Page 48 of Just (Fake) Married (Calloways vs. McGraws #1)

HARMONY

Ethan and I walked into the office at the Swinging D and everyone groaned.

“Too much?” I asked, touching my beach hat and the summer dress I was wearing.

My husband followed me, wearing a Hawaiian shirt, sunglasses and flip flops. We were leaving - no matter what happened in this meeting - to catch our flight to Hawaii for our long overdue honeymoon.

One week on the beach with that man. I had never looked forward to anything more.

“You look amazing,” Mom said, squishing over on the couch so I could sit between her and my sisters. “I’m sure that’s what all the beach people are wearing.”

Gordan Prescott, Leroy’s attorney, called for this meeting a few days ago. Right after Last Hope Gulch had gotten the news that we had officially been awarded the Blue Ribbon for our Feud Day Festival.

He’d indicated that, given we’d met the first stipulations of Leroy’s will, that there were more details to be ironed out.

Looking very nervous, he sat behind the office desk, where I’d become used to seeing Carter each morning, his hair on end with a grim expression on his face.

The Calloway women sat on the couch with Mom. Carter and Mac stood on either side of the room. Tag sat in the chair nearest the window, looking out at the sunshine and probably thinking of all the work he was missing as we were in the middle of calving season.

“All right,” Ethan said. “Let’s get this over with. Harmony and I have better places to be.”

I blew him a kiss and everyone groaned again. Ethan winked at me and I thought about how much of the next week I was going to spend naked. A lot. A whooooole lot. A serious thrill raced through my body.

Gordon cleared his throat and mopped his brow with a handkerchief.

“This is going to be simple, right?” Ethan asked. “We’ve fulfilled the terms of the will. The land isn’t going to be sold to anyone and we just need to sign some things and we can all move on with our lives?”

“Could I…ah…have a drink?” Gordan asked.

Tag poured him a whiskey and brought it over to him. He drank it down in one shot, did a full body shake and pulled an envelope out of the briefcase.

At the sight of the envelope all of us groaned.

But then Gordon cast my mom one worried look and started reading.

“ If Gordon is reading this it means you’ve made strides in ending the feud and saving our great town.

Congratulations. I know my boys are thinking that we should be at the end of this bullshit, but I’m sorry, we’re just getting started.

The feud between the Calloways and McGraws has secrets you’ve never heard about and if it’s really going to end, the truth needs to come out.

Monica ,” Gordon said, and all of us turned to look at my mom.

“Mom?” I turned to my mom. “Is there more?”

“ I’m sorry ,” Gordon continued. “ But this secret has been held for too many years. I suspected, but I never challenged you. I didn’t want to hurt you anymore than I already had.

But you recently confirmed for me what I had long believed and now it’s time everyone else learned the truth. I have a daughter .”

Mom gasped and went white. “He didn’t! That bastard.” Her hands pressed to her lips. “Not like this. Not after all this time.”

“What’s he talking about Mom?” I asked. I looked at Mom and then over at Ethan and back at Mom. My sisters looked clueless. No one in the room seemed to know what was happening.

“Stop,” Mom said to Gordon. “There’s no need to do this. Leroy is dead. You don’t have to do what he says.”

“I’m sorry,” he said with real sincerity, and went back to the letter. “I do have a legal obligation to adhere to the dictates of his will.”

“ Carter, ” he read. “ I’m sure you’ve been struggling to make sense of my accounts. ”

“Struggling is an understatement,” Carter said.

“ It’s because you’re operating under the premise that this was an operation in the black.

It isn’t. I over-extended on a land purchase, but I don’t regret it.

If this ranch isn’t growing, it’s shrinking.

And if we aren’t the ones buying, then it will be those rich asshole outsiders who do.

We need someone creative. Someone who understands money like nobody in this room does.

Someone who might have a chance to save the Swinging D.

That someone is my biological daughter. ”

“Don’t,” Monica whispered to Gordon. “Don’t say it.”

He swallowed, but shook his head. “ Sunshine Calloway. ”

“What?” Amity, Bliss and I all cried.

Mom buried her head in her hands and I slipped down to the floor in front of her and pulled her hands away.

“What is he talking about, Mom?” I asked her.

Mom shook her head and blinked up at the ceiling.

“Leroy McGraw, what an asshole you were.” She laughed a bitter, angry laugh and wiped her eyes. “A prime grade A asshole.”

“Mom, is this true? Is Sunshine actually his daughter?” Bliss asked.

Mom stood up. Rage drying all her tears away.

“You all know part of the story. Yes, Leroy broke up with me because his parents didn’t approve of us.

