Читать книгу His By Any Means: The Black Sheep's Inheritance - Maureen Child - Страница 10

Four

“So how’s the rest of dealing with the will going, Walter?” Sage drove straight from Big Blue to the lawyer’s office. He wanted a chance to talk to J.D.’s lawyer without the explosive release of emotion that had happened when the family was gathered together. Not that he’d been able to dismiss the anger churning inside him. The plan had been to arrive, calm and cool, and outstare the older man. That didn’t happen though, because he was far from feeling cool and detached.

Tension played in every one of his muscles and tugged at the last threads of his patience. Being with Colleen had ramped his body up to the point where he’d practically had to limp his way out of the ranch house. Just sitting beside her on the bed in her room had tested his self-control, because what he’d really wanted to do was lay her back on the mattress and explore those amazing curves she kept so carefully hidden.

Instead, he’d talked to her. And talking to Colleen hadn’t solved a damn thing—it had only muddied waters that were already so damn thick it might as well have been concrete. He couldn’t make her out. Was she the innocent she seemed to be? Or was she working him as she had worked J.D.? He had to find out...but that was for later. Right now, he had a couple of questions for his late father’s lawyer.

“It’s coming along but I’m not discussing it with you, Sage, and you damn well know it.” Walter Drake steepled his fingers, leaned back in his leather chair and looked at Sage with the barely hidden impatience he would have shown a five-year-old. “J.D.’s will is a private matter. I’ve already read publicly the parts that affect the family. As for the rest...”

Sage jumped out of his chair and stalked to the far window. Yeah, he was too on edge to be facing down a lawyer. He should have known better than to come here today, but damn it, there were just too many questions about the will.

Looking down on the street below, he focused for a second on the traffic, the pedestrians wandering along the sidewalks and even the mountains jutting into the sky in the distance. He looked anywhere but into the smug features of J.D.’s lawyer.

Going in, Sage had guessed that Walter wouldn’t talk. Hell, he wouldn’t have even if he could. The man liked holding all the power here. Liked having information that no one else did. And getting anything out of him would probably require dynamite—or someone with far more patience than Sage possessed. Fine, then. He’d back off the topic of the rest of the will for the moment and try a different tack. Half turning, he faced the man watching him through hooded eyes.

“All right,” Sage said, “never mind.”

Walter nodded magnanimously.

“But there’s still the matter of J.D. leaving control of Lassiter Media to Evan instead of Angelica.”

Walter frowned at him, sat up and braced both elbows on his desktop. “J.D. had reasons for everything he ever did, Sage. You know that.”

J.D. had sure thought so. But Sage had given up trying to figure out the old man years ago. The whole time he was growing up, the two of them hadn’t even been able to be in the same room together without snarling and growling like a couple of alpha dogs fighting for territory.

But Angelica was different. Right from the start, she had been J.D.’s shining star. So how he could have cut her out of her rightful inheritance was beyond Sage. “Yeah, but what reason could he have for cheating his daughter out of what should have been hers?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Can’t?” Sage demanded, walking back to stand opposite the man’s desk. “Or won’t?”

“Won’t.” Walter stood up, since staying in his chair required him to look up at Sage, and he clearly didn’t enjoy that. “J.D.’s my client, Sage, dead or alive. Not you. Not the Lassiter family.”

“And you’ll protect him from his damn family even after his death?”

“If I have to,” Walter said softly.

Frustration clawed at him. “None of this makes sense. You know as well as I do that J.D. had been grooming Angie for years, getting her ready to run Lassiter Media.”

“True...”

“So does it seem rational to you that he would leave the company to Angie’s fiancé?” There went his grasp on the last slippery thread of temper.

The lawyer only stared at him for a long minute or two. “If you’re trying to insinuate that J.D. wasn’t competent to make this will, you’re wrong. And that allegation would never stand in a court.”

“I’m not talking about court.” Yet. “I’m talking about your knowledge of J.D.”

“As I’ve already said, J.D. had reasons for everything he did, and this is no different.”

Sage had no idea why J.D. would have done this. It made no sense at all.

The lawyer’s deliberate refusal to give anything away just increased the sense of outrage snarling inside him.

“This isn’t getting either of us anywhere, Sage. So if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got business to take care of and—”

“I’m not done with this, Walter,” Sage promised. “We all want answers.”

