The Rancher’s Inherited Family (McCall Ranch Brothers Book 1)

by Leslie North

  15

  Two weeks passed before Trevor was able to see Helena in the rearview mirror. What people said was true. When it rained, it poured—and it had stormed like crazy in Helena, to be sure. He'd spent the whole time away thinking about the responsibilities he was shirking at the ranch, but now that he was pulling back onto the property, he couldn't stop worrying over whether he'd done enough back in Helena. He was a man torn between two worlds, and neither was going exactly as it should.

  “Ah, hell,” he said in a low, strained voice as he guided his truck into its accustomed spot beside his late parents’ home. The typically easy job was made more difficult due to a couple of extra cars he hadn’t been expecting.

  Except that he should have been expecting them. He had known for at least a month that Randy and Carson were coming this week, had probably even known the precise day. In all of the damage control he'd been caught up in around Helena, though, he'd completely forgotten. He hadn't checked to see that everything on the ranch was as it should be, which it likely wasn't, due to all the time he'd been spending on the bed and breakfast instead of looking after the family land. He had a sinking suspicion that he hadn't warned Lacey about their arrival, either, solidifying his belief that everyone inside the McCall house had reason to be pissed at him.

  "Better face the music," he muttered, climbing out of the truck and plodding toward the house. Before he was halfway up the stairs, he heard the lock of the front door twisting, and the screen door flew wide.

  "Trevor!" Jade cried, shouting his name at the top of her lungs as she flung herself across the porch. She launched herself into his arms without a moment's hesitation, her unflappable faith that he would catch her leaving him with goosebumps. "You're home! There are other people here, too! Lacey's making lemonade!"

  “Is she, now?” Trevor asked, kissing Jade on the tip of her nose before setting her down at his side. She reached for his hand, intertwined her fingers with his, and began to swing their clasped hands back and forth.

  “Yup! She said it was lucky there was something in the house.”

  “Yeah,” Trevor sighed. “I bet she did.”

  Trying to ignore a rising feeling of dread, Trevor walked Jade into the living room, where both of his brothers sat making small talk. Between them, Lacey was busy setting out a tray that held a large, sweating pitcher of lemonade and several glasses. When Trevor stepped into the room, all three faces turned in his direction.

  “Trevor!” Lacey exclaimed in surprise, blushing as soon as his name left her mouth. “I didn’t know you were going to be back today!”

  "Looks like you haven't been keeping any of us abreast of your plans," Randy said. His tone was genial enough, but the spark in his eyes told Trevor that his youngest brother wasn't altogether thrilled.

  Trevor felt anger of his own taking root and shook his head as if to clear it. There was no denying that they were all under a lot of pressure, and all of them had made and would continue to make sacrifices in order to fulfill their dead parents' wishes. Carson was home for the rest of the designated year now, having planned all of his rodeoing events for the foreseeable future in the vicinity. Randy didn't have all of his plans wrapped up quite yet, but he was in town for the week before his finals to see how things were holding up. He would return for graduation and then head right back to the ranch, forgoing the normal post-graduation festivities to take on his share of the responsibilities.

  They were all making sacrifices. Intellectually, Trevor knew that. At the same time, up until now, he had been the one trying to keep everything afloat, with the ranch, with Jade, and to a certain extent with the bed and breakfast as well. He had been the last line of defense, and he didn't appreciate the disapproval he thought he saw in his brothers' eyes now.

  “Is there a problem, boys?” he asked, warming up to the idea of being angry. Carson cleared his throat, shifting uncomfortably, and Randy got to his feet. Lacey balanced, looking at each brother in turn with mingled apprehension and exasperation. Randy opened his mouth, undoubtedly to say something that would escalate the situation, but before he could get a word out, Trevor’s phone rang.

  “Jeez, saved by the bell,” Carson said, exhaling loudly and looking at Lacey out of the corner of his eye.

