Westmoreland's Way

by Brenda Jackson

  It hadn’t been easy and Tammi, his girlfriend from college, had claimed she would stick by his side no matter what. Less than six months into their marriage she had run back home hollering and screaming that she couldn’t handle living on a ranch with a bunch of heathens.

  That was after she had failed to convince him to put his youngest brother, Bane, who’d been eight at the time, his cousins—Adrian and Aiden—the twins who’d been ten, and Bailey, who’d been seven, into foster care because they were always getting into some kind of mischief.

  He had understood that most of their antics had been for the attention they’d needed after losing their parents. However, Tammi had failed to see it that way and wanted out of the marriage. One good thing that had come out of his divorce was that he’d realized it was meant for him to be single and, as long as he was the head of the family, he would stay that way.

  Another good thing about his divorce was that the younger Westmorelands—all of them with the exception of Bane—had felt guilty about Tammi leaving and had improved their behavior. Now the twins and Bailey were in college. Bane…was still Bane.

  “You lost, mister?”

  Dillon quickly turned around to look into two pairs of dark brown eyes standing a few yards away. Twins? No, but they could pass for such. Now he could see that one of the teenage girls was a head taller than the other.

  “Well, are you?”

  He smiled. Evidently he hadn’t spoken quick enough to suit them. “No, I’m not lost if this is the Novaks’ place.”

  The taller of the two said, “I’m a Novak. We both are.”

  Dillon chuckled. “Then I guess I’m at the right place.”

  “Who did you want to see?”

  “I want to see Pamela Novak.”

  The shorter of the two nodded. “That’s our sister. She’s in the house talking to him.”

  Dillon raised a brow. He had no idea who him was, and from the distasteful way it had been said, he really wasn’t sure he wanted to find out. “If she’s busy I can come back later,” he said, moving back toward the car.

  “Yeah, because he might get mad if he thought you’d come calling just to see Pammie,” the taller one said.

  A look of mischief shone in their eyes as the two girls looked at each other and smiled. And then, screaming to the top of their voices, they called, “Pammie, a man is here to see you!”

  Dillon leaned against his car with arms across his chest, knowing he had been set up, and the two teens were having a little fun at his expense. He wasn’t so sure how he liked it until the door to the house swung open. At that moment he literally forgot to breathe. A strikingly beautiful woman walked out. It didn’t matter that she was frowning. The only thing that mattered was that she was definitely the living, breathing specimen of the most gorgeous woman he’d ever seen.

  She couldn’t have been any taller than five-eight, and was slim with just the right curves in the jeans she was wearing. She had shoulder-length black hair flowing around her shoulders and a medium brown complexion that complimented the rest of her features. Her eye color was the same dark brown as the two scamps, and she had a pixie nose that was perfect for her face. She was definitely a stunner. A raven-haired beauty that made him nearly breathless.

  “Hey, you’re trespassing. May I help you?”

  He looked beyond her to a big hulk of a man standing directly behind her in the doorway who’d asked the question in a high-pitched and agitated tone. And he was glaring at Dillon as if his very presence annoyed the hell out of him.

  Dillon quickly figured that this must be the “him” the girls had been referring to, and was about to open his mouth to speak when the taller of the two girls spoke up. “No, you can’t help him because he didn’t come to see you, Fletcher. He came to see Pammie.”

  A dark scowl covered the man’s face at the same time a smile touched the teen’s lips. It wasn’t hard to see she was deliberately trying to get a rise out of the man.

  “Paige and Nadia, shouldn’t you be upstairs doing your homework?” the gorgeous woman asked the two before turning her curious gaze on Dillon. Unlike her male friend, she smiled brightly and had a cheerful look on her face.

  “Pamela Novak?” he heard himself ask, trying to force air into his lungs. He’d seen beautiful women before, but there was something about her that was doing something to everything male within him.

  “Yes,” she said, still smiling while stepping down the steps toward him. He pushed away from the car and began moving toward her, as well.

