Colin arrived back in Cambria ahead of the McCrays. Drew had to wrap up some things
at home before making the trip, and Julia wanted to travel with her brother. That gave
Colin a chance to have a family meeting prior to Drew's arrival.
He picked his car up at the San Jose airport, where he'd left it when he'd caught his
flight to Montana, made the long drive down to Cambria, and got checked in at the lodge.
He knew his family would grouse at him—again—for choosing the lodge over the family
home, but he did it anyway.
Even he wasn't sure why he was so stubborn on that point. There was plenty of room
at the ranch, God knew. And he loved his family—there wasn't a single one of them he
wouldn't have taken a bullet for. But being under their roof always made him feel itchy
in his own skin in a way he couldn't quite put his finger on.
He was one hundred percent Delaney, but he had never quite fit in.
Part of it was the asthma.
When he was a kid, he'd had asthma severe enough to land him in the hospital more
than once. It was triggered by allergens, mostly—something a ranch, with the hay and the
animals and the infinite species of plants and other living things—had plenty of. So,
while his brothers and Breanna were out riding, or helping to tend the cattle, or doing one
of the million other things Colin couldn't do because his parents were afraid it might kill
him, Colin was back at the house, feeling other in a way that never quite wore off, even
when the asthma receded from a major threat to a minor annoyance.
So, yeah. That was one part of it. The other part of it, he supposed, had to do with
Harvard.
Colin had excelled in high school in a way that none of his siblings ever had. Ryan
and Breanna both had gotten solid grades, but nothing extraordinary. Liam had barely
scraped by, preferring to work the ranch and hang out with his friends instead of
studying.
But Colin had taken to schoolwork as though he'd been born doing it. Straight As,
academic awards, student government. He'd been a National Merit Scholar, and he'd
gotten a near perfect score on his SATs. So when it came time to apply to colleges, he'd
set the bar high.
Orin and Sandra had been dismayed by their youngest son's desire to attend an Ivy
League school. Despite their wealth, they were deeply down-to-earth people, and the
pretentious lifestyle Harvard represented to them felt so foreign that he might as well
have been asking to go to school on Mars. He'd wanted it badly, though, so when he got
accepted, they'd reluctantly relented and sent him.
At least some of their fears came true. Colin had come home from the East Coast
with a Harvard Law degree and a fondness for designer suits, cocktail parties, and
socializing with the children of aristocrats and business titans.
He'd never looked down on his own family, had never felt for a moment that he was
in any way superior to them because of his educational experiences. But when he'd come
back, he'd felt a distinct chill from Liam, who probably felt judged for his relative lack of
achievement, and disdain from Sandra, who simply couldn't relate to this newly uppercrust
sophisticate she'd given birth to.
He knew they thought he was judging them, but that was ironic; he was the one
being judged and who had come up lacking, in their estimation. And why? Just because
he wasn't the salt-of-the-earth man of the land that his father, his uncle, and his brothers
were? Just because he was interested in things they weren't? Since when had that become
a crime?
He'd reacted to all of it by keeping his distance—which had only confirmed their
suspicions that he had somehow become too good for them. It was a vicious cycle, and he
didn't know how to get out of it.
The simple fact was that his family's world was different than his own, and while
that should have been okay with everyone involved, somehow it wasn't.
When Colin had moved to San Diego, his mother, in particular, had taken that as a
personal affront, as though Colin had done it to hurt her, or because he didn't love her
enough to stay in Cambria. Or, because small-town life wasn't good enough for him.
He'd told his family that he had to leave because he needed to work at a major firm
in order to properly launch his career. What would he do in Cambria? Open a storefront
law office to handle people's wills and their lawsuits over their petty disputes with their
neighbors?
His mother had responded that there would be plenty of work for him handling the
Delaney holdings. The family's real estate interests were so vast and far-reaching that
managing their legal concerns could easily be a full-time job.
That was true, of course, but he'd gone anyway.
