Rachel Gibson - Truly Madly Yours

“Why did he do it? I have my suspicions.”

Max looked at the younger man standing in his office. There was something unpredictable and intense lurking just beneath that cool exterior. Max didn’t like Allegrezza. He didn’t like the way he’d behaved earlier. He didn’t like the disrespect he’d shown Gwen and Delaney-a man should never swear in the presence of ladies. But he’d liked Henry’s will even less. He sat in a leather chair behind his desk, and Nick sat across from him. “What are your suspicions?”

Nick leveled his wintry gaze on Max and said without reservation, “Henry wants me to get Delaney pregnant.”

Max debated whether to tell Nick the truth. He felt no love or loyalty toward his former client. Henry had been a very difficult man and had ignored his professional advice repeatedly. He’d cautioned Henry about drafting such a capricious and potentially injurious will, but Henry Shaw always had to have things his own way, and the money had been too good for Max to let his client find another lawyer. “I believe that was his intent, yes,” he answered truthfully, perhaps because he felt a little guilty for his part in it.

“Why didn’t he just say so in the will?”

“Henry wanted his will drafted that way for two reasons. First, he didn’t think you’d concede to father a child for property or money. Second, I informed him that if you contested a condition stipulating you impregnate a woman, you might possibly win on the grounds of a conflict of morals. Henry didn’t seem to think there was a judge around who would believe you have any morals when it comes to women, but contesting the will would defeat the purpose.” Max paused and watched Nick’s jaws tighten. He was pleased to see a reaction, however slight. Maybe the man wasn’t completely void of human emotion. “There is always a chance you might get a judge who would declare the condition void.”

“Why Delaney? Why not another woman?”

“He was under the impression that you and Delaney had a clandestine past together,” Max said. “And he thought if he forbade you to touch Delaney, you’d feel compelled to defy him, as I take it you have in the past.”

Anger tightened Nick’s throat. There had been no clandestine past between himself and Delaney. “Clandestine” made it sound like Romeo and freakin‘ Juliet. As far as the other, that whole forbidden theory, what Max said might have been true once, but Henry had overplayed his hand. Nick wasn’t a kid anymore, drawn to the things he couldn’t have. He didn’t do things just to defy the old man, and he wasn’t drawn to the porcelain doll who always got his hands slapped for him.

“Thank you,” he said as he stood. “I know you didn’t have to tell me anything.”

“You’re right. I didn’t.”

Nick shook Max’s extended hand. He didn’t think the lawyer liked him much, which was okay with Nick.

“I hope Henry went to all the trouble for nothing,” Max said. “I hope, for Delaney’s sake, he won’t get what he wants.”

Nick didn’t bother with a reply. Delaney’s virtue was safe from him. He walked out the front door of the office and down the sidewalk toward his Jeep. He could hear his cell phone chirping even before he opened the door. It stopped only to start once again. He started the engine and reached for the small phone. It was his mother wanting information about the will and reminding him to come to her house for lunch. He didn’t need reminding. He and Louie ate lunch at their mother’s house several times a week. It calmed her worries about their eating habits and kept her from coming to their houses and rearranging the sock drawers.

But today he didn’t particularly want to see his mother. He knew how she’d react to Henry’s will and really didn’t want to talk to her about it. She’d rant and rage and direct her angry diatribes at anyone with the last name Shaw. He supposed she had many legitimate reasons to hate Henry.

Her husband Louis had been killed driving one of Henry’s logging trucks, leaving her with a small son, Louie, to raise by herself. A few weeks after Louis’s funeral, Henry had gone to the house to offer his comfort and sympathy. When he’d left late that night, he’d left with the vulnerable young widow’s signature on a document releasing him from further responsibility in Louis’s death. He’d placed a check in her hand, and a son in her womb. After Nick had been born, Benita had confronted Henry, but he’d denied the baby could possibly be his. He’d kept denying it for most of Nick’s life.

Even though Nick figured his mother had a right to her anger, when he arrived at her house, he was surprised at the vehemence of today’s tirade. She cursed the will in three languages: Spanish, Basque, and English. Nick understood only part of what she said, but most of her outrage was directed toward Delaney. And he hadn’t even told her about the absurd no-sex stipulation. He hoped he wouldn’t have too.

“That girl!” she fumed, sawing her way through a loaf of bread. “He always put that neska izugarri before his son. His own blood. She is nothing, nothing. Yet she gets everything.”

“She might leave town,” Nick reminded her. He didn’t care whether Delaney stayed or was already on her way back home. He didn’t really want Henry’s businesses or the money. Henry had already given him the only property he would have wanted.

“Ba! Why should she leave? Your uncle Josu will have something to say about this.”

Josu Olechea was his mother’s only brother. He was a third-generation sheep rancher, and owned land near Marsing. Since Benita had no husband, she counted on Josu to be head of the family, no matter that her sons were grown.

“Don’t bother him with this,” Nick said and leaned a shoulder against the refrigerator. As a boy, whenever he’d gotten in trouble or his mother figured he and Louie needed a positive male influence, she’d sent them to spend the summer with Josu and his sheepherders. Both of them had loved it until they’d discovered girls.

The back door opened and his brother stepped into the kitchen. Louie was shorter than Nick. Solid, with the black hair and eyes he’d inherited from both his mother and father. “So,” Louie began, closing the screen door behind him. “What did the old man leave you?”

Nick smiled and straightened. His brother would appreciate the inheritance. “You’re going to love it.”

“He got practically nothing,” his mother interjected, carrying a plate of sliced bread into the dining room.

“He left me his Angel Beach property and the land at Silver Creek.”

Louie’s thick brows rose up his forehead and a glint sparkled in his dark eyes. “Holy shit,” the thirty-four-year-old land developer whispered so his mother wouldn’t hear him.

Nick laughed and the two of them followed Benita into the dining room, then sat at the polished oak table. They watched their mother neatly fold back the lace tablecloth, then leave to get their lunch.

“What are you going to put on the Angel Beach property?” Louie asked, assuming correctly that Nick would want the land developed. Benita might not realize the worth of Nick’s inheritance, but his brother did.

“I don’t know. I have a year to think about it.”

“A year?”

Benita set bowls of guisado de vaca in front her sons, then took her seat. It was hot outside, and Nick really didn’t feel like stew. “I get the property if I do something. Or not do something, actually.”

“Is he trying to get you to change your name again?”

Nick looked up from his bowl. His mother and brother stared back at him. There was no way around it. They were family, and they believed family had the God-given right to stick their noses in his business. He snagged a piece of bread and took a bite. “There was a condition,” he began after he swallowed. “I get the property in one year if I don’t become involved with Delaney.”