‘Lies!’ her father repeated explosively. ‘Your father—’
‘Never looked at another woman until long after my mother was dead,’ Nathan ground out, his body tense beneath the grey jacket and black trousers, his white shirt unbuttoned at the throat. ‘So that knocks down that theory for you becoming a drunk!’
‘He and Anna—’
‘Didn’t meet until my mother had been dead for two years and she was divorced from you! Although I believe you tell a different version.’ Nathan’s eyes narrowed as Brenna gasped. ‘Sweetheart?’
She swallowed hard. ‘He said—he said…’
‘Take your time,’ he said gently. ‘We have all day.’ The last was added as a threat to her father.
‘He told me that Patrick and my mother fell in love when I was still a baby, but that your father wouldn’t leave your mother, and so for respectability’s sake my mother stayed with him. He said it was the reason he began to drink,’ she revealed huskily.
‘Ah, love,’ Nathan sympathised huskily. ‘What a bastard you are!’ he turned on her father. ‘She was only a kid, easily mixed up. But that was what you counted on, wasn’t it?’ he accused with dislike. ‘When Anna divorced you Brenna was too young to realise what you were like, the drinking, the fits of temper, the violence—’
‘Shut up!’ her father ground out fiercely. ‘Anna was unfaithful—’
‘She never looked at another man during your marriage,’ Nathan told him hardly. ‘It was your guilt over your drinking that made you accuse her of affairs you knew didn’t exist. You were a violent and abusive husband and father—’
‘I never laid a hand on Brenna,’ Andrew denied heatedly. ‘Tell him, Brenna.’
She was too numbed by what she was hearing to tell Nathan anything! She had always remembered the father from her childhood as happy-go-lucky, a little irresponsible perhaps but basically a man who loved them all. She was hearing about a new, ugly side to his nature that she had only yesterday begun to guess at.
‘Lesli has other memories,’ Nathan rasped. ‘And Brenna would eventually have realised what you were like too.’ He looked at Brenna with gentle eyes. ‘Why do you think Lesli would never have anything to do with him after you all left England?’
‘I never thought about it. He always seemed so full of charm, so—I didn’t know,’ she shook her head dazedly.
‘I’m sure he made sure you never found out once you came here to college,’ Nathan acknowledged grimly. ‘I put the distance that was widening between you and the family down to the fact that you were growing away from us, making a life for yourself here. I had no idea you were seeing your father again until I came here last month.’ His mouth tightened. ‘I suppose I should have realised then that he was behind all this, but you said he had changed, and I wanted to believe that was true. For your sake.’
She shook her head. ‘You were right, he’s sick. He—’
‘You’re letting yourself be fooled by him just as your mother was by his father,’ her father scorned. ‘They took my daughters away from me, paid me off with money I never asked for—’
‘Anna didn’t want you near Lesli and Brenna once she left here,’ Nathan bit out. ‘And the money my father gave you was supposed to pay for you to go to a clinic to dry out and then support you until you found a job.’ His mouth twisted scornfully. ‘But I’m sure you put it to a different use!’
Andrew flushed. ‘Whichever way you look at it your father tried to buy me off—’
‘You were given money to try and make something of your life,’ Nathan corrected harshly. ‘And my father only did that for Anna’s sake. Personally he couldn’t give a damn if you’d returned to the sewer you’d crawled from! And neither can I.’
‘You damned—’
‘This may be a public restaurant,’ Nathan ground out with chilling intensity, ‘but if you call me a bastard I’m going to put you on the floor where you belong!’
Her father paled. ‘The Wades and their damned power! You all deserve each other,’ he said bitterly. ‘Lesli and Grant. You and Brenna,’ his mouth turned back contemptuously.
‘I don’t understand why you wanted to hurt Lesli and me,’ Brenna looked at him with pained eyes. ‘What did we ever do to you?’
‘Nothing,’ he rasped. ‘But Anna and Patrick were dead, and the two of you were very much alive!’
She swallowed hard at his vehemence. ‘And what you told me last summer about dying?’