He'd spent a few years at a big firm, learning how to practice law in the real world
and not just in theory, and then had quit to work full time for his family. But he still
hadn't returned to Cambria.
He'd stayed away because he'd needed to figure out his place in the world. He knew
who he wasn't; he'd needed to get some distance to figure out who he was.
But the longer he stayed away, the more his mother seemed to resent him for it. The
more he felt that resentment, the more he needed to stay away.
So, it would be the lodge instead of the ranch; that way, he wouldn't have to feel the
weight of his mother's disapproving gaze any longer than he absolutely had to.
Once he'd checked in, unpacked, and gotten himself settled, he braced himself and
drove out to the ranch.
It had rained on the day of Redmond's funeral, and it had rained on Salt Spring
Island. In Montana, he'd had to deal with the snow.
But now, in Cambria, the world was green and lush, and the sky was a clear blue that
seemed almost impossibly brilliant. The rolling hills were covered in waist-high grass the
color of emeralds, and the pines towered above him. As he drove north toward the ranch,
the calm, blue ocean spread out to his left into eternity.
While it was true that he'd chosen to leave, the awe this place inspired in him had
never stopped. He'd never stopped feeling the magic.
He turned right onto the road that led to the ranch, and prepared himself for all that
was to come.
It had only been a week or so since Redmond's funeral, and Liam hadn't left
Cambria yet because he'd wanted to be with the family while this business of the will
was being cleared up. So, the full complement of Delaneys—minus his nephews, Michael
and Lucas, who were watching a movie upstairs—was gathered in the family room of the
ranch house when he arrived.
They didn't mob him for information all at once, because their mother had taught
them better manners than that. Instead, they exchanged small talk and inquired about his
trip, and Ryan brought him a beer in a bottle sweating with cold.
When that was done and they were all settled in on the same sofas and chairs that
had been there since Colin was a child, they launched into it.
"He's coming here," Colin announced. "Drew McCray. He wants to meet everyone,
talk this out. His sister is coming with him."
A muscle clenched in Orin's jaw. "When?"
"A day or two, probably. Drew had some things to wrap up at home before he could
make the trip."
"I don't recall him being invited," Liam snapped.
"Oh, he doesn't need to be invited, and you know it," Sandra scolded him. "He's
family, no matter how it happened."
"Doesn't mean I have to like it," Liam said.
Of course Liam was the hard one. He always had been, in so many ways, about so
many things. But this time, Colin found it especially predictable.
Liam, of all of the Delaney children, had been the one closest to Redmond. Their
uncle had never had any children—at least, none they'd known about—and he'd treated
Liam like his son. A lesser man than Orin might have been threatened by that, but Orin
was not a lesser man. And so Liam had been particularly hard-hit by Redmond's death.
Colin supposed that Drew, Redmond's actual, blood progeny, presented a threat to
Liam in a way that none of them fully understood. Things might get sticky when it was
time for the two of them to meet.
"What's he like?" Gen, Ryan's wife, wanted to know. Colin imagined that she was
attempting to get the conversation on safer, more stable ground.
"He's shocked about the inheritance," Colin said. "He's angry that his mother lied to
him all these years."
"Well, I guess he would be," Ryan said.
"There's going to be a certain … resistance," Colin said. "At first, he didn't want
anything to do with any of us."
"Well, if that's how he feels, then he can just—"
"Liam. That's enough," Orin interrupted him. Orin was a quiet man, who'd mostly
left the control of his children to his wife. So when he corrected Liam, when he asserted
himself with authority in his voice, they all stopped and listened.
"Of course he's angry. Of course he's shocked and he doesn't know what to think,"
Orin went on. "You'd feel that way too, I expect," he said to Liam. "This young man is
Redmond's son, and we're going to welcome him into our home. And if he's a little testy
with us, well, we're all going to have a little patience, a little compassion. That includes
you." He glared at his son.
"Yes, sir," Liam uttered, his face grim and as hard as stone.
