Читать книгу His Valentine Triplets - Tina Leonard - Страница 11

Chapter Three

“I’m not sure what any of this means,” Sam said to Rafe a week later. They were all busy trying to adjust to Fiona and Burke’s sudden departure. He waved a bunch of legal documents. “It seems our aunt was keeping a lot of secrets.”

Rafe gazed out toward the horizon of Rancho Diablo. The two of them were in Fiona’s library, Sam having called him there to vent his frustration with their aunt’s dispensation of the ranch. “You’ll figure it all out.”

“I wish I’d known half the stuff before we got knee-deep in battling Bode. Did you know that originally this land was owned by a tribe? Our father bought it from them.”

Rafe shrugged. “That explains the yearly visit from the chief, maybe.”

“Yeah, it sure does. The tribe retained the mineral rights to the property.”

Sam sure had his full attention now. Rafe turned away from the window to goggle at his brother. “All mineral rights?”

“Oil, gas, silver—you name it, it’s not Rancho Diablo’s.”

Rafe couldn’t help grinning.

“What’s so damn funny, Einstein?” Sam snapped.

“Bode doesn’t know.” Rafe laughed out loud.

After a moment, the thundercloud lifted from Sam’s brow. “That’s right, he doesn’t. And he can’t sue a tribe for their mineral rights. Well, I guess he could, but he wouldn’t win. This is a signed and properly executed document.”

They both sank onto a leather sofa and chuckled some more. Jonas poked his head in, favoring each of them with a grumpy gaze.

“Don’t you two ever do any work?” he snapped.

“Listen, Oscar the Grouch, close the door,” Sam told his elder brother.

Jonas obliged, though not happily. “Why are you two lounging when there’s work to be done?”

Sam handed him the sheaf of papers. Jonas gave it a cursory glance and handed the stack back. “I don’t have time to read a wad of papers as thick as your head. That’s your job, Counselor.”

“Well, if you would read,” Sam said, “and if you could read, as your medical degree claims you can, according to these papers, Rancho Diablo Holdings owns no mineral rights. They are instead owned by the tribe of Indians from which Chief Running Bear hails.” Sam grinned, waving the papers. “An interesting turn of events, don’t you think?”

Jonas stared at his brothers with obvious disbelief. “All mineral rights?”

“Yep. All we own is the land and the bunkhouses and the main house. Actually, if you think about it,” Sam said, waxing enthusiastic about the topic, “no one really owns the houses, either. The banks do, and even once they’re paid off, the government can still come along and decide to kick you out. They either want the land for building, or they decide you owe back taxes on the property, and poof! There goes your domicile.” Sam shrugged. “The value is in the mineral rights, I’d say, and those, brothers, we do not own.”

“And we never did,” Rafe said, glancing at the papers. “These documents were executed the year before you were born, Sam.”

“Yeah, I noticed that.” He frowned a bit. “But let’s not go there for the moment.”

“Holy Christmas,” Jonas said, “that means Bode’s lawsuit is basically nullified.”

“In large part, if not in total,” Sam agreed. “Lovely day, don’t you think?”

“Fiona knew this,” Jonas said. “She had to know the mineral rights weren’t ours, and that we couldn’t give them over even if Bode won his case.”

“Maybe she didn’t,” Rafe said, wanting to defend their small, spare aunt. “Even Sam said he didn’t really understand the papers.”

“I understand them perfectly,” Sam said, “and I can’t find any documents that state otherwise, which might indicate a later sale from the tribe to Rancho Diablo Holdings. So what that tells me—”

“Is that Fiona probably never saw those documents,” Rafe said stubbornly. “They were signed before she came. When our parents were alive.”

Sam pursed his lips. Jonas sighed and looked out the same window that Rafe had been gazing from. Rafe knew his brothers thought Fiona had withheld the information on purpose.

“She hardly had time to go digging through every document pertaining to the ranch. Overnight, she became guardian to six boys in a foreign country,” he pointed out. It made him slightly angry that his brothers seemed to think Fiona might have been deceptive about what she knew about their property. She was the executor of their estate. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“She became guardian overnight to five boys,” Sam said, bringing up a point that Rafe had chosen to gloss over. “I came later.”

