“I think you've forgotten that there is a great deal of land at stake. You'd be surprised what people would do to get their hands on it.”
Nick growled and started across toward the lawyer, but Shelly jumped up and put her slim body between them. Keeping Nick at bay with a hand on his chest, she glared at Mike, and demanded, “Let me get this straight. You're saying that Nick's whole purpose for claiming to be Josh's child is to get his hands on the estate?”
“You said it, I didn't.”
Shelly gritted her teeth, wondering how she had ever thought she liked Mike Sawyer. Tightly, she said, “You implied it. Do you believe it?”
“My opinion in the matter doesn't count,” he returned, apparently unmoved by the situation. “What counts is what your brother wanted. And I can tell you for a fact that he wouldn't have wanted you to hear this sort of wild, unsubstantiated claim on today of all days.”
“Why not?”
Sawyer looked impatient. “My God, Shelly! You just scattered Josh's ashes—and I'm about to read you his will. You're bound to be upset and emotional. A perfect time for someone to play on your emotions.” He flashed a black glance at Nick. “Nick can claim to be Josh's son all he wants, but there is nothing legally that supports his claim. I might point out that his mother is mute on the subject—
which should tell you something. And unless Nick's willing to go to court and drag you and the Granger name through the mud—and hope he can convince a jury of the relationship, you are your brother's only heir.”
“But that's not right!” Shelly sputtered. “If he's Josh's child, he should be entitled to his estate.”
“If,” Mike said, and, putting the briefcase down on the table, began to open it.
“Hold it right there! Are you telling me that Nick is lying when he says that Josh was his father? And what about Maria? Wouldn't she know the father of her own children?”
“I'm afraid it would be a case of her word against a dead man's,” Mike said dryly. “And as I pointed out—Maria has not endorsed Nick's claim. Your brother never publicly or legally acknowledged any relationship with her—or Nick.” When Shelly's mouth opened indignantly, he raised a hand. “He did help Maria when her husband died—acts which could be construed as nothing more than kindness.” Mike looked at Nick again. “And ten years ago, for pennies on the dollar, I might add, he leased Nick several cows from the Granger herd so Nick could start up his own cattle herd. At the same time he gave him a long-term lease at ridiculously low terms to the Bull Flat Ranch and house. I would remind you that these could be construed only as the acts of a generous man—which your brother was.” Shelly glanced from Maria's averted face to Nick's strained one and back to the lawyer's. Something really weird was going on, but damned if she could figure it out. She'd tackle Maria later and get the truth out of her, but aloud she only said stubbornly, “If Nick is his child, he's entitled to his share of the family possessions.”
“Ah, there is that word, if, again. As I mentioned, his claim to a relationship is based solely on his say-so.”
“What about DNA?” Shelly hesitated. Her knowledge of DNA was scant, but she knew enough to be aware that while her DNA could prove that she and Nick were related, it could not prove that Josh had been his father. In fact as she thought about it, she remembered vaguely having read a newspaper article a couple years ago about the Thomas Jefferson/Sally Hemmings controversy. There'd been something in the article about that, while it could be proven via DNA that the Hemmings' descendants had been fathered by someone in the Jefferson family, conclusive proof that they were in fact Thomas Jefferson's descendants could not be proven because Thomas Jefferson had left no male offspring. Shelly's eyes widened. “That's why he insisted upon being cremated.” And then she said something she'd never thought to say about her brother, “Why that sneaky bastard!”
“Don't you think that you're overreacting?” Mike asked sharply. “You're jumping to conclusions. And, remember, Josh always intended to be cremated; it wasn't something that he just recently decided upon. Right now, you have only Nick's claim that there is any relationship. Are you going to put aside everything you ever knew about your brother simply because of something a young man you don't know very well says?”
Shelly glanced from one tense face to the other. Five minutes ago she had believed that Nick was Josh's child. Had it simply been because she wanted him to be? That she wanted some physical reminder of Josh still in this world? Was it possible that Nick was playing upon her vulnerability with an eye to gaining access to a fortune? She'd been away for seventeen years and she'd only been eighteen when she'd left. What did she really know about Nick—or his mother for that matter?
Shelly's head suddenly started to ache, and her throat felt tight. Jesus! She didn't want to deal with this right now.
