Truly Madly Yours (6 page)

“What now?” Gwen asked, pulling Delaney’s attention from the past and Nick.

“If no one contests the will we can proceed fairly quick.” Max looked at Delaney. “Do you plan to challenge the will?”

“What’s the point? You made it clear that Henry’s provision for me was a take it or leave it proposition.”

“That’s correct.”

She should have known Henry would attach conditions to his will. She should have known he would try to make her take over his business, to control her and everyone else from the grave. Now all she had to do was choose. Money or her soul. Half an hour ago she would have said that her soul wasn’t for sale, but that had been before she’d heard the asking price. Half an hour ago everything had been so clear. Now suddenly the lines were blurred, and she didn’t know what to think anymore.

“Can I sell off Henry’s assets?”

“As soon as they legally belong to you.”

Three million dollars in exchange for one year of her life. After that, she could go anywhere she liked. Since leaving Truly ten years ago, she’d never stayed in one place for more than a few years. She always became too restless and edgy to stay in one place for very long. When the urge to move called, she always answered on the first ring. With all that money, she could go anywhere she wanted. Do whatever she wanted, maybe find a place she’d want to call home.

The last thing in the world she wanted was to move back to Truly. Her mother would make her crazy. She’d be crazy to stay here and give up a year of her life.

She’d be crazy if she didn’t.

Nick popped the Jeep’s clutch and killed the engine. He would have bet anything that the old man hadn’t intended to torch his horses too. He’d been there the morning after the fire when the coroner pulled what had been left of Henry from the ashes. Nick hadn’t expected to feel anything. He was surprised that he did.

Except for the five years Nick had lived and worked in Boise, he’d resided in the same small town as his father, both of them ignoring each other. It wasn’t until he and Louie had moved their construction company to Truly that Henry decided he would finally acknowledge Nick. Gwen had just turned forty and Henry finally accepted the fact that he would never father children with her. Time had run out, and he turned his attention to his only son. By then, Nick was in his late twenties and had no interest in a reconciliation with the man who’d always refused to acknowledge him. As far as he was concerned, Henry’s sudden interest was a case of too little too late.

But Henry was determined. He made Nick persistent offers of money or property. He offered him thousands of dollars to change his name to Shaw. When Nick refused, Henry doubled the offer. Nick promptly told him to shove it.

He offered Nick a share of his businesses if Nick would act like the son Henry wanted. “Come over for dinner,” as if that would make up for a lifetime of indifference. Nick turned him down.

Eventually though, they did enter into a somewhat strained coexistence. Nick gave his father the courtesy of listening to his offers and enticements
before
he refused. Even now, Nick had to admit some of the offers had been pretty good, but he’d easily turned them down. Henry accused him of obstinacy, but it was more disinterest than anything else. Nick just didn’t care anymore, but even if he’d been seriously tempted, everything had a price. Nothing was free. There was always a tradeoff. Quid pro quo.

Until six months ago. In an effort to bridge the gap between them, Henry gave Nick a very generous gift, a peace offering with no strings attached. He outright deeded him Crescent Bay. “So my grandchildren will always have the best beach in Truly,” he’d said.

Nick took the gift, and within a week, submitted plans to the city to develop condominiums on the five acres of beachfront property. The preliminary plan was approved remarkably fast, before Henry knew and could raise an objection. The fact that the old man didn’t find out until after the fact was incredible luck.

Henry had been furious. But he got over it quickly because there was something Henry wanted more than anything else. He’d wanted the one thing that only Nick could give him. He’d wanted a grandchild. A direct blood descendant. Henry had money and property and prestige, but he hadn’t had time. He’d been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. He’d known he was going to die.

“Just pick a woman,” Henry had ordered several months ago after barging into Nick’s downtown offices. “You should be able to get someone pregnant. God knows you’ve practiced enough to get it right.”

“I’ve told you, I’ve never met a woman I’d consider marrying.”

“You don’t have to get married, for God’s sake.”

Nick wasn’t willing to produce a bastard for anyone, and he hated Henry for suggesting it to him, his bastard son, as if the consequences were unimportant.