‘Aren’t we all?’ he gave a harsh laugh as she flinched. ‘I could see that you were weakening towards Wade’s son, that something had happened between you during that Easter break, and I knew that once a Wade declares his love he claims what’s his.’
‘So you invented the visit to your doctor and the fact that he said you only had a couple of years left to live!’ she choked, remembering how she had felt after her father had told her the alcoholism Patrick had driven him to by stealing his wife from him caused his health to deteriorate so badly that it was slowly killing him. She had known then that she couldn’t return to Nathan that summer, that she couldn’t live with him knowing his father was responsible for her father’s death. And it had all been a lie.
‘Yes,’ Andrew confirmed with satisfaction.
‘You disgust me,’ Nathan told him with dislike. ‘Brenna and Lesli are your daughters!’
‘You know…’ Andrew’s mouth twisted, ‘I once toyed with the idea of letting Brenna think Patrick could be her father,’ he smiled with relish. ‘Now wouldn’t that have been interesting?’ he mocked softly.
A nerve pulsed in Nathan’s tightly clenched jaw. ‘You are sick,’ he said with vehemence. ‘But you won’t have the opportunity to lie to Brenna any more,’ he bit out grimly. ‘If you ever come near her again you’ll regret it!’
Andrew sighed. ‘There’s no point now she knows the truth,’ he dismissed. ‘Pity, it was fun while it lasted,’ he drawled.
Brenna couldn’t believe that this was her father speaking, the man who had convinced her he had been so badly treated by the Wade family that for a while she had been sure she didn’t like them either. This man cared nothing for anyone, probably never had; he only wanted to hurt and destroy, and had used her vulnerability as a way of doing that. God, she had even been the one to confide her confusion to him over Patrick’s will, had given him another weapon to use to his advantage. He had used her to hurt all the people she loved.
‘Come on, Brenna,’ Nathan stood up, his hand grasping her arm now. ‘We’re leaving.’
She had taken a couple of steps with him before she stopped, and pulled out of his grasp, moving to stand next to her father as she drew back her hand and hit him with all the pain and hate inside her. ‘I don’t suppose you’re interested,’ she ground out, ‘but you have a granddaughter. Her name is Christiana Wade. And in about another eight months you’re going to have another grandchild—and he or she will be a Wade too! But you’ll never see either of them,’ she assured him before turning away and leaving the restaurant with Nathan, oblivious of the shocked faces of the other diners after she had struck her father.
Dry sobs racked her body as she lay against Nathan’s chest in the taxi, his arms possessively about her.
‘That wasn’t exactly the way I envisaged being told I’m going to be a father,’ he murmured indulgently. ‘But as far as dramatics go it was… It was true, wasn’t it?’ he asked anxiously.
‘I’m as sure as I can be without having a test,’ Brenna nodded, clinging to him.
‘Well, if you aren’t now, we can always make sure that you are,’ he announced arrogantly.
‘How can you still love me after this?’ She looked up at him uncertainly.
‘I’ve always loved you. I always will.’
She frowned. ‘That day you came to Cumbria, you said you didn’t.’
Nathan shook his head. ‘I said I no longer “imagined” I loved you; I’ve never imagined it, I’ve always known it!’
‘But
how can you ever forgive me?’ she choked. ‘I believed all those lies my father told me,’ she groaned at her stupidity.
‘The thing about alcoholics is that they can sound so damned plausible,’ Nathan told her gently, smoothing back the wisps of hair at her temples that had escaped the confining combs. ‘And I’m not completely without blame in all this I should have realised what was going on.’
‘How could you—’
‘Brenna, I’ve loved you ever since I can remember,’ he cut in huskily. ‘I should have looked more deeply into the changes in you.’
‘He told me that he’d been bought off,’ she shivered. ‘That Mummy had been dazzled by Patrick’s wealth, that Grant had paid the price of his freedom to keep control of the ranch in the family—’
‘And that I was doing the same thing with you, hence your remarks about the Wades always paying for what they want,’ Nathan finished grimly. ‘Only that wasn’t the way Dad looked at it at all. Grant and Lesli’s wedding was already arranged, and he knew it was only a matter of time before I proposed to you, and loving you both as he did he wanted you and Lesli to have some independence of your own. Darling, something you and your father seem to have overlooked in all this is that Lesli still owns her quarter of the ranch, and even if we get married—’
‘When,’ she corrected sharply.
