“Myfather?” She tilted her head, and her eyes narrowed with a skeptical look. “Dad had investment accounts?” The tone of disbelief was obvious. She couldn’t imagine the lawyer was lying; it was just that somehow stock portfolios didn’t fit with the rough, cigarette-smoking cowboy her dad had been.
“Oh yes, quite a diverse portfolio. Jimmy told me once that he started investing the money he won from betting on horses, and then he realized he had a knack for it. He enjoyed the challenge, I think, and the stakes were higher than at the track.” The lawyer, a man she’d seen now and then throughout her life, had a sad half-smile on his face and she realized suddenly that he’d considered her father a friend.
That part was no surprise. Her father was good at making friends and he didn’t treat people who worked for him any different than anyone else. He was, or had been, a hard-working man, with integrity. A neighbor people didn’t hesitate to go to for help. Finding out he was a closet investor, on the other hand, was something of a shock, but as she rolled it through her mind, she realized it probably shouldn’t have been.
She’d never lacked for any material possessions growing up. There’d always been new school clothes, Christmas presents, anything she needed had been provided within reason. And of course, he’d paid for her college education, at least the part that wasn’t covered by scholarships. There had been plenty of scholarships in the beginning, but there had also been dorm fees, books, and other expenses that had to be paid and he’d covered them without so much as a wince, but still somehow, she’d never thought of them as being wealthy.
Maybe it was because they didn’t live like rich people. She’d grown up working on the ranch and doing daily chores. They lived simply in a big old farmhouse that had been extensively renovated, but which always seemed to need some kind of repair. Her father spent most of his time driving a beat-up old pick-up truck around their property even though he did usually have a nicer newer car around for town trips.
He’d even given her a pretty decent used car for her sixteenth birthday, but it hadn’t been a luxury. She’d needed a way to get around with the ranch being miles outside of town. Besides it hadn’t been anything fancy and he’d made her pay for the insurance herself. She’d worked her butt off to earn a lot of the extras she’d had so she’d never felt like she was especially privileged growing up.
So how did she tally that with being wealthy? She couldn’t, at least not at the moment. It was a lot to take in and her brain didn’t feel like it was functioning well. She clenched her hands in her lap, nails digging into her palms as she tried to pull it all together. The investments weren’t the main issue, and she wasn’t going to get side-tracked by them.
She hadn’t expected wealth, but shehadexpected the ranch to be hers and apparently it wasn’t. It was literally all she’d expected to receive from her father’s death, and everything felt backwards.
“Okay, so I’ve got the house and money—but what about the ranch? You said…” Whathadhe said exactly? She’d been too stunned to pay careful attention. “Something about a trust?”
“The ranch is the complicated part, Ms. McGee. I’m sorry if this comes as a surprise to you, but your father had the ranch placed in a trust. The financial aspects will be supervised by my firm, but the day-to-day management will be in the hands of the foreman. Mr. Mason has been assigned an equal share of the business property and all of its assets. Profits will be divided between you. However, he has complete authority of management, subject of course, to our oversight.”
She turned slowly to stare at Sam Mason. Her father’s foreman, her ex-boyfriend, and currently someone she was doing her best to avoid. She’d managed to forget somehow that he was in the room. He’d taken a seat in the corner and hadn’t said a word to her. Except for a respectful nod when they’d seen each other in the outer office, he hadn’t even acknowledged her presence and that was probably for the best since they tended to fight every time they ended up face to face.
She tried to keep her expression neutral, but the myriad of emotions rolling through her spilled across her face and she couldn’t do anything about it. She was usually good at hiding what she was feeling, but this was just too much. When they’d both arrived at the lawyer’s office and were ushered in at the same time for the reading she hadn’t been surprised. She’d have been shocked if Sam had been left out of her father’s will.
