Page 10 of Almost True
“Thanks, Rich. Mind if I grab him?” I nodded toward the living room where Luca would be sprawled.
He dropped his chin and Martha smiled. Minutes later, I had my almost-too-old-for-this son buckled into his seat behind me, his head lolling to the side, and we headed home. Tonight, I didn’t have that same restless feeling I usually did after hours buried in farm business and ending with a typical farewell meant to keep me focused on just that and not my own work.
Tonight, I wasn’t just driving cautiously toward home with my son and anticipating the lonely routine of pouring him into bed and waiting for sleep to take me in a few hours.
Tonight, I was counting down to Saturday.Thirty-six hours and counting.
CHAPTERSIX
Aidan
Friday morning, my truck rumbled over the gravel of the tree farm’s rear exit, and I merged onto the road that would lead me right out of my league.
You gotta stop thinking that way.
The internal reprimand came in the voice of my cousin, John. Even though he spent ninety percent of his time heading up the brewing and legal end of Silver Ridge Brewing, he’d practiced law at his family’s firm here in Silverton for just under a decade before that. The guy had a huge brain, a nice nest egg, and a family who stood behind him no matter what.
Granted, they stood behind me, too. My parents may have fled the wild winters of Silverton for the perpetual sunny thickness of Florida, but John’s parents—Gig and Doodle—were stalwart supporters of mine. I couldn’t complain.
But I could damn sure feel out of my league as I pulled into the neighborhood locally known as The Ridge. So far, no fewer than eight celebrities had made their homes in the fancy area, but it’d all started as born and bred Silverton local turned mega rock star Jamie Morris’ pet project. Well, his and billionaire Julian Grenier’s. Both were good men, and I’d done their landscaping—or, I’d fixed a few issues with Jamie’s after Julian attempted to do the design himself. He had good ideas, but he was missing a few key pieces like sustainability and forgot about some basic properties of physics a time or two.
I’d worked in this area before, but it’d been a few years since I’d been able to take on much in the way of landscaping work. I loved landscape architecture—I’d studied it in school and I was skilled at it. But when my in-laws needed me, I stepped in.
Like I always did.
And what was meant to be a few months of me bridging the gap for them became over three years. I hadn’t done any landscape work in over eight months. Finally, a while back, I’d put my foot down in the most “Aidan way” possible, as John would say.
Speak of the devil, my phone rang and his doofy face popped up on the screen.
“Yeah?”
A cheery laugh rang out. “Well, hello to you, too, dear cousin.”
“I’m almost to this job. What did you need?”
“The one at The Ridge?”
I grunted, nerves swirling in my gut.
“Whose house is it?”
“You know I sign all kinds of confidentiality paperwork for these kind of things,” I said, knowing that wouldn’t stop him.
“So? Who am I going to tell? My latest spreadsheet on cost projections?”
As social a guy as John could be, he did have a real workaholic streak in him. We were both good and bad for each other in that way—we both needed to take breaks and get out. But at the same time, we both tended not to take breaks or go out. Even if we’d been brothers, we wouldn’t have been so alike.
“In this case, I don’t know the name. Anthony Shelton was the signing agent on behalf of some other entity. You know how these people layer their stuff for privacy.”
“Oooh, so it’s definitely a celebrity. One of Jamie’s friends?” He gasped. An actual, full-out gasp. “Is it Jack McKean? I heard he likes Utah mountain towns.”
“Youheardthat Jack McKean, A-list Oscar-winning celebrity, likes mountain towns? Where did you hear this?”
“Shut up.”
John’s dirty little secret just happened to be that he loved celebrity gossip. I was pretty sure his life was made when Jamie Morris moved back here and started bringing all his fancy, wealthy friends with him. So far, only he and Callaway Rice were really big names, but we had a resident reality star and at least one former soap star turned makeup person. The others were quieter or C-listers who’d invested well. Could I tell them apart from Joe Shmoe on the street? Heck no.
“Listen, I’m here. Gotta go.”
