His Brother's Bride

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “He wanted our first meeting to be in private, so he had me come to Twin Oaks after everyone left for the barbecue. He had the negligee I’d forgotten in his hotel room the night that Leslie was conceived,” Cecilia said, blushing. But that didn’t stop her from leaning over to give her lover a soft, albeit long, kiss.

  Scott felt more than heard Laurel’s sigh beside him. He couldn’t help but wonder if, after all was said and done, he’d have a moment alone with Laurel, a chance to say goodbye to her in private before they all went their separate ways. Would she let him take her back to Cooper’s Corner?

  Or would she fly straight to New York and arrange to have her car sent?

  More to give the older couple a moment to recover than anything else, he glanced over at Laurel. She looked back at him, and he ached at the uncertain emotions he read there. He’d never meant to hurt her. Disillusion her.

  He’d only ever wanted to love her.

  * * *

  LAUREL WATCHED AS Leslie Renwick, dressed in a hospital gown and robe, came into the room a few minutes later and sat at the end of her mother’s bed. She hadn’t needed an IV, but they were still keeping her overnight for observation. She’d showered and her short dark hair was fashionably mussed, her gamin features healthy looking.

  Somberly, Scott told the threesome about Dennis’s death. William held Cecilia while she cried softly, but, though she was sad, she said she hoped that he’d finally made it to a place where he could feel loved and be happy.

  Laurel wasn’t sure how all that worked, but she hoped Cecilia was right.

  As quickly as she could without seeming insensitive, she guided the conversation back to the story she had everyone’s permission to write. She was eager to get the facts she needed and leave these people to their privacy.

  It seemed that while Dennis had just been intending to blackmail his sister, whiting out the Renwicks’ names on the birth certificate as a warning to her that he knew the truth, he’d unknowingly brought two lifelong lovers together after a thirty-five-year separation. It didn’t take Cecilia and William long to figure out who’d really sent it. Cecilia had thought that William was the only one who knew she’d given birth to his baby three years after she’d married his father, William Hamilton Sr. But William knew one other person who had that knowledge, because he’d shared it with Dennis himself. He’d confessed that he and Cecilia had finally lost the battle against their growing love and had one night of passion neither of them would ever forget. William had hoped that his frankness would shock the kid into taking care of his own troubles, finding a way to pay his own debts, to set Cecilia free to marry William and raise her daughter.

  Of course, Dennis had simply let Cecilia continue to take care of him and lose herself in the process.

  So, telling her aging husband that she was accompanying her alcoholic mother to a clinic and rehab center in Iowa for six months, Cecilia had gone off to have her baby. She’d kept in touch with William Sr. by phone the entire time, and together she and William Jr. arranged the private adoption of their daughter, giving her to Hamilton Lending’s wealthiest, but also despairingly childless, clients, Robert and Gloria Renwick. Cecilia had never met the couple personally, but she knew of their reputation through their business dealings with Hamilton Lending. She had no reason to believe she’d ever come in contact with her daughter as the Renwicks lived in another town. And, as it turned out, she never had.

  “That was when I finally told my father I was quitting the family business,” William said. “Of course he disowned me, which I’d always known he would. I left then and moved to Connecticut, where I was able to do the things that I love—travel and write books.”

  “And I grew up with a great set of parents,” Leslie said, her eyes misting as they met Laurel’s. “Unfortunately they were killed by a drunk driver a little over five years ago.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Laurel said, feeling much more than she could possibly express. Never had she had such trouble keeping the personal and professional separate.

  “So what about Dennis?” she asked softly, trying to keep things on track so she could finish her job and leave these good people alone. Scott shifted beside and Laurel tried to ignore the small jump her nerves took. “I’m imagining you cared for him a lot?”

  “My brother told us that he’d only dated Leslie as a bargaining chip.” Cecilia interrupted, sounding almost like a protective mother hen as she answered for her daughter. “Thank goodness he didn’t try anything with her.”

  “My folks and I talked a lot about Dennis that first day we were in captivity,” Leslie said, her eyes meeting Laurel’s. “I still can’t believe I was so gullible, so easily duped, but I can’t be sorry I knew him when it brought me my parents....”

  Her voice trailed off, and Laurel knew the other woman was going to have some recovery to do emotionally as well as physically, but she was completely certain that Leslie would have all the emotional support she needed to learn to trust herself again. Laurel looked at Scott, wondering if he’d ever know that same peace. He was looking right back at her, his gaze resigned.

  She couldn’t bear the emptiness she saw there.

  “The picture in your travel book on the nightstand,” Laurel asked William quickly, reminding herself why she was there. “Was that of you and Cecilia?”

  “You saw that?”

  “When you went missing I took everything in to be fingerprinted.” Scott didn’t sound as if he was having any emotional struggle at all. “Your computer’s at the county precinct office as well, safely locked up.”