Rafe saw no reason to chase that particular ghost right now. He waved a dismissive hand. “You’re a Callahan. Let’s not dig up every screaming specter in this house right now.”

“What I’m saying is that Fiona knows who my parents are,” Sam said, and Rafe and Jonas stared at him in shock.

In all the years they’d been a family, this was the most they’d discussed Sam’s abrupt arrival. They wouldn’t have even known about it, but Jonas had been old enough to remember that Sam had come later—after the accident that had claimed their parents. Rafe wished Fiona hadn’t left, and that all this discussion of documents had never arisen. Nothing good could come of the past interrupting the present. He looked at Sam’s strained face and felt sorry for his brother.

“I’m just saying this because Fiona knows who my parents are, and she knew about the mineral rights. I know that,” Sam said, “because Chief Running Bear doesn’t swing by every Christmas Eve just to share toddies with our aunt in the basement.”

“Well, he probably does,” Jonas said, “if I know Fiona.”

Rafe sighed. “This is ridiculous. Just call her and ask. Or go down to the county courthouse and sift through some records. There’s no point in getting all wild and woolly about stuff that doesn’t matter.” He felt ornery at this point. It was too hard seeing Sam suffer. “There’d be no reason for her to keep this from us,” he said, refusing to believe that their aunt could be quite so manipulative. “If she’d known, she would have revealed it in court so Bode would shove off.”

Jonas shook his head. “She might be protecting the tribe.”

“Or she didn’t know!” Rafe insisted.

“Or, and this is the most likely scenario,” Sam said, “this was the perfect way to get right up Bode’s nose.”

Rafe blinked. “You mean to let him sue us for practically no reason?”

Sam shrugged. “Everyone’s been talking for years about the rumored silver mine on our property. We know there’s nothing here, but Bode would believe the gossip. More important than land would be a silver mine. Treasure seekers have always tilted at windmills.”

“Bah,” Rafe said impatiently. “So what. I’ll tell him myself.” He was getting more ruffled by the moment, which made sense, since he was enamored of making love with Bode’s daughter.

“You can’t tell him,” Jonas said, his tone forceful and big-brother-like for a change. “None of us in this room is going to say a word to our brothers or anyone, until we find out why Fiona didn’t want it known that the mineral rights had been sold. I’m pretty certain it’s bad to withhold pertinent information in a court case, and we can’t get our aunt in trouble.”

“Not in this case,” Sam said. “Fiona and Burke are just going to say that the document was executed before they arrived, and they had no knowledge of its existence. And you,” he said to Rafe, “may I suggest you curtail your activities with a certain judge? Try not to annoy her or her father? We need time to figure everything out, before we hurt our case or our aunt. And I don’t trust you to keep your mouth shut if you’re in the throes of pleasure.”

Rafe crammed his hands in his pockets so he wouldn’t take a swing at his brother, and told himself that the family that kept secrets together stayed together.

He could keep a secret.

He could stay away from Julie.

No, I can’t.

I’m sitting on a powder keg. And when it blows, I’m probably going straight to hell.

LIFE DIDN’T SEEM TO BE getting any better when Rafe opened the door to his room in the bunkhouse and found the judge sitting on his bed. “What the hell?” he asked, trying to be nonchalant and not quite making it. She looked delicious, and as heat flooded his groin he realized he’d never been cut out for a monklike existence. “Get out,” he said. “If you’ve come to mess up my face with a permanent marker again, I should warn you I don’t fall for the same tricks twice.” He waved his hat at her. “Anyway, let’s go out in the main room.”

“I have to see you privately,” Julie said, and Rafe sighed.

If it was up to him, he’d love to see the good judge very privately. But he wasn’t going to break with the rules set forth by his brothers, even if the rules were unfair as hell. He looked at Julie’s clouds of luscious dark hair and beautiful tilted brows and delectable full lips and made himself sound stern. “Julie, you need to go.”

“Rafe, I’m not going.”

“Then I’ll go.” He turned to leave, and it was harder than leaving behind part of his own body. He told himself he was truly a man of steel for his virtuousness.

