Chapter Four
The room erupted, everyone talking at once. Tanner snatched the papers before Frank could get a word in edgewise.
Liz couldn’t believe it. The old coot had fucked them over. Well, not them. Tanner and Brady. It was their ranch—they deserved it—but now it belonged to a complete and utter stranger who shared some of their DNA.
“What in the absolute hell?” Brady muttered, launching himself over to Tanner, who was furiously scanning the will, his eyes snapping. Liz stayed put, a death grip on her mother’s hand. Her mother was several shades paler than normal.
“Peony. Please, have something to drink.”
Liz looked over to see Jake at her mother’s side, offering her a full glass of tea.
Peony opened her eyes and nodded, taking the tea and sipping it carefully.
Liz looked incredulously at the man. After what Frank had just said, Jake was offering her mother tea instead of being steaming mad like everyone else?
“What in the absolute hell?” she echoed Brady, and Jake looked over at her, confusion in his eyes. She sensed a great deal of worry coming off him. Or maybe it was shock.
They were all in shock.
“We’ll get this sorted out. There must be some mistake,” Jake said, and got up from her mother’s side and walked over to Tanner and Brady. “May I?”
Tanner thrust the papers at him and strode out of the room without another word. The front door slamming made her mother jump. Frank was rubbing his eyes again, obviously realizing this was now much more of a legal headache than it had been five minutes before.
Jake smoothed the papers out carefully, then, with a quick glance at Brady, looked the document over.
Liz watched his eyes go back and forth, then looking up and catching her eyes again. They shared a momentary acknowledgment of something, and she looked away, feeling the contact was too personal right at that moment.
“Frank, this is bullshit. I don’t want a ranch. It belongs to these people.”
His words flooded Liz with relief. They didn’t know Jake from a hole in the ground. If the will said he got it all, and he was a greedy asshole, he might just take it. But maybe he wasn’t. She wished he’d been able to say that before Tanner had stormed out. It might have helped.
But it was still fact that Brett had, in one fell swoop, doomed the ranch, and likely this wasn’t going to be something you fixed with a phone call and the assurances of the sole inheritor that he didn’t want it.
“I know, son. But there are goddamned clauses in the damned thing. If you try to give it back to Tanner, Brady, or Peony, the entire operation goes on the market for a charity, for a buck. He was pretty clear.”
“Is this even legal?” Brady asked, looking up at Frank. “I mean, real estate law, next of kin, and all that. Plus, Jake’s not even Canadian!”
“Actually, I am,” Jake muttered. “I was born right here in Brightside, and I still carry dual citizenship. I kept it to make travel easier.”
“Fuck,” Brady muttered, and turned away, obviously upset.
“It is legal, Brady. Brett has every right to disperse his assets to whomever he wants no matter who is the next of kin,” Frank interjected.
“Now, I’m going to look into some things, so nobody panic.
For now, we have to assume that this place will run as normal.
Brady, you may want to go find your brother before he beats something to a pulp and hurts himself. ”
Brady nodded and left the room, the front door slamming for the second time in as many minutes.
Liz felt the loss for her stepbrothers. All the time and work and sweat they had poured into this place beside their father, and it had been taken away with the stroke of a pen.
Salt in the wound from his death. A spit in their face from the grave.
Why? What had they done to make him so angry?
What in god’s name would have made Brett snub the only sons he’d raised and who’d dedicated their lives to this place?
Liz stood up and motioned to Jake to give her the papers. He did without a word, an apologetic look in his eyes, and she again was taken aback at him and the situation. He was much more even-keeled right at this moment than his brothers were.
She looked over the tight, spiky scrawl that was Brett’s signature, and scanned the first page.
Just like Frank had said, he’d left the entire place to Jake.
Lock, stock, and frickin’ barrel. He was to be the sole owner and was required to live there and to operate the ranch.
If he tried to sell it, live off property, or revert ownership to either of his half brothers, the executor was to immediately put the ranch on the market for a dollar.
Not one mention of her in any of the confusing language, which, for a moment, irked her, but she let it go. She wasn’t a West. Brett would often remind her of that when they argued about some decision she’d made in the stables without his approval.
She scanned farther, but there was no mention of anything for her mother either. There had to be something for her in here. Money, some way to live.
“Frank, my mother isn’t mentioned,” she said, flipping the pages.
“No, she isn’t,” Jake replied. “At all.”
Frank motioned for her to give him the will, and he took his time to read through it while they waited. Her mother had leaned back on the couch, her eyes closed again.
“Mom?” Liz asked. “You okay?”
“I’ll be fine, dear. Just letting it all sink in. This has become quite an eventful day.”
Liz swallowed the lump forming in her throat and looked out the window at the far side of the room. This place was her mother’s home, her home, and her job. What was going to happen now?
Frank shuffled some additional papers in the sheaf from the envelope. He sighed and opened his briefcase.
“Okay. There’s a copy of the deed in here, as well as some inheritance-law paperwork. I have to draw up further papers and talk to our real estate lawyer about this.”
“What happens if I take ownership for one year, enough to thwart the inheritance taxes, and then sell? There’s nothing in there about doing that,” Jake said quickly.
