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demanded.
    “Get a DNA test,” she stated flatly. “Then you’ll know.”
    He’d wanted to strangle her. Such a beautiful liar. But then ... then he looked at Rourke and started to wonder. A kid . . . a son? He hadn’t believed her, but she wasn’t wrong about the boy’s red hair. Colton was dark, like his mother, and also like his brother, Tyler, and their youngest sister, Nell. But sister Ricki was a redhead and Delilah, the middle child of Ira’s brood, had hair a red-gold color. Ricki and Delilah had taken after Ira and so ... maybe had Rourke? Was it possible? Surreptitiously, his eyes had followed Rourke all around the funeral events, both during the service and the reception at the house afterward, where everyone met for food and drink and a remembrance of Colton’s mother.
    Then Pilar had sent him Rourke’s DNA, and Colton had seen if it was a match. It was. He was Rourke’s father. On that, she hadn’t lied. While he was figuring out what to do about that news, Ira, steeped in grief, had turned to Pilar to assuage his loneliness. And Pilar had turned right back! He couldn’t believe she would have the brio to date his father! Even knowing what an opportunist she was, he just hadn’t seen it coming.
    After that, he’d just stayed incommunicado from Ira and Pilar. He wasn’t sure what to do about Rourke, but until this damn wedding was over, he was staying in Montana.
    The ice in his drink had melted, so Colton poured it out and started over, this time taking the scotch neat. “What a joke,” he said to his dog, and as if he understood, Montana thumped his tail. Part German shepherd and Lab with a smattering of mutt, Montana had come with the ranch when Colton had bought it. His name had been Breezy or something equally stupid. Colton had redubbed him the name of his newly adopted state and they’d hung out ever since.
    He carried his refreshed drink back to his chair. His old man was going to be stepfather and grandfather to the same kid. That was both mind-boggling and sad. Ira just didn’t know what he was getting into. Pilar had agreed to keep the truth about Rourke’s paternity a secret as long as Colton coughed up child support. Pretty soon, the woman would be robbing the Dillingers from both ends.
    “You know what they say?” he asked, continuing his one-sided conversation with the mutt. “‘There’s no fool like an old fool.’” Was he referring to his father or himself? He wasn’t sure. Though barely sixty-six, Ira wasn’t exactly ancient, but he was certainly proving the adage true by marrying Pilar.
    The thought curdled the contents of Colton’s stomach even as he remembered Pilar’s ample curves, wild energy and perfectly arched eyebrows. Her smile was infectious, the twinkle in her eyes hinting at mystery. A beauty by any man’s standards, Pilar was complicated and sexy, but, Colton knew, with a heart as small and cold as the money she was so fond of. Why couldn’t the old man see that he was being played like an old fiddle?
    Hell. What man would open his eyes to that kind of duplicity while his cock and ego were being stroked with equal perfection?
    You weren’t immune to her, were you?
    No. And he had the son to prove it.
    And now, damn her, she was marrying his old man.
    So in the end, who was the bigger fool?
     
     
    The specter of the animal carcass stuck in Ira’s craw as he drove toward the ranch house. Much as he’d tried to dismiss his foreman’s warning of bad totems and karma, an ill feeling needled him, like a burr under the saddle.
    Despite the blinding snow, he veered south, cutting over toward the buildings of the original homestead. Set in a white thicket of cottonwood and pine, the burned-out shell of the once-grand old house came into view. He’d been born there, in the upstairs bedroom that was no more. Now there was just an insubstantial frame of blackened timbers on the first floor. One of the two tall chimneys had collapsed in a pile of rubble;