For the first time, a flicker of something that might have been sympathy shone in the other man’s eyes. “And I wish I could give them to you,” he said. “But it’s out of my hands.”

Frustrated, Sage conceded defeat. At least for now. “Fine. I’ll go. But once the family gets over the shock of all of this, I won’t be the only one showing up here demanding answers. I hope you’re ready for that.”

At any other time, Sage might have laughed at the beleaguered expression on the man’s face. But right now he just wasn’t in the mood to be amused.

Once out in the parking lot, Sage hunched deeper into his black coat as a cold mountain wind pushed at him. Even nature was giving him a hard time today. He crossed to his black Porsche and climbed in. During the winter, this car spent most of its time locked away in a temperature-controlled garage on his ranch. Right now, he was glad he had the sports car. He had a driving need to push the car to its limits, wanting the speed, needing the rush of the moment.

He peeled out of the lot, drove through Cheyenne, and once he was free of the city, cut the powerful engine loose. He backtracked, headed to the Big Blue ranch. By now, Colleen would be gone, but Marlene and Angie would be there. And he had to see his sister. Find out for himself if she was okay. But how could she be? She’d been betrayed by someone she trusted. And Sage knew just how that felt.

The growl of the engine seemed to underscore the rage pumping just below the surface of his mind. Speeding along the road to the ranch forced him to focus, to concentrate on his driving, which gave him a respite from everything else tearing through his brain. He steered the car through the wide ranch gates, kicked up gravel along the winding drive and then parked outside the front doors.

From the stable area came the shouts of men hard at work. He caught a glimpse of a horse in a paddock, running through the dirt, and realized that J.D. being gone hadn’t stopped life from going on. This ranch would go on, too. The old man had seen to that. But what the hell had he been thinking about the rest of it?

Sage climbed out of the car and paused long enough to take a quick look around the familiar landscape. Much like Sage’s own ranch, there were plenty of outbuildings, barns, cabins for the wranglers who lived and worked on the ranch, guest cabins, and even a saltwater pool surrounded by grass, not cement, so that it looked like a natural pond. His gaze fixed on the ancient oak that shaded the pond and a reluctant smile curved his mouth. He, Dylan and Angelica had spent hours out here when they were kids, swinging from a rope attached to one of the oaks’ heavy limbs to drop into the cold, clear water.

So much of his life had been spent here on this ranch, and in spite of his estrangement from J.D., there were a lot of good memories here, too. He shifted his gaze to the house. Built from hand-cut logs, iron and glass, it was two stories high and boasted wraparound porches with hand-hewn wood railings on both levels. Those porches provided Adirondack chairs with colorful cushions and views of the mountains from almost everywhere.

Sage took a breath. He’d left here only a couple hours ago, but it felt like longer. After mentally dueling with a crafty lawyer, he wanted nothing more than a drink and some quiet. The minute he entered the ranch house, though, he knew the quiet was something that would elude him.

“Why would he do this to me?” Angelica demanded, her voice carrying through the cavernous house.

Three or four people answered her at once and Sage followed the voices to the great room. The heart of the house, the main room was enormous, with honey-toned wood floors, log walls and what seemed like acres of glass windows affording views of the ranch and the wide blue sky that had given the ranch its name above. He’d heard the story often enough to know it by heart.

J.D. and his wife, Ellie, had bought this ranch, then only two hundred acres, and Ellie had so loved the expanse of deep blue sky that J.D. had decreed the ranch would be named Big Blue, after the sky overhead. Here they’d begun the Lassiter dynasty. Over the years J.D. had added to the property, expanding the ranch into the state’s largest cattle herd and building the land holdings up to more than thirty thousand acres. They’d put their stamp on Wyoming and in Cheyenne, the Lassiter name was damn near legend.

Maybe that was part of what Sage had rebelled against all these years. The Lassiter name and what it had meant to J.D. What it had been like to not be born a Lassiter, but made into one. With that thought simmering in his brain, he took another step into the chaos.

“Thank heaven,” Marlene muttered. “Sage, help me convince your sister that her father wasn’t angry at her about anything.”

He glanced quickly around the familiar room. The massive stone fireplace, the wide French doors that led to a flagstone patio, the oversize leather couches and chairs dotting the shining wood floor. And the family members scattered across the room, all looking at him.

