To Claim a Wife. Susan Fox
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the front of the car as the doors closed.
“The will says that your refusal to submit to a blood test to determine paternity will disqualify you from inheriting.”
She heard Reno’s grim tone and felt a fresh nick of pain. She covered her reaction with sarcasm.
“If the rightful heir loses out, Reno Duvall will be boss of the Broken B.” She turned her head and glanced up at his unyielding profile. Her barb made no visible impression on him, and she was suddenly hot with resentment.
This was the man who—along with his spiteful brother and mother—had so easily won her father’s love and regard. They’d been strangers when Jess had met them on a trip to San Antonio, strangers who’d meant more to Jess Bodine from day one than his own daughter had ever meant to him.
The Duvalls had gotten everything else that had rightfully belonged to her. She wouldn’t let the last one get the Broken B, even if it was Reno. She’d have something of Jess’s—and she’d glory in the fact that he’d go to his grave knowing he’d failed to deprive her of this last thing.
And yet, even when the blood test proved she was Jess’s daughter, he’d fixed it so she’d receive only half the ranch. Half! He hadn’t mentioned the oil holdings or the several businesses he’d acquired over the years.
Emotions that were suddenly as volatile to contain as they were to identify, rose to an overwhelming pitch.
My blood inherits half the Broken B... Or Reno gets everything.
And what if the paternity test proved that Jess Bodine wasn’t her biological father? Her furious vow to keep a Duvall from getting everything faltered.
Depression sent a chill over her. She looked away from Reno and stared at the closed doors in front of her.
Her memories of her mother were hazy. She remembered a beautiful, loving, dark-haired woman, but Elaina Chandler Bodine’s face had blurred over the years. Caitlin recalled the funeral and how she’d later discovered that Jess had ordered all her mother’s things taken away, and every picture of her in the house removed. Caitlin had been crushed when Jess had scolded her for her tears and her questions.
As an eight-year-old, she’d been grief-stricken and terrified by her mother’s sudden death, but her father’s refusal to comfort her or to allow his dead wife’s name to be mentioned in his presence had deepened her trauma.
Though she could no longer clearly picture her mother’s face, she remembered with aching clarity those days and weeks and months that had followed her death. She remembered the terror and monotony of stomachaches and nightmares, and her terrible loneliness when she’d wandered the house like a tiny ghost, searching for the love and comfort of her mother’s presence.
That was when she’d become especially close to her cousin, Madison. Madison had also lost her mother, though in a different way. Caitlin’s mother had been taken from her by death; Maddie’s mother had tired of her responsibilities and had dumped her on their grandmother, who’d lived nearby in town. Though Caitlin had always thought Maddie’s loss was worse than her own because it was a personal rejection, at least Maddie’s mother was alive somewhere, so she could have hope.
Their grandmother, Clara Chandler, had been almost as stern and unloving with Madison as Caitlin’s father had been with her. The two young cousins had sought the solace and comfort of family from each other, and together they’d survived childhood. The same age, they’d formed a deep bond and, at times, they’d been as inseparable as twins.
Until Beau Duvall was killed, and Maddie—who’d been madly infatuated with him—believed as everyone else had, that Caitlin was responsible for his death.
“This is it.”
Reno’s gruff voice penetrated the fog of pain and memory. It took her a moment to realize that the elevator had stopped and the doors had slid open.
“To the right and down the hall.” Reno’s low murmur prodded her to move. She stepped forward and walked in the direction he’d indicated.
With every step she took, the dread she felt grew. She’d failed every other test her father’s animosity and neglect had placed before her. Suddenly, she had no real confidence that she’d fare any better with this last one.
Caitlin walked into the heat of late afternoon. Her rental car was parked some distance from the hospital’s main entrance, so she started toward it, reaching into her shoulder bag for the sunglasses she preferred to wear while driving.
She didn’t know what had become of Reno. He’d vanished sometime after she’d filled out papers and was led to a room to have the blood sample drawn.
She rejected the idea of hanging around the hospital until her father was awake. After her first visit, she was certain there was no point in putting herself through a second one. If Jess Bodine had gone twenty-three years without softening toward his only child, she doubted that two hours would bring any significant change of heart.
The depression that had plagued her after her mother’s death was suddenly as heavy and fresh as it had been back then, but Caitlin resisted it. That and the mercurial temper that seemed to go hand in hand with it. She’d matured in these last years, become solid emotionally. Life’s little aggravations had no power over her. Her brief lapse after her father’s bombshell was just that—a lapse, nothing more.
As she reached her car and got into its stifling interior, she thought again of Madison.
How close they’d been, sharing their angst and agonies, making their own good times, whether on Maddie’s visits to the Broken B or during Caitlin’s visits to their grandmother’s mansion in Coulter City. No one cared when they wandered off, no one cared that they’d run wild, so long as they didn’t annoy their guardians.
The worst thing about the aftermath of Beau’s death was not that Caitlin had been banished from the Broken B. The worst thing had been how swiftly and completely Madison had turned against her. Maddie had known how much Caitlin had suffered, being supplanted by Beau. In the end, that knowledge had made it impossible for Caitlin to convince her lovesick cousin that she hadn’t deliberately caused Beau’s death. Madison had sided with everyone against her, and nothing Caitlin had been able to say convinced her otherwise.
The old gloom settled around her heart. Besides Jess and Maddie’s absent mother, Rosalind, Maddie was her only living relative. The reminder deepened her sadness.
When Caitlin pulled her rental car out of the parking lot onto the street, she caught a glimpse of the interstate highway sign. She was tempted to pick up her things at the motel and drive back to San Antonio. She could catch a plane to Montana by tomorrow.
Her father would be dead soon, perhaps in a matter of hours. He was probably right about her not being his child. A man surely couldn’t despise a child unless he was certain he had cause. She could drive away now and forget him and everything else, once and for all. She had nothing here, not even the Broken B. Now it would all go to Reno....
It was the thought of forever losing even a part of the ranch that finally made her go back to the motel with the intention of staying on in Coulter City.
The Broken B was home, such as it was. She’d missed the land, wild beautiful land that stretched for forty thousand acres beneath the wide Texas sky. Montana was beautiful, but Texas was home. The ranch she’d worked on up north couldn’t compare with the deep attachment she still felt to the Broken B.
The strong unbroken spirit she’d been blessed with stirred forcefully. If she had any hope of getting even a portion of what remained of her birthright, she had to stay. The stubborn will that had helped her survive the emotional devastation of her upbringing wouldn’t allow the thought of Jess Bodine denying her the Broken B.
Even if the blood test went against her, surely the fact that she’d been publicly claimed and raised as Jess Bodine’s legal child would give her some standing in the