Brandon's Bride

by Lisa Gardner

  He said, “I’m a thirty-six-year-old widower. I’m not exactly into wild parties, and don’t worry about women.”

  “Oh.” Her expression softened instantly as people’s always did when he said he was a widower. At least Victoria’s gaze didn’t look pitying. Her blue eyes had merely gentled in a philosophic, understanding sort of way.

  “That’s hard,” she said.

  “It was a tough time.”

  “Well.” Her tone became brisk. “That brings me to the last consideration. My ex-husband didn’t die—he went to jail for two years for dealing dope. I got a restraining order against him, but he was paroled last week, and sooner or later, he’ll come around.”

  “You think he’ll try to kidnap your son?”

  “Ronald?” She shook her head vehemently. “Oh, no, he has no interest in parenting. It’s money he wants. My father is keeping as much an eye on him as possible, but if you see a dark-haired man around here, feel free to grab a shotgun. My brothers are all blond, and they’re the only men who should ever set foot on this property. I’m sorry, but don’t keep anything of value in your cabin. I can’t run a ranch and sit guard on the house, and if Ronald does come by . . .” She shrugged, and that pretty much said it all. “There you go, Ferringer. All dirty laundry is on the line.”

  “And it’s quite an impressive assortment,” he said respectfully.

  “Not bad for a twenty-seven-year-old, huh? So tell me, Ferringer, are you interested in the place?”

  “The cabin is perfect.”

  “Really?” She sounded genuinely shocked, then caught herself. “Huh. I’m not sure if that makes you crazy, or just nice enough to have around.” She glanced at him again, more contemplative this time, and suddenly, something in the air simply caught.

  Brandon’s gut got a rolling, tight feel he hadn’t experienced in a long, long time. His breathing grew shallow. He became hyperaware of the smear of dust on her high cheekbone and the way her red lips parted in shock.

  He was startled. She was startled. And damn, for a moment he did want to cross the room, encircle her waist . . .

  Brandon cleared his throat. Victoria quickly looked away. “Um. We’re all set, then?” he asked.

  “Huh. Hmm. Well,” she said, and took a deep breath. “I’m gonna fetch the paperwork,” she announced abruptly. “My father will check you out ASAP.”

  “Fine.” He still sounded hoarse. ‘‘Um . . . may I borrow the bathroom in the stables to clean up? I’ve been traveling since eight o’clock last night.”

  “Oh. Sure. Need anything?”

  “I’m fine, thank you.”

  “Okay.” She pushed away from the doorjamb hastily, and they were both happy for the distance. “My son will be home from baseball practice around six,” she called as she headed for the steps. “You’ll know when he arrives by the sound of the earth shaking.”

  “Got it.”

  She made it halfway down the steps, then halted. He was staring. He had the tingling feeling along his spine again. He found himself leaning forward.

  She turned abruptly. “Would you like to join Randy and me for dinner? If the security check works out, of course. It’s . . . it’s always good for everyone to know their neighbors.”

  “Neighbors. Of course. That would be nice. It is good to know your neighbors.”

  “Yeah. Neighbors. See you around seven.” She took off and disappeared inside the house. He finally expelled the breath he’d been holding. Belatedly, he shook his head as if that would rattle his thoughts into order.

  It wasn’t like him to react in such a way to a woman. It just wasn’t. And yet here he was, struggling for a second breath.

  From the day he was born, Brandon had been different. Other children laughed. Other children played. Other children invented wild, nonsensical games. Not Brandon. He’d been quiet, somber and unbearably aware of the tension in his family. His most vivid memory of his father was Max striding out the front door saying, “Time to deal, time to deal.”

  Max hadn’t dealt well. He’d squandered the family estate, cheated on Brandon’s mother and left behind a legacy of bitterness. And from the time he could walk, Brandon had known it was his job to fix things. He was the oldest son. He needed to make things right.

  He went to Wharton on a scholarship and graduated with honors. Then he worked hundred-and-twenty-hour weeks on Wall Street for money, money, money. He bought back the family estate when he was twenty-five. He built the perfect GQ life. He did everything he thought he was supposed to do. And his mother informed him he was just like his father—a cold, materialistic workaholic.