“What other reason could there be?” Angie asked, throwing both hands high only to let them fall to her sides again. Flipping her dark hair back out of her face, she looked at her oldest brother and said, “I thought he was proud of me. I thought he believed in me.”

“He did, Angie,” Chance put in and she turned on her cousin.

“This is an odd way to show it, don’t you think?”

Chance sighed and scrubbed one hand over his face impatiently. Sage could sympathize. The poor guy had probably been trying to cheer Angie up for hours with no success.

“Angie.” Evan McCain spoke up then and all eyes turned to him. “You’re overreacting.”

“Am I?” Shaking her head, Angie looked at the man she had been poised to marry only two weeks ago and it was as if she’d never seen him before. The wedding had been postponed after J.D.’s death, but the two of them had remained close. Until today. Until Evan had been given the company Angie loved. “He gave the company—my company—to you, Evan.” She slapped one hand to her heart. “I was his daughter and he left it to you.”

Evan shoved one hand through his hair and looked to Sage for help. But hell, Sage didn’t know what he could do. He didn’t believe that Evan had tried to undermine Angie. But who the hell knew anymore? Mysterious benefactors. Nurses who inherited three million dollars. A daughter who got cheated out of what should have been hers. None of this made a damn bit of sense.

Still, if they went to war with each other over it, that wouldn’t solve a thing either—it would just splinter them when they needed each other most.

“Angie, taking it out on Evan isn’t going to help,” Sage finally said and he caught a brief look of relief on Evan’s face. “We just have to try to figure out what was in J.D.’s mind and then do what we can to change things.”

“Can we change anything?” Marlene looked worried, her gaze darting from Angelica to Evan and back again. “The will is done. And even though J.D. was sick, he was mentally competent right up until his last day.”

“I know.” Sage walked to the woman who had been a mother in all but name to him since he was a kid and wrapped one arm around her shoulders. The scent of her perfume drifted up to him and colored his mind with memories. Marlene had been the one stabilizing influence in his life. Through all of his rebellion with J.D., his aunt was there, talking him down, trying to build a bridge between Sage and his adoptive father. That bridge had never really materialized, but it hadn’t been for lack of trying on her part.

Sage dropped a kiss on the top of her head, then looked across the room to Dylan, sprawled in one of the oversize leather chairs.

“You don’t have anything to say?”

“I’ve said plenty,” his brother countered, then shifted a glare to their sister. “I was shouted down.”

“I didn’t shout,” Angie argued.

“Like a fishwife,” Dylan told her, then glanced at Evan. “If you still want to marry her, you’re either brave or brain-dead.”

“You’re not helping,” Sage said.

“Yeah, I heard that from our darling sister an hour ago,” Dylan told him tiredly.

“You don’t understand how this feels, Dylan,” Angelica said, giving him a look that should have set fire to his hair. “Dad didn’t take away the business you love, did he?”

“No, he didn’t,” he admitted.

“Angie,” Evan said, stepping toward his fiancée and laying both hands on her shoulders. “I love you. We’re getting married. Nothing’s changed.”

She slipped out from under his grip and shook her head. “Everything’s changed, Evan. Don’t you see that?”

“I don’t want to run your company, Angie. You’ll still be doing the day-to-day,” he argued. “You’re still in charge.”

“I don’t have the title. I don’t have the power. The only reason I would still be in charge is because you allow it.” She shook her head and bit down hard on her bottom lip before saying, “It’s not the same, Evan.”

“We’ll figure this out,” he countered, but Angelica didn’t look convinced.

Sage wondered suddenly if maybe J.D. hadn’t done all this just so he could hang around as a damn ghost and watch his family jump through the hoops he’d left behind.

“I think we’ve all had enough for one day,” Marlene announced, interrupting what looked as though it could turn into a battle. She walked over to give Angelica a hug, then smoothed a stray lock of her dark brown hair back with gentle fingers. Giving the younger woman a smile, she spoke to the room at large.

“Why don’t we all go into the kitchen? We’ll have some coffee. Something to eat. It’s been a hard day but I think we all have to remember—” she paused, letting her gaze slide around the room “—that we’re family. We’re the Lassiters. And we will come through this. Together.”

* * *

“There’s no reason to be so nervous.” Jenna Cooper took a sip of her white wine and smiled as Colleen changed clothes for the third time in a half hour.

