The Wade Dynasty

by Carole Mortimer

  ‘Nathan—’

  ‘Didn’t you?’ he ground out with a fierceness that made her tremble.

  ‘Yes,’ she cried. ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ She was crying as she choked out the last.

  Nathan was unmoved by her distress. ‘Then it isn’t going to bother you that you know it on our wedding day too!’ he ground out remorselessly.

  ‘Nathan, I told you, I no longer believe that,’ she looked at him pleadingly.

  ‘And just what’s happened since then to change your mind?’ he demanded.

  ‘I knew I was wrong as soon as I saw your reaction to what Grant was saying. You—’

  ‘I loved you,’ he finished contemptuously. ‘But do you know what I’ve learnt today, Brenna? I’ve learnt that love can die as quickly as it was born,’ he told her coldly. ‘That it can turn to contempt and loathing even more quickly.’

  ‘Nathan, no,’ she was crying brokenly now. ‘I was wrong, I know I was wrong…’

  ‘Past tense, Brenna,’ he bit out scornfully. ‘You’ll be my wife, but in name only. I want your quarter of the ranch, but that’s all I want from you. And if you even attempt to leave me again,’ he warned as he read the panic in her eyes, ‘I’ll make love to you until you’re too weak to do more than stand in front of the preacher and say "I will”! You’ll marry me this time, Brenna, make no mistake about it,’ he promised grimly before forcefully leaving the room.

  Hurt didn’t even begin to describe what Nathan was feeling now, what was motivating him to act the way he was. He had loved her, had always loved her, and she had thrown that love back in his face.

  She hadn’t needed his cold anger just now to know she had lost his love irrevocably, she had seen that earlier as he listened to Grant. God, what a fool she had been! And how much she had lost because she hadn’t trusted in the love they had always had for each other.

  ‘You won’t, will you?’ Lesli stated sadly as she came into the room. ‘You couldn’t marry Nathan as things stand between you now.’

  ‘Oh, Lesli, I—’

  ‘It’s all right.’ Her sister held her tightly in her arms. ‘Damn Grant and his temper,’ she scowled as she held Brenna while she cried. ‘I told him you couldn’t be responsible.’

  ‘I might not have ever written it, but I’ve always thought it,’ Brenna admitted gruffly, wiping the tears from her cheeks. ‘Grant suddenly asked you to marry him, and then when Patrick died we learnt that he’d left the ranch to all four of us, and…’

  ‘Brenna, I saw Patrick’s will today,’ Lesli told her softly. ‘I didn’t need to see that it was dated only the week before Grant and I were married to know that I’d made a mistake in even half believing that letter.’

  ‘So Grant—’

  ‘Couldn’t have known anything about his father’s will when he asked me to marry him,’ Lesli finished gently.

  ‘I’m so glad,’ said Brenna fervently.

  ‘Not that it would have made any difference if the will had been dated the day he asked me to marry him,’ Lesli admitted drily. ‘I love Grant, and I’ve lived with him long enough to know that he loves me too. If I hadn’t been pregnant, feeling as big as a house, and very insecure about the way I looked when that letter arrived I would never have taken any notice of it,’ she sighed at her own gullibility.

  ‘But I don’t understand what I could have written to even make you think such a thing,’ Brenna frowned.

  ‘You didn’t write anything,’ Lesli shook her head unhesitatingly.

  ‘But Grant said—’

  ‘Grant was very angry when he found out what made me leave him,’ Lesli explained with regret. ‘He wasn’t thinking straight. If he had been he would have known you would never have written to me anonymously like that—’

  ‘Anonymously?’ Brenna echoed sharply. ‘You mean it wasn’t something in one of my regular letters that influenced you to leave Grant?’

  ‘He didn’t tell you that the letter was typed and unsigned?’ her sister frowned.

  ‘No,’ Brenna shook her head slowly, thoughts crowding her head. ‘Can I see the letter?’ she prompted softly.

  ‘Of course,’ Lesli nodded with a frown. ‘I’ll go and get it.’

  Brenna both needed and dreaded seeing that letter. The fact that it hadn’t been signed exonerated her completely, but that fact also made her fear what she was about to learn.

