inevitable. My parents were in their seventies. And although Dad was built like a brick shit house and had an army of people working for him, it was only a matter of time before his age finally caught up to him. I couldn’t ask Devyn, my sister who lived in California, to uproot her family and move back east. Which left me––the bachelor son.
“I know.”
“I’m retiring…” Part of me breathed a sigh of relief––he couldn’t go on dominating the world forever without it taking a toll on his health. The rest of me was in a state of high anxiety for what came next. “I’m going to hand the reins over to Sydney.”
I sat up abruptly, the heels of my boots hitting the wide plank flooring with a loud thud.
Sydney Evans…
I’d met her over a decade ago––at the height of my party days––and vaguely recalled kissing her at my sister’s wedding. I also recalled it being pretty damn good before she kneed me in the nuts. I was trashed out of my mind that night, but no man forgets a woman that almost made a eunuch out of him. Yeah, I remembered her. She was a cold, uptight bitch. Pretty if you liked nondescript vanilla blondes. Which I didn’t. Curvy brunettes were more my style. Ones with blood rather than antifreeze in their veins. Ones that enjoyed sex as much as I did.
My father had sung her praises for years. She had a head for business and a thirst for blood equal to his. I never cared for it––the blood, the kill. The art of the deal. I preferred open land and clean air.
“Good,” I said, a major weight being lifted off my chest. I wasn’t being asked to step up and that’s all that mattered to me. “She’s more than capable.”
“Yes, she is. Unfortunately, the board won’t see it that way. They’ve been waiting to install their person for the past decade. They’ll fight her tooth and nail.”
“You’ve never backed down from a fight.”
“I’m glad you remember that.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up straight. I could almost underscore the pronounced evil glee in my father’s voice with a pencil and being intimately acquainted with it I knew it would only spell trouble for me.
“I need you to do something for me, Scott. I need you to marry Sydney.”
I couldn’t possibly have heard that right. My father couldn’t have asked me to marry a woman I could barely tolerate. He couldn’t have asked me to marry anyone. That only happened in bad romantic comedies and my life wasn’t fodder for anyone’s entertainment.
“I don’t have time for your jokes, Franklin. It’s been fun. Say hi to Mom for me.”
“This is no joke. The only way to ensure the board won’t tie this up in court for years is if she’s a Blackstone. And aren’t I a lucky son of a bitch––here I am with one past-his-prime son in need of a wife.”
I wasn’t buying it. My old man was a notorious prankster. “Who you calling past-his-prime, old man? And the last thing I need is a wife.”
“Frankly, I don’t care what you need, Scott. You’ll do this for me, or I’ll write you out of the will and the tap gets turned off. You get me?”
“Well played, Darth Vader, but we’re all stocked up on funds here. The ranch has been turning a nifty profit for some time now so go ahead and write me out.” Which was the absolute truth and something I was damn proud of.
“What about your pet project?”
The threat left a chilly silence in its wake. I knew that tone. It was quintessential Franklin Marshall Blackstone going for the kill. “You love that land, don’t you? All the millions and millions of acres you’ve had me buy up over the years. The ones you want turned into a national park. I’ll break it apart and sell it off.”
Adrenaline and a heap of anger burned through my veins. I shot out of my chair and marched to the window, the phone cord stretching as tight as my nerves.
Land preservation was the only thing I truly gave a shit about, and he knew it. My ranch was run responsibly in respect to the environment, an expensive endeavor that required very careful management. Most operations couldn’t afford to work that way. They encroached on federal land which forced wildlife to either retreat or be slaughtered. Buying up the land, placing it in a trust, and turning