Truly Madly Yours

by Rachel Gibson

  The cell phone chirped on the seat next to him, but he ignored it. He hadn’t been all that surprised when he’d learned the cause of Henry’s death had been a gunshot wound to the head and not the fire. He’d known Henry was getting worse, and Nick would have done the same thing.

  Sheriff Crow had been the one to tell Nick that Henry had killed himself, but very few people knew the truth. Gwen wanted it that way. Henry had gone out on his own terms, but not before he’d created one hell of a will.

  Nick had figured Henry would pull something in his will, but he’d never expected Henry to place the condition on what Nick did or didn’t do with Delaney. Why her? A real bad feeling tweaked the base of his skull, and he feared he knew the answer. It sounded perverse, but he had a feeling Henry was trying to pick the mother of his grandchild.

  For reasons he didn’t want to examine too closely, Delaney had always spelled trouble for him. From the start. Like the time she’d been standing in front of the school bundled up in a fancy blue coat with a furry white collar, her blond hair a mass of shiny curls about her face. Her big brown eyes had looked into his, and a little smile had tilted her pink lips. His chest had grown tight and his throat closed. Then before he’d realized what he was doing, he’d picked up a snowball and nailed her in the forehead. He hadn’t known why he’d done it, but it had been the one and only time his mother took a belt to his behind. Not so much because he’d hit Delaney, but because he’d hit a girl. The next time he’d seen her at school, she’d looked like Zorro, with twin black eyes. He’d stared at her, feeling sick to his stomach and wishing he could race home and hide. He’d tried to apologize, but she’d always run away when she’d seen him coming. He guessed he didn’t blame her.

  After all these years, she still had a way of getting to him. It was the way she looked at him sometimes. Like he was dirt, or worse, when she looked through him as if he didn’t even exist. It made him want to reach out and pinch her, just to hear her say ouch.

  Today he hadn’t meant to hurt or provoke her. Well, not until she’d given him that “you’re scum” look. But listening to Henry’s will had provoked him. Just thinking about it pissed him off all over again. He thought about Henry and Delaney, and that real bad feeling tweaked the back of his neck once more.

  Nick reached for the ignition key and headed back toward town. He had a few questions, and Max Harrison was the only person who knew the answers.

  “What can I do for you?” the lawyer asked as soon as Nick was shown into a spacious office near the front of the building.

  Nick didn’t waste time on idle conversation. “Is Henry’s will legal, and can I contest?”

  “As I told you earlier when I read the will, it’s legal. You can waste your money on a contest.” Max gave Nick a wary look before he added, “But you won’t win.”

  “Why did he do it? I have my suspicions.”

  Max looked at the younger man standing in his office. There was something unpredictable and intense lurking just beneath that cool exterior. Max didn’t like Allegrezza. He didn’t like the way he’d behaved earlier. He didn’t like the disrespect he’d shown Gwen and Delaney-a man should never swear in the presence of ladies. But he’d liked Henry’s will even less. He sat in a leather chair behind his desk, and Nick sat across from him. “What are your suspicions?”

  Nick leveled his wintry gaze on Max and said without reservation, “Henry wants me to get Delaney pregnant.”

  Max debated whether to tell Nick the truth. He felt no love or loyalty toward his former client. Henry had been a very difficult man and had ignored his professional advice repeatedly. He’d cautioned Henry about drafting such a capricious and potentially injurious will, but Henry Shaw always had to have things his own way, and the money had been too good for Max to let his client find another lawyer. “I believe that was his intent, yes,” he answered truthfully, perhaps because he felt a little guilty for his part in it.

  “Why didn’t he just say so in the will?”

  “Henry wanted his will drafted that way for two reasons. First, he didn’t think you’d concede to father a child for property or money. Second, I informed him that if you contested a condition stipulating you impregnate a woman, you might possibly win on the grounds of a conflict of morals. Henry didn’t seem to think there was a judge around who would believe you have any morals when it comes to women, but contesting the will would defeat the purpose.” Max paused and watched Nick’s jaws tighten. He was pleased to see a reaction, however slight. Maybe the man wasn’t completely void of human emotion. “There is always a chance you might get a judge who would declare the condition void.”

