Chapter Nine
She was back. Alone. Once Brett saw her truck pull into the driveway, the tension eased from his body…even before he noticed that no other person was in it with her and no other vehicle followed hers.
“Good, no sign of the snake,” Frankie remarked. She stood beside him at the window.
Brett must not have been the only one who’d worried that Stokes might return with her. But maybe he didn’t need to because he’d gotten what he wanted—for her to continue fighting the will.
“I hope he didn’t talk her out of settling,” Frankie said.
Trish didn’t jump out of her truck after she parked it. She sat behind the wheel for a while. And that concerned Brett. Was she okay?
She’d nearly fallen that morning. While he’d caught her, maybe something else was going on with her. Like maybe she was dizzy or something, like she’d seemed that first night she’d shown up at the ranch after driving for so long. And then she’d basically slept most of another day.
Maybe she’d just needed to recover from packing up all her stuff and driving. Or being as pregnant as she was, she could be having any number of medical issues. He didn’t need to be a doctor like his sister Livvy to know that.
He stepped back from the window, to move around Frankie and start toward the door, to make sure that Trish was all right, but then she stepped out of the truck.
The wind tousled her curls, tumbling them around her face, which she lifted toward the sun.
She seemed to take a deep breath and square her shoulders before she began to walk toward the house.
“Uh-oh.” Frankie voiced aloud the concern that hit Brett. “She looks like she’s bracing herself to tell us whatever she decided.”
“Or maybe she’s just bracing herself to deal with the two of you,” Blake said.
Brett turned to find his brother standing behind him, his arm around Maci’s shoulders.
“Or maybe she’s just going to put us off some more before telling us what she’s going to do,” Frankie said. She was as cynical as Brett had become.
Maci shook her head. “No. I don’t think that’s the case. Trish sent me a text a few minutes ago asking me to meet her here.” Clearly, she hadn’t known that Maci was already at the house.
The door creaked as it opened, and Brett turned to watch Trish step inside the house. She glanced from Frankie to Maci to Blake. But she didn’t look at him.
A sharp jab of disappointment took Brett by surprise. He shouldn’t care that she wouldn’t look at him, that she didn’t like him. He didn’t need her to like him. And he didn’t need to like her. But…
He was starting to; he actually understood some of the reasons she’d done what she had. It was clear her mother and ex-husband had had more influence on her than she’d wanted, that they had manipulated her.
Had her lawyer just done the same?
“Are Liam and Elise here, too?” she asked.
“Here,” Liam said, his voice just a whisper, as he ducked out of his bedroom. Elise followed him out and softly closed the door behind herself.
“We just got Lucy down for a nap,” she said.
“Can we talk in the den?” Liam asked.
Trish nodded and whispered back, “Yes, of course.”
Everyone waited, letting her lead the way to her father’s office.
When Brett followed the others, he found her sitting on the couch next to Liam and Elise while Frankie, Maci and Blake stood.
He couldn’t sit either. The only other seat in the room was Frank’s chair.
And he still couldn’t bring himself to sit there.
Seeing that Liam had the baby monitor in his hand, Brett closed the door behind himself, then leaned against it. He didn’t want to wake up Lucy in case voices got raised. But for another long moment nobody said anything.
Finally, Frankie cleared her voice. “So? What did the sleaze convince you to do?”
Trish grimaced. “Nolan really is a good man,” she said. Then she smiled. “Which is what I just told him about the Lemmon brothers.”
“That we’re good men?” Blake asked.
She nodded.
“So he was still trashing us to you,” Brett concluded. “What’s his deal with us? None of us met the guy until the other day.”
Trish shrugged. “I don’t know. I think he just struggles to trust anyone.”
So Brett had something in common with the lawyer after all.
“And he didn’t convince me to do anything,” Trish continued, speaking directly to her cousin. “I had already made up my mind.”
Brett wasn’t surprised. He knew what she wanted for the ranch; she wanted to recreate the childhood she wished she’d had for her children and for other kids as well.
“And?” Maci prodded.
“I want you to do whatever you have to do to settle the estate,” Trish replied.
