Kentucky Rich Read online

  Also by Fern Michaels

  Fool Me Once

  Sweet Revenge

  The Jury

  Vendetta

  Payback

  Picture Perfect

  Weekend Warriors

  About Face

  The Future Scrolls

  Kentucky Rich

  Kentucky Heat

  Kentucky Sunrise

  Plain Jane

  Charming Lily

  What You Wish For

  The Guest List

  Listen to Your Heart

  Celebration

  Yesterday

  Finders Keepers

  Annie’s Rainbow

  Sara’s Song

  Vegas Sunrise

  Vegas Heat

  Vegas Rich

  Whitefire

  Wish List

  Dear Emily

  FERN MICHAELS

  KENTUCKY RICH

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by Fern Michaels

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  PART I

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  PART II

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  Family

  FAMILY

  Lime Chili Shrimp with Coriander and Avocado

  Teaser chapter

  Copyright Page

  I’d like to dedicate this book to two wonderful people,

  Helen and Bob Kraushaar.

  Prologue

  Thirty Years Later

  The two brothers watched from the window as a black limousine crunched to a stop in the middle of the gravel driveway. In silence, they watched a uniformed driver step out and open the rear passenger door. Their jaws dropped when they saw a slender, long-legged woman dressed in brown-leather boots, well-cut jeans, and white shirt emerge and look around. A sun-darkened hand reached up to adjust tinted glasses before she tipped the brim of her pearly white Stetson to reveal a mane of thick sable brown hair.

  “Who the hell is that?” Rhy Coleman demanded of his brother.

  “How the hell should I know?” Pyne said. “Whoever she is, she’s coming up to the porch. I think you should open the door.”

  When his older brother made no move to greet their guest, Pyne started toward the door, but it opened before he could reach it. The strange woman blew in like a gust of wind. Without a glance in the brothers’ direction, she headed straight for the stairway leading to the second floor.

  “Hey! Just a damn minute!” Rhy shouted. “Who the hell are you to walk in here like you own the place?”

  She turned to face them and smiled as she lowered her dark glasses. “I do own it, Rhy, at least a third of it. Don’t you recognize me, big brother?”

  Rhy’s eyes widened with shock.

  Pyne walked toward her. “Nealy! Is it really you?”

  “In the flesh,” she said, thinking it funny that neither one of them had recognized her. She’d known them the moment she’d seen them, not by the family resemblance but by the slump of their shoulders. Her smile vanished as she glanced back at the stairs. “Where is he?”

  Pyne’s head jerked upward.

  Nealy nodded. “You two stay here,” she ordered. “This is between me and him. I have something I want to say to him, and I don’t want either of you interfering. Do you understand? This is my business, not yours.” When there was no response, she repeated her question. The brothers nodded reluctantly.

  Nealy stared at the two men. They were strangers to her; she felt absolutely no emotion for them—not love, not hate, not even curiosity. They were just two men standing side by side in the hallway.

  It had been over thirty years since she’d seen her brothers. Over thirty years since she’d left this house with Emmie in her arms. Over thirty years since she’d set foot on Coleman land. And now, after all this time, here she was, back in Virginia.

  Home.

  The word made her shudder. She turned her back on her brothers and gazed at the staircase that led to the second floor. As a child, she’d climbed those stairs hundreds of times, maybe thousands. Usually to run and hide so she could whimper in safety.

  Shoulders stiff, back straight, she mounted each step with the same mix of confidence and caution she used when mounting her horses. At the top, she stopped and looked down at her brothers, who appeared to be debating whether or not to follow her. “Go about your own business while I take care of mine.” She hurled the words at them in a cold, tight voice to ward them off. Nealy remembered another day, long ago, when they’d stood in the same spot watching her. She glared at them now as she had then and waited until they walked away before making her way down the hall.

  Nealy hesitated only a moment outside of her father’s bedroom, then opened the door and walked in. The room was just as she remembered it, gray and dim with ineffective lighting, a few pieces of battered pine furniture and worn-out, roll-down shades covering the two windows.

  Her nose wrinkled at the smell of dust, mold, and medication. Hearing a groan, she turned her gaze toward the bed and saw a mound of quilts . . . her father, the man who had sent her fleeing from this very house over thirty years ago. How old was he? She knew he was over a hundred, had read about his getting a card from Bill Clinton when he turned one hundred, but gave up because she simply didn’t care.

  As she walked toward the bed, she sensed rather than heard someone follow her inside the room. One of her brothers, no doubt. Damn, didn’t they know an order when they heard one? Of course they knew, she reminded herself. If there was one thing Pa was good at, it was giving orders.

  A frail voice demanded to know who was there. Nealy stepped up closer to the bed and heard a footfall behind her. Rhy or Pyne? she wondered. More than likely Pyne. In his youth, Pyne had been the one to show concern about things and people. Rhy, on the other hand, had taken after their father, not giving a tinker’s damn about anything or anybody.

  “It’s Nealy, Pa.”

  The voice was stronger when he spoke a second time. “There ain’t nothin’ here for you, girl. Go back where you came from. You don’t belong here.”