  “Why Delaney? Why not another woman?”

  “He was under the impression that you and Delaney had a clandestine past together,” Max said. “And he thought if he forbade you to touch Delaney, you’d feel compelled to defy him, as I take it you have in the past.”

  Anger tightened Nick’s throat. There had been no clandestine past between himself and Delaney. “Clandestine” made it sound like Romeo and freakin‘ Juliet. As far as the other, that whole forbidden theory, what Max said might have been true once, but Henry had overplayed his hand. Nick wasn’t a kid anymore, drawn to the things he couldn’t have. He didn’t do things just to defy the old man, and he wasn’t drawn to the porcelain doll who always got his hands slapped for him.

  “Thank you,” he said as he stood. “I know you didn’t have to tell me anything.”

  “You’re right. I didn’t.”

  Nick shook Max’s extended hand. He didn’t think the lawyer liked him much, which was okay with Nick.

  “I hope Henry went to all the trouble for nothing,” Max said. “I hope, for Delaney’s sake, he won’t get what he wants.”

  Nick didn’t bother with a reply. Delaney’s virtue was safe from him. He walked out the front door of the office and down the sidewalk toward his Jeep. He could hear his cell phone chirping even before he opened the door. It stopped only to start once again. He started the engine and reached for the small phone. It was his mother wanting information about the will and reminding him to come to her house for lunch. He didn’t need reminding. He and Louie ate lunch at their mother’s house several times a week. It calmed her worries about their eating habits and kept her from coming to their houses and rearranging the sock drawers.

  But today he didn’t particularly want to see his mother. He knew how she’d react to Henry’s will and really didn’t want to talk to her about it. She’d rant and rage and direct her angry diatribes at anyone with the last name Shaw. He supposed she had many legitimate reasons to hate Henry.

  Her husband Louis had been killed driving one of Henry’s logging trucks, leaving her with a small son, Louie, to raise by herself. A few weeks after Louis’s funeral, Henry had gone to the house to offer his comfort and sympathy. When he’d left late that night, he’d left with the vulnerable young widow’s signature on a document releasing him from further responsibility in Louis’s death. He’d placed a check in her hand, and a son in her womb. After Nick had been born, Benita had confronted Henry, but he’d denied the baby could possibly be his. He’d kept denying it for most of Nick’s life.

  Even though Nick figured his mother had a right to her anger, when he arrived at her house, he was surprised at the vehemence of today’s tirade. She cursed the will in three languages: Spanish, Basque, and English. Nick understood only part of what she said, but most of her outrage was directed toward Delaney. And he hadn’t even told her about the absurd no-sex stipulation. He hoped he wouldn’t have too.

  “That girl!” she fumed, sawing her way through a loaf of bread. “He always put that neska izugarri before his son. His own blood. She is nothing, nothing. Yet she gets everything.”

  “She might leave town,” Nick reminded her. He didn’t care whether Delaney stayed or was already on her way back home. He didn’t really want Henry’s businesses or the money. Henry had already given him the only property he would have want
ed.

  “Ba! Why should she leave? Your uncle Josu will have something to say about this.”

  Josu Olechea was his mother’s only brother. He was a third-generation sheep rancher, and owned land near Marsing. Since Benita had no husband, she counted on Josu to be head of the family, no matter that her sons were grown.

  “Don’t bother him with this,” Nick said and leaned a shoulder against the refrigerator. As a boy, whenever he’d gotten in trouble or his mother figured he and Louie needed a positive male influence, she’d sent them to spend the summer with Josu and his sheepherders. Both of them had loved it until they’d discovered girls.

  The back door opened and his brother stepped into the kitchen. Louie was shorter than Nick. Solid, with the black hair and eyes he’d inherited from both his mother and father. “So,” Louie began, closing the screen door behind him. “What did the old man leave you?”

  Nick smiled and straightened. His brother would appreciate the inheritance. “You’re going to love it.”

  “He got practically nothing,” his mother interjected, carrying a plate of sliced bread into the dining room.

