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So he told his brother everything he’d said and how Colleen had reacted. Reliving it didn’t make him feel any better.
When he was finished, a couple of seconds ticked past before Dylan whistled and took another sip of his beer. “Man, anybody else probably would have punched you for all of that. I know I would have. Lucky for you Colleen’s so damn nice.”
“Is she?”
“Marlene loves her,” Dylan pointed out. “Angie thinks she’s great. Heck, even Chance has had nothing but good things to say about her, and you know he doesn’t hand out compliments easy.”
“All true,” Sage agreed.
And yet...Sage’s instincts told him she was exactly what she appeared to be. A private nurse with a tantalizing smile and blue eyes the color of a lake in summer. But he couldn’t overlook what had happened. What J.D. had done in his will. And the only person around who might have influenced the old man was the one woman who had spent the most time with him. He had to know. Had to find out what, if anything, she knew about the changes to J.D.’s will.
And if she had had something to do with any of this, he would find a way to make her pay.
Three
The Big Blue ranch seemed empty without the larger-than-life presence of J.D. Lassiter. Colleen glanced out the window of the bedroom that had been hers for the past several weeks and smiled sadly. She was going to miss this place almost as much as she would miss J.D. himself.
But it was always like this for her, she thought sadly. As a private nurse, she slipped into the fabric of families—sometimes at their darkest hours. And when her job was done, she left, moving on to the next client. The next family.
She tugged on the zipper of her suitcase, flipped the lid open and then sighed. Colleen hated this part of her assignments. The packing up of all her things, the saying goodbye to another chapter in her life. Positioning these memories onto a high shelf at the back of her mind, where they could be looked at later but would be out of the way, making room for the next patient.
Only this time...maybe there wouldn’t be another family.
She shook her head and realized that the silence of the big house was pressing down on her. The only other people at Big Blue right now were the housekeeper and the cook, and it was as if the big house was...lonely. It wouldn’t be for long, though. Soon, Marlene, Angelica and Chance would be returning, and she wanted to be gone before they got home. They didn’t need her here anymore. By rights, she should have left two weeks ago after J.D.’s death, but she’d stayed on at Marlene’s request, to help them all through this hard time.
Colleen walked to the closet and gathered an armful of clothes, carrying them back to the bed. On autopilot, she folded and then stacked her clothing neatly in the suitcase and then went back for more. It wouldn’t take long to empty the closet and the dresser she had been using. She’d only brought a few things with her when she moved into the guest room.
Normally, she didn’t live in when she took a private client. But J.D. had wanted her close by and had been willing to pay for the extra care, to spare his family having to meet all of his needs. In the past couple of months, Colleen had grown to love this place. The ranch house was big, elegant and yet still so cozy that it wasn’t hard to remember that it was, at its heart, a family home.
At that thought, Sage crept back into her mind. He, his brother and sister had all grown up here on this ranch, and if she listened hard enough, she was willing to bet she would be able to hear the long-silent echoes of children playing.
And strange, wasn’t it, how her mind continually drifted back to thoughts of Sage? To be honest, he had been on her mind since the rehearsal dinner. He starred nightly in her dreams and even his coldly furious outburst that morning hadn’t changed anything. In fact, it had only made her like him more. That outburst had shown her just how much he had cared for his father, despite their estrangement. And the sympathy she felt for the loss he’d suffered was enough to color his accusations in a softer light.
Her brief conversation with Sage Lassiter had left Colleen more shaken than the news that she was now a millionaire. Maybe because the thought of so much money was so foreign to her that her brain simply couldn’t process it. But having the man of her dreams actually speak to her was so startling, she couldn’t seem to think of anything but him. Even though he’d insulted her.
“Not his fault,” she assured herself again as she folded her clothes and stuffed them into the suitcase. “Of course he’d be suspicious. He doesn’t know me. He just lost his father. Why should he trust me?”
