Taming Clint Westmoreland - Brenda Jackson [10]
“On Mom’s deathbed. She wanted us to know the truth.”
Alyssa immediately recalled her grandfather’s deathbed confession. He’d revealed that he was her biological father and not her grandfather. It had been a confession that had changed her life forever, one that had caused jealousy within the family—a family that had never been close anyway. “What happened after that?”
He smiled over at her and she knew what he was thinking. She asked a lot of questions. Gramps would always tell her that, too. Thinking of the man whom for years she’d thought of as her grandfather sent a warm feeling through her.
“After that, Cole and I decided to find our father and develop a relationship with him. We knew it wouldn’t be easy, considering we would be a surprise to him and the fact that we were grown men in our late twenties.”
That hadn’t been too long ago, she mused, considering he was thirty-two now. Probably around the same time she had been learning the truth about her own parentage. “Did you find him?”
He gave another chuckle, this one just as sensitive to her flesh as the other had been. “Yes, we found him, all right. And we found something else right along with him.”
“What?”
“A slew of cousins we didn’t know we had. Westmorelands from just about everywhere. We suddenly found ourselves part of a big family and it was a family that welcomed us with open arms. They’ve made us feel as if we were a part of them so quickly it was almost overwhelming.”
Alyssa studied the sound of his voice and could tell that even now for him it was still overwhelming. He was blessed to be a part of such a loving and giving group. There, however, was one thing she’d noted. He hadn’t mentioned how his sister had taken the revelation of the missing father.
“Your sister, how did she handle meeting her father for the first time?” she asked.
A part of her needed to know. She knew how she had handled it when she’d discovered that Isaac Barkley was her father and not her grandfather. A part of her had wished he would have told her sooner. That would have explained a lot of things and then the two of them would have been able to face the jealousy and hatred together. But he had died, leaving her all alone.
“It was harder for Casey to come around and accept things. She’d believed what Mom had told us all those years. She wasn’t ready to meet a father who was very much alive. It took her a while to form a relationship with him, but that’s all in the past now. In fact she moved to Montana to be close to him. She met McKinnon there and fell in love.”
Alyssa sighed. A part of her wished she could find someone and fall in love but she knew that wouldn’t be possible as long as Kimberly Barkley still existed on this earth. Kimberly was determined to destroy whatever bit of happiness came Alyssa’s way.
“This is the entrance to the ranch, Alyssa.”
Alyssa leaned forward and glanced out the windshield and side windows and caught her breath. What she saw all around her was spellbinding. Simply breathtaking. She had lived on a small ranch in Houston for the first thirteen years of her life and had loved it. Then one day, her mother had sent her away to live with her grandfather in the city. That was probably the one most decent thing her mother had ever done in her life.
“It’s beautiful, Clint. How big is it?” Everywhere she looked she saw ranges, fields and meadows. She couldn’t imagine waking up to this view every morning, every single day.
“If you include the reserve on the south ridge it’s over fifty thousand acres. Uncle Sid was a ladies’ man who never married and so he left the ranch to me, Cole and Casey.”
Alyssa nodded. She didn’t want to consider the possibility, didn’t want to imagine how it would feel for once to not have to worry about Kim dropping in just make her life a living hell. The truck, she noticed, had stopped, and she lifted a brow as she glanced over at Clint.
He smiled. “I want to show you something.”
He got out of the truck and she followed and he led her close to a cliff. “Look down there,” he said, pointing.
And she did. It was