  “Thank you for that, young man,” William said. “When things got too...” He glanced at Cecilia. “Well, anyway, we left my room at Twin Oaks and went into town for something to eat and to finish our discussion. When Cici told me about telling Dennis he wasn’t getting any more money from her, I knew he was up to no good. She hadn’t been home in a week so I suggested we go out to her place to see if there was any more communication from him. We stopped back at Twin Oaks to pick up my stuff, but the lock was stuck and the key wouldn’t work. When we got to Cecilia’s, we found the letter with the picture of Leslie and Dennis together. I never gave my computer another thought after that. You know, I think this is the first time since I got it that I haven’t worried about losing the material inside it.”

  Laurel shifted, her shoulder accidentally touching Scott’s. She hated how obvious her quick move away must have been. “Maybe because you’ve got something that matters more now?”

  “Most definitely.” The older man’s voice trembled with emotion. “And yes, that photo was of me and Cici, taken the last time I was in Boston before she left to have Leslie....”

  William had what mattered more than his career. It was something Laurel wanted more than anything else in life.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  AT A ROADSIDE rest stop an hour later, while waiting for Laurel to come back from the ladies’ room, Scott took the opportunity to phone Maureen. He and Laurel had both called earlier to tell Maureen the good news about William and Cecilia, and Scott had been waiting for a chance to call back and reassure Maureen that the Nevils were not in any way involved in the kidnapping.

  He was surprised when the ex-cop wasn’t immediately relieved.

  “Frank Quigg called this evening,” she told Scott in the impassive tone of one who was distancing herself from reality. “He had a letter for me there, addressed to my married name.”

  Watching for Laurel in the darkness, Scott braced himself. “You had him open it?” he asked.

  “Yeah, it was only one line—’You can’t hide from me. I will find you.”’

  * * *

  IN THE WEE hours of the “next morning, Scott pulled into the drive at Twin Oaks.

  “Funny, isn’t it,” Laurel said as the Blazer came to a stop in the yard. “Ceci
lia thinks she made the wrong choice, giving up her baby. And my mother made the wrong choice keeping me.”

  She couldn’t remember ever being so exhausted, and yet she felt strangely on edge, as well. Something more had to happen. The day couldn’t end yet, whether the clock said it had or not.

  “I guess it just goes to show there are no absolutes. No clear-cut rights or wrongs.”

  “You have to take each situation, look at the people, the circumstances,” Laurel added.

  “I guess.”

  He grew strangely quiet. She wondered if he was as beat as she was.

  In a way Laurel was grateful for the numbing fatigue that consumed her. This way she didn’t have to think about what lay ahead.

  “I know it’s late, but would you mind coming up for a few minutes?” Laurel asked.

  Butterflies swarmed in her belly. Face burning, she stared straight ahead as Scott pulled around to a parking place close to the door.

  “I...”

  “Scott,” she interrupted, needing to be direct. “We have to talk. I know we’re tired, but now seems like a good time. You don’t have to stay long.”

  She almost crossed her fingers when she said that.

  Taking a shaky breath, she issued one last prayer for the evening—a prayer for the right words, a clear understanding, and the assurance that whatever happened, it would be the best thing for both of them.

  * * *

  SCOTT STOOD JUST INSIDE the door to her room. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d felt so awkward. He didn’t know what they had to talk about. Hadn’t it all been said? He wondered if Maureen was sleeping somewhere in the house, or lying in the dark worrying herself sick.

  He’d bet she was asleep. The woman hadn’t made it through years with the NYPD without being tough.

  “Have a seat,” Laurel said, pulling off her sandals and plopping down on the end of the bed. “It’s hurting my neck to look up at you.”

  He sat down on a wooden bench at the end of the bed.

  Laurel took a deep, almost dramatic breath. “Okay,” she said, folding her hands and dropping them in her lap. With her makeup long gone, her hair wind-tossed and shoved behind both ears, she looked about sixteen and ready to give him a speech he was going to disagree with.

  Scott braced himself.

  “First, the other night... You threw a lot of shocking stuff at me all at once....”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She looked up from her feet long enough to glare at him. “You have no reason to be sorry, and it would best if you’d just let me get through this—the first part, at least.”

  Thankful to be relieved of any responsibility in the conversation, Scott nodded.

  “Okay, as I was saying, you threw a lot of things at me. There was no way I had a chance to grasp it all—to have any idea what to think until I’d had time to sift through it.”

  She was going to give him the lashing he deserved. He couldn’t blame her.

  “So now that I’ve had time to think, there are a few things I have to say....”

  She paused and looked up, her brow raised in question.

  It couldn’t be anything he hadn’t already told himself, though coming from her it could turn out to be more painful.

  He nodded for her to continue.

  She was nervous. He could have done without the tenderness that welled up inside him.

  “The seat belt thing.” She was looking straight at him. Scott would have preferred her to continue studying her feet. The top of her head was easier to take. “You were planning to drive that car.”

