Coward, she thought. He’d left all the tough work for others to do. She wished he hadn’t died—so she could kill him herself.
Anders kept reading, “‘And as for you specifically, Aislinn, I’ve had my eye on you since the summer you came to work at Wild River. You haven’t married or gotten seriously involved with a man. I wanted to know if you still held out hope that Jaxon might be yours. That’s why I called you recently to remind you that Jaxon is free now. I heard the longing in your voice when you demanded that I never try to call you again.’”
It was too much. Of a ridiculousness beyond all insanity. Aislinn straightened and announced, “Come on. As if that crazy old man could tell anything from one phone call, a very brief phone call, a phone call that he openly admits ended with me demanding that he leave me alone.”
They all just stared at her—as they’d been staring at her almost from the moment Kip Anders began to read Durand’s last letter.
Another sound of pure misery escaped her. She ducked her head once more and laced her fingers on top of it. “Sorry. Go on. Just...get it over with, please.”
Kip Anders did just that. “‘After that phone call, I knew I had to leave you what you want most of all—a chance at a life with my adopted son.’”
“What the hell, Martin?” It was Jax, his voice a rough whisper.
Kip Anders didn’t even pause. “‘Aislinn, you and Jax are to marry within a week from the date of the reading of this letter. You are then to remain married for at least the next three months. After three months of marriage, you, Aislinn, will receive fifty thousand dollars from my estate. And, Jaxon, you will get the deed to Wild River and all the rest of it, as you should, as I always promised you and Claudia. Once the three months pass, it’s up to the two of you whether you choose to stay together or not.
“‘You must mutually agree to these terms and carry through with them. Aislinn, if you do not marry Jaxon and live as his wife for three full months, you will get nothing.’”
Nothing. She wanted to throw back her head and laugh.
As if fifty thousand dollars meant squat to her right now.
As if all the money in the world could ever stack up against what Martin Durand had just stolen from her—her pride, her family, her very identity.
Anders droned on, “‘Jaxon, if you refuse to marry Aislinn for three months, Wild River Ranch and everything on it will be sold at auction. You will get the proceeds from the sale as well as everything else that belonged to me, minus any other bequests mentioned in my will. Jaxon, you are the son of my heart, and it has been an honor to be a father to you. I want you to have Wild River, but if that doesn’t happen, you will at least have plenty of capital with which to start over. I realize that will be little consolation to you, as we both know very well that you love Wild River more than your life. But believe it or not, I am doing this for you—for both of you. I think you will make a good match, that you will be good for each other. So I am giving you the opportunity you otherwise never would have had. I wish you both love and happiness and a successful future together. With all my deepest affection and my highest regard, Martin Durand.’”
Dropping her hands from their ludicrous protective position over her head, Aislinn popped up straight in her chair. “That’s it? That’s all?”
Anders blinked behind his glasses. “The, erm, end of the letter, yes. But we have yet to cover several specific conditions and particulars that you’ll both need to—”
“Stop.” She shoved back the chair and leaped to her feet. “As if I care about your so-called conditions. As if I care about that old man’s money. As if I care about any of this crap. I am...not that person. Not somebody who was supposed to be named Madison Delaney. I’m Aislinn Bravo. I was born in Montedoro at the villa of Tristan Bouchard, Count of Della Torre. You ask my brothers. They were there, they remember. They...” She lost track of her words as her gaze skittered around the table. They all looked at her as though she’d lost her mind—all of them, Jax most of all.
She could read his thoughts in that look on his face. She’s a nutjob, his expression said, and I am so screwed...
She went ahead and put it right out there, right in his face. “You think I’m crazy.”
Jax jerked back. “No. No, I...”
That made her laugh, a bizarre, deranged sort of sound. “Hey, come on. Be honest, Jax. You think I’ve lost my ever-loving mind. And maybe I have. Because who wouldn’t go crazy, after all I’ve just heard?”
“Aislinn, really, nobody thinks you’re—”
“Oh, yes, you do. And to be perfectly honest, you might be right. I’ve come unhinged. This is all too much and I just can’t take any more. I mean, it’s simply not possible, that my family isn’t my family, that my birth mother and the real Aislinn Bravo moved to Los Angeles, where she became a superstar named Madison Delaney. That all I know to be true about myself and my life is really just a big, fat lie.”
The lawyer suggested mildly, “How about if we take a few minutes and—”
“How ’bout if we don’t?” Aislinn pinned the lawyer with a hard glare.
It was all so far beyond too much.
Jax tried once more, “Aislinn, if you would just—”
“No.” She cut him off cold as she snatched her purse off the chair. “Uh-uh. I need a minute. I need a thousand minutes. I need a lifetime out of this room.” She turned for the door.
“Aislinn, wait!” Jax called after her.
She kept walking, not once glancing back, grabbing the door handle, flinging it wide and escaping down the hallway that led to the waiting room.
As she flew by the front desk, the pretty receptionist jumped up. “Ms., er, are you all right?”
“Not really.”
“Is there something I can—?”
“Thanks, but no.” Aislinn shoved open the entry door and went through it.
Out on the sidewalk under a cool gray sky, she kept walking right into the street. A guy in a red Mustang squealed to a stop just in time to avoid running her down.
“Watch out, you idiot!” he yelled out the window.
She ignored him and kept going until she reached the opposite sidewalk, at which point she suddenly ran out of steam. Halting just past the stop sign, she found herself in front of a three-story building of light-colored brick with a sign that read BPOE on the side.
With no idea where to go next, she ducked into the alcove that sheltered the entry doors. For a moment, she froze and stared at her faint reflection in the glass of the door—a dark-haired woman in a polka-dot dress, someone she hardly recognized.
She shook herself. She couldn’t just stand here blocking the entrance.
Wrapping her arms around herself, she slid into the corner on the right side of the door and tried to decide what to do next.
“Give me a few minutes,” Jax said to the others. “I’ll talk to her. I’ll bring her back.”
He went through the door she’d left open