...

"So, Clayton thought it would be better coming from me," Colin concluded.

After the last of the mourners had left the ranch, Colin had called the family

meeting. Sandra had complained that she was too busy with all she had to do—cleaning

up after a gathering for two hundred was no easy feat, and it wasn't like the dishes were

going to wash themselves—but her grousing was all for show. She'd likely been stewing

all day, wondering what he had to say.

As a lawyer, Colin had a lot of practice remaining stoic while delivering unwelcome

news, but this time was a particular challenge. He laid out the information he'd been

given in an even tone, sticking to the facts. When he was done, his parents and siblings,

all gathered in the family room, stared back at him in stunned silence.

"Wait. Just … wait. You're saying that our uncle Redmond has had a son for thirty

years … and he never said a damned word to anybody about it?" Liam was the first to

respond to what Colin had told them.

"That appears to be the case, yes," Colin said, still in lawyer mode.

"Well, I guess he told Clayton Drummond about it," Sandra said, her lips pursed, her

eyebrows nearly knit together in the center of her forehead. "Clayton Drummond! The

man's good enough as a lawyer, I guess, but he's not family."

"I suppose that was the point," Ryan said. "It was safe to tell Drummond because

he's not part of the family."

"Well," Sandra grumbled.

"I don't get it." Orin shook his mostly bald head. "I just don't get it. Redmond never

had much use for women. I mean, he had some girlfriends back in high school, but since

then …" He spread his hands, his unfinished thought drifting in the air among them.

"Maybe there were no other women because none of them were her," Gen suggested.

As the newest member of the Delaney family, Ryan's wife was the only one who didn't

seem shell-shocked by the information. Instead, she seemed interested. If pressed, Colin

would have to admit that he was pretty damned interested, too, now that the surprise was

wearing off.

"And this guy's getting an inheritance?" Liam went on. "This guy who we don't

know anything about, who Redmond never even met?" He shook his head, his face

showing exactly how half-assed a notion he thought that was. Liam could never disguise

his feelings, Colin thought. Since they were kids, Liam's every emotion had shown on his

face as though he were wearing a sign that said HAPPY or EXCITED or PISSED.

"Well, 'this guy' is his son," Ryan said, rubbing at the back of his neck.

"We don't know that. Not for sure," Liam said. "All we know is that Clayton

Drummond says so."

"Because Redmond told him so," Orin pointed out.

"Yeah, but did he even know for sure? I mean … I can't imagine they ever did a

DNA test. Does he just have the mother's word for it?" Liam said.

"That's a valid point." Colin brought everyone's attention back to where he stood at

the head of the room. They were all gathered together on sofas or hard-backed chairs, the

chaos of a recently completed get-together still surrounding them. The flames in the

fireplace crackled softly. "But, unfortunately, it doesn't actually have any bearing on the

will. The document refers to Drew McCray by name. There's nothing in it stipulating that

the inheritance is contingent on McCray actually being Redmond's son."

"Then this guy could be taking all of us for a ride," Liam said.

"If that were the point—if this were some kind of scheme—we'd have heard from

him by now, wouldn't you think?" Ryan added, not unreasonably.

"That brings up my next point," Colin said, again sounding like a lawyer.

"Drummond hasn't contacted this Drew McCray yet. Neither about the will, nor …" He

paused, the words he was about to say bringing an unexpected lump to his throat. "Nor to

inform him that his father is dead."

"If Redmond was even his father," Liam was quick to interject.

"He was." Orin's eyes were red, and he cleared his throat roughly. "At least,

Redmond must have been sure that he was. Otherwise, he wouldn't have done this.

Redmond wasn't a man who did things lightly."

That, at least, was God's truth.

Colin couldn't remember Redmond ever making a decision without first considering

the options, weighing his choices, discussing it with his brother or his nephews, moaning

and dithering over the right thing to do, and then waiting what seemed like an

unnecessarily long time before finally making a decision. Impulsive was not a word one

would use to describe the man. There was no way he had put Drew McCray into his will

without considerable deliberation—even if he'd hidden all of that from his family.

"In any event," Colin said, "I asked Drummond not to do anything. I think the first

contact should come from us. From the family, and not some lawyer nobody outside of

Cambria has ever heard of."

Colin had a number of reasons for that. But it seemed like everybody had their own

interpretation of his motives.

"I think that's wise. It's going to be easier for him to hear all of this if it's coming

from one of you." Gen shook her head, her concern for a man she'd never met written in

the tilt of her brows, in the crease of her lips. "Can you imagine how he's going to feel if

he's been living his whole life thinking someone else is his father? If he's about to get hit

with the news that not only is his dad not his dad, but that his biological father is dead?

And that doesn't even touch on what the inheritance is going to do to his life."

"It's not like the inheritance is going to be some kind of burden," Liam said,

scowling.

"It might be," Gen said. "It's upheaval, and any kind of upheaval—positive or

negative—can take a toll on a person."

Liam, who was perched on a sofa arm next to where his mother and father were

sitting, crossed his arms over his chest, his face dark and brooding. "I'm sure Colin's

more worried about what all of this is going to do to the family." He nodded at Colin.

"Hell, yeah, we need to be the ones to tell him. I want to look this guy in the eye. We've

built something for ourselves here, starting with the first Delaney who settled on this

land, coming right down to us today. We've got a stake in it, and that comes from our

own sweat. If this … this stranger thinks he's going to come in and take what we've all

worked for—"

"He doesn't think anything." Breanna spoke up for the first time since the discussion

had started. "As far as we know, this is going to be as big a surprise to him as it was to

us. Bigger, probably. Let's just dial it down a little until we see what's going on."

