Damon’s silver brows drew in as he eased forward in the leather chair. “If you’re concerned about the money I could make by selling him, don’t be.”
Shaking his head, Nash clenched his fists. Damn it, he hated this. “I know you’re not concerned with the money. I know this because I’ve been offering to buy him for nearly three months now.”
Confusion settled onto Damon’s face as the elderly man drew his brows together in confusion. “I’m not following you.”
“You’ve been getting phone calls from Barry Stallings.”
Damon’s back straightened. “How do you know this?”
Holding firm to his courage, Nash leveled Damon’s gaze. “Because Barry is my assistant.”
Damon stared, studied for a minute, then gasped as realization dawned on him. Jerking to his feet, he started shaking his head.
“How can this be?” he whispered, as if to himself. “You—you’re...what the hell game have you been playing? The long hair, the beard. You’re a bigger man than I remember. Then again I haven’t seen you in person in years. How long have you been planning to come here and spy on me? Was the son angle just a convenient reason? Or are you even my son?”
For once in his life, Nash remained seated, wanting Damon to feel in control. Nash had never relinquished power to anyone before, and certainly not to his longtime rival, but right now, rivalry was gone and this was about so much more.
“I haven’t lied about the fact I’m your son,” Nash began. “I did find out when my mother had a stroke several months ago.”
“Jake Roycroft is my son.” Damon’s jaw clenched. “So, you came in deceiving us from day one with this fake name, long hair and a beard. Your clothes are all worn and even your truck is dated. You sure as hell thought this betrayal out down to the last detail.”
There was no other angle to look at it. Damon was dead-on.
“I did,” Nash confessed. “I wanted to come in, find out what you had planned for your horses after retirement. I needed a prizewinner to breed with mine and I wanted the best.
“Finding out I was your son was like a slap in the face,” he went on, putting everything on the line for the family he’d come to love...the rival he always thought he’d hate. “I couldn’t believe it. But my mother’s gut-wrenching confession was all the proof I needed. She’d kept the truth from me, from you, because she knew it would tear us up. She’d watched this feud for years, but when she had her stroke, she couldn’t keep the secret anymore.”
“And what was your plan when you first arrived?” Damon asked, his tone anything but that of a loving father or the cheerful man who’d walked into this room moments ago.
Now Nash did rise. He needed to pace, needed to get out of here, but he had to stay and continue to unravel this damn web he’d caught himself in.
“I was hoping if I got a good idea of what your plans were for the horses, I could get my assistant to offer enough money to take them.”
Nash crossed to the mantel where a new photo of Tessa, Cassie and Damon sat. The trio stood in front of Don Pedro after the historic win of the Triple Crown. Nash hadn’t been there, he’d been here at Stony Ridge taking care of the other horses.
Other photos showed Rose holding her two young daughters in front of a waterfall, a teen Tessa atop a Thoroughbred, Cassie in a ring with another horse. The family was tight and Nash wondered if he’d ever truly be able to break in where he longed to be.