“You’re doing this to spite me. I’ll leave you everything when I’m gone. Everything. I’ve talked to my attorney, and I’ll have to leave Gwen a little something so she won’t contest my will, but you’ll get everything else. And all you have to do is get a woman pregnant before I die. If you can’t choose someone, I’ll pick the girl for you. Someone from a good family.”

Nick had shown him the door.

The cell phone chirped on the seat next to him, but he ignored it. He hadn’t been all that surprised when he’d learned the cause of Henry’s death had been a gunshot wound to the head and not the fire. He’d known Henry was getting worse, and Nick would have done the same thing.

Sheriff Crow had been the one to tell Nick that Henry had killed himself, but very few people knew the truth. Gwen wanted it that way. Henry had gone out on his own terms, but not before he’d created one hell of a will.

Nick had figured Henry would pull something in his will, but he’d never expected Henry to place the condition on what Nick did or didn’t do with
Delaney
. Why her? A real bad feeling tweaked the base of his skull, and he feared he knew the answer. It sounded perverse, but he had a feeling Henry was trying to pick the mother of his grandchild.

For reasons he didn’t want to examine too closely, Delaney had always spelled trouble for him. From the start. Like the time she’d been standing in front of the school bundled up in a fancy blue coat with a furry white collar, her blond hair a mass of shiny curls about her face. Her big brown eyes had looked into his, and a little smile had tilted her pink lips. His chest had grown tight and his throat closed. Then before he’d realized what he was doing, he’d picked up a snowball and nailed her in the forehead. He hadn’t known why he’d done it, but it had been the one and only time his mother took a belt to his behind. Not so much because he’d hit Delaney, but because he’d hit a girl. The next time he’d seen her at school, she’d looked like Zorro, with twin black eyes. He’d stared at her, feeling sick to his stomach and wishing he could race home and hide. He’d tried to apologize, but she’d always run away when she’d seen him coming. He guessed he didn’t blame her.

After all these years, she still had a way of getting to him. It was the way she looked at him sometimes. Like he was dirt, or worse, when she looked
through
him as if he didn’t even exist. It made him want to reach out and pinch her, just to hear her say ouch.

Today he hadn’t meant to hurt or provoke her. Well, not until she’d given him that “you’re scum” look. But listening to Henry’s will had provoked
him
. Just thinking about it pissed him off all over again. He thought about Henry and Delaney, and that real bad feeling tweaked the back of his neck once more.

Nick reached for the ignition key and headed back toward town. He had a few questions, and Max Harrison was the only person who knew the answers.

“What can I do for you?” the lawyer asked as soon as Nick was shown into a spacious office near the front of the building.

Nick didn’t waste time on idle conversation. “Is Henry’s will legal, and can I contest?”

“As I told you earlier when I read the will, it’s legal. You can waste your money on a contest.” Max gave Nick a wary look before he added, “But you won’t win.”

“Why did he do it? I have my suspicions.”

Max looked at the younger man standing in his office. There was something unpredictable and intense lurking just beneath that cool exterior. Max didn’t like Allegrezza. He didn’t like the way he’d behaved earlier. He didn’t like the disrespect he’d shown Gwen and Delaney—a man should never swear in the presence of ladies. But he’d liked Henry’s will even less. He sat in a leather chair behind his desk, and Nick sat across from him. “What are your suspicions?”

Nick leveled his wintry gaze on Max and said without reservation, “Henry wants me to get Delaney pregnant.”

Max debated whether to tell Nick the truth. He felt no love or loyalty toward his former client. Henry had been a very difficult man and had ignored his professional advice repeatedly. He’d cautioned Henry about drafting such a capricious and potentially injurious will, but Henry Shaw always had to have things his own way, and the money had been too good for Max to let his client find another lawyer. “I believe that was his intent, yes,” he answered truthfully, perhaps because he felt a little guilty for his part in it.

“Why didn’t he just say so in the will?”

