THE ringing of the telephone woke Brenna the next morning—afternoon, she corrected with a groan as she looked at the bedside clock to find it was almost twelve o’clock. Why didn’t Nathan answer the damned thing?—he was always up at six o’clock, no matter what the circumstances.
It was on about the eighth ring that she realised he couldn’t be in the flat, otherwise he would have answered the telephone, so she crawled out of her double bed to answer it herself, pulling on Nick’s T-shirt that almost reached down to her knees to pick up the receiver and groggily recite her number.
‘You really shouldn’t do that in London,’ Carolyn instantly chided. ‘It could be an obscene telephone caller.’
‘They wouldn’t dare, not with Nathan here,’ retorted Brenna.
‘I don’t suppose your exhaustion could be due to your handsome stepbrother?’ Carolyn suggested hopefully.
‘No,’ she denied drily. At least, not in the way her friend meant; once those memories of Nathan that last night in Canada had been evoked she hadn’t been able to get them out of her mind, and it had been almost morning before she fell asleep.
‘Pity,’ her friend sighed. ‘Is he there?’
‘He doesn’t seem to be… wait a minute,’ Brenna turned the telephone pad around to face her, reading the large masculine scrawl on its surface. ‘He’s out,’ she sighed.
‘Damn,’ muttered Carolyn. ‘I wanted to thank him for the flowers.’
‘What flowers?’ she frowned, sleep still fogging her brain.
‘The ones he sent me, silly,’ her friend laughed. ‘A dozen long-stemmed white roses,’ she added delightedly.
The fog at last cleared from Brenna’s brain as she realised the reason Nathan had sent the flowers. It wasn’t a gesture she would have expected from him, but she thanked him for his thoughtfulness anyway.
‘To apologise for his rudeness yesterday, the card with them said,’ Carolyn continued, very often not needing answers to her conversation, just taking the answers for granted. ‘I didn’t particularly think he was rude, but he—’
‘Nathan behaved disgracefully,’ Brenna contradicted firmly, sure that Carolyn would be blaming herself for Nathan’s erroneous assumptions if she didn’t stop her right now.
‘He was just concerned—’
‘He told me what he said to you and Nick while I was packing; he was very insulting.’
‘Hey, you’re lucky to have a brother to be that worried about you,’ Carolyn scolded. ‘The poor man walked in on a situation he didn’t understand—and which you certainly hadn’t explained to him, what was he supposed to think?’
‘He could have waited for the explanations—’
‘With me coming on to him like the vamp of the year?’ her friend laughed. ‘He probably thought I was trying to draw him into our happy circle.’
There had been no ‘probably’ about the assumption, that was exactly what Nathan had thought was happening. ‘Stop defending him, Carolyn,’ scolded Brenna.
‘I’d defend any man who sent me white roses,’ the other girl assured her. ‘Still, if he isn’t there, I’ll have to thank him another time. Are you going to be in later today?’ she changed the subject.
‘You’re coming back to town?’ Brenna guessed with a groan, knowing they would never meet their deadline if Carolyn came back to London and joined her usual hectic social whirl.
‘Don’t sound so worried,’ her friend laughed. ‘I was a good girl after you left and stayed up all night finishing the story. So now Nick and I are going to reward ourselves by having a good time. I wondered if I could drop the rest of the story off to you when we get back. Although I don’t suppose you feel much like working with Nathan there,’ she realised.
‘I’ll be glad of an excuse to shut myself away from him for a few hours,’ said Brenna darkly.
Carolyn chuckled softly. ‘Is he going to be staying long?’
‘Who knows?’ Brenna dismissed drily. ‘Nathan is a law unto himself.’
‘Carolyn!’
‘Sorry, force of habit.’ The grimace could be heard in her voice. ‘Poor Nick will be getting a handful when he marries me!’
‘He doesn’t look as if he minds too much,’ Brenna teased Nick’s obvious adoration of his fiancée.
‘No,’ Carolyn laughed. ‘And perhaps I’ll get to meet your sister this afternoon.’
‘Er—she won’t be here,’ Brenna excused quickly. ‘She—she’s visiting relatives,’ she invented.
‘Oh well, at least I’ll get to see Nathan again.’
‘Will you behave yourself!’
‘When have you ever known me to do that?’ her friend taunted.
‘Never,’ sighed Brenna. ‘That’s what I’m afraid of!’
‘Don’t be,’ Carolyn laughed. ‘Nathan can take care of himself.’