  “Excuse me,” he said gruffly. “I’ve got to take this.”

  He stepped out of the room, grateful for the interruption. That gratitude lasted for roughly the few seconds it took him to get his phone out of his pocket. When he saw who was calling, his heart clenched, and his palms started sweating.

  "Mr. Morgan," he said, working hard to keep his voice level and only partially succeeding. Albert Morgan was the private investigator Trevor had hired when Penny had taken off. At the start, Trevor had hoped that his cousin would be found quickly, and everything would return to normal. Now, his desires had entirely changed, and he dreaded hearing what Morgan might have for him. He had half a mind to hang up and change his number, not that it would do any good. The man was an investigator, for Christ's sake.

  “Mr. McCall,” Morgan drawled into the phone. “I bet you’ve been wondering when you were going to get some news from me.”

  “No, of course not,” Trevor said with a nervous laugh. “You can take all the time in the world.”

  “I have been,” Morgan said with a humorless chuckle of his own. “Fortunately for both of us, I’ve found her. Unfortunately, that’s about where the good news ends.”

  “Right,” Trevor said, clenching the hand not holding the phone tightly. “Tell me.”

  “As I said, I found Penny,” Morgan said, his tone grave. “I’m sorry to tell you that she’s in no state to be a parent. She’s living in a drug den and working the streets. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but her dropping Jade off on your doorstep was the best bit of mothering she could have done.”

  “Dear God,” Trevor said, shutting his eyes tightly. As angry as he was at Penny for what she’d done, he still loved his cousin. She was family, one of the good parts of his childhood memories. To hear that she had fallen so low was a hard pill to swallow. Then there was the fact that Mr. Holloway had made it pretty darn clear that his chances at getting custody of Jade were slim.

  “I know,” Mr. Morgan said sympathetically. “I’m sorry. I hate to deliver news like this, I really do. I wanted to let you know as soon as possible, though, give you time to start making arrangements. No official in the world would give that woman back her daughter, the way things stand. It’s time to find an alternative.”

  “Right,” Trevor said shakily, his hands actually trembling now. “Thank you for letting me know.”

  He hung up the phone, and for a moment, he was positive he was going to throw up. Both Holloway’s and Morgan's words rang in his ears. Holloway had made it clear that he could never qualify to be Jade's new father. Now Morgan was driving home the point that Penny was no longer fit to parent her child. As far as Trevor saw it, that left only one option. He had to make himself more desirable, and the best way to do that was marriage. The idea sounded crazy because it was crazy, but it was also the best option left to a drowning man.

  He shut his eyes and said a little prayer, then cleared his throat. “Lacey?” he called, surprised by how level his voice was, given what he was about to do. “Hey, would you mind coming in here for a minute?”

  “Sure,” she called back, sounding distracted. “Give me one second.”

  Trevor listened to the sound of Jade's rapid-fire questions mingling with the low-voiced conversation going on between Randy and Carson. It was, against all odds, the sound of family. As confused and unconventional as it might be, he had a room full of family waiting for him, and he aimed to keep it if he could.

  “What’s going on, Trevor?” Lacey asked, coming around the corner with an uncertain smile on her face. As soon as she got a look at his expression, though, the smile disappeared. All of her standoffishness seemed to vanish, too, at least for the time being. She reached for his arm, se
eming to have forgotten for the moment that touching each other wasn’t something they did anymore.

  “I just got a call from that PI I hired when Penny went missing,” Trevor said, trying to make the words sound real as he spoke them.

  “Okay,” she said in a shaky voice, and he saw her take hold of a lock of hair and twist it fretfully around one finger. “What did he say?”

  “They found her. She’s...she’s no good as a mom, Lacey. There’s no way she’s going to get to keep Jade, and that’s assuming that she would even want the kid back. If I don’t figure something out, Jade’ll wind up in foster care.”

  “But we can’t let that happen!” Lacey exclaimed, her face twisting with horror at the notion. “What happens next? With everything Mr. Holloway said—?”

