The Black Sheep's Inheritance(10)

"And you'll protect him from his damn family even after his death?"

"If I have to," Walter said softly.

Frustration clawed at him. "None of this makes sense. You know as well  as I do that J.D. had been grooming Angie for years, getting her ready  to run Lassiter Media."

"True..."

"So does it seem rational to you that he would leave the company to  Angie's fiancé?" There went his grasp on the last slippery thread of  temper.

The lawyer only stared at him for a long minute or two. "If you're  trying to insinuate that J.D. wasn't competent to make this will, you're  wrong. And that allegation would never stand in a court."

"I'm not talking about court." Yet. "I'm talking about your knowledge of J.D."

"As I've already said, J.D. had reasons for everything he did, and this is no different."

Sage had no idea why J.D. would have done this. It made no sense at all.

The lawyer's deliberate refusal to give anything away just increased the sense of outrage snarling inside him.

"This isn't getting either of us anywhere, Sage. So if you'll excuse me, I've got business to take care of and-"

"I'm not done with this, Walter," Sage promised. "We all want answers."

For the first time, a flicker of something that might have been  sympathy shone in the other man's eyes. "And I wish I could give them to  you," he said. "But it's out of my hands."

Frustrated, Sage conceded defeat. At least for now. "Fine. I'll go. But  once the family gets over the shock of all of this, I won't be the only  one showing up here demanding answers. I hope you're ready for that."

At any other time, Sage might have laughed at the beleaguered  expression on the man's face. But right now he just wasn't in the mood  to be amused.

Once out in the parking lot, Sage hunched deeper into his black coat as  a cold mountain wind pushed at him. Even nature was giving him a hard  time today. He crossed to his black Porsche and climbed in. During the  winter, this car spent most of its time locked away in a  temperature-controlled garage on his ranch. Right now, he was glad he  had the sports car. He had a driving need to push the car to its limits,  wanting the speed, needing the rush of the moment.

He peeled out of the lot, drove through Cheyenne, and once he was free  of the city, cut the powerful engine loose. He backtracked, headed to  the Big Blue ranch. By now, Colleen would be gone, but Marlene and Angie  would be there. And he had to see his sister. Find out for himself if  she was okay. But how could she be? She'd been betrayed by someone she  trusted. And Sage knew just how that felt.

The growl of the engine seemed to underscore the rage pumping just  below the surface of his mind. Speeding along the road to the ranch  forced him to focus, to concentrate on his driving, which gave him a  respite from everything else tearing through his brain. He steered the  car through the wide ranch gates, kicked up gravel along the winding  drive and then parked outside the front doors.

From the stable area came the shouts of men hard at work. He caught a  glimpse of a horse in a paddock, running through the dirt, and realized  that J.D. being gone hadn't stopped life from going on. This ranch would  go on, too. The old man had seen to that. But what the hell had he been  thinking about the rest of it?

Sage climbed out of the car and paused long enough to take a quick look  around the familiar landscape. Much like Sage's own ranch, there were  plenty of outbuildings, barns, cabins for the wranglers who lived and  worked on the ranch, guest cabins, and even a saltwater pool surrounded  by grass, not cement, so that it looked like a natural pond. His gaze  fixed on the ancient oak that shaded the pond and a reluctant smile  curved his mouth. He, Dylan and Angelica had spent hours out here when  they were kids, swinging from a rope attached to one of the oaks' heavy  limbs to drop into the cold, clear water.                       
       
           



       

So much of his life had been spent here on this ranch, and in spite of  his estrangement from J.D., there were a lot of good memories here, too.  He shifted his gaze to the house. Built from hand-cut logs, iron and  glass, it was two stories high and boasted wraparound porches with  hand-hewn wood railings on both levels. Those porches provided  Adirondack chairs with colorful cushions and views of the mountains from  almost everywhere.

Sage took a breath. He'd left here only a couple hours ago, but it felt  like longer. After mentally dueling with a crafty lawyer, he wanted  nothing more than a drink and some quiet. The minute he entered the  ranch house, though, he knew the quiet was something that would elude  him.

"Why would he do this to me?" Angelica demanded, her voice carrying through the cavernous house.

Three or four people answered her at once and Sage followed the voices  to the great room. The heart of the house, the main room was enormous,  with honey-toned wood floors, log walls and what seemed like acres of  glass windows affording views of the ranch and the wide blue sky that  had given the ranch its name above. He'd heard the story often enough to  know it by heart.

J.D. and his wife, Ellie, had bought this ranch, then only two hundred  acres, and Ellie had so loved the expanse of deep blue sky that J.D. had  decreed the ranch would be named Big Blue, after the sky overhead. Here  they'd begun the Lassiter dynasty. Over the years J.D. had added to the  property, expanding the ranch into the state's largest cattle herd and  building the land holdings up to more than thirty thousand acres. They'd  put their stamp on Wyoming and in Cheyenne, the Lassiter name was damn  near legend.

Maybe that was part of what Sage had rebelled against all these years.  The Lassiter name and what it had meant to J.D. What it had been like to  not be born a Lassiter, but made into one. With that thought simmering  in his brain, he took another step into the chaos.

"Thank heaven," Marlene muttered. "Sage, help me convince your sister that her father wasn't angry at her about anything."

He glanced quickly around the familiar room. The massive stone  fireplace, the wide French doors that led to a flagstone patio, the  oversize leather couches and chairs dotting the shining wood floor. And  the family members scattered across the room, all looking at him.

"What other reason could there be?" Angie asked, throwing both hands  high only to let them fall to her sides again. Flipping her dark hair  back out of her face, she looked at her oldest brother and said, "I  thought he was proud of me. I thought he believed in me."

"He did, Angie," Chance put in and she turned on her cousin.

"This is an odd way to show it, don't you think?"

Chance sighed and scrubbed one hand over his face impatiently. Sage  could sympathize. The poor guy had probably been trying to cheer Angie  up for hours with no success.

"Angie." Evan McCain spoke up then and all eyes turned to him. "You're overreacting."

"Am I?" Shaking her head, Angie looked at the man she had been poised  to marry only two weeks ago and it was as if she'd never seen him  before. The wedding had been postponed after J.D.'s death, but the two  of them had remained close. Until today. Until Evan had been given the  company Angie loved. "He gave the company-my company-to you, Evan." She  slapped one hand to her heart. "I was his daughter and he left it to  you."

Evan shoved one hand through his hair and looked to Sage for help. But  hell, Sage didn't know what he could do. He didn't believe that Evan had  tried to undermine Angie. But who the hell knew anymore? Mysterious  benefactors. Nurses who inherited three million dollars. A daughter who  got cheated out of what should have been hers. None of this made a damn  bit of sense.

Still, if they went to war with each other over it, that wouldn't solve  a thing either-it would just splinter them when they needed each other  most.

"Angie, taking it out on Evan isn't going to help," Sage finally said  and he caught a brief look of relief on Evan's face. "We just have to  try to figure out what was in J.D.'s mind and then do what we can to  change things."

"Can we change anything?" Marlene looked worried, her gaze darting from  Angelica to Evan and back again. "The will is done. And even though  J.D. was sick, he was mentally competent right up until his last day."

"I know." Sage walked to the woman who had been a mother in all but  name to him since he was a kid and wrapped one arm around her shoulders.  The scent of her perfume drifted up to him and colored his mind with  memories. Marlene had been the one stabilizing influence in his life.  Through all of his rebellion with J.D., his aunt was there, talking him  down, trying to build a bridge between Sage and his adoptive father.  That bridge had never really materialized, but it hadn't been for lack  of trying on her part.