Long, Tall Texans_ Boone (Long, Tall Texans #35) - Diana Palmer Page 0,35

it true?” she repeated softly.

Ella took a deep breath. For once, she really looked her age. “Yes,” she said. “I thought the money would never run out. There was so much of it. Your grandparents invested in land when it was cheap. As the town grew, more people needed land, so they started renting it out for businesses. When they died, I continued the practice, raising the rents as the land prices increased.”

“What happened?” Keely prodded.

Ella laughed hollowly. “I got greedy. My parents would never buy me designer clothes or even a good car. They made me pay my own way, from the day I started working. They wanted me to go to college, but I thought I was smart enough. Your father thought I’d get all that money the minute I married, so he married me. But it didn’t work out that way.” She drew in a long breath, her eyes with a faraway look. “All I had was an allowance. Brent and I bought expensive cars and diamonds and ate in the best restaurants and took long trips overseas. We ran up a fortune in bills. My parents paid it, then they stopped my checks.” She laughed again as she glanced at her daughter. “Brent got used to living high. He couldn’t go back to wages. He found a way to make a lot of money quick.” Her face tautened. “You were far too young to understand what was going on. My parents died in a plane crash and we inherited the estate, but there wasn’t much left. Mostly just the land—we’d spent the rest. I wanted him out of my life. He wanted that game park, so I made a deal with him. I sold land and gave him the proceeds. I was free, still relatively young, and I wanted to celebrate. So I did. Then your father dumped you here and the luxury lifestyle was a thing of the past. I resented you for that. But it probably saved us from being tossed out into the street with the clothes we were wearing. I’d gone hog wild and didn’t even realize it. By the time I did, it was too late.”

She moved into the living room and sat down, heavily, in a chair. Keely sat down on the arm of the sofa across from her. It was unusual for her parent to speak to her like this, as an equal, without even sarcasm.

Ella brushed back her hair. “I managed to salvage a couple of the properties before they were foreclosed on for unpaid bills. But my renters found cheaper rents and moved out. I was left with empty buildings that I couldn’t repair, and nobody wanted to use them. Within the past six months, it was suddenly all gone, except for the house and the land it sits on.” She looked up at Keely. “Your father and Jock are broke and they need a grubstake. They want me to sell the house and property to fund it.”

“But it’s all you have left,” Keely argued. “Tell them you won’t do it. Sheriff Carson will look out for you.”

Ella bit her lower lip. “It’s more complicated than that, Keely,” she replied quietly. “You see, your father and I did something…illegal, when you were very small. If he tells what he knows, I can go to prison.”

Keely’s mouth thinned. “If he uses it, he’ll be incriminated, as well, and he can go there, too.”

The older woman smiled sadly. “They’d have to catch him first, wouldn’t they?” she asked. “He’s been one jump ahead of the law all his life.”

“What did you do?” Keely asked, reasoning that her mother would probably close up and say nothing else.

Ella took a sip of her drink. “I’ve lived with the guilt for years,” she said, almost to herself. “I thought it wasn’t going to bother me, what we did. I thought…” She took another sip of the drink. “A local boy saw Brent bringing in a shipment of cocaine and hiding it in our basement. He was going to tell the sheriff.” She grimaced. “My father was dying and he’d already threatened to disinherit me because of Brent. If there had been a scandal, and Brent and I had been prosecuted, I’d have lost everything. They could have proved that I…paid for the shipment that Brent was going to cut and resell on the streets.”

“What did you do?” Keely asked apprehensively.

“The boy liked to get high,” Ella continued miserably. “He did it all