What a Westmoreland Wants - By Brenda Jackson Page 0,31
Le’Shaunda received a slew of supermarket chains, and I was given a land development company and several small sheep ranches. Although I’m CEO, I have a staff capable of running things in my absence.”
Gemma nodded, taking all this in. Bailey had tried telling her and Megan that she’d heard that Callum was loaded in his own right, but she really hadn’t believed her. Why would a man as wealthy as Bailey claimed Callum was settle for being the manager of someone else’s sheep ranch? Granted, he and Ramsey were close, but she couldn’t see them being so close that Callum would give up a life of wealth and luxury for three years to live in a small cabin on her brother’s property.
“Why did you do it?” she heard herself asking.
“Why did I do what?”
“It’s obvious that you have money, so why would you give all this up for three years and work as the manager of my brother’s sheep ranch?”
This, Callum thought, would be the perfect time to sit Gemma down and explain things to her, letting her know the reason he’d hung around Denver for three years. But he had a feeling just like when his father had tried explaining to his mother about her being his soul mate and it hadn’t gone over well, it wouldn’t go over well with Gemma, either.
According to Todd Austell, trying to convince Le’Claire Richards it had been love at first sight was the hardest thing he ever had to do. In fact, she figured he wanted to marry her to rebel against his parents trying to pick out a wife for him and not because he was truly in love with her.
Callum was sure that over the years his mother had pretty much kissed that notion goodbye, because there wasn’t a single day that passed when his father didn’t show his mother how much he loved her. Maybe that’s why it came so easily to Callum to admit that he loved a woman. His father was a great role model.
But still, when it came to an Austell falling in love, Callum had a feeling that Gemma would be just as skeptical as his mother had been. So there was no way he could tell her the full truth of why he had spent three years practically right in her backyard.
“I needed to get away from my family for a while,” he heard himself saying, which really wasn’t a lie. He had been wild and reckless in his younger years, and returning home from college hadn’t made things any better. The death of his grandfather had.
He had loved the old man dearly and he would have to say that his grandfather had spoiled him rotten. With the old man gone, there was no one to make excuses for him, no one to get him out of the scrapes he got into and no one who would listen to whatever tale he decided to fabricate. His father had decided that the only way to make him stand on his own was to make him work for it. So he had.
He had worked on his parents’ ranch for a full year, right alongside the other ranch hands, to prove his worth. It had only been after he’d succeeded in doing that that his father had given him Le’Claire to run. But by then Callum had decided he much preferred a ranch-hand bunk to a glamorous thirty-floor high rise overlooking the harbor. So he had hired the best management team money could buy to run his corporation while he returned to work on his parents’ ranch. That’s when he’d met Ramsey and the two had quickly become fast friends.
“I understand,” said Gemma, cutting into his thoughts.
He lifted a brow. He had expected her to question him further. “You do?”
“Yes. That’s why Bane left home to join the Navy. He needed his space from us for a while. He needed to find himself.”
Brisbane was her cousin Dillon’s baby brother. From what Callum had heard, Bane had been only eight when his parents had been killed. He had grieved for them in a different way than the others, by fighting to get the attention he craved. When he’d graduated from high school, he had refused to go to college. After numerous brushes with the law and butting heads with the parents of a young lady who didn’t want him to be a part of their daughter’s life, Dillon had convinced Bane to get his life together. Everyone was