Thankfully that was not her area of law so he had other lawyers, likely crooked, handling that ordeal.
No, Rusty had other plans for her, and they were only marginally related to her law experience. He’d tracked her down specifically because of her past with Sam Hawkins.
They’d been in love once, planning a future together, until she’d decided to go to law school and he’d refused to leave Green Valley. They’d had to reevaluate everything and in the end, Maty left town without looking back.
Yet here she was again after a sixteen-year absence, and if she didn’t get Sam to sell his distillery, Rusty would stop payments for the care and therapy of Maty’s younger brother.
If that happened...well, it just couldn’t happen. Maty had no other funds, nobody to help her, nothing to fall back on. She wasn’t like Rusty or Sam, both of whom had more money than they knew what to do with. She was truly alone for the first time in her life and more vulnerable than ever.
Maty pulled in a deep breath and smoothed her hand down her black pencil dress. She didn’t expect approaching Sam to be an easy task. If getting him to sell his precious distillery had been easy, Rusty wouldn’t have needed to enlist her help.
She nearly laughed. He hadn’t enlisted her help. He’d demanded it. He’d removed her from her other firm in Virginia, and he’d brought her here—going so far as to set her up in an old apartment that he knew held too many memories and making it clear her brother would have all the care he needed so long as she did his dirty work.
Rusty had to have dug deep into Sam’s past to find her. She and Sam hadn’t had a relationship since college—though she’d never forgotten him.
She’d been four years ahead of him, more eager to jump into the career world, while he’d still been finding his way and dealing with his mother’s gambling addiction.
As serious as their relationship had been, as in love as they’d declared themselves to be, so many outside circumstances had wedged between them that eventually the last tie binding them finally snapped.
Maty swallowed the lump of emotions in her throat and forced away the memories. She wasn’t that same woman anymore. There was a vast difference, a lifetime practically, between twenty-two and thirty-eight. She’d experienced heartache far beyond that of losing her first love.
Though she’d still wondered about Sam over the years. It would have been impossible to ignore the explosion he had made on the scene here in Tennessee and across the country. The youngest distiller to break one billion dollars in sales in one year and the youngest master distiller in history. She couldn’t go to an upscale restaurant or even a pub back in Virginia without seeing his signature bottle behind the bar.
But here in Green Valley? Nothing. The only place you could purchase Hawkins gin, and soon to be bourbon, was at the distillery itself. Rusty Lockwood kept those hard liquor licenses tied up with his moonshine. There was no way to touch the iron-fisted mogul, or his hold on the locals, and Sam was in for one hell of a fight because Maty couldn’t fail. She had everything to lose.
Blackmail was a crime, but Rusty was careful not to leave a trail. He was as crooked as they came and she was in the thick of his web now. Her only edge at this stage was the element of surprise. Clearly Sam had been stunned by her Monday morning phone call. She couldn’t let the momentum stop. Not only did she need to keep Sam off his game, she had to move before her fears and her memories made her call off this whole thing.
Copyright © 2020 by Jules Bennett
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To Gary. 143.
Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Naima Simone for her contribution to the Dynasties: Seven Sins miniseries.
ISBN: 9781488062889
Ruthless Pride
Copyright © 2020 by Harlequin Books S.A.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidentsare either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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