“Right. I guess they only trusted family after that because that’s when Pressly started.”
“She’s a single mom like you,” I told Gabi.
“I remember her from middle school,” Gabi said. “Cheerleader type. With great hair.”
Gabi had grown up in Mossy Oak and had come back home after her husband died. She knew everyone in town.
“She has a shoe collection to die for,” Sloane said.
“Pressly’s staying with her brother,” I said, trying to look nonchalant even as my blood heated to an uncomfortable level. “Do you know anything about him?”
“Not really,” Sloane said.
“He was a few years younger,” said Gabi.
My heart plummeted. “Oh.”
“I did meet him once when all the shit was hitting the fan,” Sloane said. She raised both eyebrows and gave a low whistle. “I can’t remember a thing he said during the whole meeting. I was too busy staring at his perfect jawline.”
I blew out a puff of breath. “You should see him shirtless.”
“You saw Beckett Vinroot shirtless?”
Beckett Vinroot. A tingle ran down my spine at the sound of his name.
“The name rings a bell,” Gabi said. “We should look him up.”
“No,” I said. “We can’t.”
“Not on your phone, we can’t,” Gabi said. “That thing is from the last century.”
Sloane took her phone from her bag.
“I remember him playing little league with one of my cousins,” Gabi said. “He was the only kid with glasses.”
Sloane swiped her finger over her phone. “Nope, nope, nope. He’s not on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.”
Swipe, swipe, swipe. Her mouth dropped open. Bingo. She’d found him.
“Oh!” Sloane covered her mouth.
Gabi grabbed the phone and finished Sloane’s sentence. “My. God.”
I scrambled up to look over Gabi’s shoulder and saw a picture of Pressly’s brother fill the screen. My mouth watered. That was him all right. He wore a tuxedo and rectangular black glasses. I pulled the phone closer, trying to determine the color of his eyes. Were they brown or green? All I could tell was that they were dark and stormy.Intense. Just as Pressly had warned me.
“Beckett Anderson Vinroot,” Gabi said, reading his name under the photo. “My, my, my. You turned out real nice. You grew into those glasses all right.”
I jerked the phone from Gabi’s grasp and scanned the article below the photo.
Thirty-three-year-old Vinroot plays a vital role in the success of his family’s multi-million dollar company.
The article went on to detail Vinroot Enterprises’ hostile takeover of a tech company in the UK.
Mia came in as we were passing around Sloane’s phone to gape at Beckett. She smelled like cigarette smoke, and my first thought was to remind her of her New Year’s resolution to quit, but one look at her bloodshot eyes and disheveled hair and I cut her some slack. She worked longer hours than Thatcher and Gabi combined.
“Who’s that?” She grabbed the phone and used her thumb and forefinger to enlarge the photo of Beckett.
“Some guy Lacey is stalking,” Gabi told her.
