“Charmaine, exactly how close were you to my father over the years?”
Her head shot up with surprise. There were some things about his father he didn’t know… that his father hadn’t wanted him to know. She hadn’t lied to him during the time they’d been together or since, not exactly, but it had been a sin of omission. Like the song. “I visited your father occasionally, and I went to his funeral last year. I liked Charlie. I never got a chance to offer my sympathies to you on your father’s death, but I am sorry.”
He nodded his acceptance of her condolences.
“Charlie was saddened over our divorce, you know?”
“Our nondivorce,” he reminded her. “And, no, I didn’t know that he was saddened, or gladdened, by anything involving me. He never once came to see me in prison. At my insistence. My old man did not need to see me in that hellhole.” He shook his head to clear it of unpleasant images. “But then, you didn’t, either.”
“Me?” Why would he have expected me to visit him? Would he have even approved me for his visitor list? Does he still care? Does he think I do? All that was beside the point. Charlie and his son had never been close. Although his parents had never married, paternity had never been an issue. Despite that, through no fault of Charlie’s, the only time the father and son had been permitted to see each other were occasional weekends and summer visits. In Charmaine’s opinion, his mother had been a world-class bitch, using her illegitimate son to get back at his father, just because he was an uneducated rancher. “Why did you ask about my relationship with your father?”
“Because he left you half the ranch.”
Stunned, Charmaine just gaped at Rusty.
The hostility he leveled at her was palpable in the air. “Why do you suppose he did that, Charmaine?” Hard to believe that these same eyes, which were hard as black ice now, could ever have danced with mischief or gone smoky with passion.
“I… I don’t know.” But in the back of Charmaine’s mind, hope bloomed. I own half of a freakin’ ranch? Maybe I’ll be able to pay off my loan, after all. “How could this have happened? I mean, Charlie’s been dead for a year. Why am I just now finding out I was in his will?”
Rusty shrugged. “Dad’s lawyer told me at the time of his death that I was in the will, but details weren’t to be disclosed till after my release. I didn’t know you were in the will, too, until I walked out of Angola several weeks ago. That was also at Dad’s instructions. Thank God, there was a foreman in place when he died. Clarence has been a lifesaver. But, like I said… a mess!”
“Unbelievable!”
He slammed some papers and a pen on the table.
“What are they?”
“Just sign them, dammit.”
“What are they?” she repeated. He might think she was a ditzy bimbo, but Charmaine was an astute businesswoman, despite her recent loan fiasco. She did not sign legal papers without reading them first. Besides, these would have to be notarized, wouldn’t they?
Briefly scanning the papers, she noted that the first set was a petition for divorce. Okay, there was a tiny pang in the region of her heart. Only one day after finding out I’m still married, and the brute is this eager to get rid of me.
The other papers were even more ominous. “You want me to sign over my half of the Triple L Ranch for a token one dollar. Do you think I’m stupid? No, don’t answer that.”
“Charmaine, you have no use for a ranch. Sign the papers, and I’ll be out of here.”
“I deserve fair compensation.”
“Really?” He gave her an insulting once-over, as if she’d asked about her personal worth, not that of the ranch. “How much?”
“Fifty thousand dollars.”
He laughed. “Darlin’, you haven’t been to the ranch lately if you think that. The property is run-down, the fences are broken in so many places I can’t count, and the cattle are emaciated and hardly worth keeping. If you must know, you own half of a helluva lot of debt.”