That was more than obvious. ‘Actually, I was thinking of you—’
‘Stop fussing, Brenna,’ her friend advised impatiently. ‘Nathan and I are both adults. I’ll see you later,’ she finished.
Brenna couldn’t believe how late she had slept, although there was still time to catch her father at the office before he went to lunch, if she telephoned now. The Wade family might dismiss him as being unimportant, but he was Lesli’s father, and he had a right to know what was happening with her at the moment.
‘I was right about that T-shirt,’ Nathan drawled behind her, startling her. ‘It is more provocative than bare flesh,’ he rasped.
Brenna had been so deep in thought she hadn’t been aware of his entrance, and she followed his gaze down over the pointed allure of her breasts beneath the loose material to the tantalising length of her legs.
‘You ought to have a public health warning slapped on you like cigarette packets do,’ he growled. ‘You could damage any man’s health!’
Embarrassed colour darkened her cheeks. ‘You shouldn’t make remarks like that to me,’ she snapped.
‘No, I suppose not,’ he sighed. ‘I hope you don’t mind, I borrowed your door key so I could let myself in again. Any calls while I was out?’ His brows rose pointedly at the way she was still standing next to the telephone.
‘Carolyn. To thank you for the roses,’ she taunted. ‘It was a thoughtful gesture, Nathan.’
‘And totally unworthy of me,’ he drawled. ‘I owed her an apology and so I made it in the only way available to me.’ He shrugged.
‘Where have you been to this morning?’ She saw his gaze move pointedly to the message he had left for her on the notepad. ‘It only says out,’ she defended.
‘My times are all out, and when I got up at four this morning I crept around trying not to wake you. By eight o’clock I realised I could have saved myself the trouble; nothing was going to disturb you! So I took myself out for breakfast, and then went for a walk. I had no idea you had fallen into the habit of sleeping until lunchtime,’ he said sarcastically.
‘It must be the lax company I keep,’ Brenna dismissed tartly. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me I have to get dressed and go out for a while. I shouldn’t be long, just an hour or so.’ While she had been talking to him the noon hour had passed, and her father always left the office where he worked promptly at twelve o’clock for his lunch. But she knew where he usually went, and would see him there.
‘Boy-friend?’ Nathan’s eyes were narrowed.
‘No!’ she flashed.
‘Can’t you put off seeing your friends for a few days, until we have this mess with Lesli sorted out?’ he rasped accusingly.
Her eyes were deeply green. ‘I’m not seeing a friend either!’
‘Who then?’
She met his gaze challengingly. ‘I think a father has a right to know when his daughter has left her husband and just disappeared.’
‘Your father?’ Nathan realised harshly, his mouth a forbidding line.
‘Of course,’ she retorted.
‘When did you start seeing him again?’
Brenna swung away from him as he would have reached for her. ‘You make it sound as if I decided to stop,’ she rasped. ‘The Wades were the ones who prevented my seeing him from the time I was twelve years old. As soon as I got back to England four years ago I looked him up.’
‘What do you mean, why?’ she repeated incredulously. ‘He didn’t stop being my father just because the Wades decreed it!’
‘Stop blaming us for every damn thing that’s ever gone wrong in your life. We didn’t make your father into the irresponsible drunk that he is.’
‘Didn’t you?’ she scorned. ‘It often happens when a man’s family is taken from him.’
‘Your father lost his family because he was too damned careless of it!’
They glared at each other across the width of the lounge, Nathan wearing the denims of the night before and a short-sleeved cotton shirt the same silver-grey of his eyes. Brenna knew that her own lack of clothing put her at a disadvantage, but she didn’t particularly care about that at the moment.
‘Your father made him what he is,’ she bit out hardly.
‘No one makes another person into a drunk!’
‘“You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink"?’ she quoted. ‘No, but you can force the circumstances upon that person to push that first drink, and then another, down their throat,’ she accused bitterly.
‘Your father was always a drunk,’ Nathan said disgustedly.
Her mouth twisted. ‘I’m sure that’s what you would like to think, but it isn’t true.’
‘Brenna—’
‘I’m going out to see my father,’ she met his gaze steadily. ‘And nothing you say will stop me.’
‘I wasn’t trying to stop you seeing him,’ he ran a hand through the thickness of his dark hair. ‘You’ve just never mentioned that you were seeing your father again,’ he frowned.
‘Was I supposed to?’ she challenged.
‘Unless you felt the need to hide it,’ he nodded slowly.
