“Fine. It was paradise. Just get on with it.”
“A royal command, Thaddeus. You must obey.”
Lucas glared at her. “Be careful, amada,” he said softly.
“Yes, Alyssa, please. You’re only making matters worse.”
“You’re the one making matters worse,” she snapped. “If you’d done as I asked and simply ignored this whole thing—”
Lucas slammed his fist on the desk. So much for staying calm.
“Damn it,” he roared, “that’s it! Tell me what you’re hiding about that contract, Norton, or so help me, I’ll see you never practice law again!”
Thaddeus Norton took a briefcase from a chair and extracted a thick folder.
“Just bear in mind, sir, I told Aloysius this was insane.”
“Insane?” The woman gave a shaky laugh. “How about immoral? Unethical? How about it’s like something out of bad melodrama?”
“When the two of you get tired of this conversation,” Lucas said coldly, “perhaps you’ll be good enough to explain what in hell you’re talking about.”
The attorney opened his mouth and then shut it again. The woman shot him a look, then lifted her chin. She looked beautiful, proud and untouchable.
“Thaddeus is a coward, so I’ll do it and then we can all have a good laugh. For starters…I hate to disappoint you, Mr. Reyes, but Aloysius wasn’t my lover.” She paused. “He was my father.”
“You’re McDonough’s daughter?”
“His adopted daughter. My name was originally Montero. And there was never any warmth between Aloysius and me.”
“Alyssa,” Norton said wearily, “that’s ancient history.”
“You’re right for once, Thaddeus, but our esteemed visitor wants answers. Well, I’m giving them to him. My mother is dead and so is Aloysius. I cannot imagine missing him, especially now that he’s drawn me into this—this mess.” Her smile was bitter. “Sorry this is all far less intriguing than me being the star of some sordid little drama, Your Mightiness, but that’s the way it is.”
“Let me get this straight,” Lucas said in the tone of a man who’d just watched a rabbit pulled from a hat and knew damned well that sleight-of-hand tricks were not magic. “Aloysius McDonough learns he’s dying. He has no wife but he has a daughter. She’s cold and unfeeling and he has no desire to give her the land he once loved.”
“Sounds good. And you’ve got it half-right, except the land was actually my mother’s. And she loved it.”
“Forgive me,” Lucas said with heavy sarcasm. “I had the characters wrong but not the basic plot. You want the ranch. I own it. And? You got me here so you could do what? Beg me to give it back? Ask me to sell it to you for next to nothing?” His mouth twisted. “Or did you imagine you’d seduce me into giving it to you,” he said, his eyes locked to hers. “Was that the plan?”
“Try ‘none of the above,’” she said coldly.
“Really?” Lucas folded his arms. “I wasn’t born yesterday, amada. Not being mentioned in Daddy’s will must have been hard to accept.”
“But I am mentioned. That’s the problem.”
“He left you something, then? Good for you but I don’t see how it involves me, or why I’ve come such a distance to watch such a badly written play.”
Was he wrong, or did some of her confidence seem to drain away?
“There’s a clause in the contract. I didn’t know about it until Aloysius died and the will was read. It’s—it’s what Thad
deus calls the stipulation.”
“Dios, you say that as if the word might burn your mouth. Are you going to explain it, or must I shake it out of you?”
“I would advise against anything so foolish, Mr. Reyes.”
That tough attitude was back. The statement was a challenge. So was the way she’d addressed him. His honorific creaked with antiquity in this century but her deliberate avoidance of it was, he knew, an insult.