Free Truly Madly Yours by Rachel Gibson

the last name Shaw. He supposed she had many legitimate reasons to hate Henry.
    Her husband Louis had been killed driving one of Henry’s logging trucks, leaving her with a small son, Louie, to raise by herself. A few weeks after Louis’s funeral, Henry had gone to the house to offer his comfort and sympathy. When he’d left late that night, he’d left with the vulnerable young widow’s signature on a document releasing him from further responsibility in Louis’s death. He’d placed a check in her hand, and a son in her womb. After Nick had been born, Benita had confronted Henry, but he’d denied the baby could possibly be his. He’d kept denying it for most of Nick’s life.
    Even though Nick figured his mother had a right to her anger, when he arrived at her house, he was surprised at the vehemence of today’s tirade. She cursed the will in three languages: Spanish, Basque, and English. Nick understood only part of what she said, but most of her outrage was directed toward Delaney. And he hadn’t even told her about the absurd no-sex stipulation. He hoped he wouldn’t have too.
    “That girl!” she fumed, sawing her way through a loaf of bread. “He always put that neska izugarri before his son. His own blood. She is nothing, nothing. Yet she gets everything.”
    “She might leave town,” Nick reminded her. He didn’t care whether Delaney stayed or was already on her way back home. He didn’t really want Henry’s businesses or the money. Henry had already given him the only property he would have wanted.
    “Ba! Why should she leave? Your uncle Josu will have something to say about this.”
    Josu Olechea was his mother’s only brother. He was a third-generation sheep rancher, and owned land near Marsing. Since Benita had no husband, she counted on Josu to be head of the family, no matter that her sons were grown.
    “Don’t bother him with this,” Nick said and leaned a shoulder against the refrigerator. As a boy, whenever he’d gotten in trouble or his mother figured he and Louie needed a positive male influence, she’d sent them to spend the summer with Josu and his sheepherders. Both of them had loved it until they’d discovered girls.
    The back door opened and his brother stepped into the kitchen. Louie was shorter than Nick. Solid, with the black hair and eyes he’d inherited from both his mother and father. “So,” Louie began, closing the screen door behind him. “What did the old man leave you?”
    Nick smiled and straightened. His brother would appreciate the inheritance. “You’re going to love it.”
    “He got practically nothing,” his mother interjected, carrying a plate of sliced bread into the dining room.
    “He left me his Angel Beach property and the land at Silver Creek.”
    Louie’s thick brows rose up his forehead and a glint sparkled in his dark eyes. “Holy shit,” the thirty-four-year-old land developer whispered so his mother wouldn’t hear him.
    Nick laughed and the two of them followed Benita into the dining room, then sat at the polished oak table. They watched their mother neatly fold back the lace tablecloth, then leave to get their lunch.
    “What are you going to put on the Angel Beach property?” Louie asked, assuming correctly that Nick would want the land developed. Benita might not realize the worth of Nick’s inheritance, but his brother did.
    “I don’t know. I have a year to think about it.”
    “A year?”
    Benita set bowls of guisado de vaca in front her sons, then took her seat. It was hot outside, and Nick really didn’t feel like stew. “I get the property if I do something. Or not do something, actually.”
    “Is he trying to get you to change your name again?”
    Nick looked up from his bowl. His mother and brother stared back at him. There was no way around it. They were family, and they believed family had the God-given right to stick their noses in his business. He snagged a piece of bread and took a bite. “There was a