“And when I do put it up for sale, they buy it back for that dollar. Or I could sell it to Liz now, she’s not related to me, my brothers, or Brett by blood, it would be aboveboard, too, yeah? ”
“That is an avenue I will pursue, yes, but let’s not be hasty, there might be another way around all this. It also says here the buyers, should you decide to sell, must be a registered animal charity, which, well, Liz isn’t.”
“Easy enough to set up,” Jake snapped back, seemingly grasping at straws, thinking out loud.
“What in hell was he thinking?” Liz blurted, more to herself, but Frank answered with a sound that was half exasperation and half annoyance.
“I don’t know, my dear. He never once clued me in to what he was thinking. I kind of feel—”
“Cheated,” Jake finished for him, and the two nodded at one another. Everyone was silent for a moment, the only sound the ticking clock on the far wall. Cheated? This was beyond that.
“Yes. Okay. Jake, you need to move here ASAP to meet conditions of the will. Until we get this sorted out, stick close,” Frank finally said, as he gathered everything up.
“Frank, how can I—” Jake started, then stopped.
He looked frustrated. She watched him thinking, looking for the words, the furrow in his brow identical to Tanner’s.
The enormity of how many lives had just been completely screwed over hit her, and the anxious lump in her stomach turned into tears behind her eyes.
She needed to leave, right now. It was too much, and it was overwhelming her.
She took one more look at her mother, who nodded silently, and then stormed out of the room, taking her turn to slam the front door.
* * *
Liz found Tanner exactly where she expected, sitting in the big loft above the stable, legs dangling out the elevator chute door.
Brady was nowhere to be seen, but she figured he had his head underneath the hood of one of the farm trucks.
Tanner sulked when he was mad, and Brady tinkered.
Liz normally just doubled down on the job, but right now, she didn’t want to get on a horse.
Her patience was so thin she’d do more harm than good.
“Tan,” she said quietly, and he turned at her voice. She could see he’d been crying, which was unusual for him. He was the most stoic, uptight man she’d ever met, next to Brett. This was big, though. This was his life. Tears were justified.
“Hey,” he said, wiping at his face and scooting over for her, attempting to hide the emotion he’d obviously been unable to cope with but didn’t want to share.
She lowered herself down beside him, and they sat shoulder to shoulder and looked out over the back pasture.
Horses lazily cropped at grass or stood in the shade, tails flicking, not a care in the world.
A serene, never-changing view, and Liz felt at odds with that, because it had changed, irrevocably.
“What did we do?” Tanner said suddenly. “What would make Dad do that? Did we upset him, or—”
“I have no idea,” Liz said quietly. “I wish I did.”
“Not like I can ask him, can I?” Tanner replied, irritated. “Jesus, Lizzie. How in the hell am I supposed to make this work?”
She couldn’t answer him right away and squeezed his arm, letting the silence envelope them once again. The dust motes floating through the air and the fresh, fragrant hay stacked to the rafters were soothing to her nerves.
What did you say? What could you say about what had just happened?
She picked at her fingers, looking over at Tanner, whose face was reverting to an unreadable mask.
Tanner always bottled shit up, which made it ten times worse when it overflowed.
He had an explosive temper, and it meant that in the past, he and Brett had raised quite a ruckus arguing over ranch matters.
“If it helps, your long-lost brother is no more on board with this idea than you,” she offered finally. “He and Frank are looking into loopholes right now.”
Tanner, all thirty years old of rough, tough ranch foreman, took on the face of a petulant child, and spat, “I don’t want that asshole here. He’s no brother of mine.”
“Tan,” Liz warned. “He’s a West, even you have to see that. And it isn’t his fault that your dad decided to be a jackass. He’s gotta be here, or we lose the place. You saw the will.”
“Fuck!” Tanner spat, and turned to her, his ire up again. “It’s bullshit. What the hell is he going to do, huh? Take over my job?”
“Hey, I doubt that! He’ll likely have to sign some paperwork and he’ll, I don’t know, live here in the guest room until we can get it signed back over to you and Brady. It’s not impossible, Tan. Just a bump. You believe that, right?”
Tanner stood with a jerk and dusted off his jeans. He stopped, let out a tired, creaky groan, and held out a hand, pulling Liz up. “I’m sorry, Lizzie. I can’t take it out on you, that’s not fair. I’m being stubborn and I’m not dealing, which I should be.”
“Fair? Fuck fair, Tan. You’ve got a right to be mad.”
Tanner turned, his hat in his hand. She touched him on the shoulder, and he stopped, and then she did what she’d done for him every time he’d gotten into a scrap with his father, or another boy at school, or something had rubbed him the wrong way.
She grabbed him before he could protest and hugged him around the waist. He was her brother—maybe not by blood, but it mattered that he was her chosen family.
Tanner hated hugs, but from her he’d take one, in private, and not for long. He hugged her back, squeezing her just a little, then let her go.
“I have no idea what the fuck to do,” he muttered.
“We’ll figure this out. Frank’s a good lawyer.”
“I sure hope so,” was the response as he slid down the access ladder opposite the hay chute to the stable aisle, striding away as soon as his boots hit concrete.
Liz stood in the loft a moment more, then threw the night hay down.
Might as well get back to work. Horses didn’t care who ran the joint, as long as they got fed.