Read Online The Black Sheep and the Princess by Donna Kauffman - Free Book Online Page A

it’s a valid question.”
    â€œIt is, and, trust me, you’re not the first to ask it.” She laughed wearily. “My attorney was the first to ask me; only his language was a little more direct.” She steered the truck around a particularly tight curve and tried to decide how best to explain. Not that she had to. But for whatever reason, his opinion seemed to matter, at the moment anyway. He’d already found out she wasn’t the spoiled society girl he seemed to think she’d become. If she could dismantle a few other misconceptions, that was fine by her, too.
    â€œInitially, it was a knee-jerk reaction to the disbursement of her assets. Both Shelby and I were shocked. Though, once that wore off, we both agreed that it was quintessential Louisa to pull something like that. One of the few things we ever agreed on.” She sighed a little. “Anyway, long story short, I’d been estranged from my mother for a very long time, since my college years. Shelby, on the other hand, had stood by her and helped her invest her money and build her empire. By rights it was his.”
    â€œSo why dump the camp on him? Was it more to punish him, then?”
    â€œNo, she got us both. Shelby’s father, George, was Louisa’s third husband, and Winnimocca was his when they married, so, by rights, it passed to Shelby. I was Louisa’s only biological and legal child, as she’d never adopted Shelby and went on to remarry after his father’s death. So, along that line of thinking, I was heiress to her personal throne, so to speak. Only neither of us wanted what we got. I blurted out that we should swap, both because it was the right thing to do, and, admittedly, because it thwarted my mother’s final exertion of control over us.”
    â€œBut then you, or your attorney, came to your senses…”
    She smiled. “Well, yes and no. The emotional part of my reaction passed, but the rational part was still there.” She glanced at him. “Inheriting that kind of estate is a lot more complicated than people understand. It’s not like I won the lottery and someone was just going to hand me some huge check. Her money was all tied up in a variety of business investments, all kinds of things. Just randomly liquidating things in order to get an influx of cash to use to buy and fund a camp wasn’t all that simple, and would put a lot of people out of work. And that’s just the part that could be sold off. A lot of it was tied up in all kinds of partnerships and the like. Like I said, really complicated.”
    â€œActually, I do understand that a little. More than you might think.” He waved a hand. “But go on.”
    She was going to ask him to elaborate, but decided to circle back to it when she was done. “I had no desire to step in and run or dismantle her empire.”
    â€œEmpire?”
    â€œShe was married to Trenton Graham—”
    â€œI know. They mentioned it in the article. But they divorced.”
    â€œWell, that particular divorce settlement pole-vaulted her the rest of the way into the stratosphere of society and wealth, and she’d apparently learned more than a thing or two about empire building while married to the king of empire building. More importantly, though, so did Shelby. He’d helped her build it, and was more than ready to tackle the whole thing. I was more than ready to let him. I just wanted my camp—his camp. Which he had no interest in and neither had Louisa. It wasn’t on their radar. They couldn’t have cared less about the property.”
    â€œStill, he had to know—”
    â€œLet me finish. I’m not a complete idiot. I might not have agreed with my mother’s methods, personally or in business, and I wasn’t around while she amassed most of what she’d left behind, but I wasn’t going to walk away from everything either. It took a while, but Shelby and I