never understood why your mother willed the entire property to Scott.” The one-sided terms of the late Lydia Armstrong’s estate had shocked everyone when the will had been read. Especially Chase, Merri remembered, because he hadn’t known the disinheritance was coming.
He glanced up at the half-moon overhead, then restlessly walked the length of the porch that lined the large stone-and-cedar ranch house. His gaze traveled over the manicured lawn and the lush shrubbery, to the now-empty pastures. He didn’t seem to find fault with anything he saw in the pastoral scene. Which was no surprise to Merri. She had done a good job as conservator of the property, on behalf of the twins, who had inherited it all upon their father’s death.
Chase ignored the chain-hung swing at the end of the porch and ambled back to her side. “She figured I was a doctor. I’d make plenty of money and never have time to ranch. Whereas Scott needed a job and a place to live.”
Merri knew enough about Scott and Sasha’s selfishness now to realize undue pressure had been applied to the elder, ailing Armstrong, her emotions likely played upon. Because, hard as it was to admit, at the end of the day, all Merri’s sister and Chase’s brother had ever thought about was themselves. Their desires. Their needs.
And Chase knew it, too.
Aware it was a little too intimate to be standing there together in the semidarkness, Merri pivoted and led him inside. “Your mom could have left you half the land anyway,” she said over her shoulder. “I mean, we’re talking about over five thousand acres! Or Scott and Sasha could have willed the property back to you, instead of putting it in trust for their children.” And naming me as executor and guardian of that trust.
In the living room, Chase watched her remove the screen on the fireplace. He seemed as oblivious to the chill in the air as she was sensitive to it.
“It’s okay. I got over what happened a long time ago.”
Had he? Truth was, Merri couldn’t see how. She knelt before the hearth, and admitted with total frankness, “I still feel funny about us living here and you not. It doesn’t seem right.”
Chase continued to watch as she arranged the firewood. “Life’s not fair. We all know that.”
He was right. Merri wadded up some newspaper and stuffed it in the gaps between the oak logs. If it had been, her sister would have had functioning ovaries. She would not have required donated eggs—from Merri—to become pregnant. Had life been fair, Scott wouldn’t have needed to go to Chase for his assistance, too.
Still surprised that Chase had helped Sasha and Scott out in the end, even after initially turning the couple down, Merri decided it was past time to ask the question that had been burning in her gut for several years now. Nervously, she blurted out, “What about the twins?”
Chase gave her a mystified look. “What about them?” he asked carefully.
She struck a match and lit the fire. “What are your intentions there?” she prodded.
Chase watched the paper take the flame, before turning his gaze to Merri again. “You’re their biological mother. You should be telling me how you want this to work.”
Her anxiety rose. Chase was decisive in all other areas of his life. His apathy and indifference here were daunting, to say the least. “But like it or not, you’re involved, too,” she persisted, trying to squeeze some emotion out of him, to get him to tell her where this predicament was likely headed. “Biologically speaking, anyway.”
A tense silence fell. Chase stared at her as if she had either lost her mind or was a disaster waiting to happen. “What are you talking about?” He slowly enunciated every word.
Weary of maintaining the public ruse her late brother-in-law and sister had insisted upon, Merri looked Chase square in the eye and admitted, “A few months after Scott and Sasha died, I found the paperwork from the fertility clinic, indicating that Scott received help there, too.”
Chase shrugged. “Although it wasn’t common knowledge, you and I both know my brother had problems in that regard, too. That he was, for all intents and purposes, as sterile as Sasha.”
“Which was why you jumped in to help, just as I did.”
“And,” Chase continued matter-of-factly, “set him up with the top infertility specialists at the medical school I attended.”
His involvement hadn’t ended there and Merri knew it. Frustration mounting, she rose and walked toward him. “Look, I don’t know what kind of deal you and your brother made…probably something similar to the one I made with Sasha and him. But you don’t have to hide anything from me, Chase. Not anymore. I know that you ‘helped out’ a heck of a lot more than just setting them up with the right professionals.”
Chase studied her. “I don’t know what Scott told you—or Sasha, for that matter. My brother had a way of bending the truth to suit his needs, never more so than when his back was against a wall. But I did not do what you did, Merri. I didn’t offer up my genetic material to help them out.” He exhaled sharply. “They asked me—before I went overseas…as you well know—but I told them I couldn’t handle having a child raised by someone else, not even my own kin. It’s not in me to be a spectator in my own child’s life.”
Merri knotted her hands in frustration. She remembered the chaos his refusal had caused among the four of them. The rift that had left Chase and his brother barely speaking. “Then why did you sign those papers, allowing Scott to use sperm you had already donated to the university for medical research, for Sasha’s in vitro fertilization procedure?”
Chase’s mouth dropped open in dismay. “I never signed anything.”
“But you did!” Merri went to the desk, unlocked the drawer and pulled out a slender file of papers. She handed it over.
Chase studied the medical forms and legal documents. A muscle worked convulsively in his jaw. “Scott must have forged this. Damn him!”
Merri’s heart sank as shock turned to comprehension. Oh, my heaven. “You mean…?” she croaked.
“I never gave my permission.” Chase rifled through the papers, scanning them again and again, as if unable to believe what he was seeing. With anger flashing in his amber eyes, he let out a string of swear words that would have burned the ears off a nun.
Merri placed a hand over her heart, trembling, she was so upset. “So all this time… You never had a clue that you were the real father of the twins or were in any way biologically connected with them?” That certainly explained his lack of input or involvement. He hadn’t thought Jessalyn and Jeffrey were family at all!
Chase sat down, scrubbed a hand over his face and dropped his head in his hands. “None whatsoever,” he said miserably.
A silence fraught with heartache fell.
“So what now?” Merri asked eventually, afraid she already knew.
Chase lifted his head, already taking charge, like the kick-butt Texan he was. “We do everything and anything we have to do to make things right.”
* * *
MAKING THINGS RIGHT, according to Chase’s world, meant verifying facts. So as soon as the hospital lab opened the next morning, Merri and Chase and the twins were there.
