by Leslie North
And to think she had once thought he would make a good father. She would laugh if she didn't feel so all-around terrible. "You're really saving us," she told Bettina. "I don't know how I'll ever repay you. I don't even know how to start thanking you, for Pete's sake."
"Let Auntie Bettina look after you," her friend replied. "I won't breathe a word of this to my brother. Just come here. Come home."
Home. She had found it once before, and she could find it again. Brandy hung up and watched the clouds gathering outside her window. They were nothing compared to the shadow overtaking her heart.
But she was done thinking about Max and done thinking about herself. The future of her baby was all that mattered.
She could worry about the happy ending later.
13
He had made a bad business move.
Not just a bad business move: a bad life move.
He had spent most of the day moving his personal effects back to the west wing. It had been a lonely, frustratingly tedious affair; many times he had half-expected Brandy to appear and lay into him for his behavior. As the hours ticked past, Max found he could deny less and less that he deserved it. He had behaved irrationally, let his emotions carry him away under the guise of being professionally betrayed.
Maybe he had been betrayed. It had happened before. Then again... what if he hadn't been? What if every circumstance was just as innocent as Brandy's beseeching eyes had told him it was? Was it folly to even entertain the notion that he had been wrong?
Countless times that afternoon, he paused in front of her door and raised his fist to knock; then he would drop it, let it dangle at his side, and turn away. Worse than a bull-headed idiot, he was a coward. This was no way for an expectant father to be behaving toward the mother of his child, no matter the circumstances that had estranged them. This was exactly the wrong way to go about starting a family, and he knew it.
He decided to make dinner for her that night, and he decided on gourmet cheeseburgers, of all things. He wanted to give Brandy a taste of home, show her that home could be here for her... though he understood that they still had things to work out. Max had to get to the bottom of Drakar's latest tech release—but not to know if his property had indeed been stolen. Bollocks to that. He needed to know if he could trust the woman that, despite the odds, he still found himself hopelessly in love with—
"Brandy?" Hours later, the dinner was made, the patties gone cold on their buns. That was when Max went looking for her. The memory of her sprained ankle was still fresh in his head and now fueled his sudden worry about her whereabouts. When was the last time he had seen Brandy? Really seen her? Was it that morning, when he’d erupted—when she’d deservedly thrown his coffee on him?
Not content to knock, Max pushed open her bedroom door, and was greeted with... nothing. No Brandy, and none of her belongings. There wasn't so much as a misplaced manuscript page to greet him as he stared into the empty room.
He flew through the castle, not finding her in any of the rooms, corridors—not even the ballroom. Had she fallen down a hidden stairway, or stumbled upon another secret passage? His heart was a jackhammer in his chest, his frantic pulse almost strong enough to knock his teeth together. He open every drawer in the kitchen, groped for a torch ("flashlight"—he heard her word in his head, in her voice), and made his way out to the garden, where he swept the beam of light in every direction. He called her name. Still, he found no sign of her.
Brandy was gone.
"This is what you wanted. Isn't it? You cretin!” Max cursed himself as he dropped down on the garden bench, still wet from the earlier rain—the same bench where he had made his ill-fated proposal to Brandy. The shadows seemed to gather around him as he spoke as if listening to him in voiceless reservation. No, not voiceless. An evening breeze sighed its way through the leaves overhead, shaking droplets free; the flowers at his feet rustled.
But for all this, Max felt lifeless, drained. He had gotten what he wanted, and broken his own miserable heart in the process.
Brandy was gone.
"It's better this way," he whispered. The sound of his own voice was so unconvincing that he shut his mouth and turned aside. But it was, wasn't it? They would live apart. Their baby, boy or girl, would inherit the castle. And Max would provide the child with everything it could ever want—just as he knew Brandy would. Even if she had been an agent of Drakar's all along, Max couldn't imagine that she wouldn't love their child with all her heart. Between them, the baby would want for nothing—nothing, save a mother and a father who could bear to be in the same room together.
He thought it made a legally satisfactory deal. When you took emotion out of the equation, on the outside, everyone would get what they wanted.
But he couldn't remove the awful ache in his heart.
"You don't have to look so lost, you know."
Brandy glanced up from where she sat on the porch swing. Bettina joined her from the kitchen, ferrying a tray of tea and scones.
"Isn't it a little late for tea?" She smiled weakly as her friend sat down beside her.
"Never too late for tea," Bettina assured her. "You have a lot to learn about living British style, my expat friend."
Brandy accepted her mug, and Bettina's familiarity, gratefully. A few hours ago, she had felt as if she didn't have a friend in the world... or at least, on this coast. Now, she felt safe and looked-after, which meant she could focus all her energy on making sure the little life growing inside her felt the same.
But where was she meant to do this? She couldn't impose on Bettina and her father forever. Brandy turned to look inside, to see the elderly man wandering along a line of bookshelves as if all the titles were new to him. The way Bettina explained it, he wasn't ill... not really. But he had never quite recovered his health or faculties after the Bentons' mother left.
"Does Max visit often?" Brandy wondered.
