wasn’t a chair nearby, she just sank to the floor.
“Fuck,” Garrett growled.
Sophie wanted to growl something, too, something equally as bad as the f-word, but she couldn’t get her mouth working.
“How?” Garrett added. It was also growled.
Marcum shook his head. “That will take some time to unravel, but Billy Lee must have had the pieces in place for a while to do this. I don’t suppose you had any checks and balances on him?”
“No,” Garrett and she answered in unison again.
“He’s my godfather,” Sophie added. “Our late father’s best friend.”
Garrett had his own adding to do. “Billy Lee’s worked for the company for forty years and never gave us any reason not to trust him.”
Until now.
God, until now.
“What’s the good news?” Sophie asked Marcum.
“I don’t think Garrett and you will have to go to jail.”
Sweet baby Jesus in the manger. “Is that stating the obvious, or was there actually a chance of that happening?” she pressed.
“A chance,” Marcum answered without hesitation. “It appears that over the past couple of months, Billy Lee might have dabbled in some money laundering with the funds he was embezzling.”
Sophie thought she might not be able to stave off that puking any longer. Her stomach balled up into a knot, started dribbling like a point guard on the basketball court and she got to her feet in case she had to make a run to the bathroom.
“Billy Lee must have snapped,” Garrett mumbled.
That stopped her for the time being, and she latched on to that like a lifeline. Yes, that had to be it. Because with the stomach knot and crushed heart, Sophie couldn’t grasp that a man who was part of their family had done this to them.
“Maybe someone set Billy Lee up?” she suggested.
Both Garrett and Marcum made sounds of agreement. Weak agreement, though. But it was another lifeline that Sophie was choosing to grab.
“What do we do now?” Sophie asked.
“Get drunk,” Marcum readily answered.
“Will that help?” And she was serious.
Marcum shrugged. “Only if you drink enough to pass out.”
Sophie decided to keep that as an option.
Her phone buzzed at the same time that Marcum’s rang, and Marcum stepped into 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