Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 82767 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82767 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
I froze. This was important, but I couldn’t quite piece it all together yet. “You’ve never met him, face to face?” I asked. “What does he sound like, on the phone?”
“I don’t know. Just a normal guy, why?”
“Does he have an accent?” I demanded.
“It was always windy wherever he was calling from, but he had no trace of an accent.”
Chapter 41
KEEGAN
“I NEED TO KNOW where I stand!” I said, exasperated. I’d been on the phone with the lawyer for twenty minutes and I had still not had any solid answers from him.
“And I wish I could help, but the fact is that the figures don’t add up. If you didn’t do it, who did?”
“Isn’t that for the investigators to work out?” I said, half tempted to blame Sean, but with a doubt in the back of my mind that Freya was in on it too.
“It looks cut and dry, Keegan,” he said. “I can’t come at it from any other angle unless you give me some information.”
“There’s no information to give. Sure, I was being sneaky with money, but that was my money, from selling off some of my shares. I never touched company money!”
“So, who did?” he asked again.
“It has to have been someone else at the company. Why hasn’t Sean been investigated?” I demanded, losing my patience now.
“He is the one who discovered it,” the lawyer pointed out patiently.
“So?” I asked. “I wouldn’t put anything past him.”
“Things are moving forward slowly; this is going to be a long game. Let’s see what happens.”
I thanked him and hung up. Things hadn’t been moving slow here. Things have been moving fast, even by my most impulsive standard, at the farmstead. I owned half of the place now, and Chris had relaxed. The weight of having hundreds of acres of land, tumbling-down barns, and heavy taxes had all been lifted from him. The more we discussed our plans to restore the place and focus on breeding and training horses rather than just making ends meet, the more he changed. He spoke more now, told me about his past and shared his ideas. Our plan had always been for him to keep living in the farmhouse while I worked at Clover House, and then by the time I hit thirty-five, he would be hitting retirement age. He would own one of the smaller houses on the land and retire there, and then I would use the trust fund to buy the rest of the place.
I didn’t expect to ever come into my trust fund now, and selling my shares to Mick had only covered the first part of the plan, and so the plan had had to change. Chris was still glad for the investment, and it was the only deal he was going to get. And it looked like I would be around more, and that saved the money we would have spent on getting someone in to work there. For now, we got on fine living in the farmhouse like some kind of odd couple. Everything had been written into a contract, the investments we were committed to, all of it down to the last detail had been signed off. In time, I would renovate one of the smaller houses and move out to it. I tried to push the loss of the family business out of my mind, but it was always there, and I felt the missed opportunity, the lost chances, keenly.
I reminded myself that my father would never have taken my ideas seriously, and even if he had, Sean would have been there to put a stop to it before I could get started. I was never going to be free while I was there. But now I was living the life I had thought I would spend the next seven years looking forward to. Sure, I didn’t have the same financial security that I had thought I would have. I was going to have to work harder than ever before to make it happen. But I wasn’t afraid of hard work. Working with horses was all I had ever really wanted to do. They had tried to put the idea out of my head with all kinds of other things, the education, the hobbies, the business… But whenever I thought of being happy, picturing my future, everything else was just a distraction or a money-making scheme to allow me to work with horses. Well, I was tired of that. I didn’t want to be like my father, working his whole life just so that he could retire and wonder who the fuck he was while dawdling around a golf course.
Chris had taken the opportunity to do some traveling now he had some money in the bank, and so I had found myself suddenly in charge.
“Make sure Misty doesn’t get into the low field; she can jump and the fence is down on the east side. Rusty needs a good rub down; I meant to do it, but I didn’t get time, and the delivery should be here tomorrow. If it isn’t, you’ll have to call and give them hell. The vet should be calling you back about Warrior’s ear, but tell him I reckon it’s cleared up, and keep a close eye on it for any changes…” he said, before he left, a repeat of the same list he had given me that morning.