  There was nothing in Brandon’s life to prove her wrong.

  The thought banked the last of the embers in his mind, and his shoulders tightened with a familiar tension. He should go jogging. In the last four years, he’d discovered that if he ran far enough, fast enough, hard enough, sometimes he could escape his demons.

  Instead, he stood silently on the wooden porch in spring-filled Oregon and thought of Julia and how she’d looked in that ridiculously short pink waitress uniform the first time he’d met her. She’d been so flustered, she’d poured steaming coffee onto his silk tie. Then she’d started to laugh as she’d tried valiantly to repair the damage. Then, somehow, he’d started laughing, too. Stuffy Brandon Ferringer giggling over coffee spilled on his two-hundred-dollar tie.

  He’d never realized how much Julia had brought into his sterile existence until she’d died. He’d never realized how much she made him laugh until he was alone in the silence.

  He’d never realized how much he’d loved her and how little he’d given her until he stood at her grave and realized his mother was right. He was like his father. He’d married a woman, he’d loved a woman and he’d given her nothing of himself.

  More than C.J., more than Maggie, Brandon was Maximillian the Chameleon’s child.

  * * *

  Later, after a long, hot shower and badly needed nap, Brandon unpacked his single duffel bag while a spring sunset washed the world with shades of gold. In the distance, Victoria called to her horses. Her son arrived home with a high-spirited roar of greeting and the sharp snap of the screen door slapping shut.

  Brandon removed the sweatshirts and jeans from his duffel bag, piling them onto the quilt until he came to the waterproof pouch tucked securely in the bottom. He opened it slowly and carefully placed its precious contents on the bed—the heart-shaped locket Maggie had received from their father and a slim, bound blue book titled Tillamook High School, 1955. The locket contained the portrait of a beautiful woman no one could identify. The high school yearbook offered pictures of Max with his two best friends and business partners, Al Simmons and Bud Irving.

  After four years of investigating, these were the only clues Brandon had to his father’s enigmatic life and death, as well as a mysterious phone call C.J. had received six months ago from a voice he didn’t recognize. The caller had wanted to exchange information of Max’s life in return for C.J. backing off a case. C.J. being C.J., he had said no.

  We’ve been watching you for a long time, the voice had said. You’re almost as good as your father. You’re just a little too straight.

  Had Maximillian been involved in something illegal? Had Max’s plane crash in Indonesia been accidental? Was Maximillian even dead? Twenty-five years later, his body had never been found.

  Footsteps came running up the wooden porch in rapid staccato, sounding like a thundering bull. Brandon moved quickly, sliding the yearbook and locket beneath his mattress just as Randy Meese’s small, wiry form filled the doorway.

  Randy had his mother’s blond hair covering his head like an unruly mop. It might have been carefully combed once, but now strands stuck out in every direction as befit an energetic, sports-crazy, horse-crazy eight-year-old boy. His face was liberally covered with freckles and he was mis
sing one front tooth. The gapped smile fit him.

  He rolled back on his battered sneakers, stuck his grubby hands through the loops of his faded, dust-covered jeans and gave the new guy a thorough once-over.

  “Huh,” Randy declared at last, his voice high-pitched. “I’m supposed to invite you to dinner.” He scowled fiercely so Brandon would know Randy was still contemplating extending the invitation.

  “I see,” Brandon said and waited patiently.

  Randy wriggled against the doorway, using the doorjamb to get at an itch on his back. His red flannel shirt was brand-new, uncomfortable and two sizes too big so he could grow into it. From what he understood, his father was a decent-size man so he had a solid future of growing ahead of him. Good thing, too. It was hard to be intimidating as the man of house when you were only four feet tall. Randy was strong, though, and tough. His baseball coach called him fierce.

  “Mom says you’re gonna be a hotshot,” Randy stated. He narrowed his eyes like Clint Eastwood did when interrogating bad guys.

