Leslie LaFoy Read Online Free PDF Page A

be paid in a fair and timely manner.”
    Damn.
She hadn't figured it out yet. “I don't have any claims against your father's estate,” he explained, trying tosee a way to tell her that wasn't cruel and sensing that—no matter what he did—this would go badly. It was clear that Lindsay MacPhaull wasn't the sort of woman to back up and give a man room to come at things easy.
    “If you have no bills to present, then why have you made the trip from Texas, Mr. Stennett?” She didn't allow him a chance to answer. “If you came simply to provide the Will and offer condolences on my father's passing, please leave the effort at what you've already made. William MacPhaull left here seventeen years ago and we haven't heard from or of him since. His passing creates no more of a ripple in our lives than that of a pebble dropped into the sea off the coast of England.”
    “I'm thinking it does, Miss MacPhaull,” he countered a bit more sharply than he intended. “If you'd kindly quit yammering long enough to listen to—”
    “Your behavior might pass for well mannered in Texas, but here in New York it's considered insufferably rude.”
    He bristled and before he could think better of it, said bluntly, “Miss MacPhaull, your daddy not only left you seventeen years ago, he left you high and dry when he died.”
    She blinked and actually took two breaths before saying with quiet dignity, “I beg your pardon? Is there an English translation for what you've just said?”
    There was no need for it; he could tell by the way she eased back into the seat that she finally understood the gist of the situation. Despite that, she maintained her regal presence and it irritated him enough to take another hard shot. “Your father obviously made a new life for himself in Texas. Toward the end of it, he also made a new Will. He left all his worldly property to me.” He reached for the valise, opened it, removed the copy of Billy's Will, and handed it to her. “Read for yourself.”
    She glared at him for a long second, then angled the paper and herself into better light and began to read just as Richard Patterson had, slowly at first and then much more quickly. Jackson leaned back into the corner of the seat and crossed his arms, waiting and watching. The creak of carriage springs and the hollow clomp of hooves against paving stones rolled through the space between them. Herbreath caught hard and the color drained out of her face. For a moment he wondered if she was going to be sick. Her hands trembling, she took a slow breath and went back to read the part three times. Then she stopped reading and the paper wrinkled from the tightness of her grip.
    Jackson shoved back the pity he felt for her and continued to watch her carefully, trying to anticipate the way she would come at him. Her eyes narrowed slightly and her lips pursed—which he took to mean that she was going to be a bit more rational than Patterson had been. All things considered, that was good. Her chin slowly lifted; she was going to fight him. If he were in her shoes, he'd do the same thing. When she looked up at him, her face a mask of cool disdain, he also knew that she was going to continue on in her regal manner.
That
he wasn't going to take.
    Her stomach roiling and her throat thick with suppressed tears, Lindsay folded the document and summoned every bit of her poise. “I'll fight this in court, Mr. Stennett,” she told him with what she hoped he heard as calm assurance. “You have no right to anything my father owned outside the Republic of Texas. If you were a decent, honorable man, you'd tear up this Will and pretend you'd never seen it.”
    He shrugged. “Yeah, well, I'm between a rock and a hard place and don't have room to be a decent, honorable man. I'm a cattleman who needs clear title to half the ranch and with no money to do that unless he sells the property his partner left him. I don't intend to let seventeen years of hard work blow off into the wind