  ‘Here you are,’ Lesli returned, handing the single sheet of paper to Brenna.

  As she quickly scanned its contents she felt a sinking feeling in her stomach. The words written there seemed so familiar, so sickeningly familiar!

  ‘Where’s the envelope it came in?’ she asked abruptly, her hand tightly gripping the letter.

  Lesli shrugged. ‘I threw it away.’

  ‘But the postmark,’ Brenna protested. ‘It could have helped you trace the person responsible.’

  Lesli shrugged. ‘I don’t think so, London is a big place.’

  London. It was all she needed to know. The person who had sent this letter was someone she had trusted.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘YOU do realise that Nathan is likely to string me up by the thumbs when he finds out I helped you get away from him like this?’ Grant grimaced as he stood in the airport with Brenna waiting for her plane to leave. ‘I’m supposed to be checking the hotel next door, not putting you on a plane that will take you away from him!’

  ‘Then we’d better stay out of sight, hadn’t we?’ They stood in the area near her boarding gate, waiting for her flight to be called.

  Grant looked at her anxiously. ‘Are you sure you’re doing the right thing? Nathan isn’t going to take this lying down a second time, you know. He’ll come after you.’

  ‘I don’t intend staying long in London,’ she assured him softly. ‘I’ll be back.’

  Grant sighed. ‘If he doesn’t find you first. The only reason he doesn’t realise you’re here now is that he’s expecting you to get the London flight tomorrow as you originally planned to do.’

  Because she still had a seat booked on that flight. But she had also managed to get a seat on a flight to Toronto tonight, and would pick up her connecting flight to England from there. As she had expected when she left the ranch tonight, Nathan was looking for her at all the Calgary hotels and motels.

  In the meantime Grant had driven her to the airport, although he wasn’t too happy about deceiving his brother in this way.

  ‘I have to go to London,’ she said determinedly.

  ‘Look, I know I was angry earlier, but I’ve apologised, and I didn’t really mean it about you leaving.’

  ‘Grant, I’m not going because of that,’ she assured him firmly. ‘I want you to know your apology meant a great deal to me.’

  ‘Yes. Well,’ he looked sheepish. ‘I should never have said those things to you. I’m sorry it’s messed things up again between you and Nathan.’

  ‘I don’t think they’ll ever be right between us,’ she sighed.

  ‘He’s angry right now,’ Grant conceded. ‘But once he calms down he’s going to love you the way that he always has. Hell, if he’d married you when he wanted to you would have beaten Lesli and me! But Dad persuaded him to let you go to college first before telling you how he felt about you.’

  ‘I didn’t know anything about that,’ she gasped, her eyes wide.

  ‘You would never have agreed to go to college if you had,’ Grant said sarcastically. ‘You were in love with Nathan even then, you would have married him if he had asked you.’

  And if she had she would have spared herself all the pain of the last four years of denying her love for him. Time and distance had erected barriers between them that couldn’t be broken down.

  ‘Dad and Anna thought you should go to college first,’ Grant added.

  ‘Mum knew too?’ she frowned.

  His mouth twisted. ‘I’m afraid my loving Lesli and Nathan loving you were foregone conclusions the moment we met. Oh, Nathan and I had to accept
that you both had a lot of growing up to do first, but it was always the Jordan sisters for us,’ he admitted. ‘I couldn’t be as patient as Nathan and let Lesli go off to become a lawyer before we were married! We thought it was all going to work out according to plan last Easter when you and Nathan became so close. Nathan withdrew into himself when you didn’t come back,’ he shook his head at the memory. ‘None of us understood what had gone wrong, but Nathan said you’d made your decision and he wouldn’t come after you. Lesli said you refused to even talk about Nathan in your letters.’

  Because her mind had been poisoned, systematically, and very effectively.

  But she couldn’t tell Grant that, she needed time to take it in herself. And she had a couple of flights before her when she could do exactly that. Tomorrow she would face her enemy knowing who it was.

  ‘That’s all in the past now, Grant,’ Brenna dismissed briskly.

  He shook his head. ‘Nathan is determined to find you this time.’

