Prologue

      Charles Carlisle knew he was dying. His family denied it. The herd of medical specialists they’d employed kept skirting around the flanks of the truth like a team of well-trained cattle dogs, but Chas knew his number had come up.

      If the tumor mushrooming inside his brain didn’t finish him off, the intense radiation therapy he was about to commence would. The only other soul willing to accept the truth was his good mate Jack Konrads. Not surprising since as an estate lawyer Jack dealt with human mortality every day of his working life.

      Chas supposed his lawyer friend got to deal with plenty of unusual will clauses, too, because his face remained impressively deadpan as he digested the changes just requested by Chas. Carefully he set the single sheet of paper aside. “I assume you’ve discussed this with your sons?”

      “So they can make my last months a living hell?” Chas snorted. “They’ll find out once I’m six feet under!”

      “You don’t think they deserve some forewarning? Twelve months is precious little time to produce a baby from scratch—even if any one of them was already married and planning to start a family.”

      “You suggest I should give them time to wiggle out of this?” They were clever enough, his sons. Too clever at times for their own good. “Alex and Rafe are past thirty. They need a decent shove or they’ll never settle down.”

      Brow furrowed with a deep frown, Jack perused his written instructions again. “This wording doesn’t seem to exclude Tomas…”

      “No exclusions. It’s the same for all of them.”

      “You don’t have to prove anything to those boys,” Jack said slowly, still frowning. “They know you don’t play favorites. You’ve always treated them as if they’re all your sons by birth. They’ve grown into fine men, Chas.”

      Yes, they were sons to make any father proud, but in recent years they’d grown apart, each wrapped up in his own world, too busy, too self-involved. This clause would fix that. It would rekindle the spirit of kinship he’d watched grow with the boys as they raced their ponies over the flat grasslands of their outback station. Later they’d roped cleanskin bulls and corporate competitors with the same ruthless determination. He was counting on that get-it-done attribute when it came time to execute this will clause.

      “It has to be the same for all three,” he repeated resolutely. He couldn’t exclude Tomas—didn’t want to exclude Tomas.

      “It’s been barely two years since Brooke was killed.”

      “And the longer he stays buried in grief, the harder the task of digging his way out.” Jaw set, Chas leaned forward and met his friend’s eyes. “That, I know.”

      If his father hadn’t forced his hand—tough love, he’d called it—Chas would have buried himself in the outback after his first wife’s death. He wouldn’t have been forced overseas to manage his father’s British interests and he wouldn’t have met a wild Irish-born beauty named Maura Keane and her two young sons.

      He wouldn’t have fallen completely and utterly in love.

      He wouldn’t have married her and completed his family with their own son, Tomas. Their son whose grief over his young wife’s death was turning him as hard and remote as his outback home. Tomas needed some mighty tough love before it was too late.

      “Does Maura know about this?” Jack asked carefully.

      “No, and that’s the way I want it to stay. You know she won’t approve.”

      For a long moment Jack regarded him over the top of his glasses. “Hell of a way to take all their minds off grieving for you.”

      Chas scowled. “That’s not what this is about. It’ll get them working together to find the best solution. My family needs a shake-up, Tomas most of all.”

      “And what if your plan backfires? What if the boys reject this clause and walk away from their inheritance? Do you want the Carlisle assets split up and sold off?”

      “That won’t happen.”

      “They won’t like this—”

      “They don’t have to like it. I suspect I’ll hear their objections from beyond the pearly gates, but they’ll do it. Not for the inheritance—” Chas fixed his friend with his trademark gaze, steel-hard and unwavering. “They’ll do it for their mother.”

      And that was the biggest, strongest motivation for this added clause to the last will and testament of Charles Tomas McLachlan Carlisle. He wanted more than his sons working together. He didn’t only want to see them take a chance at settled, family happiness. This was for Maura. A grandchild, born within twelve months of his death, to bring a smile to her sad eyes, to break her growing isolation.

      He wanted, in death, to achieve what he’d never been able to do in life: to make his adored wife happy.

      “This is my legacy to Maura, Jack.”

      And the only thing out of a multibillion-dollar empire that would be worth an Irish damn to her.