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re too old,” Randy said flatly. Jimeeny, the guy was at least thirty, definitely one step from the grave.

  “That seems to be the consensus,” Brandon agreed.

  “What’s consensus?”

  “Um, it means other people have said the same.”

  “Then why are you doing it? My uncle Charlie says only the leanest, meanest bast—uh, guys are fit to be hotshots. You’re just old.”

  Brandon did his best not to wince. “Yes, I think we’ve covered that. But for the record, I’ve done a thing or two.”

  “Like what?”

  Brandon contemplated the boy. He recognized the intense look, the determination to be tough. Randy was the eight-year-old man in the family. Brandon respected that.

  Brandon squatted. He spoke man-to-man. “I’ve gone scuba diving in open seas.”

  “That’s just water.”

  “I’ve hiked the volcanoes of Indonesia. The ground shakes and pops beneath your feet. You have to watch your step. One wrong move, the hot lava bursts beneath you and sprays sulfur all over your legs.”

  Randy appeared slightly more interested. “Oozing rocks, huh?”

  “I’ve done peak bagging,” Brandon said sagely. “Do you know what peak bagging is?”

  “Peak bagging? What’s a peak? Does it have fangs? Does it growl? Can it tear you from limb to limb?”

  “Not quite. A peak is the top of a mountain. The very tippy-top most people never see. You know how early explorers—’’

  “Lewis and Clark.”

  “Yes, Lewis and Clark. They went into hard, brutal terrain most people would never attempt to cross. Peak bagging is like that. You hike up tough mountains and rough trails most people wouldn’t be able to handle. You have to be in a great shape, have strong legs, good lungs. You have to be willing to keep climbing even when your whole body wants to stop.

  “Then, when you reach the top of the peak, you’ve bagged it. Some people bag the different peaks of the Appalachian Trail. Some people try to bag the fourteen-thousand-foot peaks around the globe. Then there are peaks over twenty thousand feet high, so tall and so cold, you have to bring your own oxygen.”

  “Have you done twenty-thousand-foot peaks?”

  “Yes,” Brandon said quietly. “Everest.”

  “Mount Everest!” Randy’s eyes went saucer-wide. “Did you make it to the top?”

  “Not quite. The weather took a turn for the worse. But we were close.”

  “What was it like? Did it hurt? Was it hard?”

  “The hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Brandon said honestly. “And it was the most beautiful place in the world. Everest is twenty-nine thousand and twenty-eight feet tall, give or take ten feet because of snow. Up that high, the whole world is thick and white and the sun glints blue off the ice caps. It’s like walking on top of the world, through the clouds.”

  “I bet it was dangerous,” Randy said shrewdly.

  “It was dangerous.”

  “Did people die?”

  Brandon hesitated. “It was dangerous.” Two men in their team had died. Sometimes Brandon still dreamed of the men’s frozen blue faces and wide-open eyes. Sometimes, he dreamed that they were him.

  “Keeewl,” Randy drawled breathlessly. “Wait till I tell Mom!”

  He leapt off the porch, went racing pell-mell across the yard, then came to a skittering halt that churned up plumes of red dust. “You’re supposed to come, too,” he called. “It’s dinner!”

  “Oh,” Brandon said, having not understood that part. He straightened slowly, feeling suddenly hesitant about approaching the main house and sitting down with Randy and Victoria. It would be such a cozy scene. Homey, comfortable. Those were things Brandon hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

  “Hurry up!” Randy yelled from across the yard. His impatient look clearly stated that if they didn’t eat absolutely, positively now, the food would magically disappear and they would both starve. Brandon got moving.

  Randy scurried up to the front porch, then waited, propping open the door with his hip and working the laces of his sneakers. “No shoes in the house.”

  “All right.” Brandon removed his worn hiking boots and placed them side by side by the door. Randy tossed his tennis shoes in two different directions. One landed beneath the rocking chair.

  “Gotta wash up before dinner. Do the back of your neck. Mom checks.”

  “I see.”

