been done to the building before we got the contract. When we started tearing the place apart, it was way worse than we initially thought. Now, I always build in allowances into a contract, but this was going to cost way more than we ever anticipated. I made some calls to the previous owners and found out that they disclosed all the problems to the buyer when they sold the building. The guy flat out lied to us, and now he’s trying to get out of paying for the additional charges.”
“Who is this? I don’t recognize the name?”
He scoffed. “Destin Properties. It’s one of those destination wedding places. The office is about an hour away.” He shook his head and sighed. “I knew something was off. I had this feeling that they were hiding something from me. Anna thought so too. Now I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do. If they take me to court, it’s going to cost me a shit ton of money, and I’ll start losing clients.”
I stared down at the papers, reading through everything. Something was definitely off about this. “I can look into this for you.”
“I can’t ask you to do that. You’re a divorce lawyer. This isn’t even your area of expertise.”
“No, but just by reading this, I know something’s off. Let me dig into this and see what I can find out.”
He stared at me warily. “What do you want for doing that?”
I grinned. “You know me so well.”
“Yeah, well, you deal in favors.”
I held up my hands. “Hey, I’m not asking for much.”
He snorted, shaking his head. “Right, just my office manager.”
“Just for the week. She can work out of my apartment again. I’m gonna be slammed this week, and I won’t be able to drive down.”
“Then how the hell would you be able to look into this?”
“Don’t worry about this. I promise, you let me have Anna for the rest of the week, and I’ll make sure this is taken care of. I have a feeling that if I walk in and put a little pressure on this guy, he’ll snap like a twig. He just needs someone to tell him the legal ramifications of what he’s doing.”
“Seriously?”
“No guarantees, but I’ll give it a try, and if it doesn’t work out, I’ll see what else I can do.”
He sighed in relief. “Thanks, man. I was going crazy here, trying to figure out what to do.”
“No problem.”
I walked over to the fridge and grabbed a beer, then took a seat at the table. “So, where’s Kat?”
“She’s still at work. She’s been working overtime so she can take extra time off at the wedding.”
“Yeah? Is Anna taking care of everything for you?”
“Yeah, but Kat hates all of this. You really screwed us when you messaged the whole fucking town.”
I chuckled and took a pull of my beer. “Call it payback.”
“For what? I didn’t do anything to you.”
“Not yet, but it’s coming.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. You’re paying me back for something that hasn’t happened yet?”
“I never said it made sense.”
He shook his head, gathering all the papers. “So, this thing with Anna, is it going to last this time?”
“I don’t know. I hope so, but she’s not in all the way yet.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s scared. I got her to finally give me a real chance, but I can tell she thinks it’s not going to work.”
“What are you going to do about that?”
“Well, staying the week with me will help. And I got her a house-“
“You what?”
I grinned at his shocked expression. “That old house across the field from her. That’s the one I used to take her to when I snuck her out of the house.”
“Robert, when I said that you should use her eviction to your advantage, I didn’t mean that you should buy her a house.”
“Technically, I didn’t. I paid the down payment.”
“Yeah, and how much was that?”
I shrugged, scratching at the back of my neck. “Okay, it may have been a large sum.”
“How large?”
“Half the house?”
“What? Are you crazy? What if this doesn’t work out with her?”
“It will. It has to.”
“Why? I don’t understand why you’re chasing her so hard. I mean, I get that you have a history, but she’s right, there are a lot of missing years that have changed both of you. And you’re running ahead full steam.”
I ran my hand across my jaw, trying to figure out how to get him to see. “How did you know with Kat?”