  “I don’t want anything, Pa,” Nealy said, looking down at the load of quilts on the bed. They looked dirty, or maybe it was just the lighting. Clean, dirty . . . what did she care? She pushed the Stetson farther back on her head so she could get a better look at the dying man without any shadows over her eyes.

  “Then what are you here for?”

  Nealy felt a hand on her shoulder and glanced back to see Pyne. The hand was to tell her to take it easy.

  Like hell she would. Her father had never taken it easy on her. Not even when she was so sick she couldn’t stand on her own two feet. She removed Pyne’s hand with her own and gave him a warning look. More than thirty years she’d waited for this moment, and neither Pyne nor Rhy was going to take it away from her.

  “I came here to watch you die, old man,” she said, looking her father straight in the eyes. “And I’m not leaving until I hear you draw your last breath. I want to see them dump you in the ground and cover you up. I want to make sure you’re gone forever. Only after I’ve danced on your grave will I leave. Do you hear me, old man?” She glared at him, h
er eyes burning with hate.

  The old man’s face became a glowering mask of rage. “Get out of my house!”

  “Still ordering people around, are you? Well guess what? I don’t have to take your orders anymore. I repeat ; I came here to see you die, and I’m not leaving until you go to hell. That’s where you’re going, Pa. Hell!” There, she’d said what she’d come to say. Why didn’t she feel a bigger sense of satisfaction? Why did she feel this strange emptiness?

  “Pyne! Take this devil child away from me. Do you hear me?” the old man gasped as he struggled to raise himself up on his elbow.

  “I’d like to see him try,” Nealy said bitterly. Then she felt her brother’s hand on her shoulder again. “I’d like to see anyone even try to make me do something I don’t want to do. Those days are gone forever.”

  The old man gurgled and gasped as he thrashed about in the big bed. Nealy watched him with a clinical interest. Her eyes narrowed when she saw drool leak from his mouth. God did work in mysterious ways, she thought as she remembered the day her father decided to take her drooling dim-witted child to the county orphanage. Spawn of the devil was what he’d called Emmie. She stood staring at him until he calmed down, then stretched out her leg and, with a booted foot, pulled over a straight-backed chair and sat down facing the bed. For long minutes she stared at her father with unblinking intensity until, finally, he closed his eyes.

  “Okay, he’s asleep now,” Pyne said. “What the hell are you doing here, Nealy? We haven’t heard a word from you in more than thirty years, and all of a sudden you show up just as Pa is getting ready to die. How did you know? Can’t you let him die in peace?”

  Nealy removed her Stetson and rubbed her forehead. She didn’t really care all that much for hats, but she’d always longed to wear a pearly white Stetson, just like the Texans wore. These days she was into indulging herself and doing all the things she’d always longed to do but for one reason or another had never done.

  “No, I can’t let him die in peace,” she said, her voice even now, calm. “He has to pay for what he did to me and Emmie.” Her eyes narrowed as she watched her brother closely, wondering what he was thinking before she realized she didn’t care. She really didn’t give two hoots what her brothers or anyone else thought. “As to how I knew he was dying, I make it my business to know what goes on here. And you know why I’m here, Pyne. I want my share of this place for Emmie.”

  Pyne chuckled softly. “Your share? You just said you’d made it your business to know what goes on around here. So how come you don’t know that Pa refused to make a will? There hasn’t been any estate planning, Nealy. And neither Rhy nor I have power of attorney. The IRS is going to take it all. Whatever’s left will be a piss in the bucket.”

  Nealy bridled with anger. Leave it to her gutless brothers to let their father go to his deathbed without so much as a power of attorney. “We’ll just see about that,” she said. “Call the lawyers right now and get them here on the double. Offer to pay them whatever they want. Just get them here. If we work fast, we can still get it all into place. As long as Pa’s still breathing, there’s a chance. Now, get on it and don’t screw up, or you’ll be out on the highway along with your brother.”

  Pyne stammered in bewilderment. “But . . . I can’t. Pa wouldn’t . . .”

  Nealy stood up, took her brother by the shoulders, and shook him. “Don’t tell me what Pa would or wouldn’t do. It doesn’t matter anymore. He’s dying. There’s nothing he can do to you, to any of us. Don’t you understand that?”

  Pyne Coleman stared down at his fit and expensive-looking younger sister. After all these years she was still pretty, with her dark hair and big brown eyes. Once when they were little he’d told her she looked like an angel. She’d laughed and laughed. Back then they had been close out of necessity. It was all so long ago. And now here she was, over thirty years later, just as defiant as ever and issuing orders like a general.

  Nealy suffered through her brother’s scrutiny, wondering what he was thinking. She was about to ask when Rhy stuck his head in the door. “You better come downstairs, Pyne, there’s a whole gaggle of people outside. They said they were relatives, family. I didn’t know we had a family. Do you know anything about this?”

  Pyne didn’t seem the least bit surprised. “I know a lot about it,” he said, smiling. “Pa told me about them about a month ago, right before he had his stroke, but he didn’t say anything about them coming here. I wonder what they want.” He took Nealy’s elbow and steered her toward the door. “I’ll make you a deal. You make our family welcome while I make that phone call to the lawyers.”