Maci nodded. “That means that Stokes has to withdraw his request to postpone the probate court hearing. In order for everything to be settled, the judge has to rule that the will is valid, review all the documentation we’ve forwarded regarding the ranch books and inventory, and reissue the deed for the ranch to show all the heirs as the rightful owners. ”
Trish drew in a breath and then nodded, too. “I’ll have him do that, and we can get this settled. But…”
“But what?” Frankie asked.
Trish drew in another deep breath, and her face flushed slightly. “I already asked Brett this question, but I’ve wanted to ask you, too.”
Frankie glanced at him. “What question?”
“After everything that’s happened, do you still respect me enough to work with me?” Trish asked. “Or will you not be able to get over it?”
Frankie glanced at Brett again, as if she was waiting for him to share his response before sharing hers. But as Trish had already pointed out to him, he hadn’t answered her. She glanced at him now, but then her gaze bounced back to her cousin.
Frankie shrugged. “I understand some of your reasoning,” she admitted. “You were going through a lot. I wish you had let us be there for you. I wish we would have known what was going on with you.”
Trish blinked, but there was still a sheen of tears in her light brown eyes. She nodded. “I know. I’m sorry.”
Frankie released a shaky sigh and nodded. “I know. And yeah, we can do this…all five of us can run this ranch…although…once the estate is settled I’ll probably be on my own way, back to the road.” She didn’t sound all that excited about returning to her old life, though, not like she once had.
“I still have some concerns about running this ranch together,” Trish began, and she sat up a bit straighter on the couch. “I feel like I’m at a real disadvantage.”
“I’ll show you the books,” Blake said. “Bring you up to speed on everything we have going on.”
Brett knew he’d already offered, but Trish had been more interested in whether or not she could work with him and Frankie. “I don’t think that’s what she means,” he said, then had to clear the gruffness from his voice. “She has plans for the ranch.”
“The petting zoo and kids’ camps,” Liam said.
“I love that idea,” Elise added. “I think it would be great for kids who otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity to get a taste of living on a farm. We can teach them responsibility, too, by having them help take care of the petting zoo animals.”
Trish smiled. “And here I was worried that you would all vote against my idea.”
“Ah,” Blake said. “You thought all the Lemmons would stick together and side against you.”
“And Frankie,” she added with a glance at her cousin.
“How will this work?” Frankie asked, and she looked at Maci. “If someone wants to do something on the ranch, do we have to put it to a vote?”
Maci shrugged. “Frank didn’t put that into the will. I guess he assumed you would all figure it out.”
“Maybe he assumed that some people would sell their shares to the others,” Brett said with a glance at Trish. “That they wouldn’t actually be interested in running the ranch.”
Trish cleared her throat. “If that was what he thought, he would have been wrong.”
Brett had respected Frank for how much he’d loved the ranch and his family, for how hard he’d worked to try to hang on to them both.
“But was it wrong to assume that somebody who hadn’t shown any interest in the place for years wouldn’t want to be part of the day-to-day running of it?
” He shrugged. “That seems logical to me.”
Trish sucked in a breath, and the color left her face.
A pang of guilt struck Brett. He hadn’t wanted to upset her.
But he also had to defend his friend since Frank wasn’t here to defend himself.
Annoyed with himself more than anyone else, he shook his head.
“I can’t deal with this right now, with talking about petting zoos and kids’ camps that we don’t have the money or the manpower to get up and running.
We need to focus on the cattle, on what actually makes the money to keep this place going. ”
He turned and pulled open the door and then walked out.
He couldn’t stand around while Frank’s daughter destroyed the ranch that he had worked so hard to save.
But he didn’t know how to fight her and her ridiculous ideas when he didn’t want to hurt her or her feelings.
Clearly, she’d already been through a lot in her life.
If only she would just sell her share and leave…but he had a feeling that she wasn’t going anywhere. So would he have to? Because he wasn’t sure how he was going to work with Trish Dempsey, let alone live with her and the twin babies she was going to bring into the world soon.
* * *
Brett clearly didn’t want to work with her. Or live with her.
And she wasn’t sure if he just really didn’t like her plans for the petting zoo and camps, or if it was her that he didn’t like. That hurt, and the sting of pain stole her breath for a moment.
Elise reached out and patted her hand. “Are you okay?”