  He said “Yeah” only when she made it obvious she wasn’t going to continue without a response.

  “Paul didn’t take any risks you weren’t already taking yourself.”

  “Laurel...” he started to argue.

  “Because you didn’t consider it a risk at all,” she continued.

  “I knew about the recall notice, he didn’t.”

  “But you also believed the risk was nonexistent. I know you, Scott. If you’d thought there was any danger, you wouldn’t have let Paul drive that car no matter how drunk you were.”

  He couldn’t argue with that. Not that it absolved him of the responsibility.

  “And just as we learned from Cecilia’s decision to give up Leslie—it’s the motivation that counts.”

  She’d caught him between the eyes and he hadn’t seen it coming. “But...”

  “No buts this time, Scott. I’m right and I’m not letting you talk me into anything else. You are not to blame for the fact that Paul was thrown from that car. Period.”

  He couldn’t let go that easily. But she had an interesting point about motivation.

  She was quiet, as though waiting to see if Scott was going to argue, and then continued.

  “Second, Paul driving.”

  He reinforced the walls he’d built. She wasn’t going to talk him out of that one. He was going to be accountable for the rest of his life.

  “Paul was a grown man with the right to make his own choices. You are neither responsible for nor answerable to those choices.”

  “I...”

  “You were drunk and I’m surprised and disappointed about that,” Laurel said.

  He wasn’t going to let the weight of her words crush him. He’d known they were coming.

  “But Paul had been drinking, too. And he was the one who decided to drive, whether he was hungover or not. You didn’t say, but knowing your older brother, I’m quite certain he intended to drive whether you were in the car or not.”

  He vaguely remembered some kind of threat along those lines.

  “And knowing you, there’d be no way you’d let him tackle that feat alone.”

  When had she come to know him so well? It had always been Paul for her.

  This was the oddest dressing-down he’d ever had. She was listing all of his crimes—though he cringed when he thought of the one to come—and yet, she wasn’t doing nearly as good a job as he did in making him feel like a scum.

  “Your point?”

  “The accident was just that. An accident.”

  Scott sat there, fingers forming a steeple against his chin. He could feel his skin getting tight. Hot.

  He must be more tired than he’d thought. He almost felt lighter. As though the weight that he bore every day was giving him an hour off.

  For that he’d gladly never sleep again.

  “Now, the third thing—the way you say you felt about me.”

  “The way I know I felt about you.” The look he sent her was ruthlessly piercing. She wasn’t going to make pretty with this.

  Her shoulders slightly hunched, she glanced down. Oddly enough, she seemed more embarrassed than disgusted.

  “Yes, well, the fact is, you can’t help how you feel, Scott. I mean, if we could choose who we love, lots of us would choose differently. Heck, I’d have chosen to fall in love long before Paul if I’d had any way to make it happen.”

  He stared at her.

  “I’d have done it again since, too, rather than be so lonely these last three and a half horrid years.”

  He couldn’t find the hole in that argument, either.

  “What matters is what you did with the feeling,” she continued. “The only thing you could control was the response you chose, not the emotion itself.”

  He wished she’d just yell at him and let him get out of there, drive home and sleep it off in the familiarity of his own bed. Or maybe he’d just sit up in his Blazer all night. That was a hell of a lot closer, and the front seats tilted back far enough.

  Hell, he could even bum a pillow off her. And maybe a blanket. Not that he’d need one. He was always warm. But the late summer nights were getting cooler.<
br />
  “Scott?”

  She’d moved over to the edge of the bed, her feet touching the floor. “Yeah?”

  “The point is you didn’t make a wrong choice,” she said. “Falling in love was something you had no say over, and your response to that was everything you could ever have hoped it would be. You were honorable. Loyal to both your brother and me, but also to yourself. You did nothing to be ashamed of. You never once acted on your feelings. As a matter of fact,” she chuckled, though with little mirth, “I was completely blown away the other night. All that time we spent together and I never had one hint that you felt anything for me except affectionate irritation.”

  Slow down. Stop the train.

  He had to get off.

  Somehow between doing his job that night and ending up in this room, he’d gotten on the wrong ride. He had no idea where he was or where he was supposed to be, for that matter.

  “Scott, are you listening to me?”

  He nodded. Of course he was. To every word. But...

  “You really think all that stuff?” he asked.

  “I know it,” she said. Her conviction was damned hard to fight.

  “I knew it the other night, Scott,” she said, dropping to the floor. She was on her knees at his feet.

  Scott didn’t know what to do about it.

  “I was just so shocked that I didn’t know what to say, what to tackle first.”

  He’d give just about anything to believe that.

  “And,” she added, interrupting his thoughts, “because I was scared to death.”

  “Scared?” That was news to him.

  “I was scared because when you told me you used to be in love with me, all I could feel was this crushing disappointment that I hadn’t known—and that you no longer felt that way.”