  Nealy jerked her arm free, walked back to her father’s bedside, and leaned close to him. Only after she was satisfied that he was still breathing did she follow her brothers downstairs....

  In the foyer, Nealy set her hat down on the telephone table and checked her hair and makeup. With all the skill of a seasoned actress, she worked a smile onto her face as she headed toward the door. Rhy wasn’t kidding when he said there was a gaggle of people outside. But family? Whose family?

  “Hello,” she said. “I’m Nealy Coleman. And you are?”

  PART I

  1

  Seventeen-year-old Nealy Coleman’s chest heaved and rattled when she coughed, causing the housekeeper’s faded eyes to grow wide with alarm. The toddler at Nealy’s feet started to cry. Nealy reached down to pick up the little girl. “Shhh, don’t cry, Emmie. Please don’t cry,” she pleaded hoarsely. The child whimpered in her mother’s arms.

  “Let me hold her while you stick your head under that steam tent I made for you. Land sakes, child, if you don’t take care of yourself, you’re going to end up in the hospital or the cemetery.” The housekeeper reached for the toddler, who was barely two years old.

  “All right, Tessie, but you keep an eye out for Pa. I’ve still got three horses to groom, and you know how he is. He doesn’t like it when any of us get sick and can’t do our chores.” Nealy gave Emmie over to the housekeeper and sat down. “If you sing to Emmie, she’ll stop crying.”

  Tessie walked around the kitchen with Emmie in her arms, crooning as she tried to calm the fretful child.

  “Whatever you do,” Nealy added, “make sure supper isn’t late. Pa will take it out on me if it is.” Nealy stuck her head under the towel and struggled to take deep breaths from the bowl of steaming mentholated water. She could hear the old woman singing off-key to Emmie. Something about a blackbird baked in a pie. If she wasn’t so sick, she might have laughed.

  Moments later Nealy heard the swinging door slam against the wall and ripped the towel away from her head. Her face dripping wet from the steam, she jerked around to face her father. In that one instant she saw everything in the huge kitchen: the coal stove and bucket, the stewpot on the stove, the old refrigerator, the clean crisp curtains hanging on the windows, her brothers Pyne and Rhy, and her hateful, angry father. So much for Tessie keeping an eye out.

  The sound of rain hitting the back porch beat like a drum inside her head. Chills racked her body as she struggled to her feet. Afraid of what her father might do, she started to inch closer to Tessie and her daughter when his hand snaked out and pulled her back.

  “What are you doin’ lollygaggin’ around in here when you have horses to tend, girl?”

  Nealy threw her head back, lifted her chin, and met his angry gaze. “I wasn’t lollygagging, Pa. I was waiting for the rain to let up.”

  Her father snickered in disgust. “Like hell you were,” he said, looking at the bowl of water. “You got a slicker, girl. Now git to it.”

  Pyne stepped forward. “I can do her chores, Pa. Nealy’s sick.” Without warning, Josh Coleman swung his arm backward. Pyne took the blow full in the face. He reeled sideways, his hand going to his nose. Blood spurted out between his fingers. Rhy handed him a dish towel.

  Tears filled Nealy’s eyes. She staggered over to the coatrack by the kitchen door. Her hands were trembling so badly s
he could barely take the slicker from the peg. She turned around as she put on her slicker and looked straight at Tessie, begging her with her eyes to take care of Emmie a little while longer. The old woman nodded in understanding. Nealy cringed when she heard her father say, “Put that drooling half-wit in her bed and get our supper on the table, woman.”

  Outside in the pouring rain, Nealy trudged to the barn. Once inside, she collapsed on a bale of hay and fought to catch her breath. She turned fear-filled eyes on the barn door, and whispered, “Just this once, God, help me. Please.”

  Help arrived minutes later in the form of her brother Pyne. He touched his lips to her forehead. “Jesus God, Nealy, you’re burning up. Lie down and rest, and I’ll do what needs doing. Pa will never know. He went into his office with a bottle, and you know what that means.”

  Nealy curled up in a nest of loosened hay and put a horse blanket under her head. “I don’t understand you, Pyne. Why do you let Pa treat you like he does? Why don’t you stand up to him and show him what you’re made of?”

  Pyne looked up from cleaning April Fantasy’s rear hoof. “You keep thinking I’m something I’m not. I don’t have your grit, Nealy. I never have, and I never will. And Pa knows it.”

  Nealy sighed in resignation. It was sad but true. Pyne had no backbone whatsoever.

  “He doesn’t pick on Rhy, just you and me. I hate him. I hate him so much . . .” She broke into a fit of coughing. She felt like she’d swallowed a pack of razor blades. “I never felt like this before, Pyne. I think I must be dying. I see two of you. Who’s going to take care of Emmie if I die?”

  “Shhhh,” Pyne said as he picked up the currycomb. “I’m not going to let you die, Nealy. As soon as I finish up here, I’ll take you into the house and put you to bed. Tessie told me she’s going to fix you a couple of mustard plasters and that you’ll be right as rain in no time.”

  Right as rain, Nealy thought as her eyes started to close. What’s right about rain? she wondered as she drifted off.