After all they’d been friends. More than friends really; her dad had treated him like a son since Sam’s own father had died. Sam had still been a teen then, but he’d insisted on taking on a grown man’s job at the ranch, and he’d worked hard. Eventually, when he’d proven himself, her dad made him foreman.
He’d been doing more than that in the past two years. Since Jimmy’s cancer had gotten bad, Sam had taken over managing the entire ranch, and she couldn’t stop resenting him for it because it should have been her job. But no, her father just talked her into re-enrolling in a master’s program when he got his diagnosis, and despite her insistence that she needed to stay home to help out, he had refused to allow that. Sam would handle everything, he’d said.
She’d been upset about being sent away to school again to start with, after all she’d quit the first time for a reason, but her relationship with Sam might have been able to weather the distance if it hadn’t been for the rest. The fact that he’d been the one to take care of her father while she’d been sent away to school was too much for her to handle so their relationship fizzled.
Later, even their friendship had suffered. There’d been one fight after another—most of them over ridiculous things—because she couldn’t admit she felt excluded and shut out by her father. Eventually there had been one clash too many, and in the middle of a spectacular shouting match on one of her rare visits home words were said that neither of them could get over. After that they barely spoke, and when they did it usually ended up with snapping and frustration on both sides.
And now this.
A brief flash of suspicion shot through her. Had Sam used her father’s sickness to push him into leaving him the ranch just to hurt her? She dismissed the idle thought almost as fast as it entered her head. Sam wasn’t the type to do that. The expression on her face betrayed her, and Sam was quick to speak.
“Charlie,” he said, turning to her. “I hadnothingto do with this. I’m as surprised as you. If I’d known I would have tried to talk him out of it. I know how you feel about the ranch and I wouldn’t take it from you.” His voice held a hint of pain, and she felt guilty for suspecting him. He was a good man, despite their past, and she didn’t really believe he’d hurt her.
Sam knew her better than most; he knew how much she wanted to be the one running the place. She’d told him so many of her plans and dreams to someday expand beyond the cattle and small herd of horses they bred and trained. He also knew how frustrating it was for her that her father had other ideas about her future.
No one had needed to push Jimmy into this. He’d probably planned it for years. She wanted to hate him for it, but she couldn’t even do that because he was gone. Knowing that she couldn’t yell at him for his highhanded plan just made her miss him more.
She’d learned breathing techniques for moments of anxiety like this and she fell back on them now, taking a deep breath in through her nose, and then releasing it through her mouth in a long, slow exhale while she counted to ten. She willed the stress that was tightening her chest to leave with it. It helped a little.
More pain on top of what she’d already been feeling was the last thing she needed, but it wasn’t Sam’s fault and blaming him wouldn’t change anything. Although, maybe there was another way around it.
“My dad was too stubborn to listen to anyone, Sam. It wouldn’t have done any good. He had this idea in his head that I was meant for other things, but he was wrong. Now he’s gone, so we have to work with what he left behind. It’s probably just going to mean some extra paperwork for you to sign over your share of the business and then…”
The lawyer cleared his throat, interrupting her. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Ms. McGee. Should Mr. Mason choose not to accept or decide to leave the ranch then I’ve been authorized to put it up for sale. The proceeds would then be divided between you.”
She turned back in her seat to face him; eyes narrowed to slits as she glared in stunned disbelief. “You’re telling me that Sam has to run the ranch forever or it gets sold? How is that even legal?!”
He shook his head. “Not forever, no. The will has some conditions that clarify a time frame.”
“And those are?”
“Mr. Mason has complete authority over the ranch for five years; after that time control will shift to an equal partnership if, and only if, you have completed a doctorate degree in the field of your choice.”
It was sotypicalof her father to put a condition like that in his will. For a second, she just gaped at the lawyer, and then a peal of laughter poured out of her. It wasn’t funny, not really. It was infuriating, frustrating, but it was just sohimthat she couldn’t help it. She had to laugh, and if it sounded more hysterical than amused, well, that wasn’t far off from what she was feeling either.
