Extract
“Jackson?” A soft feminine voice called out through the doorway of the sixteen-stall stable at Adair Acres. The structure sat in the middle of one hundred and eighty acres of the most beautiful land Southern California had to offer. With sprawling citrus orchards, vineyards and pastures of alfalfa and the best horseflesh money could buy, it was an oasis of grace and beauty tucked in the gently rolling hills.
“Jackson?”
Noah Scott didn’t respond to the voice, refusing to acknowledge the name he’d been born with. He threw a blanket over the black stallion’s back and returned to the tack room for a saddle.
“There you are.” His half sister, Landry Adair, met him as he exited the tack room with a saddle in hand.
Standing five feet ten inches tall, she was almost as tall as he was. With her hair pulled back in a low ponytail, she looked more like a girl than the twenty-six-year-old daughter of the deceased billionaire, Reginald Adair. She smiled at him with her bright blue eyes so much like his own. “Rachel called. She’ll be here in a few minutes for her riding lesson.”
“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
