Everyone else must have been out working the ranch or away because the town car was running. Once he jumped out of his truck, the chauffeur stepped out and opened the back door.
A man came out first. He was probably only ten or fifteen years older than Brett, but he had a lot of silver in his hair and lines in his face. He reached in and helped out a woman. She was slim and blonde with a face stretched taut, but she was definitely older than the man.
“Where is my daughter?” she demanded of him.
He arched an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“Where is Patricia?”
He glanced back toward the road, but he was really hoping that Trish was taking her time in town. He didn’t want her coming back to deal with her mother after how emotional she’d been at her father’s grave. It would be too much for her.
“She’s not here,” he said. “So you have no reason to be.”
“What did you do to her?” her mother asked, as if he’d murdered the woman that he…
He what?
He couldn’t finish that thought. He wouldn’t let himself.
“Trish is fine,” he said. Or at least he hoped she was. He cursed himself now for leaving her alone.
“Where is she?” the man asked. “She’s my wife.”
“Ex-wife,” he automatically corrected him.
And the man’s pale face flushed. “That was a mistake. She must have realized that by now.”
Brett laughed at the man’s arrogance. He reminded Brett way too much of the neurosurgeon Livvy had dated. “She knows her only mistake was in marrying you in the first place,” he told him.
The guy clenched his hand into a fist, and Brett braced himself for a blow. But the guy didn’t swing.
“And who are you to Patricia?” her mother asked.
“Her partner,” Brett said.
Her mother snorted. “She knows better than to fall for a ranch hand ever again.”
“He’s not a ranch hand, Aunt Belinda,” Frankie said. She must have come from the barn because she’d walked up without anyone noticing.
Belinda looked Frankie up and down, and her mouth twisted into a sneer. “I am not your aunt,” she said. “And he is not Patricia’s partner.”
“You’re right about us,” Frankie said. “And I am grateful we’re no longer related. But you’re wrong about Brett. He is Trish’s partner, and he’s mine, too.”
Trish’s mother gasped as if horrified.
“You’re thinking the wrong kind of partner,” Brett said, taking pity on the uptight woman. “Frankie, Trish, my brothers and I are all equal partners in the Four Corners now.”
“Well, I’ll have you know that we will be taking legal action to change that.”
Dust billowed as a truck barreled down the drive toward them. It stopped abruptly behind his, and Trish clamored out. He stepped closer to her mother and ex, trying to shield her from them. Dealing with them was the last thing she needed right now. And he was worried about her talking to them in the state she’d been in when he’d seen her last.
Frankie had thought she was vulnerable before, but she was especially vulnerable now. Before she’d needed protection against him; now she needed it from him.
“Go in the house,” he told her. “Frankie and I will get rid of the trespassers. I’ll call the sheriff if they won’t leave.”
“Call the sheriff,” her mother said. “You should be arrested for the con you pulled on my daughter and on my gullible ex-husband.”
“Stop!”