  “Wait a minute, Pamela,” the hulk of a man called out. “You don’t know this man. You shouldn’t be so quick to be nice to people.”

  “Maybe you should follow her lead, Fletcher.”

  A new voice Dillon hadn’t heard before had spoken up, entering the fray. He glanced behind the hulk to see a young woman, probably around seventeen or eighteen, stepping out the door. Another sister, he quickly surmised, due to the similarities in their features.

  Pamela Novak continued walking and when she came to a stop in front of Dillon, she offered her hand. “Yes, I’m Pamela Novak, and you are…?”

  He accepted her hand and immediately felt a warmth that began to flow all through his body. Then a fluttering he felt in the pit of his stomach began to slide downward. Even the engagement ring he’d noticed her wearing couldn’t stop the sensations engulfing him.

  He watched her mouth move, fascinated with her lips and thinking they had a nice shape. He felt his stomach tighten when he raised his gaze from her lips to her eyes. “I’m Dillon Westmoreland.”

  He watched her brow lift ever so slightly, although she kept her smile in place. He could tell she was searching her memory for when, how and where she recalled the last name. He decided to help her. “I understand that my great-grandfather, Raphel Westmoreland, was once a business partner of your great-grandfather, Jay Winston Novak.”

  The smile on her lips transformed into a full chuckle. “Oh, yes, Raphel Westmoreland. The wife stealer.”

  He couldn’t stop his lips from twitching in a smile. “Yes, so I’ve heard. In fact, that’s the reason I’m here. I—”

  “What does he want, Pamela?”

  Dillon could tell by the stiffening of Pamela Novak’s shoulders that she wished the hulk would keep quiet for once. “Is he your fiancé?” he couldn’t help asking.

  She met his gaze and studied it for a moment before saying, “Yes.”

  She then inclined her head to call back over her shoulder, “This is Dillon Westmoreland. Our great-grandfathers were once business partners so I consider him a friend of the family.”

  She quickly turned back to Dillon, presented him with another smile and whispered, “You know I say that loosely, don’t you, considering your great-grandfather’s reputation.”

  Now it was Dillon’s time to chuckle. “The reason I’m here is to find out all I can about that reputation since I only recently discovered he had one and—”

  “What does he want, Pamela?”

  Before she could respond the shortest of the teen imps said, “We already told you. He wants Pammie.”

  The hulk’s frown deepened and Dillon knew the young girl hadn’t meant it the way it sounded, but basically she had spoken the truth. He was attracted to Pamela Novak. Encroaching into another man’s territory had been Raphel Westmoreland’s style, but was not his. However, at that moment Dillon didn’t feel any guilt about the thoughts going through his mind, especially since it was apparent the woman was engaged to an ass. But that was her business, not his.

  The man came down the steps and moved toward them and Dillon quickly sized him up. He wore a suit and an expensive pair of black leather shoes. His shirt and tie didn’t look cheap, either, which meant he was probably a successful businessman of some sort.

  When he stopped in front of him, Dillon offered the man his hand. “I’m Dillon Westmoreland, and like Ms. Novak said, I’m a family friend. The reason I’m here,” he decided to add,
“is because I’m doing research on my family’s history.”

  The man shook his hand. “And I’m Fletcher Mallard, Pamela’s fiancé,” he said, as if he needed to stake a claim by speaking his position out loud.

  Dillon took it in stride and thought that you could tell a lot about a man from his handshake, and this man had all the telltale signs. He was using the squeezing handshake, often used to exert strength and power. A confident man didn’t need such a tactic. This man was insecure.

  Mallard looked at Dillon skeptically. “And just what is it you want to know?”

  The smile dropped from Pamela Novak’s lips and she actually glared at her fiancé. “There’s no reason for you to ask all these questions, Fletcher. Mr. Westmoreland is a family friend and that’s all that matters right now.”

  As if her words settled it, she turned to Dillon with her smile back in place. “Mr. Westmoreland, please join us for dinner, then you can tell me how we can help in your quest to learn more of your family’s history.”