  “He left me his Angel Beach property and the land at Silver Creek.”

  Louie’s thick brows rose up his forehead and a glint sparkled in his dark eyes. “Holy shit,” the thirty-four-year-old land developer whispered so his mother wouldn’t hear him.

  Nick laughed and the two of them followed Benita into the dining room, then sat at the polished oak table. They watched their mother neatly fold back the lace tablecloth, then leave to get their lunch.

  “What are you going to put on the Angel Beach property?” Louie asked, assuming correctly that Nick would want the land developed. Benita might not realize the worth of Nick’s inheritance, but his brother did.

  “I don’t know. I have a year to think about it.”

  “A year?”

  Benita set bowls of guisado de vaca in front her sons, then took her seat. It was hot outside, and Nick really didn’t feel like stew. “I get the property if I do something. Or not do something, actually.”

  “Is he trying to get you to change your name again?”

  Nick looked up from his bowl. His mother and brother stared back at him. There was no way around it. They were family, and they believed family had the God-given right to stick their noses in his business. He snagged a piece of bread and took a bite. “There was a condition,” he began after he swallowed. “I get the property in one year if I don’t become involved with Delaney.”

  Slowly Louie picked up his spoon. “Involved? How?”

  Nick cast a sideways glance at his mother, who was still staring at him. She’d never talked to either boy about sex. She’d never even so much as mentioned it. She’d left the talk up to Uncle Josu, but by that time, both Allegrezza boys had known most of it anyway. He returned his gaze to his brother and lifted one brow.

  Louie took a bite of stew. “What happens if you do?”

  “What do you mean what happens?” Nick scowled at his brother as he reached for his spoon. Even if he were crazy enough to want Delaney, which he wasn’t, she hated him. He’d seen it in her eyes today. “You sound as if there’s a possibility.”

  Louie didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. He knew Nick’s history.

  “What happens?” his mother asked, who didn’t know anything but felt she had the right to know everything.

  “Then Delaney inherits the property.”

  “Of course. Isn’t it enough that she got everything that is rightfully yours? Now she will be after you to get her hands on your property, Nick,” his mother predicted, generations of suspicious and secretive Basque blood running through her veins. Her dark eyes narrowed. “You watch out for her. She’s as greedy as her mother.”

  Nick seriously doubted he would have to watch out for Delaney. Last night when he’d driven her to her mother’s house, she’d sat in his Jeep doing a really good impersonation of a statue, the moonlight casting her profile in gray shadows and letting him know she was royally pissed off. And after today, he was pretty sure she’d avoid him like a leper.

  “Promise me, Nick,” his mother continued. “She always got you into trouble. You watch out.”

  “I’ll watch out.”

  Louie granted.

  Nick frowned at his brother and purposely changed the subject. “How’s Sophie?”

  “She’s coming home tomorrow,” Louie answered.

  “That’s wonderful news.” Benita smiled and set a slice of bread next to her bowl.

  “I’d hoped to have a little more time alone with Lisa before I tell Sophie about the wedding,” Louie said. “I don’t know how she’ll take the news.”

  “She’ll adjust to her new stepmother eventually. Everything will turn out fine,” Benita predicted. She liked Lisa okay, but she wasn’t Basque and she wasn’t Catholic, which meant that Louie couldn’t marry in the church. Never mind that Louie was divorced and couldn’t marry in the church anyway. Benita wasn’t worried about Louie. Louie would be okay. But Nick. She worried about Nick. She always had. And now that girl was back and she would worry even more.

  Benita hated anyone with the last name Shaw. Mostly she hated Henry for the way he’d treated her and the way he’d treated her son, but she hated that girl and her mother too. For years she’d watched Delaney parade around in fancy clothes while Benita had to patch Louie’s hand-me-downs for Nick. Delaney got new bicycles and expensive toys while Nick went without or had to settle for secondhand. And while she’d watched Delaney get more than one little girl needed, she’d also watched her son, his proud shoulders straight, chin in the air. A stoic little man. And each time she watched him pretend it didn’t matter, her heart broke a little more. Each time she watched him watch that girl, she grew a little more bitter.

