Page 61 of Inheriting Miss Fortune

“I think we should give her something to chew on,” I suggested again over the sound of her screaming. “It’s probably her ears.”

Dev shot me a look while Lellie continued to thrash in her car seat. The plane had only been in the air a few minutes, but Lellie had been screaming for at least a half hour.

“Fine,” he said, shoving the backpack at me. “You figure out what to give her, then. Everything we brought is mushy.”

He was right. As I rifled through the bag, I found overripe bananas, cut-up strawberries that had softened in their own juice, pumpkin bread squares Jo had packed, and little fingers of peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “Shit,” I muttered. There wasn’t anything that would help her work her jaw to pop her ears.

“PB&J,” I said desperately, pulling out a piece of the sandwich and saying a silent thank-you to the universe when she shoved it into her mouth. Fat tears rolled down her cheeks, and her eyelashes were spiky-wet. I reached out a thumb to wipe them away, but before I could reach her other cheek, a pristine white cotton handkerchief appeared.

I glanced up at the stranger who’d arrived with the plane before murmuring my thanks. Kenji was slender and poised, dressed immaculately in designer suit pants and a crisp Oxford shirt. He looked like a Japanese cover model who’d been recruited by Brooks Brothers to make business attire look sexy and chic at the same time.

He hadn’t cracked a smile since I’d met him last night.

We’d made our way up to the main house for dinner after showering the dirt and sweat of roundup off and had been introduced to Kenji, who’d arrived sometime during the afternoon.

“He’s here to accompany you to Texas,” Silas had said before whisking Dev away to his study, where the three of them presumably talked about things they didn’t want me to overhear.

I’d wanted to ask Dev about it when we returned to the apartment, but he’d excused himself to check on Trigger as soon as we’d gotten Lellie down for the night.

Roundup had kicked my ass, so I’d fallen asleep on the sofa before he’d returned. Thankfully, he nudged me awake just long enough to move me into his bed with him before I fell right back to sleep.

And now I couldn’t ask him because Kenji was right here.

After wiping Lellie’s face of tears and now peanut butter and jelly, I glanced apologetically from the ruined handkerchief to Kenji. He waved my concerns away. “It happens.”

“Thank you for arranging for the plane,” I began, shifting on the soft leather sofa situated across from the one Kenji sat on. “I was going to ask my firm to send theirs. It was generous of Silas to do this for Dev.”

Kenji opened his mouth to speak, glanced at Dev, and closed it again. Something seemed off, and it made me uneasy.

“Is this Silas’s plane?” I asked, looking between the two of them. And if it was, what the hell did Silas do for a living? I’d thought he was a business consultant.

Dev shifted in his seat. “It’s owned by a company the group of us co-founded.”

I attempted to glare at him while keeping an eye on Lellie. He was part of a group of friends whoowned a plane?

He cleared his throat. “Technically, it’s the company’s plane.”

“And you and your friends own the company,” I prompted. Kenji remained conspicuously silent.

“Yes.”

I closed my eyes and counted to ten, trying desperately to remember none of this was any of my business. When I opened my eyes, Kenji was gone. Thankfully, Lellie had stopped crying and was now reaching for the bag of strawberries. I helped her pick them out of the bag one at a time while Dev decided how much to trust me.

Finally, I sensed him lean toward me. When he spoke, his voice was lower. Softer.

“I met the guys at Yale. I think you knew that. We worked on a project together that went very well.” He leaned over and ran a wet wipe over Lellie’s hands before continuing. “After college,we started a company together. A business consulting firm that specialized in taking ideas to market and finding financing.”

“Venture capital.”

“Kind of. Also like an incubator. Technically, I still own part of it, but corporate stuff wasn’t really my wheelhouse. I don’t love working at a desk in a high-rise. That was more Bash and Silas’s thing. Landry had his modeling, and Zane had his music.”

I glanced at him. “What didyouhave?”

“At the time, I was working with the Yale Animal Resources Center, following up on research I’d done before graduating. I was considering applying to vet school, but I didn’t want to leave the project while it was still underway. And then my brother died. And everything changed.”

I knew his brother had died in a car crash a few years ago. Katie had told me that much. I moved closer to him and took his hand in mine. “Will you tell me about it?”

He glanced back over at Lellie before finally meeting my eyes again. “It was my fault. The accident.”

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