  ‘So that he can marry me,’ she nodded. ‘I’ll come back to the ranch, but I don’t think either of us are so self-destructive that we would marry each other!’

  ‘I accept that there are misunderstandings between the two of you, but—Damn,’ muttered Grant as her flight was called. ‘You’ll come back, Brenna?’ he urged.

  She nodded. ‘But Nathan will never forgive me,’ she sighed. ‘And I certainly can’t say I blame him.’

  ‘Call us when you get home,’ Grant hugged her tightly. ‘Promise?’

  She nodded slowly. ‘I’ll do that.’

  He shrugged, knowing it was all he could expect for now, lifting his hand in final parting as she glanced back once before going through to get her flight.

  The flight to Toronto seemed longer than it should have, the wait in the lounge while she waited for her connecting flight was even more so, and she was pale and hollow-eyed by the time she finally boarded the plane for London.

  She took only a few minutes in her flat to shower and change, quickly checking her mail, dismissing most of it as unimportant, smiling as she read the brief card Carolyn had sent her from her weekend in New York, relieved when she read the letter from their publisher saying that story and drawings were great.

  She gave her appearance only a cursory look before leaving, knowing she had matured considerably over the last twenty-four hours, that she had been disillusioned and hurt by one of the people she had loved.

  He was sitting at his usual table, a paper propped up in front of him as he ate, a glass of water at his elbow, but she felt none of the warmth that usually engulfed her at seeing him again.

  He wasn’t aware of her presence as she walked across the room to him, and for a moment, as she looked into his handsome face, she wondered if she hadn’t misjudged him. But then she knew that she hadn’t, blinking back the tears as she straightened challengingly.

  ‘Hello, Father.’

  His hazel eyes registered his surprise before his face creased into a pleased smile. ‘Hello, love,’ he greeted her warmly. ‘This is a lovely surprise!’

  ‘Is it?’ she said bitterly, wondering if she had ever really known this man, or if it had only been that side of himself that he had wanted her to see. She thought it was the latter.

  ‘Of course, darling.’ Andrew Jordan stood up to hold back a chair for her, and Brenna dropped down into it woodenly. ‘All sorted out with Lesli now?’ he asked lightly.

  Brenna looked at him with cold green eyes. He looked the same to her as he always had, a recklessly handsome man, the drink giving him lines of dissipation beside his eyes that he shouldn’t really have had at only forty-eight. Yes, he still looked the same, and yet she knew she would never feel the same about him again.

  ‘Are you going to be too disappointed if I say yes?’ she challenged, her eyes hard.

  His eyes narrowed slightly, and it was the only change in his expression. ‘Don’t you have that the wrong way around, darling? I—’

  ‘Don’t call me that,’ she snapped. ‘And no, I’m sure I don’t have it at all wrong. Just tell me why you did it,’ she grated.

  ‘Why did I do what?’ he prevaricated in a puzzled voice.

  Why had he deliberately set out to alienate her from the Wade family when they were reunited four years ago? Why had he made her mistrust Nathan’s love for her by telling her Nathan had to want her because of her share of the ranch, that a Wade always had a reason for everything he did? Why had he written that letter to Lesli trying to shatter the very foundation of her marriage? He certainly couldn’t have been motivated by love, of that she was certain.

  She looked at him with dislike. ‘I must have been so easy to influence,’ she said disgustedly. ‘I was already slightly in awe of the love I had for Nathan when I came to England four years ago. I’d felt a different sort of awe for Patrick since the moment I met him, I was overwhelmed by the way he always went determinedly after what he wanted—’

  ‘The way he went after your mother,’ her father accused harshly. ‘We had a good marriage—’

  ‘You had a lousy marriage,’ she retorted. ‘Even I remember that you were rarely at home!’

  ‘Because I was forced out by Patrick Wade,’ he defended. ‘You know that was why I began to drink, to stay away from home.’

  Brenna looked at him with narrowed eyes. ‘I know that you told me they had had an affair for years, but that nothing could come of it because of Patrick’s marriage to Christine, her ill health meaning he couldn’t divorce her,’ she accused.

  ‘Brenna, what’s making you act like this?’