“Rafe,” Julie said, standing up, “we have to talk.”

But his brothers had warned him, and somewhere in his mind, he figured they were probably right. “You’ll find me on the couch if you want to tal—”

Her hand on his arm stopped him. “Rafe.”

Well, technically, they were in a doorway; they weren’t really alone, right? “Yes?”

“If I have to have this discussion with you via a court order, I will.”

He grunted. “So your father sent you.”

“No one sent me. I’m here because I need to talk to you.” She looked at him closely. “The last two times I’ve seen you, you’ve done your best to seduce me, and unfortunately, I’ve let you. Now you’re acting like you don’t even want to look at me…” Her voice drifted off. “It was all about the lawsuit.”

He blinked. “What was?”

“Seducing me in chambers. You just wanted to convince me—compromise me—into recusing myself.”

“Well,” he said, wishing he could kiss her, but knowing he couldn’t without risking his brothers’ wrath, “it’s an interesting premise, but no.”

She pulled away from him, standing a prim and proper three feet away, no longer in the doorway but outside in the den. Rafe knew it was for the best, though he could tell by the hurt look on Julie’s face that she completely had the wrong impression.

But how could he tell her that if it was up to him, he’d toss her into his bed right now and ravish her until next week?

He couldn’t. And the curse of it was he’d never had Julie in a bed. Never had her with hours to spare.

Always quickies. “Damn.”

“What?” Julie stared at him, her pretty face wreathed with suspicion.

“Nothing,” Rafe said with a sigh. “Anyway, what did you want to tell me?”

She took a long look at him. “I wanted to tell you I heard through the grapevine that your Aunt Fiona and Uncle Burke have left.”

He shrugged. “It’s true. What of it?”

“What does this mean for the lawsuit?”

He shrugged again, not interested in discussing it. “Ask your father.”

“I…we don’t discuss it much,” Julie said, and Rafe snorted.

“Right. You were the judge in charge of hearing the case.”

“And since I’m off the case,” Julie said with heat, “we have not discussed it, or your family. I am not the judge, and therefore I am not privy to details!”

She was so cute when she got snippy.

“You’re a jerk,” she said, when he made no reply, and she flounced out the door, her white sundress practically blinding him as he tried to stare through it. He remembered her delightful derriere, and he wanted her. She made him crazy in ways he’d never been crazy before.

“I am a jerk,” he said, and turning, bumped into Sam.

“I won’t argue with that,” his brother said gleefully. “I heard the whole thing, and you have very little understanding of how to treat a woman, bro.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Rafe snapped, his patience addled by being so near Julie and unable to possess her. “You told me to stay away from her until this whole thing blows up or over.”

“True,” he conceded, “but she didn’t wear that darling little dress to talk about cases, dummy. She came wearing that hot number hoping you’d take it off of her.” His grin was wide. “Boy, are you dumb.”

Sam continued on, and Rafe sighed before heading out to the barn.

He wasn’t dumb. He was playing it safe, and right now, that seemed like the smart thing to do.

And maybe the only thing to do.

RAFE CALLAHAN WAS AN ASS, Julie fumed as she stalked to her truck. She got inside and resisted the urge to peel out of the Rancho Diablo driveway. It would solve nothing, and it served no purpose for him to think he’d won.

That’s what this was all about. From time immemorial, women had been played by Romeos, and she was no different. The Callahans were great tricksters, fond of practical jokes and mayhem. They loved one-upping anyone who tried to outdo them.

Her father was right: Callahans were trouble. And she should have known better than to think there was anything real going on between her and Rafe.

“An ass,” she muttered. “A big, braying ass.”

Her heart jumped and fluttered as she thought about how wonderfully he kissed, and she wiped at a tear that slid down her cheek. One tear, that was all she’d spare for that tall, dark, handsome Romeo.

He wasn’t worth her time.

Unfortunately, she still had to talk to him. The problem now was telling him what she had to tell him without killing him.

This time, she wouldn’t settle for permanent marker hearts all over his face.

A branding iron would be much better, but unfortunately, she didn’t have one of those. “Oh, heck,” Julie said to herself. “This is not going to be good.”