  Randy led him to the utility room just inside the door. A big old metal sink, rimmed with eight kinds of disinfectants and cleansers, loomed. Randy took up a position on the right side. Brandon went left. They stood shoulder to shoulder, preparing for battle.

  “The trick is to lather up good,” Randy informed him. “Specially ’cause then you smell like soap, and if you smell like soap, she won’t look so hard.”

  “Good point.”

  Randy scrubbed his face so hard his freckles should’ve come off. Then he passed the lumpy bar of soap, and Brandon lathered up. Under Randy’s watchful gaze, he washed the back of his neck, too, finally earning the boy’s nod of approval.

  Victoria found them a moment later, Randy hunched over the sink, his face soapy and water sticking his oversize red shirt to his thin shoulders and bony little-boy’s frame. Beside him, Brandon filled out the room with the unmistakable form of a man. Wet spikes of hair rimmed his crinkled blue eyes. Beads of water trailed down the smooth line of his square-cut jaw and dampened his blue chambray shirt. His lean fingers gripped the soap, squishing white suds across the back of his bronzed skin and drawing her gaze to the rippling strength of his forearms.

  “Oh, my,” she whispered, stomach tightening. She’d told herself the moment in the cabin had been a product of her imagination. Obviously she’d lied, because here was Brandon Ferringer, damp and soapy, and heaven help her, she was growing warm all over.

  Her son was looking at her curiously. She whisked herself to attention. “I mean, oh, my, it looks like you’re both ready for dinner.”

  Randy promptly thrust out his hands and face. “I’m washed up! Time to eat.”

  “I smell like soap,” Brandon said modestly.

  “You put on a new shirt,” Randy accused Victoria shrewdly. “Why’d y’change your shirt?”

  Uh-oh, she was busted. She’d hoped her son wouldn’t notice, but fat chance of that. Like any good eight-year-old, Randy only ignored things that could be used against him in a court of law. She squirmed beneath her own child’s gaze, twisting the hem of her shirt. The shirt wasn’t much, just an old plaid shirt like the rest of her wardrobe. Of course, it was lavender and she’d been told it highlighted her eyes, but that had nothing to do with it.

  Her son was still staring at her, astute enough to make Torquemada proud. “Uh, my othe
r shirt had hay on it,” she tried.

  “Your shirts always have hay on them.”

  “Gee, you’re all washed up. Why don’t you go sit at the table now?”

  “Okay!” The promise of food sent Randy bolting from the room. Child-rearing was definitely ten percent skill, ninety percent blatant bribery.

  Victoria turned toward Brandon, hoping she looked natural, figuring she probably didn’t. Ferringer, on the other hand, looked great. When he’d arrived this afternoon, he’d looked too grim, worn around the edges. Now, however, his shoulders were down; his face was relaxed. She’d recognize her son’s handiwork anywhere.

  “Isn’t he something?” she said.

  “I like him,” Brandon said promptly and looked a little dazed. Yep, Randy had that affect on people.

  She began to relax, but when Brandon took a step forward, she inhaled instinctively, and her pulse skittered out of control. Lord help her, he did smell like soap. Good, strong, spicy, manly soap. She swore it didn’t smell like that on her brothers.

  “Thank you for the dinner invite, Victoria. Generally I just eat alone.”

  “No problem,” she said in a voice that was two octaves too high, then dug her fingernails into her palm. Dammit, she was too old and too sensible for this. Sure Brandon Ferringer was a good-looking man in that rugged outdoorsy sort of way, but she had a ranch to run and a son to raise. She was beyond the stage of being easily impressed by the male half of the species. Now, if he knew how to train horses, rebuild a ranch or grow money on trees . . .

  “Mom!” Randy wailed from the kitchen. She smiled. Oh, yeah, hers was the glamorous life.

  “That’s our paging system,” she informed Brandon.

  “Highly effective.”

  “Oh, you haven’t heard anything yet. Let’s eat.”

  “Wonderful.” He fell in step beside her. “I’m really looking forward to this, Victoria,” he said somberly. “I washed the back of my neck, you know.”

  Chapter 2