His Valentine Triplets

She nodded and took Burke’s hand. “It has been an honor to raise you. We love you like our own sons. We always did. There are a lot of questions you may one day want to ask, and when you’re ready, we’ll answer them for you. And remember that everything you think you know isn’t always what is. Take good care of each other, and most importantly, be brothers.”

Fiona and Burke made their way from the library. Rafe tried not to gawk at the departing figures of their aunt and uncle. “I think she’s serious.”

Sam nodded. “She really believes she’s the source of Bode’s anger. I say we just kill him.”

They all snorted at him.

“She can’t go back to Ireland,” Jonas said. “We need her here. She belongs here. Burke belongs here. They haven’t been back to Ireland in over twenty-some years. What are they going to do there?”

The brothers turned to stare at him.

“That is the most emotion I think I’ve ever heard you spew,” Rafe said. “I feel like I’m in the presence of the angel of human psyche.”

“There’s probably no such thing,” Sam said, “but that was pretty heavy, Jonas, for a tight-ass like you.”

Jonas threw a tissue box at them. “Go ahead, bawl your brains out. We all want to.”

“I’m not crying.” Rafe took a deep breath, not about to let himself get drizzly, although he did feel like a water balloon in danger of being punctured. Fiona’s decision had left him pretty torn up. “I’m going to convince Fiona she’s worried over nothing. I’m—”

They heard a door slam. The brothers glanced at each other.

“Must be going out to check on the horses,” Creed offered.

“Or to change her holiday lights. It’s about time for her to take down the Fourth of July décor-anza.” Pete nodded. “She left them extra long because all the little girlies liked them so much. She said her great-nieces should always have sparkly decorations to look at.”

Fiona was famous far and wide for her lighting displays. Rancho Diablo always looked like a fairyland, sometimes draped with white lights, sometimes colored—but always beautiful. “I want to wring Bode’s scrawny chicken neck,” Rafe said.

“I do, too,” Judah said, “but that’ll just land us in jail.”

“Miserable old fart.” Rafe couldn’t believe what had happened. His luscious Julie had to know that her father was beginning to go around the bend. Not that she would ever admit to such a failing in him, locked in her ivory tower of daddy-knows-best. “Maybe Bode has terminal dumb-ass disea…” Rafe stopped, listening to a sound that had caught his attention. “Was that a motor? A vehicular motor? Visitors, perhaps?”

Or Bode serving up more trouble.

The brothers looked at each other, then jumped to the many windows of the library to study the driveway in the dimming evening light.

“That is a taxi,” Jonas said, “and if I’m not mistaken, our aunt and uncle just bailed on us.”

Chapter Three

“I’m not sure what any of this means,” Sam said to Rafe a week later. They were all busy trying to adjust to Fiona and Burke’s sudden departure. He waved a bunch of legal documents. “It seems our aunt was keeping a lot of secrets.”

Rafe gazed out toward the horizon of Rancho Diablo. The two of them were in Fiona’s library, Sam having called him there to vent his frustration with their aunt’s dispensation of the ranch. “You’ll figure it all out.”

“I wish I’d known half the stuff before we got knee-deep in battling Bode. Did you know that originally this land was owned by a tribe? Our father bought it from them.”

Rafe shrugged. “That explains the yearly visit from the chief, maybe.”

“Yeah, it sure does. The tribe retained the mineral rights to the property.”

Sam sure had his full attention now. Rafe turned away from the window to goggle at his brother. “All mineral rights?”

“Oil, gas, silver—you name it, it’s not Rancho Diablo’s.”

Rafe couldn’t help grinning.

“What’s so damn funny, Einstein?” Sam snapped.

“Bode doesn’t know.” Rafe laughed out loud.

After a moment, the thundercloud lifted from Sam’s brow. “That’s right, he doesn’t. And he can’t sue a tribe for their mineral rights. Well, I guess he could, but he wouldn’t win. This is a signed and properly executed document.”

They both sank onto a leather sofa and chuckled some more. Jonas poked his head in, favoring each of them with a grumpy gaze.

“Don’t you two ever do any work?” he snapped.

“Listen, Oscar the Grouch, close the door,” Sam told his elder brother.

Jonas obliged, though not happily. “Why are you two lounging when there’s work to be done?”

Sam handed him the sheaf of papers. Jonas gave it a cursory glance and handed the stack back. “I don’t have time to read a wad of papers as thick as your head. That’s your job, Counselor.”

“Well, if you would read,” Sam said, “and if you could read, as your medical degree claims you can, according to these papers, Rancho Diablo Holdings owns no mineral rights. They are instead owned by the tribe of Indians from which Chief Running Bear hails.” Sam grinned, waving the papers. “An interesting turn of events, don’t you think?”

Jonas stared at his brothers with obvious disbelief. “All mineral rights?”

“Yep. All we own is the land and the bunkhouses and the main house. Actually, if you think about it,” Sam said, waxing enthusiastic about the topic, “no one really owns the houses, either. The banks do, and even once they’re paid off, the government can still come along and decide to kick you out. They either want the land for building, or they decide you owe back taxes on the property, and poof! There goes your domicile.” Sam shrugged. “The value is in the mineral rights, I’d say, and those, brothers, we do not own.”

“And we never did,” Rafe said, glancing at the papers. “These documents were executed the year before you were born, Sam.”

“Yeah, I noticed that.” He frowned a bit. “But let’s not go there for the moment.”

“Holy Christmas,” Jonas said, “that means Bode’s lawsuit is basically nullified.”

“In large part, if not in total,” Sam agreed. “Lovely day, don’t you think?”

“Fiona knew this,” Jonas said. “She had to know the mineral rights weren’t ours, and that we couldn’t give them over even if Bode won his case.”

“Maybe she didn’t,” Rafe said, wanting to defend their small, spare aunt. “Even Sam said he didn’t really understand the papers.”

“I understand them perfectly,” Sam said, “and I can’t find any documents that state otherwise, which might indicate a later sale from the tribe to Rancho Diablo Holdings. So what that tells me—”

“Is that Fiona probably never saw those documents,” Rafe said stubbornly. “They were signed before she came. When our parents were alive.”

Sam pursed his lips. Jonas sighed and looked out the same window that Rafe had been gazing from. Rafe knew his brothers thought Fiona had withheld the information on purpose.

“She hardly had time to go digging through every document pertaining to the ranch. Overnight, she became guardian to six boys in a foreign country,” he pointed out. It made him slightly angry that his brothers seemed to think Fiona might have been deceptive about what she knew about their property. She was the executor of their estate. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“She became guardian overnight to five boys,” Sam said, bringing up a point that Rafe had chosen to gloss over. “I came later.”