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Seven Years Later
“I don’t want it!” Denver McLean declared as he dropped into a tufted leather chair close to Ross Anderson’s desk.
“We’re talking about the entire ranch,” the young attorney reminded him. Ross was serious, his watery blue eyes steady behind thick lenses, his narrow features pulling together. He smoked a twisted black cigar.
The old-fashioned Western cheroot smelled foul and seemed completely out of place in this modern chrome-and-glass office building, Denver thought. He rubbed the scar on the back of his left hand. “I guess you didn’t hear me. I don’t want it. Sell the whole damned thing!”
“We can’t do that without your brother’s consent,” Ross said in that soothing lawyer tone that irritated the hell out of Denver.
“No one knows where Colton is. I haven’t heard from him in years.”
“Nonetheless, half the ranch is his—half yours. Split fifty-fifty. That’s the way your father wanted it, and your uncle saw fit to carry out his wishes.”
“I wish John had talked to me first,” Denver said flatly. If his uncle weren’t already dead, he gladly would have wrung the old meddler’s neck.
“Too late now,” Ross said succinctly.
Denver’s lips twisted at the irony. Though he’d been away from the McLean Ranch for seven years and had ignored his uncle’s repeated pleas to visit, the old man had gotten him in the end. “Okay,” he decided, flopping back in his chair. “Just sell my half.”
“Can’t do it. Back taxes.”
“Son of a—”
The door opened and Ross’s secretary, a willowy woman with pale blond hair, eyes heavy with mascara and a glossy smile, carried in a tray of coffee, cream and sugar.
“Just set it on the desk, Nancy,” Ross instructed as he puffed on his cigar, gradually filling the room with bluish smoke.
Nancy did as she was bid, casting Denver an interested glance that made him shift uncomfortably in his chair. Even after three successful operations, he felt as if his burns were as red and harsh as when he was dragged barely alive from the fire.
The fire—always the fire. He had never escaped it. Not really. And he never would.
His guts churned at the memory, and he tried to concentrate on the plastic cup of black coffee Ross handed him.
“So, you think your uncle was getting back at you by leaving you the ranch?”
“Wasn’t he?”
“It’s over a thousand acres of Montana ranch land,” Ross said dryly. “Doesn’t seem like such a curse.”
“No?” Denver sipped the coffee. It was scalding and bitter. He didn’t really much care. “Why weren’t the back taxes paid?”
“The ranch has been in the red for the past few years.”
“I thought there were supposed to be huge silver deposits on the land,” Denver said,
thinking back to those years of speculation, before the fire, when both his parents and his uncle had been excited at the prospect of mining silver from the ridge overlooking the ranch—the ridge where he’d lain with Tessa while a smoldering cigarette butt ignited dry straw in the stables far below.
“I guess the silver didn’t exist,” Ross said.
“Too bad,” Denver muttered. “What about the stock?”
“It’s holding its own, I think. Your uncle seemed to think that he was on the brink of turning things around.”
Denver doubted it. Ross was just giving him the sales pitch that good old Uncle John had peddled him time and time again over the past few years. Denver hadn’t bought it then and he wasn’t buying it now. “The stables were never rebuilt after the fire, right?”
“The insurance company paid reluctantly—claimed the fire was arson. The fire chief concurred. Unfortunately the building was grossly underinsured. The money only covered cleaning up the mess and adding a few stalls to the barn.” Ross squinted through his glasses. “John was hell-bent on suing the insurance company—claimed he’d been misrepresented, that he’d paid higher premiums than he should have for the amount of coverage. But he finally gave it up.”
“On your advice?”