“Henry wanted his will drafted that way for two reasons. First, he didn’t think you’d concede to father a child for property or money. Second, I informed him that if you contested a condition stipulating you impregnate a woman, you might possibly win on the grounds of a conflict of morals. Henry didn’t seem to think there was a judge around who would believe you have any morals when it comes to women, but contesting the will would defeat the purpose.” Max paused and watched Nick’s jaws tighten. He was pleased to see a reaction, however slight. Maybe the man wasn’t completely void of human emotion. “There is always a chance you might get a judge who would declare the condition void.”

“Why Delaney? Why not another woman?”

“He was under the impression that you and Delaney had a clandestine past together,” Max said. “And he thought if he forbade you to touch Delaney, you’d feel compelled to defy him, as I take it you have in the past.”

Anger tightened Nick’s throat. There had been no clandestine past between himself and Delaney. “Clandestine” made it sound like Romeo and freakin‘ Juliet. As far as the other, that whole forbidden theory, what Max said might have been true once, but Henry had overplayed his hand. Nick wasn’t a kid anymore, drawn to the things he couldn’t have. He didn’t do things just to defy the old man, and he wasn’t drawn to the porcelain doll who always got his hands slapped for him.

“Thank you,” he said as he stood. “I know you didn’t have to tell me anything.”

“You’re right. I didn’t.”

Nick shook Max’s extended hand. He didn’t think the lawyer liked him much, which was okay with Nick.

“I hope Henry went to all the trouble for nothing,” Max said. “I hope, for Delaney’s sake, he won’t get what he wants.”

Nick didn’t bother with a reply. Delaney’s virtue was safe from him. He walked out the front door of the office and down the sidewalk toward his Jeep. He could hear his cell phone chirping even before he opened the door. It stopped only to start once again. He started the engine and reached for the small phone. It was his mother wanting information about the will and reminding him to come to her house for lunch. He didn’t need reminding. He and Louie ate lunch at their mother’s house several times a week. It calmed her worries about their eating habits and kept her from coming to their houses and rearranging the sock drawers.

But today he didn’t particularly want to see his mother. He knew how she’d react to Henry’s will and really didn’t want to talk to her about it. She’d rant and rage and direct her angry diatribes at anyone with the last name Shaw. He supposed she had many legitimate reasons to hate Henry.

Her husband Louis had been killed driving one of Henry’s logging trucks, leaving her with a small son, Louie, to raise by herself. A few weeks after Louis’s funeral, Henry had gone to the house to offer his comfort and sympathy. When he’d left late that night, he’d left with the vulnerable young widow’s signature on a document releasing him from further responsibility in Louis’s death. He’d placed a check in her hand, and a son in her womb. After Nick had been born, Benita had confronted Henry, but he’d denied the baby could possibly be his. He’d kept denying it for most of Nick’s life.

Even though Nick figured his mother had a right to her anger, when he arrived at her house, he was surprised at the vehemence of today’s tirade. She cursed the will in three languages: Spanish, Basque, and English. Nick understood only part of what she said, but most of her outrage was directed toward Delaney. And he hadn’t even told her about the absurd no-sex stipulation. He hoped he wouldn’t have too.

“That girl!” she fumed, sawing her way through a loaf of bread. “He always put that
neska izugarri
before his son. His own blood. She is nothing, nothing. Yet she gets everything.”

“She might leave town,” Nick reminded her. He didn’t care whether Delaney stayed or was already on her way back home. He didn’t really want Henry’s businesses or the money. Henry had already given him the only property he would have wanted.

“Ba! Why should she leave? Your uncle Josu will have something to say about this.”

Josu Olechea was his mother’s only brother. He was a third-generation sheep rancher, and owned land near Marsing. Since Benita had no husband, she counted on Josu to be head of the family, no matter that her sons were grown.

“Don’t bother him with this,” Nick said and leaned a shoulder against the refrigerator. As a boy, whenever he’d gotten in trouble or his mother figured he and Louie needed a positive male influence, she’d sent them to spend the summer with Josu and his sheepherders. Both of them had loved it until they’d discovered girls.

The back door opened and his brother stepped into the kitchen. Louie was shorter than Nick. Solid, with the black hair and eyes he’d inherited from both his mother and father. “So,” Louie began, closing the screen door behind him. “What did the old man leave you?”