Chapter Three
Brett shouldn’t have left the Four Corners that morning. Because while both he and Trish were away from the ranch, her lawyer had shown up—or so Blake had told him when he reached him at Ranch Haven.
“Have you told Maci that he’s there?” he’d asked his brother.
“Yeah, I called her first.”
Of course he had. After all, Maci was not only the executor of Frank Dempsey’s estate but also the love of Blake’s life.
“Trish is at Maci’s house with Frankie,” Blake had continued. “She told Maci to ask everybody to meet at the ranch. That’s why I’m calling you. You need to get back here as soon as possible.”
And so Brett had driven as fast as he safely and legally could back to the Four Corners.
When he pulled up to the house, dust billowed in behind him.
He didn’t see Frankie’s van or Trish’s truck in the driveway yet, or even Maci’s little SUV.
But he immediately recognized the flashy black Hummer as the same vehicle that had left tracks near the Four Corners property not long ago.
This lawyer, Nolan Stokes, had personally spied on the ranch as well as hiring Brett’s dad’s assistant to spy for him, too. Had he done so for his client? Or for himself?
Brett didn’t like that the guy was alone here with his brothers, sister-in-law and baby niece.
Again, he mentally kicked himself for leaving that morning.
It was his job to protect the ranch, and his family as well.
That was why he couldn’t get into a relationship: ranching was hard work with long hours.
It made it difficult to have a family because the needs of the ranch always came first. That was why Frank’s wife had left him and taken their young daughter with her.
And it was why Frank hadn’t gotten more custody time with Trish.
Liam was already married and Blake would probably be proposing to Maci soon.
Brett would make sure their relationships weren’t at risk, at least. He would pick up the slack on the ranch—that is, if they managed to keep it.
It would destroy them all if they lost it.
After being forced to move to the city when they were kids, he and his brothers had dreamed of having a place like this one day.
And for a while that dream had come true for all of them. But it was being threatened now.
Brett hated that the minute he had turned his back, this snake, Nolan Stokes, had slithered out from beneath his rock and onto the Four Seasons property.
He parked his truck close to the driver’s side of the man’s expensive vehicle, so close that Stokes would struggle to open his door wide enough to get inside again.
Then Brett hopped out of his truck and rushed up the porch steps.
He pushed open the door to the living room, which was oddly quiet despite all of the people occupying the space.
Even baby Lucy wasn’t making a sound. Liam held his daughter close to his chest, protectively. And Brett didn’t blame him. He found himself edging closer to where Liam sat on the long couch with his wife and their child, so that he stood between them and the stranger.
Despite Nolan Stokes’s fearsome reputation as a lawyer, the man was younger than Brett had expected him to be, probably just four or five years older than Brett’s thirty-two.
He was about the same height, hovering somewhere just under six feet tall.
His dark blond hair was slicked back, and he had very pale blue, almost silver eyes. Cold eyes, Brett noted.
Blake stood behind Stokes, and he was staring out the front window. “We’re not supposed to talk to him until Maci gets here,” Blake told him.
As if Brett had anything to say to the guy. But Stokes wasn’t really the problem anyway. Trish was the one who’d hired him, who’d turned him loose not just on Brett and his brothers, but on the two women who’d considered her like a sister to them.
“You don’t have to talk,” Stokes said. “But I need you to listen. Trish has been through a lot over the past several months—actually, the past few years. She’s suffered much more than you all know. And then she lost her father and was blindsided with his will.”
A pang of sympathy struck Brett for whatever suffering she’d endured, but he also remembered all too well how Frank had suffered, too, from loneliness and disappointment.
“She didn’t lose her father when he died,” Brett said. “She lost him years before when she turned her back on him and on the Four Corners.”
Blake cleared his throat and shook his head, signaling Brett to shut up.
But fury bubbled up in Brett now, fury that he had tamped down last night when he’d seen how pregnant and exhausted Trish Dempsey had been.
“She should have been blindsided that she was included in the will at all given how she didn’t care about her father or the ranch,” Brett continued.
“I find it really interesting that she only came back to the Four Corners after her divorce. Didn’t you get her a good enough settlement for that, Stokes? Losing your Midas touch?”