Bettina shook her head. "No. There's no chance of him finding you here." She stirred her tea and appeared to concentrate on the little whirlpool she was making. "I'd go so far as to say that this is the last place he would look for you," she said finally.
"I should go back to the States," Brandy whispered. "There's nothing for me here. I thought by moving here and starting a new life, I'd have nothing to lose... but I was wrong."
"Is that the solution that will make you happiest?" Bettina pillowed her cheek in her palm and gazed at her. "What about the baby?"
Brandy sighed. After a moment's contemplation, she nodded at the answer she had found for herself in Bettina's question. "No," she said finally. "That wouldn't make me happiest. I don't want to take Max's baby away from him. Despite everything, I... he... I feel as if, underneath it all, he really loves and cares for our child."
"Max is afraid to love," Bettina remarked. "Anybody. So he focuses on other things. Things he can control. It's always been this way with him, even before Drakar. Drakar just provided him with an even bigger excuse to detach."
"Was it your mother?" Brandy guessed. Bettina nodded; then she surprised Brandy by reaching into Brandy's lap and gently tugging free her father's photo album. Brandy had pulled it from among her possessions and brought it outside with her; she didn't know why. She had hardly looked twice at it since the day she’d discovered she was pregnant.
"May I see?" Bettina asked her.
Brandy shrugged. "I don't know what you'll find. All I found was more questions: questions about the man my father was, and questions about the place I might have occupied in his heart."
"Might have?" Bettina repeated incredulously as she flipped through the photos. "Brandy, my dear, are we looking at the same photo album? The man was crazy about you."
"You really think so?" Brandy leaned in to look. She suddenly felt as if she was seeing her father's photo album with new eyes. Every picture was lovingly dated and filed in its place... could it be that the man, imperfect as he had been, had loved her in his own way? Did a parent ever really leave their ch
ild behind them, or did they always carry them in their heart—or, in this case, in the immortal pages of a dusty old book?
She loved Max. That much couldn't be denied. Seeing him again would hurt, but maybe his own imperfect love—the love she was certain he carried for their unborn child—was enough. She would never get her happily-ever-after ending, but that didn't mean her baby couldn't find a happy beginning here in England.
She would rent a cottage, she decided: a small cottage, like this one she found herself in tonight. Hell, maybe she could fix herself up in the same neighborhood as Bettina and her father. Max wouldn't be parted from his child as she had been from her father.
It wasn’t perfect. It wasn't the conclusion she would have chosen. She would probably be in love with Max for the rest of her life. But as Brandy closed the book and looked out past the safe little sphere of porch life, she knew that love would prevail. Her son or daughter would know a life she and Max had never known growing up in their own families.
She couldn't dare hope for anything more.
14
Gavin called early the next morning. Max rolled over and groped for his phone, but the name that came up wasn't the one he had been hoping for. Still, Gavin wouldn't hit him up before the sun rose if it wasn't urgent. Max hauled himself into a sitting position and accepted the call.
"What is it? What’s happened?"
"I just got off the phone with my contact in the States."
That would explain the inconvenient timing, Max thought. "So? Is this supposed to mean anything to me?"
"Damn but you're thick before your first cup of coffee." Gavin snorted. "My contact in the States, you'll recall, has special insight into Drakar and his dealings. You've used him before—it's how you came to know about the castle you're currently sleeping in."
"I'm only half-sleeping in it now." In truth, he was fully awake and alert, listening to Gavin's description of events. "So, what did you contact have to say?"
"He says it's a bluff. Drakar has nothing. He had heard about your plans for the new release from someone at my own company—and trust me, I intend to deal with that little slip myself once the sun comes up."
"He has nothing," Max repeated blankly, then his mind snapped into focus. "The security program he's been shopping around..."
"Is a total sham," Gavin concluded. "Drakar is currently in a financial hole too deep to dig himself out of without help. That's why he sold his castle, and probably why he's been seen sniffing around Glen Ridge over the past month. You might warn Bettina he's on the prowl."
"Bettina has nothing to worry about," Max said confidently. "My sister may be young, but she knows better than to get involved with him ever again. She'd shoot him on sight if this were the States."
"And what about your bride-to-be from the States?" Gavin inquired. "Is she locked and loaded? Because you know Drakar will stop at nothing to get at you now that the news is about to break. He's got less than forty-eight hours to prove to his investors that he has something, or he's done."
Done. The word rang with such finality that Max knew it could be nothing less than true. Drakar's reign of terror, and the human cost he left in his wake, was about to end.
Suddenly, he recalled spotting the man at the café, talking up Brandy. It hadn't been a coincidence, after all—but it hadn't been the rendezvous he’d suspected, either. Brandy had no idea who Drakar was, but Drakar had known all too well who Brandy was. He had been throwing his Hail Mary, to use an American football term—and Brandy had doubtless denied his advances.
"Christ," Max moaned as he dropped his forehead against unforgiving fingers. He didn't have a headache, precisely, but he knew he deserved one. "I had it all wrong. I ran Brandy off over a rumor. And it wasn't just a rumor... I let my own damned paranoia get in the way."