Liam, who apparently didn't appreciate being told to dial it down, scowled at his

sister, who simply glared at him in response. It was the familiar, nonverbal language of

siblings who'd shared a lifetime of daily battles, but who had matured too much to

actually hit each other and call each other names like they had when she was eight and he

was three. This way was no less effective.

"You've got contact information for the man?" Sandra asked, bringing things back

around to the practical.

"I have an address and phone number for the mother," Colin said. "But Drummond

tells me it might not be current. It's the last address Redmond knew, but there's some

reason to believe she's not there anymore."

"Why's that?" Orin asked.

Colin cleared his throat. "According to Drummond, Redmond tried to send a letter to

that address a few years ago. It was returned unopened."

"All right. Well, has anybody tried the number yet?" Ryan asked.

"I'm going to do better than that," Colin said. "I'm going out there."

" 'Out there' where?" Liam wanted to know. "Where are we talking about?"

Colin paused, then said, "Bozeman. She never left there, as far as we know."

"Well, hell." Liam got that stubborn look that Liam often got, the one that harked

back to his boyhood, when he'd refused to clean his room or eat some green thing that

appeared on his dinner plate. "I should do it, then. It's my home territory."

"No, Colin's going to do it." Sandra hadn't said much up to this point, but her tone

was clear and sure, letting her sons know she would brook no backtalk. "He's the

executor. And anyway, Liam, you're too damned hotheaded. You go out there, you're

going to scare the man to death. We don't need that."

Liam started to say something, but his mother talked over him. "No, we don't need

that," she repeated. "Colin keeps his head in a crisis. Always has. Ryan and Breanna, too,

but the two of you are needed here." Ryan was needed because he ran the Cambria ranch

operation, and Breanna because she had two young sons who needed to be taken to

school, harangued to do their homework, and generally kept in line.

The implication didn't escape Colin's notice—that the others were needed here, but

he wasn't. Well, that was no surprise, he thought with some bitterness. That was no great

shakeup of the status quo.

"It's settled, then. I'll get a flight tomorrow. If he's not at the address I've got, then

I'll just have to do some sleuthing and find him," Colin said.

"You've been working on that land development down in Palm Springs," Breanna

said. "Are you going to be able to get away right now?" She was the only one who'd

thought about that, apparently, and he was grateful that she'd taken the time to consider

how this shitstorm might affect his life and the various business deals he had going on.

"He'll work it out," Sandra said, and then she got up from where she'd been sitting

and stalked off into the kitchen to begin the cleanup she'd so reluctantly put off.

He guessed he'd work it out, at that. God himself couldn't drive Sandra Delaney off

her course. And if He couldn't do it, then neither could Colin.

As convenient as it would have been to take a flight out of San Luis Obispo, that was

out of the question, because the airfares from there to Bozeman were astronomical.

Colin's parents had made it clear from the time he was a child that coming from a

wealthy family didn't mean you could piss away your money just for the sake of it.

In fact, they'd been side-eyeing his Mercedes and his Italian loafers since the day

he'd returned to town. The car and the shoes mattered, though, even if Sandra and Orin

couldn't see it. Nobody took seriously a lawyer who wore forty-dollar shoes and drove a

Ford Fiesta. They respected someone who projected an aura of success.

Of course, none of that mattered once people knew Colin was one of the Cambria

Delaneys. Once they realized that, they'd defer to him even if he was wearing plastic flipflops

and driving a Schwinn.

He thought about the benefits and drawbacks of his family name as he drove up

Highway 101 toward the San Jose airport with his suitcase in the trunk and the window

open to the clear, cool, February day.

Coming from money was a double-edged sword, and Colin had regularly used one

side and felt the sting of the other. He wanted the people he did business with to respect

him not because of who his parents were, but because he was damned good. But that

hadn't stopped him from playing the Delaney card whenever it would be to his

advantage.

He drove past patchwork plots of farmland under a sky of cloudless, startling blue.

The paper Starbucks cup in the cupholder had been empty for at least twenty miles.

The hell of this whole thing was that amid the surprise of Clayton Drummond's

revelation, Colin hadn't had much time to think about Redmond.

Grief was a funny thing. You thought you had it under control—might even have

congratulated yourself on your stoic acceptance of the inevitability of death—only to be

brought down by the sight of an empty pair of slippers next to the person's favorite chair,

or the sight of someone in the grocery store who looked a little like him at the right angle,

from behind.

It happened to Colin when a Garth Brooks song—"Friends in Low Places"—came

on the radio. Not that Redmond had liked the song, or even Garth Brooks. In fact, he'd

resented the very existence of country music, because, as a lifetime rancher, he was

expected to like it.

Well, I guess I'll listen to whatever kind of music I damned well please.

Colin felt the sting of tears in his eyes, tried to will them away, and then pulled the

car over when it became clear that the tide of his emotion was not about to ebb. He sat in

the Mercedes on the side of Highway 101, the engine running, and cried into his hands,

his head hunched over the steering wheel, his nose running. His shoulders shook with the

unbearable weight of his loss.

When the worst of it had passed, he fumbled in his glove box for a stack of napkins

he'd picked up from some fast food joint, and used them to wipe his eyes and blow his

nose. He took a deep, ragged breath.

"Goddamn it, Redmond," he said, to no one.

Then he put the car in drive, pulled back out onto the highway, and drove to catch

his flight....