Her eyes flashed. ‘He’s my father, I’ll see him when I want to. And I don’t need anyone’s permission!’
‘I didn’t say you did.’
‘You implied it,’ she snapped.
‘Brenna, your father is a sick man,’ he reasoned gently. ‘Alcoholism is a disease—’
‘All the more reason for his daughter to care what happens to him!’
He gave a deep sigh at her stubbornness. ‘Can I come with you?’ he asked softly.
She gave a scornful laugh. ‘He hasn’t touched a drink for almost a month, seeing me with a Wade is likely to put him right back at the bottom of a whisky bottle!’ she understated.
‘You know that the abstinence won’t last, don’t you?’ Nathan said gently. ‘That he can’t stop drinking for any length of time?’
‘Yes, I know,’ she rasped. ‘But while it lasts I give him all the encouragement I can.’
‘That’s commendable. But—’
‘I have to go, Nathan,’ she dismissed with controlled impatience. ‘There’s food in the fridge if you’re hungry; I’ll be eating out.’
He grabbed hold of her arm as she would have walked past him, his fingers lean and strong. ‘When will you be back?’ he ground out roughly.
‘I told you, about an hour. And try not to upset Lesli if she should turn up here,’ she sighed. ‘Or she’s likely to just leave again!’
His mouth tightened. ‘Believe it or not, Lesli has always liked me.’
‘She always did have poor taste—Nathan, no!’ Brenna cried as he would have pulled her into his arms. ‘Please don’t touch me!’
He released her slowly, frowning darkly. ‘You’re as jumpy as a skittish—’
‘Mare,’ she finished drily, badly shaken by the physical threat this man posed. ‘That is the rest of the crude terminology I heard you once discussing with one of the hands?’
Nathan grimaced, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his denims. ‘I was a lot younger then, and you shouldn’t have been listening,’ he muttered.
‘You were both standing just below my bedroom window at the time,’ she drawled.
He scowled. ‘You still shouldn’t have been listening.’
She laughed derisively. ‘Whatever happened to Kay McCrae?’ she mocked. The other woman had been his girl-friend at the time he made the comment—and the woman he was also referring to.
‘She’s married and got three kids,’ he mumbled reluctantly.
‘Then I guess it must have been the stud that made her so jumpy,’ Brenna taunted before fleeing the room, locking the bathroom door behind her as she heard him in hot pursuit.
She let her breath shakily from her body. She had tried so hard to keep Nathan at a brotherly distance, but he kept overstepping that imaginary line, and she knew that if she hadn’t stopped him just now she would probably be in his arms even now.
He was sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee when she came back from her bedroom a few minutes later. ‘Too many of those will give you a middle-aged spread,’ she indicated the biscuit barrel he was liberally tucking into.
‘I’ll spread you across my knee and tan your backside if you don’t get out of here!’ he warned.
‘I’d like to see you try,’ she challenged, no longer wary of these physical retributions he kept threatening. ‘It might have worked when I was seventeen, but I just might hit back at twenty-two!’
‘Now that might be worth seeing—’ Nathan began to rise threateningly.
Brenna left with as much haste as dignity would allow, knowing he had nerve enough to carry out the threat now that she had promised retribution.
She took a taxi to the restaurant her father frequented, never having bothered to acquire her own transport while living in London; tubes were plentiful, taxis even more so, and much more convenient than trying to fight her own way through the traffic.
Her father was seated at his usual table, and she was relieved to see the glass of water he had to accompany his meal; she was well aware that he could relapse into drinking at any time, had lived with the worry of what the alcohol was doing to him for the last four years, since she had really become aware of his problem. He just didn’t seem able to give it up for any length of time. Much as it pained her to accept it she knew it would one day kill him.
‘Hello, love,’ he stood up as she approached, surprised to see her there, a tall loose-limbed man who lived on his nerves. ‘I thought you were in a cottage somewhere in the middle of Wales?’
‘Cumbria,’ she corrected lightly, used to the lapses of memory he occasionally had too, smiling her thanks at the waiter as he brought her a menu.
‘What happened, Brenna?’ he asked astutely.
‘Happened?’ she delayed lightly. ‘Lesli has had a bit of an argument with Grant, but other than that everything is going smoothly.’
His hazel eyes were narrowed. ‘How serious is a “bit of an argument"?’
‘Nothing for you to worry about.’ She had thought better on the drive over here of worrying him with Lesli’s disappearance; he was doing so well this time in his effort to keep away from alcohol, she didn’t want to give him reason to start drinking again. Over the years she had kept him informed about the happenings in both her and Lesli’s lives, but there was no point in worrying him with this, she had decided. ‘Pregnant women are notoriously temperamental,’ she dismissed lightly.
