The Wade Dynasty

by Carole Mortimer

  ‘Yes,’ she sighed.

  ‘Did you do much riding in England?’ he challenged suddenly, reining in the stallion as he became even more anxious for a gallop.

  ‘Not much,’ she admitted.

  ‘Want to race me back to the ranch?’

  Brenna swung around in the saddle, surprised to see they had come a good couple of miles from the house. ‘I’m a little rusty,’ she protested, her body already complaining at the unaccustomed exercise.

  ‘Riding a horse is like making love—’

  ‘Once you’ve done it once you never forget,’ she finished hardly.

  His face darkened with irritation at her accusing tone. ‘Brenna…’

  ‘Let’s go, shall we, Nathan?’ She turned Samson and set him at a gallop, her hat falling down on to her back, her hair streaming out wildly behind her, much silkier and finer than Samson’s tail, but making her look one with the blue-black animal.

  She wasn’t at all surprised when Nathan and the stallion streaked past her a good mile from home, and she urged Samson to greater speed, although she knew he would never catch the other pair.

  She jumped nimbly down from Samson’s back once in the stable yard and handed the reins to Bill, her cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkling, her hair a tangle of ebony waves down her spine.

  She gave a start of surprise as strong sinewed arms came about her waist from behind and she felt Nathan’s warm breath against her ear as he moulded his body into the back of hers.

  ‘You’re completely wild and untamed,’ he groaned.

  ‘Nathan…’

  ‘No.’ He stilled her struggles. ‘You can’t keep escaping me.’

  ‘But I don’t want this!’ She couldn’t get his arms from about her, like steel bands against her pulling fingers, their voices necessarily hushed because Bill was settling the two horses back into their stalls.

  Suddenly Nathan thrust her away from him, his eyes flinty, and just as cutting. ‘What did you want from me that night?’ he rasped. ‘Just to find out what it would be like with me after all that talk with your friends? To rid yourself of your cumbersome virginity with an experienced older man? What?’ he demanded. ‘Because it sure as hell wasn’t a proposal you were expecting!’

  Brenna still had no real explanation for what had happened that night for herself, let alone for him. She hadn’t had so much to drink she didn’t know exactly what she was doing, and who she was doing it with. At the time she had just wanted to be in his arms, to seek oblivion, and if there had been more to it than that she had never probed it.

  ‘Of course I didn’t expect it,’ she snapped. ‘You’d never given any indication before that you felt that way about me.’

  Nathan’s hands clenched into fists at his sides. ‘That way?’ he mocked. ‘Why can’t you say it—I loved you! I certainly don’t go around proposing marriage to every woman I’ve slept with,’ he rasped.

  ‘I don’t think the house could hold that many wives!’ Her eyes flashed like emeralds.

  He drew in a ragged breath. ‘I don’t understand you, I doubt if I ever will. When a man offers you his love and his life it’s usually polite to at least tell him you don’t want them!’

  ‘Nathan, you…’ Brenna became conscious of their stunned audience, her face blanching at the shocked look on Bill’s face. He had been employed on the Wade ranch ever since she had lived here, had been a witness to many of the fiery arguments between Nathan and herself, but never one quite as bitterly personal as this one. She turned accusing eyes on Nathan. ‘I’m here because my sister’s marriage is in trouble,’ she grated. ‘But once that’s settled again I’m leaving here on the next plane and I never want to see you again!’

  ‘Even that might be too soon for me!’ He turned and strode out of the stable, knocking the dust from his hat against his thigh as he walked.

  ‘Patrick always said the two of you could light a fire during one of your arguments,’ Bill whistled between his teeth. ‘I think I’ve got the blisters to prove it!’

  Some of the tension left Brenna’s body—but not all. She doubted she would be able to completely relax again until she left here and returned to England. Maybe that was why she had felt that instant rapport with England four years ago; there was no Nathan there to mock and taunt and deride everything she did.

  ‘You only caught the edge of it, Bill,’ she grimaced. ‘I have third-degree burns!’

  He chuckled, a middle-aged ranch hand who loved his work. ‘It’s good to have you back, Brenna,’ he said with obvious sincerity. ‘It just hasn’t been the same around here without you.’