  "Marry me," Trevor interrupted quietly. "That's what we do. Marry me, and then we won't have to worry about the ‘single man’ issue anymore. We'll be able to give her a family, and I'll be able to keep helping you with the bed and breakfast. Most important, though, Jade will be safe."

  Lacey looked at him for a moment, her eyes blank, almost as she hadn't understood a word he'd just said. She suddenly pulled her hand away, taking back the comfort of her touch, and took several steps away from him as if she couldn't stand to be so close. It was like she didn't even want to breathe the same air. She shook her head, looking down at her feet, and when she looked at him again, her eyes were full of tears. Seeing that filled him with an unnamed dread, and he knew before she gave her answer that he had screwed up again. The only problem was, he wasn't entirely sure how or why.

  “No, Trevor,” she said, her voice hardly above a whisper, and shook her head again. “I know you think you’ve found the perfect solution, but no. I can’t. I love Jade, you know I do, but I can’t do this. I can’t pretend anymore.”

  Before he could say anything, either apology or retaliation, Lacey turned and fled. Of all of the mistakes he'd made in his life, he couldn't remember one that had made him feel worse. The sight of her turning her back on him, walking away, maybe for good, made him want to cry right along with her.

  16

  It took three days for Trevor to get himself into gear after Lacey’s cutting loose. He didn’t blame her, not after that mess of a proposal he’d made, but that didn’t make her leaving any easier. Now, he wasn’t only trying to deal with the feeling of the walls closing in around him when it came to Jade, he was also contending with his own uncomfortable feelings.

  He’d never meant to propose, never would have done so if he hadn’t felt that his back was up against the wall, but that didn’t make her refusal sting any less. For Trevor, it only proved what he already knew in his gut, even if Lacey didn’t. He wasn’t good enough for her. A man like him could never be. Even if he wished to give her what she wanted, what she needed, he knew he didn’t have it in him. He was pretty sure Lacey would see it, too, after a little time passed. Losing him wasn’t really losing much of anything at all.

  The situation had one bright point, though, something that made him feel like life was worth living, and that was Jade. That was the one effort he wasn’t willing to give up on, not until they pried her out of his hands. Having Randy and Carson back for good made his prospects look a whole lot better, too—or at least, he was hoping it did. Like having three parents instead of one. Trevor had to hope that would be better in the eyes of the law.

  "Trevor?" Jade asked, poking him in the forearm with one of her dolls for good measure. "Whatcha thinking?"

  “Nothing, sweet girl,” he said with a smile as he ruffled her hair. “Just how happy I am to have you here.”

  "Me, too," Jade said, pulling her doll closer and examining its synthetic hair carefully. Trevor waited to see if she would say anything else but heard nothing more than a sigh.

  He bit his tongue, weighing the benefits of pretending he didn't see her unhappiness against waiting for it to pass. It was an awful thing to consider, and it made him feel like a real jerk, but he thought he already knew what had her so blue. They’d already had this conversation plenty of times, although Lacey hadn't been gone for very long. Something told him they were going to keep right on having it, too, until Jade either lost her voice or Lacey came back. Trevor thought the former was the more likely of the two scenarios. Still, he couldn't quite make himself keep quiet, much as he might want to. He reached out to lift the small chin a little, so that Jade was looking into his eyes, and tilted his head questioningly.

  “Feel like telling me what’s the matter?” he asked gently.

  "I miss Lacey," she answered, tears springing to her eyes and falling down her rosy cheeks. "I want her to come back."

  “I know it, honey, and I’m sorry, but Lacey’s got things she needs to take care of. It was never part of the plan for her to stay with us forever. She’s not part of this family.”

  “But I want her to be!” Jade insisted, banging a chubby fist on the hardwood floor. “I want her to come back.” She gulped back a sob. “I love her, Trevor. I want her to be my new mommy.”