‘I remember,’ he drawled. ‘But I always thought Lesli was the placid one of my daughters,’ he frowned.
He wouldn’t think that if he could see her sister during one of her sulks to get her own way! Lesli was placid only until she decided she wanted something to happen a certain way, then she changed completely.
‘She is,’ Brenna nodded. ‘I’m sure all this will quickly pass. What have you ordered for lunch?’ she changed the subject, ordering the same when she knew he had ordered the fresh fruit and cottage cheese.
It was just an hour later that she arrived back at the flat, moving quietly through the lounge when she saw Nathan was asleep stretched out on the sofa. Jet-lag was a terrible thing to go through, and she knew it didn’t get any better, no matter how many times you flew.
Her studio was as she last saw it, the bed neatly made, her sketches lying about the work-tops. She worked on her latest drawing of Koly for the next hour and a half, and all remained quiet in the lounge as Nathan continued to sleep.
When the doorbell rang she hurried to answer it before it woke Nathan, and quietly invited Carolyn inside.
‘I brought the… What is it?’ Carolyn frowned as Brenna put a silencing finger up to her mouth.
‘Nathan is asleep, and—’
‘No, I’m not,’ he appeared in the lounge doorway, his clothes rumpled, his hair tumbled, a sleepy look of sensuality in his eyes.
‘Did I interrupt something?’ Carolyn obviously misunderstood the reason for the latter.
‘No.’
‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ Nathan grinned at Brenna’s outraged expression, stretching like a sleek feline.
Carolyn turned to Brenna accusingly. ‘And you said he was the one who never noticed you!’
Brenna mentally cringed at the mockery in Nathan’s eyes before he drawled, ‘Oh, I noticed her, but she can run faster than I can!’
‘I wouldn’t have thought a little thing like that would have bothered you,’ Carolyn teased throatily, putting her arm through the crook of his as they went into the lounge together.
‘Maybe Brenna already has a boy-friend?’ He arched dark brows questioningly.
‘I’m sure she doesn’t,’ Carolyn instantly shook her head. ‘To tell you the truth, I think she’s a little frightened of men.’
‘Carolyn!’ she protested at this assumption—a quite inaccurate one at that!
‘She is?’ Nathan ignored her outrage, looking at her with narrowed eyes.
‘I think so,’ her friend nodded. ‘She hardly ever dates, and when she does, one date is all they get, poor things.’
‘Really?’ drawled Nathan, his gaze still riveted on the red-faced Brenna.
‘Mm,’ Carolyn frowned at her. ‘I think she must have had a bad experience early on in life.’
‘Carolyn, that’s enough,’ Brenna snapped irritably. ‘I rarely date because I choose not to do so. Believe it or not, my life doesn’t have to revolve around men!’
‘Ouch!’ Her friend gave a pained grimace. ‘I think that dig was directed at me,’ she assured Nathan lightly. ‘We must have really upset her, Brenna never gets bitchy with me.’
‘It wasn’t directed at you at all,’ Brenna blushed. ‘It’s men who seem to have the idea we can’t do without them.’
‘But we can’t,’ Carolyn drawled. ‘And I for one don’t even want to try!’
‘A woman after my own heart,’ Nathan grinned at her appreciatively.
Smiling buffoon! Brenna thought accusingly. Yesterday he couldn’t even be bothered to give Carolyn the time of day, and now he was flirting with her as if he had never thought of her as anything but a beautifully desirable woman. And it was quite sickening the way Carolyn was fawning all over him as she thanked him for the roses, and equally nauseous was Nathan’s charming flattery. The man was never charming, and he didn’t know the meaning of the word flattery!
Finally Carolyn was the one who seemed to realise the two of them weren’t alone, and she held out the folder she carried to Brenna. ‘My second baby,’ she drawled. ‘Handle it with care,’ she grimaced. ‘Nick and I are off to New York for the weekend.’
‘But it’s only Thursday,’ Brenna pointed out drily.
Her friend shrugged. ‘Nick has some business there, and I can’t wait to get into the shops! Just send the story in to David when you’ve finished,’ she dismissed carelessly. ‘It was lovely seeing you again, Nathan.’ She gave him a glowing smile. ‘Maybe we can all have dinner together when Nick and I get back from New York?’