Sasha came, and well, I’m sorry to say boys, but I think you know, your parents’ marriage was arranged.

For years your father was miserable. But he had two sons and he thought…

well, he was considering a divorce. I was still single at the time.

Never really stopped loving the jerk, I suppose,” she swallowed, shook her head.

“Anyway, he started coming around again. He was so lonely, and I missed him. He was an asshole and married, but I missed him. The man I knew. And I missed what we had together. What I did was wrong and I regret it more than I can say, but we had an affair. It didn’t last long.

The guilt was…too much for me.” She shook her head, every bit of her the picture of regret. “Except, I was pregnant.”

Amity, Bliss and I could not contain our gasps. “Mom!”

“Judge me all you want,” she said, hard and cold.

“We don’t judge you,” I said. I looked over at Ethan, who shook his head, too. “None of us judge you. None of us were in your shoes. None of us knew what he was like.”

Mom’s shoulders relaxed from her ears.

“We agreed to meet, out at our secret spot. I was going to tell him about the baby. I figured he would file for divorce immediately. Except when I got to our spot…I could see it in his face. He told me Sasha was pregnant. That would have been with Seth. He was sorry, but he couldn’t divorce her now.

Couldn’t walk away from his responsibility.

I never told him I was pregnant. I didn’t see the point.

And that…was the end of us. Two months later your dad came driving into town with that oil company.

He took one look at me and fell head over heels in love.

But, of course I had to tell him the truth. ”

“So Dad knew you were pregnant when he married you?”

She smiled sadly. “He did. He was a wonderfully caring man. He only asked that I raise Sunshine as his and I was happy to agree. I think I fell in love with your father, girls, in that very minute. If Leroy suspected anything, he never said. But a couple of months ago, he asked me to come see him here at the lodge. He was so fragile. I knew, or thought I knew, that whatever I told him, he was taking to his grave. He asked if Sunshine was his, said she always reminded him of his mother. I told him she was.”

My dad worked out math problems with Sunshine. My dad bought her every book she ever wanted. My dad used to solve the crossword puzzle in the back of the local paper with her every Sunday.

And she wasn’t his biological kid.

Suddenly, I missed my dad all over again.

“And now…what?” Carter asked, white lipped and angry. “What the hell is the point of telling us any of this?”

“He said the ranch is in trouble,” I piped up. “Financially, that’s what he said, right Mr. Prescott?”

“It’s overextended,” Gordon said. “Yes.”

“That’s why he’s telling us this,” I figured. “He wants Sunshine to come home and do her money magic.”

My sister could summon money from the sky. She was a financial wizard working at one of the largest brokerage firms in New York City. She’d made millions for her clients over the years.

“We can’t tell her this over the phone,” I said. “She needs to hear the truth face to face.” I looked at Ethan and he shook his head.

“No,” he said, pointing his finger at me. “No, we have a honeymoon to leave for, in,” he checked his watch. “Seven minutes. Someone else can do this.”

“Not me,” Bliss said. “She scares the shit out of me.”

“Sunshine left for school when I was like, what eleven?” Amity said. “You think she wants to hear this from me?”

Sunshine left for college early, when she was only sixteen. She’d only been back once, for Dad’s funeral. We kept in touch. Of course. Calls and texts and such. But I was probably the only person in the room actually close with Sunshine.

“I’ll go,” Mom said.

“Mom,” we all said at once. “You know how you are about leaving this place. You won’t make it to the airport in Cheyenne without a panic attack.”

“I can go,” I said, looking at Ethan. “Hawaii is not going anywhere, is it?”

“I suppose not,” he said, already looking defeated.

“We don’t have to go to her. We just need someone to bring her here,” Bliss said. “If she comes home, then Mom can tell her the truth. Then she’ll be surrounded by us while her big brain will have a big problem to solve. She’ll love that.”

“You know,” Amity said, looking over at Carter, then at Mac. “This is a problem your father created. One of you should go and get her.”

“I’m with Bliss. She intimidates the heck out of me,” Mac said. “How am I going to convince her she needs to come home?”

“I guess I can go,” Carter said. “But it will still be weird. I think, Ethan, the best thing would be for you and Harmony to postpone-”

“Stop.” Tag unfurled from the chair where he was sitting.

He had one black jeans and the black shirt with the pearl snaps he wore on special occasions. He picked up his hat from where he’d put it on the table and slipped it on his head. He looked, at that moment, like the cowboy-est cowboy ever.

I loved my husband. I did.

But Tag? Could turn a few heads with all that tall, dark, and handsome combined with the strong and silent thing he had going.

“I’ll go get her,” Tag said.