  “I know, kiddo,” Trevor sighed. “I love her, too.” He wanted to take the words back as soon they came out of his mouth. He'd never spoken them aloud, rarely even thought them privately. The last thing he'd intended was to make some kind of lovesick admission to Jade, who would surely only try to use the information against him in her next attack against his defenses. The worst part was that it didn't matter whether or not he loved Lacey. It didn't change his defects, and it didn't change things so that they could be together. The damage was done, and there was no sense in getting Jade's hopes up.

  "Hey, Trevor!" Carson shouted from the other room, his voice strained. Trevor closed his eyes and took in a deep breath, holding it for a count of ten before he let it out again. Grateful as he was for having his brothers around, he still wasn't used to everyone being under the same roof. The urge to revert back to a sixteen-year-old when dealing with them was strong, and being shaken up the way he was now didn't help matters any.

  "He's in here!" Jade called cheerfully. When Trevor glanced at her, she had put on a wide grin. Whether she was trying to be helpful or messing with him, he couldn't tell for certain, but she was awfully pleased with herself, either way.

  “Come on in here a minute,” Randy said. “We need to talk to you about something.”

  As a rule, Trevor didn't respond so well to being summoned, but something in Randy's voice was making the back of his neck prickle. He had the feeling Randy and Carson needed to say something that they didn't want Jade to hear, and to Trevor, that spelled nothing but bad news. He ruffled Jade's hair again and got to his feet, wincing at the way his knees cracked as he stood. All this cross-legged playtime was harder on a body than it looked.

  "What's going on, guys?" he said as he rounded the corner, looking over his shoulder to make a funny face at Jade as he went. "I'm engaged in some pretty heavy-duty make-believe at the moment."

  Carson and Randy were standing in front of the fireplace. Carson held a piece of paper in a white-knuckled grip. Seeing Trevor, the younger brothers exchanged a quick glance, the kind that held a whole silent conversation. Carson lifted the old, faded paper toward Trevor.

  "We found something," Randy said quietly, his voice sounding almost shy. "We were looking through the attic, and we found a chest full of some of Mom and Dad's things. We weren't sure whether or not we should show you, but after talking it over, we thought you should know."

  “Jeez, man,” Carson said shakily, shoving the hand not holding the paper as deep down in his pocket as it could go. “Please tell me we did the right thing by showing you this.”

  “No need to be worried, guys,” Trevor said, doing his best not to look at the paper they were trying to thrust upon him. “I know what that is.”

  “What?!” responded Randy and Carson in perfect unison. It would have been funny had the topic of conversation been different.

  As it was, Trevor only felt tired. He brushed past them
and poured himself a drink before dropping into an overstuffed leather armchair and finally meeting their gaze. "I found that in Dad's papers when I was in high school," he said with a sigh. "But I'd been looking for something like it for a while before that. I knew when I was younger. That I was different."

  “You stopped smiling,” Carson said, half to the room and half to himself.

  “Looking for it?” Randy asked incredulously. “Why would you go and do a thing like that?”

  “Because, man, look at me,” Trevor said, gesturing at his face. “I don’t look like you guys. I don’t look like any of you. It’s why Dad treated me different, too. It doesn’t take a genius to see that he never really wanted me. I was the designated black sheep without even having to try. I was never going to belong, no matter what I did.”

  He took a deep breath, looking from one to the other. “It’s why I’m leaving when this year is up, too. This place doesn’t belong to me. It’s for the family, and I’m not really a part of it.”

  "I'm sorry, Trevor, but you've got it all wrong," Carson said simply as if he somehow had insight into the situation that Trevor hadn’t been able to achieve in more than a decade.

  Trevor felt a surge of anger and gripped the arm of the chair tightly, willing himself to stay calm. “I’d be careful if I were you, little brother,” he said slowly. “I’m not interested in hearing fairytales. I’ve been sitting with this for a long time.”