Two To Wrangle (Hotel Rodeo #2)(8)

“Tom left the hotel to Ty?”

“Not quite. I said controlling interest in Brandt Morgan. You still own twenty-five percent of it.”

“Does Ty know about this?” she asked. She didn’t know what she was going to tell Evan about the hotel. She was already dreading that conversation. She’d agreed to sell it to him and they’d all but signed the deal. Now it seemed all bets were off.

“Not yet,” Bob said. “I was waiting for Tyrone to arrive before I went over all the details of the will.”

“Tyrone?” She almost choked. “Is that Ty’s full name? I would have guessed Tyler or Tyson, but Tyrone?”

“He’s named after his maternal grandfather, Tyrone Jefferson,” Bob replied, impervious to the laugh that gurgled up in her throat. “He was a good ’un, ol’ Tyrone.”

“So you knew Ty’s family?”

“Yup. I know just about everyone ’round these parts. I grew up here. Moved away to go to law school, but still have plenty of connections.”

“Staying out here at the ranch must save you a lot of inconvenience,” she remarked.

“Hell, yeah,” he laughed, “Tom’s place is a second home to me. I’m almost ready to set up a second practice here.”

Monica sighed. “As much as I hate to do it, I’ll probably sell the place, I know Tom loved it here, but I have absolutely no desire to own a cattle ranch, even with someone else running it. I don’t see the point in being an absentee owner of a business I have no interest in.”

Bob rubbed his jaw. “I’m afraid that won’t be your call either.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Tom didn’t think you’d give a fig for the ranch, given that you’d never even come out here, so he also bequeathed the Circle B to Ty. Said he always felt bad that Delaney took half of Ty’s place, so he wanted to make it up to him. Ranching ain’t the life for everyone, ’specially women,” Bob said ruefully. “Tom loved his ranch, and he didn’t want to see it sold.”

Monica wished she understood that kind of attachment. Having travelled from place to place most of her childhood, she’d never known any real home. Since adulthood, she’d worked a seventy-to eighty-hour week and eaten most of her meals out. Her poshly decorated Manhattan apartment wasn’t much more than a place to shower and sleep. Marrying Evan wouldn’t have changed anything in that respect. He was always on the move.

“Tom thought Ty would want to hold onto it since he pretty much grew up here,” Bob said. “He also wanted to be sure Ty always had a place to call home in Oklahoma. He hoped Ty would come back here and raise his own family one day. Tom was real sentimental like that.”

“Yes he was. I imagine Tom would have loved to have been surrounded by grandkids,” Monica said. In all honesty, she couldn’t care less that Tom had left the ranch to Ty. She had no use for it and strongly suspected she’d be bored out of her mind if she was stuck out here for more than a couple of days.

Her heart gave a painful contraction that Tom had been denied his dream. Part of her wished she could have granted it, but this wasn’t her kind of life. During their engagement, she and Evan had never even discussed kids. Evan didn’t really like them, and Monica was ambivalent at best. Maybe it was because neither she nor Evan had come from a close family. He despised his, and she’d always felt unwanted in hers. If he’d asked her to, she probably would have agreed to get a tubal. If she had to choose, she’d rather deny herself the experience of motherhood than bring an unwanted child into the world—at least that’s what she’d always told herself.

“Seems like you and Tyrone have a lot to discuss, given that you both now have a vested interest in the hotel.”

“He might have controlling interest, but he’s no better off than he was before without money to renovate it,” Monica said.

They’d done nothing but fight over the fate of the hotel. They’d been at an impasse since her arrival in Vegas. She’d decided to sell, but he was determined to hold on. She’d finally offered to let him buy her out and gave him sixty days to line up financing, but as the new CEO Ty could do as he liked—providing he didn’t go bankrupt. Given her financial interest, she couldn’t stand silently aside for that. She’d just have to find a way to convince him to sell.

“I s’pose he could sell the ranch,” Bob said.

“I hope he doesn’t,” she said. “It’s not what Tom would have wanted, but I don’t know how else he’s going to get cash to renovate.”

Bob met her gaze, as if reading her mind. “With a twenty-five percent interest and almost a billion dollars in assets, maybe you have the answer.”

“I don’t want to be in the hotel business,” she said, now wondering if that’s what Tom had had in mind when he’d changed his will in Ty’s favor. Had he been trying to engineer a match between them? Tom had made it no secret that he’d wanted to see them together. Maybe because she and Ty had been his only family.

“But you wouldn’t have to be involved any more than you want to be. I guess that puts you in a unique position, doesn’t it, Ms. Brandt?”





Chapter Four