  Benita was proud of both her sons and she loved them equally. But Nick was different from Louie. Nick was so very sensitive.

  She looked across the table at her younger son. Nick would always break her heart.

  Chapter Four

  The plastic doggie scooper bags in the pocket of Delaney’s shorts seemed like some pathetic metaphor of her life. Shit, that’s what it was. Ever since she’d sold her soul for money, that’s what her life had become, and she didn’t see that it would get any better for another eleven months. Almost everything she owned resided in a storage shed on the outskirts of town, and her closest companions were the two Weimaraners walking beside her.

  It had taken Delaney less than five hours to decide to accept the terms of Henry’s will. An appallingly short amount of time, but she wanted the money. She’d been given a one-week reprieve to travel to Phoenix, quit her job, and close her apartment. Saying good-bye to her friends at Valentina had been hard. Saying good-bye to her freedom was even harder. It had been only a month, but it felt like she’d been a prisoner for a year.

  She had no job and wore boring clothes she didn’t particularly like because she lived with her mother.

  The hot sun baked the top of her head as she made her way down Grey Squirrel Lane toward the center of town. When she’d lived in Truly ten years ago, most of the streets hadn’t had names. There had been no need, but with the recent influx of summer residents, and the boom in real estate, the city council had knocked itself out to come up with really inventive street names like Gopher, Chipmunk, and Grey Squirrel. Delaney, it seemed, lived in the rodent section of town, while Lisa fared somewhat better over on Milkweed, which of course was next to Ragweed and Tumbleweed.

  Since she’d been back, she’d noticed a lot of other changes, too. The business district had quadrupled, and the old part of town had been given a facelift. There were two public boat ramps to accommodate the heavy invasion of boats and Jet Skis, and the city had added three new parks. But beyond those changes, there were two other very visible and telling signs that the town had finally been pulled into the 1990s. First, there was the Mountain Java Espresso Shop located between Sterling Realty and t
he Grits and Grub Diner. And second, the old lumber mill had been converted into a microbrewery. When Delaney had lived in Truly before, the people drank Folgers and Coors. They would have declared a double-shot skinny latte “sissy coffee” and would have beat the crap out of anyone who dared to utter the words “raspberry beer.”

  It was the Fourth of July and the town was smothered in patriotism. Red, white, and blue flags and ribbons decorated everything from the “Welcome to Truly” banner to the wooden Indian standing outside Howdy’s Trading Post. There would be a parade later, of course. In Truly, there were parades for just about every occasion. Maybe she’d stick around downtown and watch the parade. It wasn’t like she had anything else to do.

  At the corner of Beaver and Main, Delaney stopped and waited for an RV to lumber by. For walking so nicely beside her, she reached into her pocket and rewarded Duke and Dolores with Milk-bones. It had taken several frustrating weeks to assert her role as the alpha dog and teach them who was boss. She’d had the time. For the past month she’d spent some of her time catching up with a few old school friends. But they were all married and had families and looked at her as if she were abnormal because she didn’t.

  She would have loved to spend more time with Lisa, but unlike Delaney, Lisa had a job and a fiancй. She would have loved to sit down with her old friend and talk about Henry’s will and the real reason she was back in Truly. But she didn’t dare. If its stipulation became public, Delaney’s life would turn into a burning hell. She would become the subject of endless speculation and the topic of never-ending gossip. And if the part of the will concerning Nick was revealed, she’d probably have to kill herself.

  As it was, she was just likely to die of boredom before it was all over. She spent her days watching talk shows, or she walked Duke and Dolores as a means to get out of the house and escape the life her mother had planned for her. Gwen had decided that since Delaney would be living in Truly for a year, they should be involved in the same projects, belong to the same social organizations, and attend the same civic meetings. She’d even gone so far as submitting Delaney’s name to spearhead a committee concerned with the drug problem in Truly. Delaney had politely turned down the offer. First of all, Truly’s drug problem was laughable. Second, Delaney would rather drink bong water than get involved in the community.