Maureen Child - His By Any Means

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.”