“Didn’t your lawyershow you the will?” Maci asked Trish as she set a copy of it on the coffee table in Frank Dempsey’s den. She’d brought Trish in here to show her, and it was just the two of them now.
The others had stayed in the living room. Or maybe they’d gone out to work the ranch. This was the legal stuff, and they trusted Maci with that. She hoped she deserved their trust and was able to get through to her old friend that the settlement laid out in her father’s will was really what he’d wanted.
Trish leaned forward from where she sat on the leather couch and stared down at the document. But she didn’t read it. “Stokes told me what was in it, and he thought it was strange that my father would leave the same amount to a ranch hand as he would to his daughter.”
Maci grimaced. “You really have to stop calling them ranch hands,” she said. “They were so much more than that to your dad. They were more like your father’s sons.”
Trish flinched then. “Sons? How? He didn’t know them that long.”
“Brett’s worked here for five years,” Maci said. “After his first year working at the Four Corners, he convinced Blake to leave another ranch and come here to help him save your father’s ranch. Without them…” She trailed off as emotions overwhelmed her. Then she cleared her throat and continued, “Without them, it wouldn’t be here. The bank would have foreclosed and sold it already.”
Trish flinched again. “It was really that bad?”
Maci nodded. “I didn’t know either until I wrote the will. Your dad paid for my law school—”
“And for some of my wedding,” Trish said. “Even though he didn’t approve and wouldn’t come.”
“That was what? Four years ago?”
Trish nodded.
“It was bad then. Brett would have already been working here for about a year. I don’t know how he kept the place going. He certainly wasn’t getting paid for quite a while.”
“But he still worked here anyway?” Trish asked, her light brown eyes wide with surprise. There were probably few people in her world like the Lemmons, so she didn’t understand that kind of selflessness.
Maci nodded. “They’re really good guys, Trish. All of them.”
“You love Blake.”
That love warmed Maci, making her smile. “With all my heart. But that’s not why I wrote the will this way. I wrote it because it was what your father wanted. He wanted the Lemmons, you and Frankie to each have an equal share. He wanted you all to work together to run it, too.”
“Why?”
A little annoyed, she replied, “I just told you that they literally saved the ranch—”
“No, why does he want us all to work together to run it?” she asked. “Frankie doesn’t want to do that, right? Isn’t she still touring with her band, doing shows?”
Maci shrugged. “She says she is, but she doesn’t seem in any hurry to get back at it.”
“Oh…” Trish shook her head again, tossing her curls around her face. This was the prettiest she’d ever looked. She was actually glowing, like people always said pregnant women did. “But did he really thinkIwould come back to run it with some strangers?”
“Frank didn’t consider the Lemmons strangers,” Maci said. “They were all so close.”
Trish looked her in the eye. “What about me, though? I more or less became a stranger to him.”
“You weren’t a stranger either,” Maci said. “He loved you, and he knew you loved the ranch once.”
Trish sighed, and it was such a wistful sound. “I still do,” she said. “And it would be such a great place to raise the babies.”
“Yes, it would,” Maci conceded.
“Will they let me buy them out?” she asked eagerly. “I have some money from my divorce settlement.”
Maci shook her head. “The Lemmons love this place, too. It’s not just where they work now. It’s their home, and their life, especially for Brett. It’s really all he has.”
Trish sighed again, but this one sounded as if it was full of disappointment. “So I won’t be able to buy them out.”
Maci shook her head again. “They won’t want to sell. To you. Or to anyone. They have so many plans for the place.”
