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But Angelica was different. Right from the start, she had been J.D.’s shining star. So how he could have cut her out of her rightful inheritance was beyond Sage. “Yeah, but what reason could he have for cheating his daughter out of what should have been hers?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Can’t?” Sage demanded, walking back to stand opposite the man’s desk. “Or won’t?”
“Won’t.” Walter stood up, since staying in his chair required him to look up at Sage, and he clearly didn’t enjoy that. “J.D.’s my client, Sage, dead or alive. Not you. Not the Lassiter family.”
“And you’ll protect him from his damn family even after his death?”
“If I have to,” Walter said softly.
Frustration clawed at him. “None of this makes sense. You know as well as I do that J.D. had been grooming Angie for years, getting her ready to run Lassiter Media.”
“True...”
“So does it seem rational to you that he would leave the company to Angie’s fiancé?” There went his grasp on the last slippery thread of temper.
The lawyer only stared at him for a long minute or two. “If you’re trying to insinuate that J.D. wasn’t competent to make this will, you’re wrong. And that allegation would never stand in a court.”
“I’m not talking about court.” Yet. “I’m talking about your knowledge of J.D.”
“As I’ve already said, J.D. had reasons for everything he did, and this is no different.”
Sage had no idea why J.D. would have done this. It made no sense at all.
The lawyer’s deliberate refusal to give anything away just increased the sense of outrage snarling inside him.
“This isn’t getting either of us anywhere, Sage. So if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got business to take care of and—”
“I’m not done with this, Walter,” Sage promised. “We all want answers.”
For the first time, a flicker of something that might have been sympathy shone in the other man’s eyes. “And I wish I could give them to you,” he said. “But it’s out of my hands.”
Frustrated, Sage conceded defeat. At least for now. “Fine. I’ll go. But once the family gets over the shock of all of this, I won’t be the only one showing up here demanding answers. I hope you’re ready for that.”
At any other time, Sage might have laughed at the beleaguered expression on the man’s face. But right now he just wasn’t in the mood to be amused.
Once out in the parking lot, Sage hunched deeper into his black coat as a cold mountain wind pushed at him. Even nature was giving him a hard time today. He crossed to his black Porsche and climbed in. During the winter, this car spent most of its time locked away in a temperature-controlled garage on his ranch. Right now, he was glad he had the sports car. He had a driving need to push the car to its limits, wanting the speed, needing the rush of the moment.
He peeled out of the lot, drove through Cheyenne, and once he was free of the city, cut the powerful engine loose. He backtracked, headed to the Big Blue ranch. By now, Colleen would be gone, but Marlene and Angie would be there. And he had to see his sister. Find out for himself if she was okay. But how could she be? She’d been betrayed by someone she trusted. And Sage knew just how that felt.
The growl of the engine seemed to underscore the rage pumping just below the surface of his mind. Speeding along the road to the ranch forced him to focus, to concentrate on his driving, which gave him a respite from everything else tearing through his brain. He steered the car through the wide ranch gates, kicked up gravel along the winding drive and then parked outside the front doors.
From the stable area came the shouts of men hard at work. He caught a glimpse of a horse in a paddock, running through the dirt, and realized that J.D. being gone hadn’t stopped life from going on. This ranch would go on, too. The old man had seen to that. But what the hell had he been thinking about the rest of it?
Sage climbed out of the car and paused long enough to take a quick look around the familiar landscape. Much like Sage’s own ranch, there were plenty of outbuildings, barns, cabins for the wranglers who lived and worked on the ranch, guest cabins, and even a saltwater pool surrounded by grass, not cement, so that it looked like a natural pond. His gaze fixed on the ancient oak that shaded the pond and a reluctant smile curved his mouth. He, Dylan and Angelica had spent hours out here when they were kids, swinging from a rope attached to one of the oaks’ heavy limbs to drop into the cold, clear water.
