Chapter One #2
“Trish Dempsey,” she corrected him. She’d worked hard to drop Trent.
The divorce had dragged on for far too long.
But it had finally been settled, leaving her free to come home at last. And she didn’t have to worry about her ex getting any part of the ranch.
She just had to worry about Brett Lemmon and his brothers getting it.
Her lawyer had been fighting that, too, just as he’d fought her ex for her freedom. But after Trish had talked to Maci and her cousin Frankie, she wasn’t sure that contesting the will was the right thing to do anymore. Maci and Frankie were upset with her for not honoring her father’s final wishes.
But what if her lawyer’s suspicions were founded, and the Lemmon brothers had conned her father and her friends?
She had to be careful. She couldn’t make the mistake of trusting the wrong people again. If only she’d listened to her dad instead of her mother…
She pressed her hand over her belly. Everything she’d done had led her to where she was now—about to have the family she’d wanted for so long.
These babies were just her babies, not her ex’s.
Harold Trent had lied to her about wanting kids, just as he’d lied about so much else.
But after a couple of years of denying herself what she wanted, she’d realized their marriage would never last. They didn’t really love each other.
She wasn’t sure they’d even liked each other.
And so, she’d started the divorce proceedings and the IVF treatments because she’d realized that the smartest and safest thing for her was to be a single parent.
Then she would never have to share custody if things didn’t work out.
Her kids would never be shuffled back and forth between two homes, fought over and poisoned against another parent.
They could just be kids, confident in the love of the one parent they had, and happy.
She knew they would be happy here at the Four Corners Ranch.
But she hadn’t considered that she might not be happy here now, without her dad, and with these Lemmon men living on the ranch, too.
She’d figured that if they stayed at the Four Corners, they would be living in the bunkhouse, not the main house, and she would have some distance from them.
And if her lawyer was right about them, they wouldn’t necessarily be here for long. But what if Nolan Stokes was wrong?
“You were in the den?” she asked. “When I saw the light…” For a moment she’d imagined her dad was still here, waiting up for her like he used to when she and Maci and Frankie had gone into town on one of those long-ago summer nights.
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“And you live in the house?” she asked. She really didn’t want to share it or the ranch with anyone but her family. But if it was truly what her father had wanted, which was what Maci and Frankie claimed, then she might have to share.
“Yes,” he said. “My brothers and I live here.”
“What happened to the bunkhouse?” she asked.
That was where the ranch hands used to stay back when she spent her summers with her father.
One of those ranch hands had once dated her but had really just wanted to get closer to her father and, behind her back, to Frankie.
After that experience, she never should have dated—let alone married—a man who’d worked for her mother’s new husband.
She should have known that she wasn’t what he’d really wanted.
“The bunkhouse needs plumbing and electrical updates, and Frank wanted us in the house with him,” Brett Lemmon said, his voice suddenly as chilly as the late spring wind that swirled around her. “He was lonely.”
She wasn’t sure if there was recrimination in his tone, but she flinched as if he was blaming her for that loneliness.
She already blamed herself, and that guilt weighed heavily on her shoulders, which were physically aching from the long drive.
Overwhelmed with exhaustion and guilt, she closed her eyes to hold back tears that threatened to fall, and as she closed her eyes, she swayed on her feet from a sudden rush of dizziness.
Before she could steady herself, strong hands gripped her arms, holding her. “Are you all right?” That deep voice was tinged now with concern.
She nodded and, keeping her eyes closed, drew in a deep breath that smelled faintly of hay and horses and leather and a trace of sweet smoke.
These were the scents she’d always associated with home.
But when she opened her eyes, she couldn’t see the house or the ranch; she could only see the man who stood in front of her, holding her.
He could not be home to her; he was a stranger, albeit a very good-looking one. The glow from the yard lights illuminated his dark eyes and his square jaw that was highlighted with dark auburn stubble.
“You must have been driving for hours,” he said.
Nearly too exhausted to speak, she nodded again.
