by Maggie Wells
Put that way, Janessa could understand Abe’s reasoning. At the time Brody was born, Sophia would have been about three months pregnant with her and had already left Abe. Judging from the few tidbits Janessa had managed to glean, Sophia had wanted a quick divorce and gotten one, but the complications started after her birth when Abe pressed for custody.
“Abe told me I was a nuisance.” Janessa cringed the moment she heard the words leave her mouth. Words still coated with hurt after all this time. Even if the hurt was justified, the timing was wrong to bash a man at his funeral.
Thankfully, Brody didn’t have time to respond to her confession because Asher finally got out of his car. After popping open his huge black umbrella, he started back toward them. Not a brisk pace but rather a slowpoke stroll. The lawyer’s expression was like a textbook example of someone bearing bad news.
Swallowing hard, Asher put on his glasses and opened the small white envelope he was carrying. “I’ll go ahead and read Abe’s opening statement as he instructed, and then we can go over a summary of the will.”
Asher stopped, gave each of them a glance, then huffed. “Look, you should know right off that you’re not going to like what I’m about tell you. I tried to talk Abe out of doing this, but as you know, he didn’t always listen to reason.”
Janessa felt her stomach clench into a little churning ball. Margo groaned and kicked the tombstone again. Brody, however, didn’t stir from his spot while Asher began.
“‘I figure if you’re listening to this, then you’re wanting to know what and how much I left you,’” Asher read aloud. “‘I have some stipulations. Now, that’s a big-assed word for you, isn’t it? A fifty-cent way of saying you’ll have to do as I say or you get diddly-squat. My lawyer will tell you all about the terms, but I’ll bottom line this for you. My daughter, Janessa Parkman, inherits everything.’”
Janessa froze, then blinked. “Excuse me?” she managed to say.
“Everything,” Asher verified.
“Everything?” Margo shrieked.
Janessa shook her head, looking first at Asher, who gave her no clarification whatsoever. He certainly didn’t add a laugh and say wasn’t that a fine fifty-cent joke?
Janessa whirled toward Brody to assure him that she not only hadn’t expected this, she darn sure didn’t want it. But Brody was already on the move, stepping out from the umbrella and walking away.
“Wait!” Janessa and Asher called out at the same time.
With the rain pelting down on him, Brody didn’t stop. Janessa ran after him. No easy feat what with her shoes slipping in the mud. He was already in his truck before she managed to reach him.
“I’m so sorry,” she blurted out. “Why would Abe do something like this?”
“Apparently, you weren’t a nuisance after all,” Brody drawled, right before he slammed the truck door, started the engine and drove off.
There were so many emotions racing through her that Janessa wasn’t sure which one she felt the most. She thought about it a second and decided that really-bad-pissed-off fury won that particular award. The ranch should have been Brody’s, and nothing should have gone to her.
When Janessa turned back around, she saw a fresh glare from Margo. “I didn’t know,” Janessa insisted. “And I’ll make it right. I can give the ranch and assets to Brody and you.”
“Well, actually you can’t do that,” Asher said, drawing her attention back to him. He got that messenger-of-really-bad-news look on his face again. “I understand Abe sent you a letter.”
That cooled some of her anger. “He told you about that?”
Asher shook his head. “No, but Abe arranged for a courier in San Antonio to deliver a copy of that letter to my office in the event of his death. The courier company just found out that his funeral was today so they brought it over. It arrived a couple of minutes ago, and my assistant called to tell me about it. I haven’t read it yet,” he quickly added, “but on the outside of the envelope there was a sticky note saying you’d already received the exact same letter, that he sent it to you a week ago.”
“That’s true,” Janessa admitted. “It’s in the car. I brought it with me.” But before she could say more, Asher held her off by lifting his hand.
“Let’s get through the will first, then we’ll deal with whatever’s in the letter,” the lawyer insisted. “As Abe said in his instructions, he had stipulations.”
“Stipulations?” Margo growled.
Asher nodded, but he left his gaze glued to Janessa. “And when you’ve heard them, I’m betting that you’ll be in just the right mood to kick your father’s tombstone.”