Maybe Mike was right. Maybe she was jumping to conclusions. She looked at Nick again. OK, so he had green eyes, and she thought she saw a family resemblance. Maybe she was wrong. Nick wouldn't be the first person to turn greedy at the thought of a lot of money.
She stepped away, and, not meeting anyone's eyes, said softly, “Right now, I don't know if I ever even knew my brother.”
Alone in her room, Shelly lay down on the bed, trying not to think about the ugly ending of the day. She didn't want to think that Nick was claiming a relationship in order to cut himself in for a piece of the pie that Josh's estate represented. She wanted, she admitted, for Nick to have spoken the truth. She wanted in a way that astounded her for Nick to be her brother's child, her relative, but she couldn't discount Sawyer's words either. Nor could she reconcile the man who Nick said was his father with the open, generous, loving brother she had known all her life. If Nick were his child, why wouldn't he have told her? Oh, not when she was a child, but surely once she had grown up, what reason was there for him to keep it secret? Because he was ashamed and didn't want her to think badly of him? Well, yeah, maybe.
What bothered her most was the notion that if Nick had indeed been Josh's, he had never acknowledged that fact. Illegitimate or not, at some point, wouldn't love or pride have moved him to reveal his relationship? She sighed, trying to make what she knew of her brother fit with Nick's claim. If she understood the meager facts she had at hand, Josh had always maintained a distance, had always acted as if he were nothing more than Maria's kind, caring employer. He had never admitted the truth, if Nick's statement was true, to anyone, not even his lawyer. And Sawyer was right, damn him! The leased cows and land could be explained away as simply the generosity of a lonely man with no children of his own.
Round and round her thoughts went, Maria's reticence nagging at her. Why hadn't Nick's mother backed him up? Did Maria know he was running a scam and while unwilling to expose him, was not brave enough to give weight to his claim? She found no answers and eventually dropped off into an uneasy doze. She didn't know how long she had slept, but something woke her. Bleary-eyed, she gazed around the room, surprised to find that dusk had fallen, shadows filling the room.
She lay there a moment, trying to wake up. A tap on the door jerked her upright, and after fumbling for the switch on the lamp near the bed, she flicked it on. Soft, yellow light pooled near the bed, dispelling the shadows and spreading the sensation of warmth throughout the area.
Seated on the side of the bed, she yawned. There was another, more insistent tap on the door.
Rubbing her forehead, she called out, “Who is it?”
“Nick. May I come in?”
She hesitated, then replied, “Sure. The door's not locked.”
Nick slipped into the room, a tray held in his hands. He walked up to her and put the tray down on the table near the bed. Grabbing one of the chairs, he pulled it up and sat down.
Shelly looked at the contents of the tray and couldn't help grinning. The total items were a big plate of Oreo cookies, a half-gallon carton of milk, and two tall glasses.
Picking up a cookie and taking a bite, she looked at Nick. “Did
Maria tell you they were my favorite?”
He smiled uncertainly. “Nope, I remembered from when we were kids.” His smile faded. “Look,” he said, “I want to apologize for what happened this afternoon. Mike was right about one thing—my timing stinks. I should have kept my mouth shut and given you time to settle in before I said anything. I'm sorry.”
Pouring them both glasses of milk, she shoved one in his direction. Indicating the cookies, she mumbled around a mouthful, “Help yourself.”
They ate cookies and drank milk in silence. It was a friendly silence. A comfortable silence, and Shelly remembered times from the past when she and Nick had done just as they were doing now, eating cookies and drinking milk in complete accord with each other.
Putting her empty glass down a few minutes later, she asked, “Your timing wasn't the best, I'll grant you that, but the problem doesn't go away.” She looked him dead in the eye. “Was Josh really your father?”
He hesitated, took a deep breath, then said in a rush, “Yeah. I believe he was. He never admitted it, and Mom…” He looked puzzled and hurt. “She won't talk about it—but she and Juan were always open about the fact that Juan wasn't my father—even if I carry his last name.” He sighed and glanced down at the plate of rapidly disappearing Oreos. “Whenever I questioned her about my father, Mom just said not to worry about him—we had a nice home and she had a nice job and we didn't need him. We were happy without him—besides, she was married to Juan. By the time I was old enough to really question her about him, I guess I'd just accepted her explanation and didn't think about it too much.” He looked off into space. “I must have been about fifteen, sixteen, when I found out differently. Until that time, Josh had always just seemed like a really neat guy, you know. He was good to Mom, and he was great to Raquel and me after Juan died—in that easygoing, careless sort of way he had. I never suspected a relationship—even between them.” He grimaced. “OK, I'll admit that now and then after Juan died I thought that it would be great if Mom got something on with Mr. Granger. But I never even once considered that your brother was my father.”