There was a pause, and he could imagine Gavin’s look of consternation all too clearly, then, "So what are you waiting for?" Gavin demanded. "Someone to throw you an offer? If she's slipping away, you go and get her. Max—don't throw your chance at the future away on mistakes of the past."
Solid love advice from a fellow billionaire who could barely be arsed to look up from his workshop table most days. Gavin had a few more words to say, then hung up the call.
Max rocketed out of bed, threw on some semblance of an outfit, picked up his razor and, on second thought, flung it aside. He had too much to do, and no time to divert himself with appearances. Coffee came first. He knew exactly where he was headed after that.
The solicitor's office didn't seem any more organized when he entered it this time. He went unrecognized for several minutes, likely due to his disheveled appearance, before he was admitted to the back office amid a cascade of apologies.
"I'm not here to make your job harder," he said. "I'm here to make it easier. I'm giving up my claim to Landon Castle. All of it. Every last inch, stone, and flower. I withdraw my appeal. I want it all to go to Brandy Jackson."
The only problem was, his bumbling solicitor couldn't draw up the necessary paperwork without an address to deliver it to. Max stepped outside onto the curb, already on his second cup of coffee (thanks to the secretary’s hasty preparations) and started dialing. Every hotel, motel, and boarding house he called came up empty: no one with the name "Brandy Jackson" had checked in within the last forty-eight hours. He even tried a few of her romance pen names, but no one had seen or heard from her.
Finally, at his wits' end and lacking imagination, he called his sister. "Bettina, I haven't the faintest idea where she might have gone," he told her. "I've called around everywhere. Hell, I've even checked every local campsite. She's nowhere—and not answering her phone. You don't think she might have flown back to the States, do you?"
"I think our little American bird is closer than you think," Bettina said.
Now that got his attention. "You know where she is?"
"I didn't say that."
She knew, all right. He might have guessed sooner that his sister held the key to finding the woman they had both grown to love. "Bettina, please. I've made a horrible mistake. I accused her of... but that doesn't matter now."
"Of course it does. You accused her, without so much as giving her room to breathe a word in her own defense!" Bettina exclaimed. "Do you understand just how... how extra you've been? These past years, you've been living for revenge, fighting to defend me, and yourself, against a man who had no power over us. Not here. Not in the present. Letting him occupy so much headspace is inviting him to have power over you, dear brother. Drakar lives rent-free in your head."
"I know that now," Max said. "I don't want to talk about Drakar. Hell, I never want to think about him or what he's done again. He's made his bed. What I need now is..."
He faltered. Right when he needed his voice more than ever, it was failing him.
Maybe Bettina heard something in his silent struggle. Maybe she sensed it. He had no real way of knowing what inspired her next words in their conversation, only that they came. "She's here, Max. With Dad and me. She's safe."
"I have to see her," he said.
After a moment's silence, Bettina laughed lightly in defeat. "Why don't you come and get her?" she suggested instead.
The universe didn't have to ask him twice.
He pulled the Rolls-Royce up outside the little cottage, the pop of gravel beneath his tires announcing his arrival. He always felt like an outsider here, but being greeted by his sister's beaming face usually eased some of the tension. He still had trouble facing his father, though he had bought the house for the man and continued to provide for him financially. Bettina was the one more easily able to share her heart, even after Drakar had broken it.
But Bettina wasn't there to greet him today.
Max got out of his car, wondering if Brandy was in the house. Wondering if he should knock. As always, he was uncomfortable even before the visit had really begun.
But today, he was on a mission. He was here to bring the princess home to her castle
—but at the end of the day, only Brandy could say whether she saw him as a repentant knight or a fire-breathing dragon.
"Max? That you?" a soft voice queried him as he came around the backside of the cottage. Max froze, gradually taking in the sight of the two people who greeted him: there was his father, and his father's arm was looped through Brandy's as the statuesque brunette guided the fading old man on a tour of his own garden.
"Yes, it's me, Dad," Max said quietly.
"Well, I can see that." His father pushed his spectacles up his nose and frowned. "Are you here to take back your wife, son? Or are you going to follow in your father's footsteps and let another man take her?"
"Easy, boys." Brandy's gentle interjection surprised him, though he was grateful for it. His father might be able to revisit the past that had shaped him in the form of a joke now, but Max wasn't there yet.
He cleared his throat. "I'm here to take back my wife, Dad."
"Then take her," his father invited. He removed Brandy's hand from his arm and joined it with Max's; then, patting their union gently, as if bequeathing his blessing, he turned and walked back inside.
"You shouldn't lie to your father," Brandy said.
"How so?"
She crooked an eyebrow at him incredulously. "You just told him you were here to take back your wife."
"I am."
"We're not married.” She tilted her head to regard him closely. “In case you've forgotten, I said no to you the first time."
"The first time?" he asked, trying not to smile. "That implies more than one proposal."
Brandy growled in frustration, but before she could take her hand back, Max positioned himself in front of her and withdrew a folded, clipped-together document from the lining of his coat. "For you," he said. "The castle. And everything in it. I want you, and our child, to live there."