“I’m not nervous,” she replied, “I’m just hyperalert.”

Jenna chuckled and curled up into a corner of her chair. Colleen met her friend’s amused gaze in the mirror and released a sigh. “Fine. Maybe I’m a little nervous, but there’s no reason to be. This is not a date. It’s just dinner with a family member of a patient I’ve lost.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You might sound a little more convincing when you’re placating me.”

“I’ll work on it,” her friend said, still laughing.

Jenna Cooper lived next door, with her husband and adorable three-year-old twin boys, Carter and Cade. At five foot two, Jenna looked like a pixie with very short black hair that curled around her elfin features. Her green eyes were always shining and she and Colleen had been good friends since the second week Colleen had lived in the condo complex two years before.

Knowing Colleen was a nurse, Jenna had come to her door in a panic late one night because one of the boys had had a fever seizure. Colleen had recognized it for what it was immediately and helped them lower Carter’s temperature, then she had stayed at the house with a sleeping Cade while Jenna and her husband took Carter to the E.R. to be checked out, just to be on the safe side.

Jenna took a sip of her wine and murmured, “I still can’t get over Mr. Lassiter leaving you so much money.”

Colleen’s stomach churned uneasily and she slapped one hand to her abdomen in a futile attempt to stop it. “Neither can I.”

She’d had several hours to think about it, yet it still didn’t seem real. Though everything Sage had said to her earlier kept replaying in her mind. The thought of gossip gave her cold chills, but...

“So, have you told your mother yet?”

“About the money?” She shook her head and then frowned at her reflection. Tugging at the scooped bodice, she tried to pull it a little higher, but no matter what she did, you could see cleavage. A lot of cleavage. “I never really noticed just how big my boobs are.”

“That’s because you’ve usually got them covered up under a layer of cotton and wool.” Jenna stood up, smacked Colleen’s hand away from the fabric and smiled. “You look gorgeous. Stop fussing. God, that’s an amazing dress.”

“It is.” And ordinarily, she never would have bought anything like it. But Angelica had insisted on taking Colleen shopping for the perfect dress to wear to the rehearsal dinner. Sage’s sister had picked this dress out for Colleen and she’d worn it the night Sage had first noticed her. The night...her eyes widened suddenly. “Oh, God. I can’t wear this dress tonight. I was wearing it the night Sage’s father collapsed and died. What was I thinking?”

She turned to head for her bedroom and the pitiful offerings she might find in her closet, but Jenna stopped her with one hand on her arm. “You can’t retire the dress, Colleen. For one thing, it didn’t kill Mr. Lassiter, and it’s just too amazing to be tossed into the dark abyss that is your closet.”

“Thank you.”

“And for another thing, trust me when I say that when Sage gets a look at you in this dress—” Jenna took a step back, swept her gaze up and down Colleen and whistled “—it won’t be funerals that’ll spring to mind.”

A tiny thrill dazzled Colleen before she remembered that Jenna was her friend. Of course she was going to compliment her. But, she told herself firmly, let’s be realistic. Sage Lassiter was not interested in her. Going to dinner with him meant absolutely nothing.

“This is crazy,” she said aloud. “I’m acting like this is a date and it’s not.” Colleen wrung her hands together until she realized what she was doing, then she stopped that pitiful action. “Honestly. Slacks and a sweater. That’s what I should wear.”

“If you change one more time, I’m going to tie you to a chair,” Jenna warned. “You look great, you’ve got a date—”

“Not a date—”

“—you’re going to dinner with the most gorgeous man in Wyoming, possibly the United States—”

“I wonder what Tom would say if he heard that.”

Jenna grinned. “He’s not worried. My Tom’s not gorgeous, but he has other...compensations.”

“You’re impossible.” Colleen could admit silently that she felt more than a little envy of her friend’s relationship with her very cute husband.

“Tom thinks so...” She grinned again and wiggled her eyebrows for emphasis.

If Colleen had half the confidence that Jenna had, she wouldn’t be the slightest bit nervous about her nondate. As it was though...the bats in her stomach—too big for butterflies—were flying in tighter and tighter circles. It was as if they were winding an invisible spring inside her and Colleen was terrified that it was going to snap at just the wrong moment.

