Always a McBride by Linda Turner

cemetery at Twin Pines, the family ranch.
    Later, Taylor couldn’t have said how long he sat at one of the library’s time-worn oak tables, staring at his father’s faded obituary, before the words finally sank in. Phoebe had, without being aware of it, already informed him he had a sister. Now, it turned out, he had another sister and two brothers. When he’d planned the trip to Liberty Hill to search for his father, he’d known, of course, that there was a good possibility that he had a couple of half brothers or sisters walking around Colorado that he knew nothing about. He’d never dreamed there were four of them.
    And he felt nothing. Nothing but resentment.
    If his mother had been alive, she would have been less than pleased with him. In spite of the fact that she’d been disowned by her own parents, she’d valued family and had always regretted the fact that she couldn’t give that to him. Although she’d never discussed the matter with him, he knew she would have wanted him to give his father’s other children a chance if they showed an interest in developing a relationship with him.
    It wasn’t going to happen.
    At the thought, he could almost hear his mother clicking her tongue at him in disapproval. But it took more than blood to make a family. The legitimate children of Gus McBride had been raised on the family ranch. They had grown up with all the rights and privileges of a McBride. They knew who their father was, their grandfather, where the family came from, where they, themselves would live and die. Hell, they even knew where they would be buried!
    And what had been his birthright? Because of Gus McBride, he hadn’t had a father, hadn’t had grandparents—on either side! When he was little, there’d been no father to chase away the boogeyman in the closet when he had bad dreams, no dad to teach him to fish or hunt or the million and one other things a good father taught his children.
    His mother had tried to step up and fill the roll of both parents, and he had to give her credit. She’d done a damn good job. But she couldn’t do it all. She was a woman, and there were times when she had to deal with her own fears. She’d needed a man, a husband, to protect her, just as he’d needed a father. They’d had neither.
    Because Gus McBride had been halfway across the country, protecting his real family.
    And Taylor would bet money that Zeke, Merry, Joe and Jane weren’t scared at night when they were growing up. They hadn’t worried about the bills or having enough money for new clothes for school each year. They didn’t hate the neighborhood they had to live in. They’d grown up in the Colorado Rockies, for heaven’s sake, on a ranch that was started by some of the firstsettlers in the area. That alone was like growing up in a national park.
    Did they know how lucky they were? Growing up, they’d had it all. Taylor wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d thought their daddy was a saint. He wasn’t. Unfortunately, they’d never know that.
    Unless he told them.
    Deep down inside the very core of him, a voice reminded him that he wasn’t the kind of man—or lawyer—who hurt innocent people. Normally, he would have agreed, but the bitterness that rose in him every time he thought about Gus McBride drowned out his common decency. All he could think of was that it wasn’t fair that his father had escaped the consequences of his actions by dying. The truth had to be told.
    And he was just the person to tell it, he thought grimly. The only problem was, it wasn’t just Gus’s children who needed to be told the truth about him. He wanted Sara to know. She was the one Gus had left his mother for. She was the reason he’d grown up without a father. If it hadn’t been for her, his mother would probably have contacted Gus as soon as she found out she was pregnant. She’d