Maureen Child - His By Any Means - The Black Sheep's Inheritance

Letting go of that train of thought, she brought herself back to the business at hand. The reason she’d come here.

“I really just wanted to make sure everything is going through without any trouble.” Shrugging, she added, “I’m about to sell my condo so I can buy something closer to where I will be working, and—”

He gave her a knowing smile. “And you’re worried that something might go wrong with the dispersal of the will.”

“Exactly.” It was nice that he understood her concerns and didn’t make her feel silly for having them.

“You have nothing to worry about,” Logan told her. “J.D. set this will up in such a way that it would be almost impossible to contest it.”

“Almost?”

He grinned. “Caught that, did you?”

“I did, and it’s a little scary to think about. If someone contested the will, all of the bequests might be nullified, right?”

“It’s possible, yes,” he admitted, then leaned back in his oversize leather swivel chair. “But highly unlikely. J.D. was competent when he made his will. And it was his estate to divide how he saw fit. I know some of the family are upset with what that will said, but there’s not much they can do about it. So to answer your question, I don’t see any problems looming. Go ahead and sell your place. Buy the one you want.”

Colleen released a breath she really hadn’t been aware she was holding. Somehow she felt even more reassured than she had when talking to Walter. Maybe it was because the older lawyer tended to speak more in legal terms, and Logan made the process seem less confusing. “Thanks. I feel better.”

“Happy to help,” Logan said, rising to come around his desk. “I know this must be strange, suddenly coming into so much money. But it’s all real, Colleen. You can trust it.”

She stood up and offered her hand. This was what she’d needed to hear: the confirmation that her new life was about to begin. For some reason, she’d been half expecting someone to pull the rug out from under her and leave her sprawled, broken and bruised, on the floor. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Now though, she would reach out and grab hold—with both hands—of the changes headed her way.

Logan walked her to his door and smiled. “Try to relax and enjoy all of this, Colleen. J.D. clearly wanted that for you.”

“I think he did,” Colleen agreed as she shook Logan’s hand one last time. “I really appreciate your time.”

“If you have any more worries, feel free to come back.”

But she wouldn’t be worried now. At least not about the bequest. Instead, she would worry about Sage Lassiter and how important he was becoming to her. When just the thought of his name sent an electrical charge buzzing through her, she knew she had plenty to worry about.

Seven

“Wow,” Jenna chirped later that day. “According to Google, Sage Lassiter is worth about ten billion dollars.” She glanced up from the laptop and fanned herself with one hand. “I mean I knew he was rich...but that is seriously rich.”

The two of them were in Colleen’s bedroom at her condo. The room was small but neat, with cream-colored walls, a bright quilt on the bed and dozens of jewel-toned pillows stacked against the headboard. Colleen looked at her friend, sitting cross-legged on her bed. “You’re supposed to be checking real estate on the mountain for me.”

“I am, on another webpage,” Jenna said with a shrug. “But I can multitask. Besides, I had to look him up. You’re going to stay at his ranch for a few days and I want to see what my friend’s getting into. You know, I bet there are rich serial killers, too.”

Laughing, Colleen said, “He’s not a serial killer.”

“No harm in checking,” Jenna told her. “So, according to this website that is all gossip all the time, Sage made his first million by investing in some thingamajig for computers that his college roommate invented.”

“Well, that tells me he believed in his friend, so that’s nice.”

“And made a boatload off that investment,” Jenna continued, scrolling down the page, “which he then invested in several other inventors with great ideas.”

“That’s a good thing. He helped a lot of people get started and they all became successes.” Colleen folded another T-shirt and dropped it into her suitcase. She would drive up to Sage’s ranch in the morning and nerves were beginning to settle in. Three days at his house. God, she could hardly sit across from him in a restaurant without her body erupting in dangerous wants and needs. The next few days were going to be agonizing.

Unless, she thought wildly, something happened between them to release all this tension she felt building inside her. But if they did sleep together, then what? From everything she’d learned from J.D., she knew that Sage wasn’t interested in a real relationship. And even if he were, he wouldn’t want her, she knew that already.

So what would she gain by going to bed with him?

Lovely memories, her brain shrieked. Orgasms galore, her body chimed in.

She shivered again.

This had seemed like such a good idea, having Sage show her the mountains and how to avoid danger.

Which was really funny if you thought about it, because Sage himself was dangerous to her. He was becoming too important to her. While she planned her new life, looking forward to all the exciting things stretching out in front of her, Sage was in those mental images, too. He had become a part of the dream she’d nurtured for so long and she didn’t know how to separate them now.

The only thing she could do was try to protect her heart from the inevitable crash that was headed her way.

“Hello?” Jenna demanded her attention. “Did you know he was that rich?”

In spite of everything, Colleen laughed. “It never crossed my mind to ask J.D. what Sage’s bank account looked like.”

“Well, it just doesn’t seem fair, does it?” Jenna turned the laptop so that Colleen could see the screen, where an image of Sage stared out at her. “A man should not be allowed to be that amazing-looking and rich to boot. Just seems selfish somehow.”

Colleen would have laughed, but she was staring at the image of Sage, drawn from some tabloid site. He looked impossibly handsome in a tux and was glaring at the camera even as the woman on his arm, last year’s Oscar winner, beamed at the photographer as she draped herself against Sage’s broad chest.

There it was, she told herself silently. Proof that whatever was between her and Sage wasn’t permanent. Wasn’t anything more than a temporary fantasy on her part, just a lot of chemistry that sizzled and flashed between them.

So, knowing it was all fleeting, what was she supposed to do? Stay home? Avoid Sage? Or should she accept the fact that this was all transitory and simply enjoy it for what it was? A swirl of expectation swam in her veins, side by side with a few slim threads of reality. It would be interesting to see which sensation finally won out.

“Anyway,” Jenna was saying as she slapped the laptop lid down, shattering the spell Colleen had been under. “I found a couple of cabins for sale. One has a lot of land with it—like thirty acres—the other’s close to a county road.”

“Sounds great.” She smiled appreciatively as Jenna handed over a piece of paper with the addresses. “I’ll see if Sage can take me to look at them.”

“We’re depending on Sage a lot lately, aren’t we?”

Colleen quirked a smile. “Is that the royal we?”

“It’s the you we,” Jenna said, leaning back against the headboard of Colleen’s bed and stretching out her legs to cross them at the ankle. “You’ve really been seeing a lot of him and now you’re off to stay with him at his place.”