“Tell her I’m taking the day off.” He tossed the saddle over the stallion’s back with a little more force than usual.
Diablo danced sideways, his ears slanting backward.
“She’s driving all the way out here, expecting you to give her a riding lesson.”
Noah ran a hand along the horse’s neck, murmuring soothing sounds until the animal settled and let him reach beneath him to snag the girth. “Hell, you can give her the riding lesson.”
“She prefers having you as her instructor, Jackson.”
“Noah. My name is Noah.”
Landry nodded. “Noah. I have to admit I have a hard time thinking of you as Jackson.”
“Because that’s not who I am.” A couple days ago, Noah had known who he was and what he wanted to do: continue his import-and-export business on the side while working with his cousins at Adair Acres, where he could be around the horses and cattle he loved.
Now, he was reeling with the knowledge he wasn’t who he thought he was. His real name was Jackson Adair. The long-lost son of the man who’d owned the ranch he’d been working. The man he thought of as his uncle.
Jackson Adair. How would he ever get used to it? He’d spent the past thirty-seven years as Noah Scott. A man didn’t change his name overnight. Hell, his entire life. He didn’t bother facing Landry Adair, his half sister; instead, he focused his attention on the girth he cinched around the horse’s belly. Once the girth was tight enough, he let the stirrup drop in place on the stallion he’d adopted as his favorite since coming to work at Adair Acres three months ago.
Landry touched his arm. “Are you going to be okay?”
“I’m fine.”
He led Diablo out of the barn.
Before he could mount, Landry spoke again. “I’m here for you, if you need someone to talk to.” She smiled, hesitantly. “After all, we’re related. I’m your sister.”
“Half sister,” he corrected automatically, regretting it as soon as he noted the slight frown between her arched brows. Landry had always been nice to him and, though he had thought they were cousins, she’d been more like the little sister he’d never had growing up. Now that he knew it was true, it changed everything about their relationship.
But should it?
God, how could this happen to him? How could he have spent the past thirty-seven years of his life oblivious to the truth?
“If it makes you feel any better, none of us knew, either. We had some suspicions but that was pretty recent,” Landry said as if reading his thoughts. “Now that we do know, we’re glad you’re the missing Jackson we’d always heard about. We love you. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have as my oldest brother.” She emphasized brother, negating his attempt to make the distinction.
A knot formed in Noah’s throat. Landry accepted him as part of her family. He’d yet to get a real reaction from her brothers, Carson and Whit. They might not be as thrilled to have to share their inheritance with him. Maybe he was being paranoid.
Now that the truth had been revealed and the terms of Reginald’s will spelled out to him, he found it incredibly hard to believe he had a share in the ranch he’d come to work for.
Gathering the reins, he started to raise his foot to the stirrup, but a hand on his arm stopped him.
“I wish my father could have been here to know it was you all along,” Landry said softly. “He only had good things to say about you. He’d have been proud to call you his son.”
“Well, we’ll never know that now, and guessing what he might have said or felt is as empty as guessing what the weather was the day I was born.” He glanced down at her hand on his arm. “If you’ll excuse me, I want to check on a fence in the north pasture.”
Landry stepped back. “Of course. You need time to sort this all out. If you need to talk, you know where to find me.”
Noah swung up into the saddle, nudged his horse’s flanks and rode away from the Adair barn, all his motions from rote memory.
Thoughts and memories ricocheted through his mind as he gave the stallion his head. Soon they were racing across the fields, nothing but the sound of the horse’s hooves and the creak of saddle leather to interrupt the chaotic feelings rattling around inside his head.
He leaned forward, the wind in his hair, the breeze taking the heat out of the warm morning sun already bearing down on his back.
For the hundredth time since he’d learned of the results of the DNA test, he shook his head. It couldn’t be true. He wasn’t one of Reginald Adair’s children. The woman he knew as his mother wouldn’t have hidden him as a baby from his biological father and mother. Hell, Reginald was her brother. And Ruby, Reginald’s first wife, had been her sister-in-law.
All his life, Emmaline Adair Scott, the woman he’d called Mother, had sheltered him, kept him secluded from other children and other families. He’d assumed she’d done it to protect him because she loved him so much. Now...holy hell, she’d been hiding him from his real family. They’d never lived in any one place for very long. His mother had him in small private schools in France, or homeschooled him to keep anyone from suspecting he wasn’t her child.
If not for the summer his mother had taken ill and required major surgery, she’d have kept him from the rest of the Adair family. But she couldn’t care for him while she was laid up for several months. His grandparents had sent him to stay at his uncle’s ranch in California.
That summer, surrounded by the Adair siblings, was the first time he’d felt part of a family. Reginald Adair had been kind to him. For a few short weeks, he understood what it might have been like to have a father to look up to. A man who cared about him and wanted to teach him the things a father taught his sons.
Working with and hanging around Reginald’s children, whom he’d thought were his cousins, he’d finally gotten a feel for what it would be like to have siblings and be a member of a large family. Growing up as an only child, he’d always wished he had a brother to go fishing with or a sister to tease and protect.
He’d envied Reginald’s children, wanting what they had. Not the money or the lifestyle of the rich, but a big family, people he could count on to always be there for him.
If he really was Reginald Adair’s long-lost son, he had two half brothers and a half sister. The two boys and the girl, now grown, he’d come to respect and care for when he’d been there that summer so long ago.
If? His thoughts churned. The DNA test had been conclusive. There was no if about it. He was Reginald’s son.
In this day and age, how could someone get away with stealing a child and hiding him for all those years? Everything he knew about his life had been a lie. All the times he’d asked his mother about his father, she’d lied to him. She’d told him that his father died before she’d given birth. All the while his father and his mother had been alive and well, grieving the disappearance of their son.
That his fake mother was related to his father—and knew how devastated he’d been by the loss of his son—was impossible to fathom.
All those years, growing up isolated in France, he could have known the joy of having brothers and sisters, sitting at a table filled with family, laughing, joking and sharing each other’s lives.
All the years he could have spent with his family, getting to know and love them, were lost. Now that he knew who his real father was, the man was gone. Murdered before