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About that, anyway.
“It’s not a lie,” she said, pausing for another sip of her wine.
What was it about the woman’s throat and the slim elegance of it that fascinated him?
“He did miss you.” She smiled at him again and the warmth in her eyes washed over him. “He told me about your arguments. And really, I think he missed them. He had no one to butt heads with, and that must have been frustrating for a man as strong and powerful as he once was.”
Frowning now, Sage saw that she might just have a point. Even though his relationship with J.D. had never been a close one, he knew that his adoptive father had gone through life like a charging bull. Putting his head down and rushing at problems, determined to knock them out of his way through sheer force of will.
J.D. Lassiter had been the kind of man who let nothing stand between him and his goals. He’d bent the world to his whim and pushed those around him into line—or in Sage’s case, had tried to. For him to be reduced to a sick bed because his heart had turned on him must have been wildly frustrating. Surprisingly, Sage felt a twinge of sympathy for the old man rattle around inside him before he could stop it.
“He told me that he and his wife adopted you and Dylan when you were boys.”
Seemed J.D. had talked her damn ears off. Which gave him hope that somewhere in there, he might have confessed the reasons behind his will.
“They did,” he said and reluctantly was tossed into the past.
He had been six and Dylan four when they went to live on Big Blue. Their parents had just been killed in a traffic accident and they’d clung to each other in an unfamiliar world. Then J.D. and Ellie had swooped in and suddenly, everything was different. Their lives. Their home. Their parents. All new. All so damned hard to accept. At least for Sage. Dylan, maybe because he was younger, had accepted the change in their lives with much more ease.
Sage had refused to let go of his memories...of the life he’d been forced to surrender. He’d bucked against the rules, had fought with his new parents and in general been a pain in the ass, now that he thought about it. He’d grumbled about everything, comparing their new life to the old and the new always came up short.
Ellie had tried relentlessly, through patience and love, to get through to Sage and eventually she’d succeeded. But J.D. hadn’t had the patience to carefully win Sage over. Instead, he’d simply demanded respect and affection and Sage had refused to give either.
The two of them had fought over everything, he remembered now. From doing chores as a kid to driving as a teenager. Sage had instinctively gone in the opposite direction of anything J.D. recommended. There’d been plenty of battles between them, with Ellie stepping in as peacemaker—until she died after giving birth to Angelica.
And the love they shared for Sage’s sister was the one thing he and J.D. had ever agreed on. She had been the glue in their shattered family. Without Ellie there, they would have all floundered, but caring for Angelica kept them all afloat. Then Marlene had moved in and because she hadn’t expected their love, she’d won their hearts.
Shaking his head now, Sage reached for his wine and gulped it down as if it were water. The waiter appeared, delivering their meals, and for a moment or two, there was silence. Then they were alone again and Colleen finally spoke.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring back unpleasant memories.”
“You didn’t,” he lied, smoothing his voice out as easily as he mentally paved over memory lane.
“Okay.” She took a small bite of her ravioli, then chewed and swallowed. “Well, I’ve been talking forever. Why don’t you tell me about your ranch?”
Sage stared at her for a long minute as he tried to figure out what she was up to. But damned if he could see signs of manipulation on her features.
So he started talking, grateful to be in comfortable territory. He watched her face as she listened to him, and enjoyed the shift and play of emotions she made no attempt to hide. But as he told her about his place, Sage realized something. He wasn’t going to be getting the information he needed tonight. She was either really skillful at turning the conversation away from her—or she was as sweet and innocent as she appeared to be. But either way, it was going to take longer than he’d thought to find out exactly what she knew.
Oddly enough, that thought didn’t bother him at all.
* * *
“You can’t be serious.” Laura Falkner dropped into her favorite chair and stared up at her daughter as if she’d just sprouted another head. “Three million dollars?”
