turn-of-the-century apartment building on the outskirts of downtown Dallas. The condition of the building left a lot to be desired, and the area was practically an abandoned ghetto, but the building had a period charm unlike any Cole had ever seen. Because of nearby renovation projects along with the growing desire of young urban pioneers for downtown addresses, he decided to take the risk and create luxury condominiums, hoping the yuppies would bite and other investors would follow suit.
Then came the fire.
Cole thought it was the worst thing that could possibly happen, until the blaze was ruled arson and he and his partner became prime suspects. Investigators speculated that they’d gotten concerned that their huge investment in such a questionable area wasn’t going to pay off after all, so they’d torched it for the insurance money.
Cole had spent his last dime on the best attorneys he could buy, trying to convince a jury that he’d had nothing to do with the crime, all the while assuming his partner hadn’t, either. Then it turned out the guy had a mountain of gambling debts Cole hadn’t even known about, which had driven him to set the fire to try to collect the insurance money.
The fury Cole felt the moment he realized his partner’s betrayal was superseded only by the gut-wrenching defeat he felt when he looked at that fire-ravaged lot. Because the fire had been deliberately set, the insurance company hadn’t paid a dime, and Cole was left with nothing but a huge stack of attorney bills and a reputation that was in the toilet. Never mind that he’d been exonerated. The press had been quick to proclaim his alleged guilt on page one, then bury his innocence on page sixteen, and all the doors he’d worked so hard to open in the last ten years had suddenly slammed in his face.
Then he remembered his grandmother’s will. He had one last shot to pull himself out financially and get back on top again, and he intended to take that shot—even if he had to spend another six months in Coldwater to do it.
“So where’s the little woman?” Murphy asked. “Don’t recall hearing anything about you getting married.”
“She’ll be here Sunday.”
Cole held his breath, afraid Murphy was going to ask him more questions about his wife. Instead, he moved his toothpick to the other side of his mouth and gave Cole a warning stare.
“Part of the deal is that you work on the ranch.”
“I’ve done it before.”
“And hated every minute of it.”
Cole couldn’t argue with that. Still, he’d worked hard on the ranch the year he lived there, and Murphy knew it. Cole would have shot himself before giving the old man the satisfaction of telling Edna he wasn’t pulling his weight.
Mary Lou put a cup of coffee down in front of Cole with a provocative smile. As she walked away, Cole shoved the cup aside.
“Edna’s will allows me a monthly salary and the use of the foreman’s house for the six months.”
“That’s what it says.”
“Just wanted to make sure we’re on the same track.”
“We are, unless you’re forgetting who decides whether you’ve stuck to the terms of the will. If you so much as forget to show up for work one day, I can call the whole thing off. What makes you think I’ll cut you any slack?”
Good question. Cole knew Murphy didn’t much like him showing up at the eleventh hour, because it meant another six months before the fate of the ranch would be decided. If Cole didn’t inherit, Murphy would. Fortunately, Cole knew the ranch meant nothing to Murphy without Edna. And since Murphy had been financially well-off long before he and Edna got married, the money the ranch would bring at sale meant very little to him, anyway. But carrying out the stipulations of Edna’s will meant everything to Murphy, whether he agreed with them or not.
“Because you’re a fair man,” Cole said. “Edna always said so.”
Murphy’s mouth twisted with irritation, and Cole knew he’d hit him where it hurt.
“Edna let her heart rule her head,” Murphy said. “She knew her son was worthless, but his son—she had hope for him. Said all her grandson needed was a good woman, an honest job and something to work for, and he’d turn into a man she could be proud of. Instead you’ve spent the last year scraping to stay out of jail just like your old man.”
Cole forced his expression to remain impassive, but he hardly felt that way inside. He remembered that day eleven years ago when a Dallas judge finally tossed his father in jail. At seventeen, Cole would have preferred to have been on his own, but the court hadn’t seen it that way. His grandmother had agreed to take him in, and after a few rocky months, Cole made a surprising discovery—that at least one person in the world actually thought he might amount to something.
He knew she’d taken him in out of family responsibility, and in the beginning things had been pretty shaky. He remembered the day he arrived, so full of attitude that, looking back, he was surprised she hadn’t kicked him right out the door. Instead, she’d fed him a hot meal, given him a clean bed to sleep in, then told him that no matter what his father had done, he wasn’t his father and there was no need to follow in those footsteps.
In the coming months, no matter how many times he mouthed off, no matter how many times he screwed up, even though he could tell she was disappointed, still every day was a new day. Finally the days got better. She’d given him love and affection for the first time in his life, and when she died she left him everything—with a few strings attached. As her only living blood relative, the fact that she’d willed it all to him hadn’t been a complete surprise. The terms of the will had.
“Now as for me,” Murphy said, “I think Edna was dreaming. I think you’re heading down the same road as your old man. Sure, you do things a little bigger and flashier, but the end result is the same. This is just a little detour along the way, like a trucker stopping to gas up. When you’ve got what you want, you’ll be on the road again.”
He stood up and tossed a five on the table, then lowered his voice. “One more thing. I made sure that nobody but you, me and the attorney who drew up the will knows anything about the provisions Edna outlined. If word gets out that she’s trying to turn her no-good grandson into a hardworking family man, she’s going to look like a fool, and I’ll be damned if that’s going to happen. If I think for one minute that you’re telling people things they don’t need to know, I’ll pull the plug on this deal so fast it’ll make your head spin. Now, do we understand each other?”
Cole nodded.
“See you Sunday. Looking forward to meeting the wife.”
Cole watched him go, then sat back in the booth with a heavy sigh. Murphy was right about one thing. A year from now, when he sold the ranch and banked the money, his grandmother was going to look down from heaven and be sorely disappointed. But for all her good intentions, she hadn’t understood that she could make him play the part of a hardworking husband, but she was never going to turn him into one.
This time last year, the mayor of Dallas himself had applauded Cole’s efforts to revitalize a run-down area of town. Dallas Monthly had listed him as one of the twenty hottest bachelors in Dallas, which had given him so much instant celebrity that he couldn’t even stop at 7-Eleven for a Big Gulp without a woman shoving her phone number into his pocket. And he’d been on the verge of making more money than he ever dreamed he would see in a lifetime. With the profit from