Stokes snorted and smirked. “Midas touch?”
“I see your Hummer parked out there, the same vehicle that left tracks by the property a couple of weeks ago,” Brett said.
“I know you hired someone to spy on us, but you did some of your own spying, too. Bunch of good that did for you. All you would have seen was us working our butts off on the ranch. What has Trish done for the Four Corners but cost us contracts and caused stress?”
“Brett!” Blake exclaimed.
He glanced away from Stokes then and saw that Maci, Frankie and Trish Dempsey had walked into the house.
Stokes turned toward the women, too. “This is why you shouldn’t have come here on your own,” he said to Trish. “It isn’t safe for you to be here with them.”
Like Brett and his brothers were dangerous.
Brett snorted. “Are you still trying to convince her that we hurt her father? Or conned him? We all loved Frank. He was more than a boss to us. More than a friend…” Emotion rushed up on Brett, nearly choking him.
Frank had been more like a father to him.
While Brett loved his dad, he’d had more in common with Frank Dempsey than Bob Lemmon.
Brett had always wanted to be a cowboy, a rancher, which was all Frank had ever been, while Bob was a numbers man, an accountant who spent more time in his office than outside.
Frank had definitely been more than a boss to Brett.
And now Brett couldn’t help but wonder if Trish was more than a client to Nolan Stokes.
Or maybe he was just thinking like that because everybody else in his life was pairing up with someone else.
And not all of those pairings were because of his grandpa and Sadie’s meddling.
Trish was beautiful, so he could understand why a man would be interested in her. Surely, Stokes was, or why else would a man as busy and successful as he was rumored to be take the time and go to the trouble to personally spy on them for her?
Why else would he be so concerned about her that he rushed to her rescue this morning?
* * *
When Trish was a teenager, her mother had caught her eavesdropping on one of her conversations with her stepfather about her father.
It had been about their divorce and custody battle, about how Frank had chosen the ranch over fighting for more custody time with Trish.
She’d been devastated then, and her mother hadn’t been very sympathetic.
If you’re going to eavesdrop, you’re going to risk hearing things you don’t want to hear…
She’d loved and worshipped her father and had longed to spend more time with him, more time at the ranch.
Until that day, she’d always believed that it had been her mother’s fault that she hadn’t been able to, and then she’d learned the truth.
That her dad had agreed to just have her during the summer and on some random holidays in exchange for keeping the ranch and not having to sell it to pay her mother her share of it. Learning that had devastated Trish.
Now she’d inadvertently eavesdropped when she, Frankie and Maci walked into the house during Brett’s argument with Nolan Stokes. And what Trish learned was that Brett Lemmon had genuinely loved her father.
And that he didn’t have any respect for Trish herself. Wondering if anything her mother had told her was the truth, Trish found she suddenly didn’t have a whole lot of respect for herself and how she’d handled things.
Or maybe what bothered her the most was that she hadn’t handled things how she should have: on her own.
“Trish, surely you see that coming here was a mistake,” Stokes persisted. “Why don’t you come back to my place, and we’ll hash this out in probate court as we intended.”
She shook her head. That had been his intention, not hers. She’d always intended to talk to Maci and Frankie. But she hadn’t been in the greatest physical shape until recently. And she hadn’t wanted to risk losing these babies as she had the others by putting too much stress on herself.
“You’re still contesting the will?” Maci asked the question.
“Let them try, Maci. You’ve got this,” one of the Lemmon men remarked.
Trish had only met Brett, so she didn’t know which one was Blake.
The one who looked like Brett and had spoken, or the younger man with the baby?
Then she remembered that Liam had the wife and baby, so that was Blake who’d championed Maci, who clearly loved Maci.
He stared at her with a look of such awe and pride and affection.
Trish couldn’t remember anyone ever looking at her that way except one man—her father. He had loved her. And she had loved him, even though she hadn’t seen him as much as she should have, as she’d wanted to.
Tears stung her eyes over all her regrets. She blinked furiously in an attempt to keep them at bay, but at least two of the men had seen them because both Stokes and Brett took a step closer to her.
“Let’s get you out of here,” Stokes said.