  It would have been so easy and less complicated to decline her offer, but there was something about Fletcher Mallard that outright irritated Dillon and pushed him to accept her invitation.

  “Thank you, Ms. Novak, and I’d love to stay for dinner.”

  Two

  P am knew she had made a mistake inviting Dillon Westmoreland to dinner the moment he was seated at the table. She wished she could say Fletcher was in rare form, but she’d seen him behave this way before, when another man had shown interest in her.

  But what was strange was that Dillon hadn’t actually shown any interest in her, so she couldn’t understand why Fletcher was being so territorial. Unless…he had picked up on her interest in Dillon.

  She pushed such utter nonsense from her mind. She was not interested in Dillon. She was merely curious. What woman wouldn’t be interested in a man like Dillon Westmoreland. He was at least six foot four with coffee-colored features. He had an angular face that boasted a firm jaw, a pair of cute dimples, full lips and the darkest eyes she’d ever seen on a man. She was engaged to be married, but not blind. And when he had sat down at the table to join them for dinner, his presence was powerfully masculine in a distracting way. She glanced around the table and couldn’t help noticing her sisters’ fascination with him, as well.

  “So just where are you from, Westmoreland?”

  Her spine stiffened with Fletcher’s question. She hadn’t invited Dillon to dinner to be interrogated, but she knew Fletcher wouldn’t be satisfied until he got some answers. She also knew once he got them he still wouldn’t be contented.

  “I’m from Denver,” Dillon answered.

  Fletcher was about to ask another question when Dillon beat him to the punch. “And where are you from, Mallard?”

  The question had clearly caught Fletcher off guard. He had a way of trying to intimidate people, but she had a feeling that Dillon Westmoreland was a man who couldn’t be intimidated.

  “I’m from Laramie,” Fletcher said gruffly. “I moved to town about five years ago to open a grocery store here. That was my first. Since then I’ve opened over twenty more in other cities in Wyoming and Montana. It’s my goal to have a Mallard Super Store in every state in the union over the next five years.”

  Pam couldn’t help but inwardly smile. If Fletcher thought that announcement would get a reaction from Dillon, then he was sadly mistaken. Dillon didn’t show any sign that he was the least impressed.

  “Where are you staying while you’re in town?” Fletcher asked, helping himself to the mashed potatoes.

  “At the River’s Edge Hotel.”

  “Nice place if you can do without cable television,” Jill said, smiling.

  Pam watched how easily Dillon returned Jill’s smile. “I can do without it. I don’t watch much television.”

  “And what is it that you do?” Fletcher asked in a voice that Pam felt was as cold as the iced tea she was drinking.

  Dillon, she saw, gave Fletcher a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes when he said, “I’m into real estate.”

  “Oh, you sell homes,” Fletcher said as if the occupation was beneath him.

  “Not quite,” Dillon said pleasantly. “I own a real estate firm. You might have heard of it, Blue Ridge Land Management.”

  Pam saw the surprise that lit Fletcher’s eyes before he said, “Yes, I’ve heard of it.”

  She had to force back a chuckle because she was sure that he had heard of it. Who hadn’t? The Blue Ridge Land Management Company was a billion-dollar corporation, well known in the Mountain States, that had a higher place on the Fortune 500 list than Mallard Super Stores.

  Seeing that Fletcher was momentarily speechless, she stepped in to say, “Mr. Westmoreland, you said that—”

  “I’m Dillon.”

  He had raised his gaze to meet hers and she saw a friendly smile lurking in the dark depths of his eyes. Her heart rate began accelerating in her chest. “Yes, of course,” she said quickly. “And I’m Pam.”

  After taking a sip of her tea, she continued. “Dillon, you said that you were here to research your family’s history?”

  “Yes,” he said, his gaze still on her. “For years I was told by my parents and grandparents that my brothers, cousins and I didn’t have any living relatives, and that my great-grandfather, Raphel Westmoreland, had been an only child. So you could imagine my surprise when one day, out of the clear blue sky, a man, his two sons and three nephews showed up at my ranch to proclaim they were my kin.”