  ‘All that peace and quiet getting to you, was it, Bill?’ she teased.

  He nodded. ‘It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Nathan blow up like that.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have enjoyed it so much if you’d been on the receiving end of it!’

  ‘Now that you’re back I expect I will be—I expect we all will be,’ he grinned. ‘It’s been pretty dull around here the last year or so.’

  As she and Nathan had argued more or less from the moment they had met Brenna couldn’t understand why Bill preferred it that way. ‘I think I’ll go and get some coffee,’ she murmured. ‘Nice to see you again, Bill.’ She didn’t need to have the remark returned, she could see how much he was enjoying himself by the twinkle in his blue eyes.

  When she would prefer the tanquillity of her life without Nathan in it she found it strange to think other people actually welcomed the combustion between them. Maybe Bill was just a glutton for punishment!

  Or maybe it wasn’t just Bill who had these masochistic tendencies; Grant seemed to be spoiling for a fight as she entered the house, his voice raised at his older brother.

  ‘—and I tell you she’s my wife, so I’ll take her to the damned doctor!’ He glared at Nathan in mulish determination.

  If Brenna had thought he looked in bad shape the night before, he looked even worse now; his handsome face was deathly pale, his blue eyes sunken into the dark shadows of their sockets, his fair hair looking in need of a comb. Physically he and Nathan looked very alike, both tall and muscular, but Grant had his mother’s fair colouring whereas Nathan took after his father. But they had both inherited Patrick’s arrogance and temper, and neither liked to be the loser in any verbal encounter they had; Patrick had cured them of physical arguments while they were both still boys, making them punch it out until they both collapsed. Grant looked as if he wouldn’t mind a rematch right now!

  Nathan shrugged. ‘I don’t think she’ll want you to take her,’ he explained truthfully.

  Grant’s mouth set in a mutinous line. ‘It’s my damned baby too! And I—’

  ‘Grant, I really think Nathan is right about this,’ she tried to soothe.

  He turned blazing eyes on her. ‘I might have known you would say that, you always side with Nathan!’

  The inaccuracy of that made her give a choked laugh; she and Nathan never agreed about anything!

  ‘It’s always been the two of you versus the rest of the world.’ He ran an impatient hand through his already tousled hair. ‘I don’t know why you don’t just get married and to hell with it,’ he scowled.

  ‘Grant!’ Nathan grated harshly.

  ‘I know,’ his brother scorned. ‘A taboo subject. Maybe it isn’t such a good idea; look how my “ideal” marriage is turning out!’

  Brenna could have wept for his bitterness, wishing he and Lesli would just talk to each other.

  ‘Grant, I think you’re still drunk,’ Nathan told him coldly. ‘Either sober up or go to bed!’

  His brother’s chest heaved raggedly. ‘I am sober; that’s the problem. It all looked better when I was drunk.’ He looked at Brenna with bloodshot eyes. ‘Maybe your father had the right idea after all. He—’

  ‘Grant!’ Nathan’s reprimand lashed out with all the force of a whip cracking, and Grant’s head snapped back challengingly. ‘Hurling insults at Brenna’s father isn’t going to help th
is situation,’ he grated warningly.

  ‘I wasn’t insulting him,’ Grant dismissed. ‘I think he has the right idea; things look a hell of a lot rosier from the bottom of a whisky bottle.’

  ‘You should know, you reached it last night,’ Nathan rasped. ‘You aren’t fit to drive a car even if Lesli would agree to letting you take her to the doctor’s!’

  Grant scowled. ‘Which she won’t. I’m going for a ride—on horseback,’ he caught Nathan’s sharp look. ‘If my wife feels like telling me how she and our baby are when she gets back perhaps you could let me know!’

  Brenna watched him as he strode out of the house. ‘He’s really hurting,’ she said regretfully.

  ‘What do you expect?’ Nathan bit out accusingly. ‘Your sister is destroying him.’

  Her mouth dropped open as she watched him stride away too, in the opposite direction to Grant. She had forgotten their own argument during the friction between him and Grant, but he obviously hadn’t. She had a feeling Bill was going to see Nathan ‘blow up’ a lot more before she left here!

