Almost A Bravo

Dropping her hands from their ludicrous protective position over her head, Aislinn popped up straight in her chair. “That’s it? That’s all?”

Anders blinked behind his glasses. “The, erm, end of the letter, yes. But we have yet to cover several specific conditions and particulars that you’ll both need to—”

“Stop.” She shoved back the chair and leaped to her feet. “As if I care about your so-called conditions. As if I care about that old man’s money. As if I care about any of this crap. I am...not that person. Not somebody who was supposed to be named Madison Delaney. I’m Aislinn Bravo. I was born in Montedoro at the villa of Tristan Bouchard, Count of Della Torre. You ask my brothers. They were there, they remember. They...” She lost track of her words as her gaze skittered around the table. They all looked at her as though she’d lost her mind—all of them, Jax most of all.

She could read his thoughts in that look on his face. She’s a nutjob, his expression said, and I am so screwed...

She went ahead and put it right out there, right in his face. “You think I’m crazy.”

Jax jerked back. “No. No, I...”

That made her laugh, a bizarre, deranged sort of sound. “Hey, come on. Be honest, Jax. You think I’ve lost my ever-loving mind. And maybe I have. Because who wouldn’t go crazy, after all I’ve just heard?”

“Aislinn, really, nobody thinks you’re—”

“Oh, yes, you do. And to be perfectly honest, you might be right. I’ve come unhinged. This is all too much and I just can’t take any more. I mean, it’s simply not possible, that my family isn’t my family, that my birth mother and the real Aislinn Bravo moved to Los Angeles, where she became a superstar named Madison Delaney. That all I know to be true about myself and my life is really just a big, fat lie.”

The lawyer suggested mildly, “How about if we take a few minutes and—”

“How ’bout if we don’t?” Aislinn pinned the lawyer with a hard glare.

It was all so far beyond too much.

Jax tried once more, “Aislinn, if you would just—”

“No.” She cut him off cold as she snatched her purse off the chair. “Uh-uh. I need a minute. I need a thousand minutes. I need a lifetime out of this room.” She turned for the door.

“Aislinn, wait!” Jax called after her.

She kept walking, not once glancing back, grabbing the door handle, flinging it wide and escaping down the hallway that led to the waiting room.

As she flew by the front desk, the pretty receptionist jumped up. “Ms., er, are you all right?”

“Not really.”

“Is there something I can—?”

“Thanks, but no.” Aislinn shoved open the entry door and went through it.

Out on the sidewalk under a cool gray sky, she kept walking right into the street. A guy in a red Mustang squealed to a stop just in time to avoid running her down.

“Watch out, you idiot!” he yelled out the window.

She ignored him and kept going until she reached the opposite sidewalk, at which point she suddenly ran out of steam. Halting just past the stop sign, she found herself in front of a three-story building of light-colored brick with a sign that read BPOE on the side.

With no idea where to go next, she ducked into the alcove that sheltered the entry doors. For a moment, she froze and stared at her faint reflection in the glass of the door—a dark-haired woman in a polka-dot dress, someone she hardly recognized.

She shook herself. She couldn’t just stand here blocking the entrance.

Wrapping her arms around herself, she slid into the corner on the right side of the door and tried to decide what to do next.

Chapter Two (#u1df4fed5-fe79-594a-864e-2d51a731a953)

“Give me a few minutes,” Jax said to the others. “I’ll talk to her. I’ll bring her back.”

He went through the door she’d left open and strode down the hallway toward the waiting area.

This was like some nightmare, his worst nightmare. Wild River could be lost to him because Martin had done something really bad way back when—and then decided he needed to make his own brand of twisted amends after his death.

And the woman, Aislinn. She’d seemed completely destroyed by what she’d just learned. It had felt downright evil to sit there at that table, a witness to her suffering, as Anders read that showboat letter of Martin’s that said she wasn’t who she’d always believed herself to be.

Damn Martin. Damn him to hell and back. Jax had loved the old reprobate, but this was one long, rickety bridge too far.

And then again...

Well, Martin was Martin. He’d always made life interesting. Jax and his Aunt Claudia, both serious, down-to-earth and a little bit shy, had secretly reveled in the excitement Martin brought to their lives. They always tried to hold him back when he got some out-there idea he was itching to pursue. At the same time, they loved it. They were his audience and Martin was the star of their cobbled-together family of three.

If Martin were here now in the flesh, what would he say? Jax knew: I love you, son. I never wanted to hurt you. But we both know some men need a good kick in the pants to get out there and get what matters most—and who around here needs a good kick? Martin would grin. Look in a mirror, Jaxon, my boy.

Jax felt all turned around. Wild River was in jeopardy. He needed to consider every possibility.

Was the woman really what she seemed? Could this be her doing, somehow?

That bit about being in love with him. What was that, anyway? Had Martin simply lost it in his last days—or had Aislinn Bravo somehow gotten to him? Had she managed, secretly, to cozy up to a lonely old man and whisper in his ear?

But whisper what? I’m your daughter and you owe me. I’ll take Jaxon.

No. Wrong.

This wasn’t the woman’s fault. It couldn’t be. Even with a possible fifty K in the mix, it didn’t quite add up that she was in on this horror show.

No. On the surface at least, this was pure Martin—the drama of it, the insanity and the out-there, over-the-top solution of Jax and Martin’s secret daughter getting married and remaining so for three months in order that said secret daughter would get her chance at her heart’s desire: Jax himself.

Completely bonkers.

Still, he had to keep his eyes open. That Aislinn Bravo might be the bad guy in this didn’t seem possible. But as of now, anyway, he couldn’t be 100 percent certain of her innocence, either. He barely remembered her from that summer five years ago, and he had no way to be sure who she was deep down, at heart.

And whatever she’d done, whatever her possible part in this lunacy, he needed her on the same page with him now. Unless Anders could come up with some way to break the terms of Martin’s crazy-ass last will and testament, Jax was going to need her to be married to him for the next three months.

It was that, or lose Wild River.

And that could never happen. His family had owned Wild River for generations. The ranch was his future and his past. It was everything to him. He would never let it go.

He strode fast across the lobby and pushed through the double doors out onto Exchange Street, glancing left first, then right and seeing no sign of her. Had she vanished around the corner? Disappeared into a Lyft?

But then he looked straight ahead.

And there she was across the street, huddled in the doorway alcove of the Elks building, her arms wrapped around herself, her delicate shoulders hunched. She seemed to be studying the pretty white sandals on her narrow feet.