The Rancher's Surrender

Cade sighed, and his smile faded. 'None of your parents have yet been successfully found, much less traced back to Constance. It doesn't matter for the inheritance.'

Zoe swore softly, bitterly disappointed. Cade touched her shoulder. 'Constance didn't need more proof than what she had-three women born approximately when she thought her granddaughter might have been born, and who were in the right place. She felt certain it was one of you. She knew how close you were, how much you loved one another, and that was enough for her.'

Zoe nodded and fought her crushed hopes. Whether she liked to admit it or not, she would have given her right hand to know what had happened to her mother that day she'd been dropped off so many years ago.

And she would have died before admitting to a soul that she was twenty-six years old and still haunted by what her mother had done, that she needed to know why she'd been deserted, and that need grew daily.

'Other than the fact that none of you have a father on your birth certificate, and that you'd all been left by a mother who disappeared out of your lives, we have little to go on,' Cade admitted.

Zoe spoke kindly because he was doing everything he could, but it was hard to be patient when she was dying for more. 'So what 'gaps'?'

'We're busy now,' Ty interrupted. 'We've got fencing-'

'Ty, I've got to know.'

'Fine.' Abruptly he turned away, back to the fence. Hunkering down, he set to work, ignoring her.

'Cade?' More urgently now, Zoe turned to him. 'Tell us.'

'Should we go back to the house first?' he wondered.

Behind them, Ty's hammer hit a post hard. Zoe glanced at him, at the tense set to his body, but she didn't have time to worry about the moody, brooding cowboy when her own life was on hold. 'No, please tell us now.'

Delia came closer again and lost most of her defiance as she stood united with her sisters. Cade flashed a look that begged them for understanding, but Zoe wasn't prepared to blindly give anything.

'Constance was only a prayer away from bankruptcy,' he said quietly, easily, but it was clear how badly he felt in every line of his tall, rangy body. 'And if she'd gone bankrupt before her death, there'd have been no land to inherit.'

'That's no secret, is it?' Delia asked. 'It was pretty clear to us from the beginning how much money trouble she'd had.'

'That poor woman, all alone, facing that,' Maddie said with pain in her voice. 'I wish we could have found her sooner.'

'Losing this land would have killed her,' Cade admitted. 'Triple M Ranch was everything to her. The only thing that meant more was finding her granddaughter.'

'If she was so poor, then how did you get paid?' Delia asked. 'I'm sure you're not cheap. And now that I think about it, why do you keep on this case even now, when there's clearly no money in the estate for you?'

'I'm getting to that.' Obviously a man used to hostility, Cade calmly took another long drink of his water. 'Aah, that's good.' He looked at Delia evenly. 'Constance had a benefactor.'

'You mean like maybe an older man who loved her and couldn't stand to see her hurt?' Maddie's face softened. 'Oh, how romantic.'

'Not an older man, no,' Cade said. 'But it was someone who cared about her a great deal, and yes, someone who didn't want to see her hurt.'

'Dammit!' roared Ty.

Everyone looked at him. He ripped off his gloves and sucked on an injured finger. He'd shucked his hat a while back so that the sun shone off the dark hair that fell nearly to his shoulders. He was taut as a bow, an explosion just waiting to happen.

Zoe's bad feeling got worse, and she turned back to Cade. 'You're telling me that this someone paid off both her debts and your fee? Just because they cared? That's a whole lot of caring.' In her opinion, no one did something like that without a really good reason.

A motive.

And motives were usually selfish.

'It is a lot of caring,' Cade agreed. 'And because of it, you're here.'

With a quiet oath, Ty dropped the hammer and turned to face them, hands low on his hips in a stance of great irritation. 'If you're all done having a nice little break, then scatter, would ya? I've got work to do and you're distracting me.' He stalked to the truck, but before he could hop into the driver's seat, Cade spoke to him.

'I think they should know who that benefactor was, Ty.'

'Well, I don't. There's no reason to tell them.'

'You're wrong.' Zoe stepped closer, quivering with the need for answers. 'We have every right to know, and I want someone to tell us right now what's going on.'

Cade shot Ty a sympathetic glance, but he spoke regardless. 'It was Ty.'

Stunned silence met this remark. Zoe felt the shock bounce through her, which only deepened when Ty looked at her, his eyes bleak and miserable.

'You,' she whispered softly.

'Me,' he agreed, just as softly.

'Delia said you were considering making him a partner in the ranch,' Cade said. 'So I thought you should know how responsible and trustworthy he is.'

'We're not considering a partnership,' Zoe said, turning away, her shoes crunching in the dirt. She stared blindly at the gentle green slope that led down to the raging river.

'Well, I think you should consider one,' Cade told her back. 'Because, frankly, I don't see how you'll do it without him. Ty is the best at this, you couldn't get anyone better.'

'Oh, Ty,' Maddie murmured. 'How incredibly wonderful of you to take care of Constance that way.'

'And expensive,' said the pragmatic Delia, but even as cynical as she was, she looked very touched. 'I'm not sure I know how to thank you.'

'I don't want thanks.' His jaw was set, and hostility rolled off him in waves.

'What you did meant the world to Constance,' Cade said to Ty quietly. 'And you deserve the proper recognition for that.'

Ty clamped his mouth shut as if too much of a gentleman to say what he thought about that. 'I didn't do it for any of you,' he said finally.

Okay, Zoe thought, maybe he wasn't too much of a gentlemen to express his thoughts after all. 'Why did you do it, then?'

Ty slid into the driver's seat and snapped on his seat belt. 'Your ride is leaving. You walking back?'

Being ignored made her testy, and just a tad bit pushy, though even a small child would have had the sense to leave this man alone right now. 'Maybe it was more simple than that,' she suggested. 'You wanted to buy this place.'

'I already told you that,' Ty said through clenched teeth.

Cade looked confused at Zoe's hostility. 'I don't think you understand. If Ty hadn't paid for me to continue the search for Constance's granddaughter, and if Constance hadn't been satisfied with what I'd found, Ty wouldn't have had to buy this place.'

Ty started the truck and rudely revved the engine.

'But of course he would have bought this place,' Zoe said loudly, glaring at Ty. 'He already told us he wanted it.'

Cade shook his head. 'Over the years Constance got very close to Ty.' He had to yell over the noise of the truck. 'She felt as though he were her family, and indeed for a long time, he was all she had. She thought the world of him.'

The engine revved again. Music filled the air now, loud pumping, ridiculously upbeat music that was at a direct conflict with the tense atmosphere.

It was hard to reconcile the brooding, terse male sitting in the driver's seat with the kind, caring warm man Cade was describing.

Harder still to let go of her years of innate suspicion and wariness to admit that maybe, just maybe, she was