  ‘I saw the letter you sent Lesli,’ she snarled. ‘“A Wade takes what he wants even if he has to use someone else to do it”,’ she quoted vehemently. ‘“Grant only married you to keep control of the ranch, without your share of it you would have been thrown out of his life”,’ she quoted again. ‘It was all too familiar, Father,’ she said scornfully. ‘It was almost word for word what you’ve been telling me over the years!’

  ‘I didn’t expect the stupid little fool to keep the letter,’ he rasped disgustedly.

  ‘You thought she would read it and then destroy it in her distress,’ Brenna guessed cynically. ‘But that the things you’d written would slowly eat away at her love for Grant until it was destroyed, the way my love for Nathan was so slowly eroded! But she didn’t destroy the letter, she kept it, and as soon as I read it I knew who was responsible for writing it!’

  ‘Okay,’ he challenged. ‘So I wrote my daughter a letter. There’s nothing wrong in trying to protect her!’

  Oh, she had been taken in so easily by this man during the last four years, had believed him when he said Patrick was the reason he began drinking, had claimed that he had become an outcast in his own marriage after Patrick and her mother met and fell in love, that after her mother had divorced him he had tried to keep the two girls, but that Patrick Wade had claimed in court that he was a drunk and not responsible enough to be a father to his own children, that Patrick had paid money into a bank account for him knowing he would drink himself into the grave with it.

  But after seeing what her father had tried to do to Lesli she could see how he had distorted things, that her mother had probably turned to Patrick because of her husband’s drinking, that her father had probably demanded that money as a pay-off for not pursuing his case to get custody of the girls. She had a feeling that this was a more accurate explanation of what had happened, and she felt ill at the way she had misjudged her mother and all the Wade men.

  She gave a weary sigh. ‘What really happened all those years ago?’ she demanded.

  ‘I told you—’

  ‘This time I want the truth!’ Her eyes shot flames at him.

  ‘I’d be interested in hearing your account of that too!’

  Brenna gasped at the sound of that coldly angry voice, turning to find Nathan seated at the table behind them. How long had he been sitting there? What was he doing here? How had he got here?

 
; ‘What the hell…?’ her father scowled at him as he stood up to occupy the seat between the two of them, his eyes narrowing as he fully took in the appearance of the younger man. ‘A Wade!’ he ground out with dislike.

  Nathan nodded abruptly. ‘A dreaded Wade,’ he confirmed harshly, turning his attention to Brenna, clasping her hand as it moved restlessly on the table-top. ‘It’s going to be all right,’ he told her gently. ‘I understand now.’

  Her avid gaze searched the harshness of his face. He had come after her, as Grant had said he would, but was it still in anger or in love? She couldn’t tell just from looking at him.

  He squeezed her hand tightly, maintaining that contact as he turned coldly compelling eyes on the older man. ‘You were about to tell us what happened all those years ago…?’ he prompted contemptuously. ‘Your version of it, that is.’

  Andrew Jordan flushed angrily. ‘This is none of your business, boy—’

  ‘The fact that it’s my family you’re maligning makes it my business, Jordan,’ Nathan bit out. ‘That Brenna is going to be my wife makes it doubly so,’ he added challengingly.

  Her father rose to that challenge. ‘She isn’t going to marry a Wade,’ he snarled. ‘She—’

  ‘Brenna?’ Nathan promptly softly.

  She couldn’t defy the command that told her to meet his gaze, almost burning at the fierceness of the love that shone there for her. Her fingers tightened convulsively about his; Grant had been right about this too; once Nathan had calmed down he had still loved her!

  She turned to her father with glowing eyes. ‘I’m going to beg to marry this Wade,’ she told him fervently.

  ‘You…!’ Her father looked ready to explode. ‘He’s a Wade, Brenna,’ he spluttered.

  ‘I know,’ she nodded happily.

  ‘My God, you—’

  ‘And needless to say you will not be invited to the wedding,’ Nathan put in coldly.

  ‘Hell would have to freeze over before I—’

  ‘I said you weren’t invited!’ Nathan rasped. ‘And neither of us is going to beg, Brenna,’ he added softly. ‘We’re just going to get married as we would have done long ago without your father’s poisonous lies coming between us.’