Page 64 of Don't You Dare Marry Me

“Nah. Just need to talk to her.” Nicola held out her hand and waited for Alanna to say her goodbyes. Nicola immediately walked out of the room, down the hall, and stepped outside. The last thing she wanted was for Paula to overhear what she was going to say. “They’re already hassling me for next month.”

“Oh Nicola. I thought you’d made arrangements for a payment plan.”

“I did.” Nicola gritted her teeth. “But I won’t have enough to make a bulk payment, which is what they’re asking for now.”

“I can’t help this month. It’s been tight, and I’m trying to save up.” Something clashed loudly in the background of Simone’s phone. “You know why.”

Yeah, Nicola knew why. The impending divorce that Simone was always talking about and never actually filing for. Nicola bit her lip though. The last thing either one of them needed was for her to say something about that. It would end in an argument and the two of them not talking for a month. Which Nicola really didn’t need right now.

“I’ll figure it out.” Nicola ran her fingers nervously through her hair. Abagail was right in some ways. This was her responsibility, and it was about damn time that she started taking full responsibility for it. This was her burden to carry, and she needed to do that way better than she had been.

She wasn’t Abagail. She didn’t have family money to fall back on, and everything she’d won in the lawsuit was already gone. She hadn’t been smart enough to invest it well to make it last. If she had… well, she’d still probably be in this same damn situation.

It was time for her to get a job. One that she could keep, and one that would actually pay the bills.

And there was only one place she could think that might actually do that.

Abagail’s bar.

twenty-four

“Ms. Kerrbox, I think you might have a problem.”

Abagail furrowed her brow, her phone pressed to her ear as she listened to her lawyer’s voice. She hadn’t actually spoken to the woman in a few months, so this call had been relatively out of the blue for her.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve been petitioned by Estelle to determine your competency.”

“What?” Abagail’s voice rang through her office. She immediately stood up and moved to the door to shut it. She didn’t need anyone else to hear this conversation, and she certainly didn’t need to know what Ivy would think of her then. The amount of family drama that had come to her place of work lately was overwhelming. She was typically so good at keeping the two separate. “What are you talking about?”

“The paperwork came here instead of to you, I think because she was trying to prove that you were too incompetent to take care of it.”

Abagail shivered as she listened to Marta continue to prattle on.

“But they’re questioning your competency to keep control of the family funds and businesses. She’s determining whether or not you should be in charge and if you need a guardian.”

“That’s bullshit.” Abagail sat down heavily in her office chair, rubbing small circles into her temple. “Never in the thirty plus years that I’ve known this woman has she put her foot forward like this. My brother? Yeah, he absolutely would have pulled some kind of bullshit like this. But Estelle? She’s a weak-hearted soul who rolls over before she—” Abagail stopped. She tensed. “It’s not Estelle. I mean, she’s doing it, but Warren’s behind it.”

“Your nephew?” Marta answered.

Abagail nodded and pinched the bridge of her nose. She should have known better than to think that he was going to walk away so easily. “It’s complicated family drama that they’re now bringing to the courts. Wonderful.” Her lips thinned as she frowned. How was she going to explain this one to Nicola?

“This petition could put a whole lot on pause for you, but I don’t think much will come from it in the long run.”

“Of course it won’t. They’re full of horse shit.” Abagail cringed. Anger burbled its way into her chest and continued to boil away. She wasn’t quite ready to let go of it yet. She tried to relax a little because she wasn’t mad at Marta. She was mad at Estelle, and she was really ticked off at entitled Warren.

Did he think that he’d end up with control of it all? He wouldn’t even know what to do with it. Abagail had even taken great pains to create trusts that he couldn’t touch and ruin in the case of her untimely death. He and Estelle would be set up financially, but they wouldn’t be able to screw around with all the hard work that Abagail had put into it.

“What are the next steps?” Abagail asked. This was something completely out of her realm of understanding. She didn’t know the process. She’d never predicted or evenanticipated that something like this could happen—at least not while she was actually competent.

“We wait for the courts to start the process of evaluations. We’ll argue that if—and I emphasize if— a temporary guardianship happens that it shouldn’t be either Estelle or Warren, or anyone from the family, actually. Do you have any suggestions as to who that could be?”

Abagail immediately knew who. “Elia Sharpe.”

“Will she be accepted by the family?”

“Not without prompting, but they don’t have any ill will toward her from my understanding. They don’t know her that well.”

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