  In the end Lesli only agreed to go to the doctor if Brenna accompanied her, although she insisted on going in alone when it came time for her to see Dan Whittaker.

  Brenna glanced at Nathan as he idly flicked through a motoring magazine he had picked up from the table in front of them.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he drawled. ‘She’s going to be admitted.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re a powerful man, Nathan, and that your wishes will be considered, but—’

  ‘It isn’t a question of either of those things,’ he rasped. ‘Anyone can see Lesli is teetering on the edge of physical collapse.’

  He was right, Lesli had looked even worse this morning, and because of that Brenna didn’t believe for one moment that her sister’s love for Grant was dead; their estrangement wouldn’t be affecting her like this if it were. The same applied to Grant. She felt like knocking their heads together, although she doubted that would achieve more than heaping retribution on her head.

  Nathan was also right about Dan Whittaker admitting Lesli, in fact he insisted she stay on right now, much to Lesli’s annoyance.

  ‘I don’t have anything with me for a stay in hospital,’ she protested to Nathan and Brenna.

  ‘I can always drive back to the ranch and get your things while Nathan sees you settled in,’ Brenna reasoned. ‘I can be back in an hour.’

  ‘I don’t want to stay in hospital!’ Lesli wailed.

  Dan Whittaker looked at her reprovingly beneath bushy eyebrows; he was inclined to flabbiness about his middle, and was a good six inches shorter than Nathan; they seemed an unlikely pair to have become friends! ‘Do you want this baby, Lesli?’ he asked gently. ‘Because I’m afraid if we don’t get you rested up for a couple of weeks it’s going to be born before it should. And even at seven months I can’t guarantee it will survive.’

  His shock tactics, although a little drastic, Brenna thought, seemed to have worked, for Lesli allowed the two men to see to her admission.

  Brenna took the keys of the Camaro from Nathan’s hand. ‘Sure you trust me with it?’ She attempted to lighten the strain that still existed between them.

  ‘I trusted you with something infinitely more precious to me than my damned car,’ he grated harshly. ‘Try not to smash the car up too,’ he jeered before going off with Lesli and Dan Whittaker.

  Brenna paled at the raw anger in his accusation. But he hadn’t given her his heart as he implied he had; he didn’t have a heart to give.

  ‘Well?’ demanded Grant as soon as she got back to the ranch, looking a little better than he had earlier, and he hadn’t been drinking again, despite his claim. ‘Where’s Lesli?’ he frowned.

  ‘The doctor has decided she should go into hospital—Grant, it’s all right,’ she assured him quickly as he paled. ‘She needs to rest for a few weeks, get away from the friction that exists here at the moment,’ she hastened to add as he was about to protest at the need for Lesli to do that in hospital when Mindy could have looked after her here.

  ‘I have to go to her.’ He picked up his car keys from the hall table.

  Now he decided to talk to Lesli! ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, Grant—’

  ‘I don’t give a damn what you think,’ he bit out. ‘I wasn’t asking your permission!’

  ‘Do you give a damn about Lesli?’ Her eyes flashed her own loss of patience.

  ‘Of course I—’

  ‘And the baby?’

  ‘Not that argument again, Brenna,’ he sighed. ‘Lesli is my wife and that’s my baby she’s carrying; I have a right to be there!’

  She couldn’t argue with that right. ‘Just let me get Lesli’s case packed and we can go in together,’ she encouraged softly.

  His mouth twisted. ‘I can assure you, I’m completely sober,’ he told her.

  ‘But you’re upset,’ she reasoned.

  ‘All right,’ he conceded with a sigh. ‘But make it quick, will you?’

  Brenna could feel his tension-filled gaze on her all the way down the hallway to the bedroom, and she quickly threw the things she thought necessary into a small case before hurrying back to join him. He was still standing in the hallway, looking as if he hadn’t moved since she left him.

  He took the case from her unresisting fingers, his expression grim as he threw it into the back of the car before putting out his hand for the keys. ‘You drive like an old woman,’ he rasped at her questioning look.

  ‘At least we’ll get there in one piece.’ She ignored his hand, getting in behind the wheel of the gold vehicle.