“How'd you find out?” Shelly asked around an Oreo.
“Some wise-ass kid at school. It was at football practice, and I don't remember what happened exactly, but we got into it.” He grinned. “All that young, male testosterone, I guess. Anyway, I damn near beat the shi—, uh, devil out of him, before his friends piled in, then my friends joined the fight.” His eyes gleamed with remembered enthusiasm. “The coaches leaped in and pulled us all apart. We were read the riot act and three or four of us were benched for the next game. By then we had cooled down and thought we'd gotten off easy—we could have been out for the whole season.”
Shelly raised a brow. “In St. Galen's? Where the entire high school can barely put together a full team? I don't think so.”
Nick smiled. “Yeah, you're probably right. But Jim Hard-castle, the guy I'd been fighting with, started whining and complaining. He was always sort of a troublemaker and the coach told him that he'd make an exception for him: two games. That really set Hardcastle off. He started yelling that it wasn't fair. That I had started the whole thing and that I was nothing but a half-breed Mex and that if my father wasn't Josh Granger, I'd have been thrown off the team.”
Shelly paused in the act of pouring another round of milk for the pair of them. “Wow! That must have been a shock.”
“To say the least,” Nick commented wryly. “I went at Hardcastle, calling him a liar, and punched him in the nose for bad-mouthing my mom.” He made a face. “The adults separated us again, and I ended up being benched for three games—which for us, was most of the season. Coach ordered me home right then—wouldn't even let me finish practice.”
“You sound more pissed off about that than finding out about Josh and your mom.”
Nick grinned. “Well, in a way I was. Man, I hated getting benched! As for the other—I didn't really believe Hardcastle—I thought he was just being a blowhard and a pain in the ass. It wasn't until I got home and was in the kitchen—” he paused and winked at her—“cramming my face full of Oreos and milk, and spouting off about what a jerk Hard-castle was, and asking Mom how he thought anybody would believe such a damned lie, when I noticed her expression.” He shook his head. “I took one look at her face, and my stomach dropped right to the floor.”
Shelly stopped eating her Oreo and stared at him, sympathy in her gaze. “Must have been hard. What'd you do?”
“I tackled her with it right off, but I didn't get anywhere then or ever.” He glanced away, his expression bleak. He took a deep breath, and, meeting Shelly's sympathetic gaze, blurted out, “You have only my word for it. Mom simply will not talk about it. Even now if I press her, she starts to cry, and says she promised. Says she swore never to tell anyone. But it's the tears that get me. She almost always bursts into tears…she cried a lot that first day.” Nick's eyes dropped, his jaw working. “I never saw my mom cry before, and it shook me—bad. I was in a rage”—he smiled deprecatingly—“as only a sixteen-year-old-almost-a-man can be. Not at her,” he added quickly, “never at her, but I resented the situation, and I was furious that they'd kept the truth from me. I was furious that they'd allowed me to find out in such a manner.”
Shelly shook her head. “Knowing Oak Valley, you'd have thought that they'd have realized that someone was bound to put two and two together eventually. They should have told you—it was cruel and thoughtless not to. They had to know that you would find out sooner or later. Surely they didn't think you'd never find out?”
Nick shrugged. “Don't ask me. Mom keeps her mouth shut, just saying that your family was kind to her and that they supported her when she needed help. It's obvious she never expected more than what she got, and she was satisfied with it—that's the part that eats at my gut.” The expression in his eyes hardened. “Your mother gave Mom money and paid for her to go back to Mexico…and stay there.”
Shelly made a face. “Sounds like Mother. She really took her position in the valley to heart. She wouldn't want any slurs cast on the Granger name.” She frowned. “But if your mom went away, never to return, what happened? She came back.”
“Yeah, she did.” Hurriedly he added, “And it wasn't because she wanted more money either.”
“I would never doubt that. But why did she come back?”