‘When we get married,’ he drawled in satisfaction. ‘Your quarter of the ranch will still be your own; a wife’s property doesn’t automatically become her husband’s any more!’
‘I’ve been so stupid,’ she groaned.
‘Not stupid,’ he chided. ‘Just misguided. Anyway,’ he added briskly, ‘Grant and I think we’ve come up with a solution to the ranch problem, if you and Lesli are agreeable.’
She looked at him frowningly, not liking the sound of this at all. ‘Oh?’
He nodded. ‘We’re going to sell it.’
‘What?’ she gasped disbelievingly, staring at him as if he had gone mad. As she felt sure he must have done!
He shrugged. ‘We had a talk yesterday before you did your disappearing act, and decided that it was the only thing to do to convince you and Lesli that it’s you we want and not the ranch—’
‘No,’ she told him determinedly. ‘That ranch belongs to the family; it always has!’
‘But you hate it—’
‘Not enough to ask you to give it up!’ she protested. ‘I’m sure Lesli will feel the same way.’
‘She does,’ he nodded. ‘But as you know we only need a majority to sell and we thought you—’
‘No,’ she said again.
‘What about all those “lovely little calves that are ultimately fattened up for slaughter"?’ he reminded her drily.
‘Hm.’ A frown marred her brow.
‘I did come up with another solution on the flight over here,’ he told her softly.
Pain darkened her eyes. ‘Please don’t say it’s that we don’t get married!’
‘Oh, you’re marrying me, Brenna Jordan,’ he assured her fiercely, his arms tightening about her. ‘As soon as we get back. Which reminds me, you promised you wouldn’t run out on me again—’
‘I was coming back,’ she cut in quickly. ‘I just had to—had to see my father. But how did you get here so quickly?’ she frowned.
‘By getting on the same plane you did and following you,’ he revealed grimly. ‘Lesli finally relented and told me what you were doing, and I managed to get on your flight by the skin of my teeth! When Lesli told me you intended coming back I had a feeling you knew something about that letter you weren’t telling any of us, and so I followed you to the restaurant too.’
‘I’m so glad you did!’ Brenna pressed herself against him.
‘Do you want to hear the alternative solution or would you rather we just made love on the back seat of this taxi?’ he drawled.
She looked about them dazedly. ‘I would rather we went up to my flat and made love,’ she told him huskily as the taxi came to a halt outside her home.
‘That’s what I’d like to do too,’ Nathan said gruffly, paying the driver before following her inside. ‘Very slowly,’ he murmured as he carried her through to her bedroom. ‘We can talk about your father later.’
She shivered at the mention of him. ‘Much later,’ she agreed, pulling him down to her on the bed.
He looked down at her with eyes darkened by passion. ‘What about my alternative solution?’ he teased her haste in undressing him.
‘I don’t care where we live as long as we’re together,’ she assured him as she pulled him fiercely into her.
‘I’m sure he’s too young to be sitting up there,’ Brenna watched the two in the corral anxiously from her sitting position on the fence.
‘Rubbish!’ A proud grin split Nathan’s lean features as he held his son on the stallion’s back.
Nine months almost to the day after Christiana’s birth Patrick Nathan Wade had made his entrance into the world with a loud wail of indignation. And as Nathan had held the tiny replica of himself in his arms only seconds after birth, Brenna had looked on with proud pleasure.
But she hadn’t expected their son to be hoisted up on Samson’s back when he was only nine months old and not even walking yet!
‘Stop fussing.’ Carolyn sat beside her on the fence, her designer jeans not daring to pick up even the slightest speck of dust, the thin gold wedding band glinting on her left hand. ‘He’s loving it!’
Patrick was chuckling so hard that couldn’t be doubted, his black curls bouncing, his grey eyes filled with merriment, his little chubby hands clinging to the reins, his confidence in his father’s ability to take care of him complete.