  Intrigued by the story, Pam placed her fork next to her plate and gave him her full attention. “How did they find you?”

  “Through a genealogy search. The older man, James Westmoreland, knew that his grandfather, Reginald Westmoreland, had an identical-twin brother. It was discovered that that twin brother was my great-grandfather, Raphel, who had left home at twenty-two and had never been heard from again. In fact, the family assumed he’d died. They had no idea that he had eventually settled in Denver, married and had a son, who gave him two grandsons and then a slew of great-grands—fifteen, in fact. I am the oldest of the fifteen great-grands.”

  “Wow, that must have been a shocker for you to discover you had other relatives when you assumed there weren’t any,” Jill, who was practically hanging on to Dillon’s every word, said. “What does your wife think about all of this?”

  Pam watched Dillon smile and knew he hadn’t been fooled by the way the question had been asked. Jill wanted to know if he was a married man. Pam hated to admit that she was just as curious. He wasn’t wearing a ring, but that didn’t necessarily mean a thing.

  “She didn’t have anything to say because I’m not married,” Dillon replied smoothly. “At least not anymore. I’ve been divorced for close to ten years.”

  Pam glanced over at Jill and prayed her sister had the decency not to inquire as to what had happened to end his marriage.

  Fletcher, disliking the fact he wasn’t the center of attention, spoke up in an authoritative negative voice. “Sounds pretty crazy to me. Why would you care about a bunch of people who show up at your place claiming they were your relatives, or better yet, why would you want to find out your family history? You should live in the present and not in the past.”

  Pam could tell Dillon was fighting hard to hold his temper in check, and his tone was remarkably restrained when he finally responded. “Do you have a family, Fletcher?”

  Again, by Fletcher’s expression it was obvious he didn’t appreciate being the one receiving the questions. “No, I was an only child. My parents are deceased, but they didn’t have any siblings, either. I’m the only Mallard around for now.” He glanced over at Pam and smiled. “Of course, that will change once Pamela and I marry.”

  Dillon nodded slowly. “But until that changes, I wouldn’t expect you to understand the significance of what a family means. I already do. Westmorelands are big into family and, after meeting my other relatives, my only regret is not having known them
sooner.”

  He glanced over at her and, for a second, she held his steady gaze. And she felt it. There was a connection between them that they were trying to ignore. She looked down at her plate as she continued eating.

  Nadia asked him a question about his siblings and just as comfortably and easily as a man who was confident with himself and who he was, he began telling her everything she wanted to know. Without even trying, Dillon was captivating everyone at the dinner table…with the exception of Fletcher.

  “How long do you plan to stay in town?” Fletcher rudely cut into the conversation between Dillon and the sisters.

  Dillon glanced over at Fletcher. “Until I get all the questions I have about Raphel Westmoreland answered.”

  “That may take a while,” Fletcher said.

  Dillon smiled, but Pam knew it was just for Fletcher’s benefit and it wasn’t sincere. “I got time.”

  She saw Fletcher open his mouth to make another statement and she cut him off. “Dillon, I should be able to help you with that. My great-grandfather’s old business records, as well as his personal journal, are in the attic. If you want to drop by tomorrow and go up there and look around, you’re welcome to do so.”

  “Thanks,” he said, smiling. “I’ll be happy to take you up on your offer.”

  “I don’t want you meeting with that man alone, Pamela. Inviting him here tomorrow while your sisters are away at school wasn’t a good idea. And tomorrow I’ll be out of town visiting my stores in Laramie.”

  Pam glanced over at Fletcher as she walked him to the door. He was upset and she knew it. In fact, there was no doubt in her mind that everyone at the dinner table had known it since he wasn’t a person who hid his emotions well.

  “So,” he continued, “I’ll get word to him tomorrow that you’ve withdrawn the invitation.”