  ‘When?’ The disgruntled Grant got in beside her. ‘I’d like it to be today, if possible.’

  Brenna clamped her lips together to hold back her angry retort; Grant was spoiling for a fight and she wasn’t going to be his victim! Once they reached the hospital she realised that perhaps she should have let him take out his frustrated anger on her; it would have been preferable to the light of battle she saw in his eyes as they went into Lesli’s room, and Lesli returned that look as she lay on top of the bed still fully clothed.

  ‘Nathan?’ Brenna questioned desperately.

  ‘Talking to the doctor,’ Lesli answered without looking at her, her angry gaze fixed on Grant. ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded contemptuously.

  ‘I’ve come to check on the welfare of my son.’

  ‘My son,’ Lesli interrupted tautly. ‘Or daughter,’ she added hardly.

  ‘The baby is half mine.’

  ‘How can you be sure of that?’ she challenged.

  ‘Lesli! Grant!’ Brenna appealed for common sense. They both ignored her.

  Lesli sat up. ‘If you think I’m going to let this baby be used the way I was then—’

  ‘I’ve never used you!’ Grant stormed. ‘I’ve loved you, but I’ve never used you!’

  ‘Don’t lie to me,’ Lesli rasped. ‘I know you for what you are now, and—’

  ‘You know me, Lesli,’ her husband thundered. ‘And the things you’re accusing me of just aren’t true, and you know it!’

  ‘You as much as admitted it!’ Lesli shouted back. ‘When I asked you you said—’

  ‘That I knew what my father’s will contained before he died,’ he acknowledged harshly. ‘That doesn’t mean I admitted using you. I loved you, I would have married you anyway—’

  ‘Would you?’ Lesli scorned. ‘I don’t happen to think so.’

  ‘I don’t know who’s been poisoning your mind like this, but—’

  ‘No one “poisoned my mind”,’ she retorted. ‘I just came to my senses. I—Oh!’ Her face paled as she clutched at her lower abdomen, her face deathly pale.

  ‘What is it?’ Grant instantly forgot his anger at her obvious pain. ‘Lesli!’

  ‘It’s the baby,’ she gasped. ‘Oh, my God, I think the pains have started. The doctor said it was too soon.’ Her eyes were wide with panic.

  ‘I’ll go and get him.’ Br
enna rushed to the door.

  ‘Grant?’ She heard Lesli falter as she opened the door.

  ‘It will be all right,’ he instantly assured her. ‘It will, Lesli.’

  ‘Oh, please God!’ her sister choked as Brenna hurried off down the corridor.

  Her need to find the doctor and bring him to Lesli was paramount, but she couldn’t prevent the conversation between Lesli and Grant from going round and round in her mind. She knew why Lesli had run from Grant as she had now; it was the same reason she could never allow herself to love Nathan.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘LESLI was right.’ Dan Whittaker joined Nathan and Brenna in the waiting-room where they had been since he began his examination. ‘The baby has decided to come early.’

  ‘Can’t you do anything to stop it?’ demanded Nathan.

  His friend shook his head. ‘It’s too late for that.’

  ‘Hell!’ Nathan ran a frustrated hand through his hair. ‘Grant ought to be horsewhipped!’

  ‘I should never have brought him here.’ Brenna let her breath out shakily.

  Dan shook his head. ‘It’s really a culmination of things rather than just one,’ he comforted. ‘Lesli is very tired and run down; this could have happened at any time.’

  ‘And the baby?’ Brenna looked at him with shadowed eyes.

  ‘We’ll just have to wait and see,’ he said noncommittally. ‘At least she was in the right place when it happened.’

  Brenna glanced sideways at Nathan once they were alone again. He hadn’t given any sign of condemnation, and yet she felt as if he blamed her for what was happening—as she did. The only good thing to come out of this was that Grant was still in with Lesli. But now that she realised the reason for Lesli’s hurt and confusion about her marriage, she wasn’t sure how long that would last. She couldn’t understand what, after four years of happy marriage, had happened to make Lesli suspect Grant’s motives the way she obviously did.

  She stood up to pace the room in impatient movements. ‘Well?’ she frowned at Nathan. ‘Why don’t you just get it over with?’ She met his gaze challengingly.