“You should get some sleep,” he said. “Let me help you into the house, and then I’ll come back and grab whatever you need from your vehicle.”
The quad cab truck was full of her stuff, as was the trailer that she’d pulled behind it.
She’d packed everything she owned to come home, because that was what the Four Corners had always felt like to her even though she’d spent more time at her mother and stepfather’s estate in the city.
Her father had always made certain that she’d felt that way, too, that the ranch was hers and would always be hers.
But was this really her home anymore or had the Lemmon brothers completely taken it over?
“Do I…is anyone using my room?” she asked.
“Uh…” He grimaced slightly as if he was uncomfortable. “Frankie moved into your old room when she gave hers up to Liam and Elise and the baby since her room was bigger,” he said.
Since Frankie had lived full-time at the ranch after her own parents died, she’d had the bigger bedroom with the en suite bathroom.
It wouldn’t have made sense for Trish, who’d only visited for the summer and holidays, to have that room.
But Dad had insisted she decorate hers as she’d wanted it to look, and he’d said that it would always be there for her whenever she wanted to use it.
“We didn’t realize you were coming tonight, or she could have taken my room,” Brett said.
“You weren’t waiting up for me?” she asked. Not that she was under any illusion that he’d intended to welcome her home. In fact, she was surprised that he was trying to help her. After realizing he was staying in the house, she’d half expected him to bar her from entering the ranch.
He shook his head. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“That’s why I kept driving,” she said. After she’d sent the text to Maci that she was finally coming home, she’d been so excited and sleep had seemed impossible.
But now that she was here, she was exhausted.
She certainly didn’t have the energy to deal with Brett Lemmon, especially now that he was being kind to her.
The text she’d sent Maci hadn’t given an exact time that she would arrive at the ranch.
“I should have called to let Frankie know that I was going to drive straight through, but I didn’t want to wake her up this late.
” She’d thought she would just be able to let herself into the house, with the key she’d kept all these years, and into her bedroom without waking anyone up.
But things had changed at the Four Corners, maybe even the locks.
“You can take my bed,” he said. “I’ll sleep on one of the couches.”
He was willing to give up his bed for her. Would he give up his share of the ranch? Would he let her have the one thing she had left of her father for just herself and her family? She wanted to ask him, but first she had to talk to Maci.
She had to learn what her father really wanted. And she had to respect that, just as she wished people had respected her wishes for what she’d wanted out of her own life. “Thank you,” she said. “I have an overnight bag on the passenger seat. That’s all I need for tonight.”
Tomorrow, after getting some rest, she would figure out what she would do with the rest of her stuff and how to carry out her plan for what to do with the rest of her life.
* * *
The sound of voices woke Frankie up, not that she’d been sleeping all that deeply.
Since learning that her cousin was coming home, she’d been on edge.
From a distance, Trish had been causing so much trouble.
What would happen when she was here, presumably staying under the same roof with Frankie and the Lemmon brothers?
But it wasn’t just the guys now. Liam was married to Elise, and they had baby Lucy.
So Frankie had given them her room, and she slept in Trish’s now, which was exactly as she’d left it all those years ago like a shrine Uncle Frank had kept of his daughter.
Maybe Frankie should have moved out when they’d returned from the party at Ranch Haven.
But Trish hadn’t said that she was coming tonight.
And it had already been so late that Frankie hadn’t believed that she would arrive tonight or maybe at all.
She recognized the voices she heard coming from the living room. One was Brett’s. She wasn’t surprised that he was still awake; he’d been even more on edge than she was. While all the Lemmons loved the ranch, Brett was the most invested in it.
He’d come to work here first, and then when he’d seen how much trouble the Four Corners was in, he’d enlisted his brothers to help. And maybe he was most invested in the ranch because it was all he had, unlike his brothers, who’d found love.
Not that Brett wanted love any more than Frankie wanted it. She wanted to go back to her band and life on the road. But she couldn’t do that until she made certain that her uncle’s wishes were carried out. For everything that Uncle Frank had done for Frankie, she owed him that, as well as her life.