“Are you a spa expert?” Emma shouted from the other room.
“It’s a ranch. A working ranch,” Libby said firmly. “Why would we mess with that? Look, you two don’t have to be involved if you don’t want. I just thought that maybe.…” She shook her head and looked out the window. “Never mind. You don’t have to be involved. I’ll do it. I’ll take care of everything.”
“I know what you thought,” Emma said, appearing in the doorway again. “You thought this would turn into a chick flick where we bond as sisters and discover we have all these things in common and we root for each other and marry brothers and raise each other’s children. But that’s not happening, Libby.” She disappeared into the other room again.
Libby looked so wounded by what Emma had said that Madeline couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. “Libby, I’m sorry… but I don’t… I don’t think this is for me,” she said honestly. “I don’t know why a father I never knew left me anything. My hope was that we could wrap this up as soon as possible.”
“Wow,” Libby said, her effervescent smile gone. “You just met us. Can you take a moment to decide if you want to know us? Have you considered why Dad left us this place? Maybe it was his way of reaching out, of giving you sisters, Madeline. Of giving me a purpose. Of giving Emma…” she trailed off.
Emma appeared at the door again. “Go on, Libby. Give Emma what?”
Libby frowned and looked away from Emma, declining to answer.
Madeline’s head was pounding. This was not going well at all—she’d never guessed they would want to somehow make this forced partnership work.
“Here’s what I think, if anyone is interested,” Emma said, and pointed at Madeline. “I don’t care if we are friends.” She cocked a brow, almost daring Madeline to challenge it, knowing that she wouldn’t. “And I’m going back to L.A. in a couple of days.”
“But we need to make some decisions,” Madeline said.
“I don’t.” Emma disappeared into the kitchen again.
Emma, Madeline thought, was a bitch. And Libby was too… eager. But of the three of them, Madeline was the one who had no real business here at all, no ties, no feelings, no history, not like these two apparently had. She wanted only to do what had to be done and leave before Grant could mess up her life any more than he already had. He could have left everything to Libby and Emma, and Madeline would never have known, would never have been the wiser.
“Then go,” Libby called out to Emma, her feelings clearly hurt. “How stupid of me to think that maybe three sisters could make something of this place. Together.”
Madeline felt awful. She hadn’t come here to hurt anyone’s feelings. “I’m sorry, Libby. I am. But I don’t know how we can be… partners,” she said, discovering that she couldn’t even say sisters. “We don’t know one another. Grant must have known it would be a difficult situation for us, so I don’t know why he left it to us like this.”
“There is nothing here!” Emma shouted, and that was followed by the banging of a cabinet door. “Nothing!”
“Because he was our father,” Libby said. “Isn’t that what parents do? Don’t they leave their worldly possessions to their children? And besides, he couldn’t sell it, not with the contract.”
“The what?” Madeline asked.
“What contract?” Emma asked, appearing again with a glass of water.
“Jackson didn’t tell you? There’s a contract Dad’s heirs must honor, and we can’t do anything before we meet the terms of it.”
Madeline’s pulse began to quicken. If she’d come all this way to find out it was even more complicated and impossible…
“The Johnson family reunion,” Libby said, enunciating a little more than was necessary, looking at them both. “The contract has been signed. The deposits have been paid and applied to the event. Two hundred Johnsons are going to show up in a matter of days and they are expecting one long weekend of happy family reunion, and we have to honor that commitment.”
For some reason, Emma actually laughed. “Well if that’s not the topper on the cake.”
Madeline thought she might pass out. She preferred to know what to expect, and she did not expect a family reunion. “I don’t understand,” she said, and rubbed her temples against the pounding in her head.
“I can’t believe Jackson didn’t tell you. It was Mr. Kendrick’s idea, a way to make some money. He and Dad were setting this ranch up to host family reunions. The family will camp here, and they will use the kitchen, and the showers in the bunkhouse, and they will do all the things that make Pine River so attractive in the summer, only on private property with private guides. That’s why the Port-A-Johns.”
Two hundred Johnsons. And just like that, Grant Tyler had complicated Madeline’s life even more.
Emma laughed again. “He’s dead and he’s still a prick. God, I need a drink.”
NINE