Don’t miss
Christmas at Colts Creek by Delores Fossen,
available November 2021 wherever
HQN Books® and ebooks are sold.
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Copyright © 2021 by Delores Fossen
Keep reading for an excerpt from Christmas Data Breach by K.D. Richards.
Christmas Data Breach
by K.D. Richards
Chapter One
Mya Rochon had a bounce in her step as she strolled the short distance back to her laboratory. She sipped her gingerbread latte, enjoying the Christmas lights draping the topiaries in the office complex. The starry Sunday night wasn’t the reason for her upbeat mood, however. She’d spent the last several weeks subjecting the final part of her cancer treatment to rigorous testing, and at every turn it had responded as she’d hoped. After years of study and research, it finally looked like she’d successfully developed a treatment for glioblastoma brain cancer.
The building that housed her laboratory sat at the back of the office complex and was smaller than the other office buildings. Dr. Timothy Ott’s office took up the first floor. TriGen Labs, which she helmed, occupied the second floor.
She headed around the building to the side entrance. There was no security guard on duty on weekends and tenants could exit from the lobby door on the weekend, but there was no entry from that door. She swiped her building identification, which doubled as a keycard, over the security panel by the door and headed down the hall to the elevators.
A man’s deep baritone voice from just around the corner in front of her had her pausing. Tenants had twenty-four-hour access to the building, but she couldn’t remember Dr. Ott ever coming in on a Sunday night. Nor did the voice she heard sound at all like the tenor of the kindly sixty-three-year-old dentist she knew. No, the tone of this man’s voice was chilling.
A shiver snaked down her spine. There was no doubt in her mind that he was dangerous.
Definitely not Dr. Ott.
Curiosity demanded she peek around the wall, but fear rooted her to the spot. She chucked the nearly empty coffee cup and listened.
“I’ve looked all over for her. Her car is in the lot, but she’s not here.”
Mya glanced back at the door through which she’d entered. Entry from the outside was granted electronically, but the door was opened from the inside by a metal bar that clanked loudly when pushed. She doubted she could make it out the door and away from the building without being heard.
“I’ve already started a fire in the lab. I need to get out of here before this place goes up in flames.”
Heavy footsteps moved away from where she stood. She waited until she couldn’t hear them any longer, then bolted for the door to the stairwell, the laptop in her oversize messenger bag bouncing against her hip.
There were years of work in that lab, not just hers, but her mentor’s life’s work too. She couldn’t just let it all go up in flames.
The lab took up most of the second floor, but she’d carved out space for a reception area and offices for herself and her assistant. On the second-floor landing, she dialed 911, ignoring the dispatcher’s order to get out of the building immediately. She tucked the phone into her pocket and ch
arged forward.
Mya burst out of the stairwell into the office’s small reception area. Nothing there seemed out of place, so she kept moving toward the lab and offices.
She heard the crackle of flames as she approached her office door. The man had set the fire in her trash can. Fire leaped from the bin and climbed the inexpensive cloth blinds she’d installed to brighten up the sterile office.
Her phone clattered to the floor as she grabbed the fire extinguisher from the wall outside her office and sprayed. The flames died just as a thunderous boom shook the floor. She ran back to the door of her office. Fire had shattered the glass separating her lab from the interior hallway. Shards littered the tiled floor.
No way would her fire extinguisher stand up against this much larger inferno. Fire raced along the tabletops and up the walls. The square ceiling tiles curled as they melted, falling from the ceiling. Smoke filled the hall quickly. She tucked her mouth and nose into the crook of her elbow and stepped away, coughing. There was nothing she could do to save the lab and she had to get out now.
Mya turned and hurried back down the stairs.
Outside, she could hear the distant blare of fire engines. She looked back at the lab where she’d worked eighty-hour weeks for the last decade.
She watched as the inferno moved in a cruel dance on the other side of the second-floor windows. Devouring her life’s work.
Copyright © 2021 by Kia Dennis
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ISBN-13: 9780369709257
Trial in the Backwoods
Copyright © 2021 by Margaret Ethridge
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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