He ran a hand through his dark hair. “I don't know if you knew, but Mom's father died when she was a child in Mexico and left the family almost destitute. She said that with her dad gone, they were practically living on the streets. Anyway, Abuela Ynez, my other grandmother, wrote to her only brother, Tio abuelo Oliverio. He had settled here and was working, for the”—he flashed her a glance—“Ballingers. When he received Abuela Ynez's letter begging for help, he sent for the entire family and helped them find jobs here in Oak Valley.” He looked at Shelly. “This was Mom's home. She's lived here since she was eleven years old. She grew up here. She had her citizenship. Abuela Ynez, her uncle, her sisters, and a brother lived here. In Mexico there were just some cousins or something, and she was lonesome. So, when I was about six months old, she couldn't stand it anymore and she came home. To Abuela Ynez's—not to the Grangers'.”
Shelly waved a hand. “I believe you. And I can guess the rest. Josh or one of my parents found out that she was here and they probably thought it would cause less talk if Maria came back to work for them than if they just pretended they'd never heard of her.”
Nick nodded. “Mom never said, she can be pretty vague about stuff when she wants to be, but I guess it was something like that.”
Shelly looked curious. “Doesn't she talk about it at all?”
“Not a word. You saw her today. Even for me she won't open up. She has some hang-up about breaking her word. If she had her way, we'd all just continue to pretend it never happened. She hates it when I bring up the subject.” He grinned at her. “She really tore a strip off me this afternoon when we went home.”
“The mind boggles at what the situation was like here—for them. I never suspected a thing.”
“You wouldn't—you were a kid, just like Raquel and me. And by the time you were old enough to maybe notice something or ask embarrassing questions, you were gone—remember?”
Shelly grimaced. “I remember.” She picked up another Oreo. Nibbling at the edges of it, she asked, “Did you ever face Josh?”
Nick took a deep breath. “Oh, yeah. And he just looked at me and said it was too bad that I listened to gossip.” He flashed a wry grin. “I lied a little and said that Mom admitted it and he got that, I smell shi—, manure, grin on his face and told me that he couldn't be responsible for any tales his housekeeper might tell her son.”
Shelly's eyes widened. “He actually said that?” she asked in a stunned voice.
Nick nodded and took a bite of a cookie. “Yeah. He said it. I should know—I was there. Jesus! I hated him at that moment. I wanted to pound him into the ground. Not so much for not acknowledging me, but for dismissing Mom that way—his ‘housekeeper.’ Needless to say, he and I didn't have very many friendly father-to-son chats after that.”
“I guess not.”
They chewed on the cookies for a few minutes in silence. Then Nick asked quietly, “Do you believe me? I don't have much proof.” He laughed bitterly. “Hell, I don't have any proof—just gossip and a gut feeling. And green eyes. And a father my mother won't name.”
Shelly sighed and put down her half-eaten cookie. “I find it hard to believe that Josh could be so cold and calculating and yet…” She looked at him, studied the lean, intent features across from her, and, for one dizzy moment, it was as if Josh stared back at her. She blinked, the resemblance vanished, and it was just Nick sitting across from her.
Did she believe him? It was a fantastic story and flew in the face of everything she knew about her brother, but there was something about it, something she couldn't just dismiss out of hand. And it wasn't improbable that young, pretty Maria would succumb to the charms of twenty-year-old Josh. This site, the site where they had lived in those days, was isolated. There were no near neighbors, unless you considered five miles down a winding twisting forest and brush-lined road near. They would have spent a lot of time here at the house when Josh had been home from college. They were worlds apart socially and financially, yet Maria was in his house, close at hand, day and night…. Shelly wrinkled her nose. The whole situation, if true, was nasty. It reminded her uncomfortably of the master/slave situation that had been so prevalent in the South and the droit du seigneur of old France. Had Josh considered making love to Maria his right? She thought about her brother, realizing that she'd always been aware, albeit vaguely, of his careless indifference to those he considered of a lesser stature than himself. He wasn't cruel. He just…Her mouth twisted. He just thought himself above the masses. He was, after all, a Granger. And not just any Granger, but a Granger of Oak Valley. It had been one of his less attractive traits, Shelly admitted, but he had always been so open and generous with those he liked and loved that one tended to overlook it. To forget about it.
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