Maybe the red dress would help. It was beautiful and wearing it, she couldn’t help but feel more confident. Besides, she told herself, Sage might not even remember that she was wearing this dress at the rehearsal dinner.

“Have some wine.” Jenna offered her own glass and Colleen snatched at it, taking a big gulp, hoping to drown the bats. Apparently though, they knew how to swim.

“This is a mistake,” she muttered and handed the glass back to her friend.

“No, it’s not. You’re a terrific person, Colleen. It’s about time you let some man figure that out for himself.”

“It’s not a—”

“Yes, yes.” Jenna walked back to the love seat, dropped onto the slipcovered cushions and stared up at her. “Now, tell me how my best friend becomes a millionaire and gets a date with the Sage Lassiter.”

“Weren’t you listening? It’s not a date.”

“Whatever.” She patted the cushion beside her. “So how’re you doing, really, with this crazy, world-shifting, life-altering day?”

Good question. “Actually, I think I’m feeling better about the money.”

“Yay!”

Smiling, Colleen thought about sitting down, but she didn’t want to wrinkle her dress. How did the beautiful people do this all the time? “Really, I’ve had all day to think about it, and you know, Sage was right. Even if I give up the money to charity, people will still talk. I’ll just be poor while they’re talking about me.”

“He’s obviously brilliant as well as gorgeous. I like him already.”

Colleen did, too. Which was worrying on a whole different level. Still, first things first. Now that she’d decided to accept J.D.’s amazing gift, her life was going to change. Big-time. Laughing to herself, she said, “You know this means I can quit my job.”

Jenna lifted her glass. “Excellent. Soon-to-be nurse practitioner Colleen Falkner.”

Colleen put one hand to her abdomen to ease those bats that were still flying in formation in the pit of her stomach. But it was a futile gesture. Her body had been through so many ups and downs today, there was no calming it. Oddly enough, it wasn’t even the money or the knowledge that she could make her dreams come true that was really affecting her. Nope, that was all Sage Lassiter. His eyes. His mouth. The deep rumble of his voice, the impossibly broad shoulders.

Oh, God.

She shouldn’t be going to dinner with him. Colleen turned and glanced into the mirror again and what she saw didn’t make her feel any better. Her eyes were too wide, her boobs were too big, her hair was a mass of waves on her shoulders because no matter what she’d tried, she hadn’t been able to clip it up and keep it from looking like a rat’s nest.

Why was she putting herself through this? What if she couldn’t talk? What if staring at him across a table turned her into a mute? Or worse, her mind taunted, what if she babbled incoherently?

“Stop.”

“What?” Colleen came up out of her nerve-racking thoughts like a drowning woman breaching the surface of a lake. She was practically gasping for air.

Shaking her head, Jenna said, “You’re making yourself nuts. It’s just dinner, Colleen. You eat dinner every day. You can do this.”

Could she? She didn’t think so. Heck, her last date had been...oh, God, she couldn’t even remember when she’d dated last. All she could recall was that the guy in question had bored her to tears and then tried to grope her on her front porch. Good times. “I’m being crazy, aren’t I?”

“Just a little.”

“Right.” Sage certainly wouldn’t be boring, she told herself. And if he tried to grope her, she might just let him. Oh, boy. Get a grip, she told herself silently. She was making too much of this. Sage wanted to talk about his late father. All she had to do was keep remembering that and she’d be fine. By talking to him, spending time with him, she could help him get the closure he no doubt needed.

This wasn’t about her and her fantasies. This was about a man, who in spite of his wealth and remarkable good looks, had lost a link to his past. With that thought firmly in mind, she let her sympathy for his loss rise up to drown her silly hormonal meltdown.

“You’re right,” she said, and reached out to take another sip of Jenna’s wine. Colleen hadn’t poured herself any because she hadn’t wanted to risk alcohol on a nearly empty stomach. But the crisp, sharp taste of the Sauvignon Blanc felt like bliss sliding down her too-tight throat. Then the cold, wheat-colored liquid hit her stomach and immediately soothed those pesky bats.

She took a breath, handed the glass back and checked her reflection one last time. “It’s just a meal with a grieving man.”

“Yep. Just dinner with the gorgeous, incredibly sexy, unattainable black sheep billionaire,” Jenna said with a grin. “No pressure.”

Oh, God.