Brenna dismissed her anxiety to look about them with satisfaction. Nathan’s ‘alternative solution’ had been to divide the ranch into two homesteads, Grant and Lesli continuing with the cattle while he and Brenna branched out into seriously breeding horses. It was something Nathan had always taken an interest in, and in his first year it had been obvious he was going to make a success of it. The proof of that was all about them. As an ‘alternative solution’ it had been ideal. Although at only nine months old Patrick was becoming as fond of steak as his father was!
‘Ride him, cowboy!’ Nick joined them at the side of the corral, encouraging Patrick.
Brenna gave him a scathing look. ‘A fine example of a godfather you are!’
He grinned up at her. ‘By the time he’s two years old he’ll be riding as well as his old man!’
‘Wait until you get one of your own,’ she warned. ‘Then we’ll see who worries!’
Nick laid a familiar hand on his wife’s thigh. ‘We’re still practising,’ he murmured with satisfaction.
Carolyn laughed happily. ‘I think we’re about to go in for some serious training!’
Nathan laughed at Nick’s stunned expression at this news as he walked over to join them, Patrick sitting trustingly in his arms. ‘Here,’ he handed Patrick to the other man. ‘He needs his diaper changing, you’d better learn to do it before yours gets here!’
‘But I… But—Carolyn!’ Nick looked at her disbelievingly.
She jumped down off the fence. ‘Don’t look so stunned, darling,’ she mocked. ‘We’ve been having the most marvellous time trying the last three months!’
‘Yes, but—you could have chosen somewhere a little less public to tell me,’ he complained as the two to them walked with Patrick towards the wood-construction ranch house. ‘You would have looked pretty stupid if I’d fainted or something.’
‘That’s during the birth, silly.’ She took Patrick from him.
‘I feel ill now,’ he told her irritably. ‘Carolyn, you should have…’
Nathan chuckled as the other couple disappeared into the house, his arm about Brenna’s shoulders. ‘She’ll be surprising him the rest of his life!’
‘Yes,’ Brenna smiled, looking up at the husband she adored.
Nathan’s eyes darkened as he met the flame
of desire in hers. ‘I think it’s time I showed the mother of my son that I’m perfectly capable of taking care of him—and her,’ he murmured huskily.
‘We have guests arriving for dinner in half an hour,’ she reminded him as he swung her up in his arms, striding towards the house with determined steps.
‘Only Grant and Lesli, and they’re used to coming for dinner and having to eat on their own!’
They grinned at each other as they shared the memory of the night Lesli and Grant had come to dinner on the very night Brenna had been declared fit after Patrick’s birth. The other couple had been greeted by the housekeeper, had eaten dinner, admired Patrick, all without Brenna and Nathan having put in an appearance, lost in the wonder of being physically close again. They hadn’t even realised until days later what they had done! It was now a standing family joke that you took your chances when you dined with Brenna and Nathan.
‘Besides, we’re practising ourselves, aren’t we?’ he reminded her throatily.
They had decided that it was time for Patrick to have a little brother or sister. Brenna had had an easy pregnancy and childbirth with him and both of them wanted another two or three children.
She shook her head. ‘We’re already perfect,’ she welcomed him down on to her body as they lay on the bed, knowing that they had put the past behind them now, that they loved each other enough to surmount any obstacle.
Together.
* * * * *
Now, read on for a tantalizing excerpt of Caitlin Crews’ next book,
MY BOUGHT VIRGIN WIFE
I’ve never wanted anything like I want Imogen. I married her to secure my empire—but my wife has ignited a hunger in me. I will strip away her obedience, and replace it with a passion to match my own…
Read on for a glimpse of
MY BOUGHT VIRGIN WIFE
CHAPTER ONE
Imogen
IN THE MORNING I WAS TO MARRY A MONSTER.
IT DID NOT matter what I wanted. It certainly did not matter what I felt. I was the youngest daughter of Dermot Fitzalan, bound in duty to my father’s wishes as women in my family had been forever.
The Wade Dynasty Page 14