"Well, that's that, then," Sandra announced. "I'll make up the spare bedroom here.
Gen, you suppose one of them can stay with you and Ry?"
"Of course," Gen said. She and Ryan had a big, new house they'd built on the ranch
property when they'd gotten married, and they'd included plenty of rooms for the
children they might have one day.
The ranch had a nice little guest house down by the creek, but Gen, an art dealer, had
been using it to host visiting artists. At the moment, she had some guy in there who
painted portraits of himself. That was all—just himself. Himself as a man, himself as a
woman, himself as a dog, and an angel, and as Christ. Colin supposed that said something
about the basic emotional makeup of artists, though he wasn't sure what.
"We can put Drew in Colin's room," Ryan observed dryly, "since he's not using it."
And there it was—the inevitable jab at him for not staying at the ranch.
"Just because he's coming here to meet us doesn't mean he has to stay here," Liam
said, still determined to be pissy about the whole Drew situation.
"He might not want to," Colin observed. "Might be more comfortable at a B&B,
given the circumstances."
"Well, I'm sure you'd understand that way of thinking better than I do," Sandra
groused.
Colin was sure she was right.
When the family meeting was over, Liam caught up with Colin out on the porch
while Colin was finishing his beer and looking out over the hills toward the ocean.
"So, the sister's coming, huh?" Liam was trying to make his voice sound casual, but
he'd never had much luck with that particular skill.
Colin looked at him, already feeling defensive. "Yeah, she is. So?"
"So," Liam said, pointing his own beer bottle at Colin and dropping the casual act,
which had been a farce to begin with, "that's a car wreck waiting to happen. And you
know it."
"Ah, shut up, Liam, would you?" Colin turned his back on his brother and faced the
glorious landscape instead.
Liam, unfazed by having been told to shut up, continued undaunted. "You told me
yourself you made a move on her, so don't pretend there's nothing going on there."
"Yeah, yeah. I made a move, and I crashed and burned. So you can stop worrying
about it."
"She might not want to go there, but you do."
"Maybe. So what?"
"Colin." Liam waited until Colin turned to look at him, and then he fixed his brother
with the same glare he probably used on errant ranch hands in Montana. The one that said
you'd better get your shit together or you'd be on a Greyhound bus to go live in your
mother's basement by sunset. "Do not do this. She is that guy's sister."
"You can stop calling him 'that guy' any time now," Colin observed mildly. "He
does have a name."
"She's that guy's goddamned sister," Liam went on, "and so she's caught up in this.
The last thing our family needs is for this whole thing to get even messier than it already
is. If you sleep with her, Colin, I swear to God …"
"What? You swear what?" Colin was puffing up now, like some kind of pack animal
trying to appear bigger to the alpha male to avoid getting attacked. Which, when he
thought about it, was exactly what he was.
"I swear to God I'll kick your ass, is what." Liam's face had reddened slightly, his
brows drawn together like he was Clint Eastwood asking Colin whether he felt lucky.
"Says the guy who hasn't been laid in, what, two years? Just because you're living
like a damned monk doesn't mean I have to."
The remark could have set Liam off, could have pushed him over the edge from
belligerent to outright hostile. But instead, it seemed to have the opposite effect, and
Liam deflated slightly. He stepped up next to Colin at the porch railing and leaned his
forearms on the wood.
"Jesus, it really has been a long time," he admitted.
Colin slapped him on the back, brotherly order restored. "That's your own fault, you
know."
"Yeah. Yeah, I know it."
Liam had caught his girlfriend cheating on him with one of the ranch hands two
years before, and it was as though all of the air had leaked out of his balloon. He'd
always had a hot temper, but now Liam seemed angry most of the time. And he hadn't
been willing to take a chance on women again—a situation that just increased his overall
irritability.
"If Julia and I were to get together," Colin said, "it wouldn't be just about sex. I like
her. I like her a lot."
Liam shook his head sadly. "You're a shithead, you know that?"
"I believe I've heard that before," Colin remarked