‘I’m not sure I’ll still be here then,’ he evaded smoothly. ‘Why don’t you give Brenna a call when you get back to London; if I’m still here I’d love to join the three of you for dinner.’
‘Oh, good,’ Carolyn beamed. ‘Now I really must go, Nick’s waiting downstairs in the car.’
Her friend left in a waft of exclusive perfume, leaving an awkward silence behind her. Brenna was angry at both of them, and she wasn’t sure whether it was for the way they had discussed her social life as if she weren’t there or if it was the way they had flirted together as if she definitely weren’t there!
‘She must be difficult to keep up with,’ Nathan murmured softly.
‘Nick’s used to it,’ she snapped. ‘In fact, I think he rather enjoys it. Before he met Carolyn he was very bored with his life; now he doesn’t have the time to be bored,’ she added ruefully.
‘Nick Bancroft,’ Nathan said the name slowly. ‘His name somehow seems familiar to me. I—Dominic Bancroft?’ he questioned incredulously.
Brenna gave an abrupt inclination of her head. ‘Recent heir to all those oil millions,’ she drawled. ‘Wish you’d been more polite to him now, Nathan?’ she taunted.
His mouth tightened. ‘I’m not a snob, Brenna,’ he rasped.
‘Nick used to be,’ she grimaced. ‘He used to be so wrapped up in himself, very conceited and supercilious. But Carolyn has changed all that. She keeps him so much on his toes keeping up with her he doesn’t have the time to think of himself!’
‘I can imagine,’ said Nathan. ‘I didn’t think she could live the way she does on what she earns as a writer.’
Her eyes flashed. ‘Well, you’re wrong, she does! She isn’t interested in Nick’s money, if that’s what you think,’ she snapped. ‘Carolyn doesn’t like jewellery, and she abhors furs, her only weakness is that she likes to travel. And she can afford to pay for that!’
‘Believe it or not,’ he drawled hardly, ‘I like the lady. I wasn’t being critical just now.’
‘It just sounded that way,’ she retorted harshly.
‘Only if you’re biased,’ he grated. ‘Why don’t you date, Brenna?’
She stiffened at the unexpectedness of the question; she had thought he had let Carolyn’s comments about her social life pass by. She should have known better! ‘I date,’ she told him calmly. ‘When I choose to.’
‘But nothing serious?’ he persisted.
‘As Carolyn said, I had a nasty experience early on in life,’ she looked at him pointedly.
His eyes narrowed to icy slits. ‘There was nothing nasty about that night. In fact, I’ve wanted to repeat it ever since,’ he added softly.
Brenna’s expression froze. ‘I’m sure there’ve been plenty of other women to fill your bed since then!’
‘A few,’ he conceded drily. ‘But that doesn’t mean they have,’ he added harshly at the contemptuous curve of her lips.
‘My friends used to find you a fascinating topic of conversation, Nathan,’ she dismissed. ‘I think they worked it out that the longest you’d gone without a woman was two months; and that was only because you’d broken your leg skiing!’
‘Six weeks,’ he ground out. ‘One of the nurses was very obliging.’
‘Even more reason for me to know you haven’t been alone the last sixteen months.’
‘Didn’t Lesli tell you?’ he scorned. ‘As I recall, you used to tell each other everything.’
‘I made it clear I wasn’t interested in knowing!’
Nathan released his breath in a ragged sigh. ‘Maybe we should start this conversation all over again?’ he muttered. ‘How was your father?’
‘You don’t really want to know,’ she said crossly.
‘I am interested, damn you,’ he said intently.
‘Do the Wades need the satisfaction of knowing how their victim fared after a savaging from them?’
‘Brenna, you’re under a misapprehension concerning our involvement with your father’s—’
‘I don’t think so,’ she rasped, turning away. ‘And he’s well, very well.’
She wasn’t aware how vulnerable the taut set of her shoulders was at that moment, but the man watching her was, and he reached for her instinctively.
‘No!’ He held her firm as she would have escaped him, turning her to press her face against his chest, his thumb lightly caressing her cheek as it rested against her. ‘I need this,’ he groaned into her hair. ‘I think we both do!’
‘Nathan, don’t!’ choked Brenna just before the firmness of his mouth moved softly over hers and the protests melted away as her body responded to a demand of its own too long denied.
Drugging kisses, ever deeper and deeper, put her mind awash, as the force of Nathan’s desire pressed against the flatness of her stomach, the softness of her breasts flattened against his chest as his hands cupped her face and he drank from her mouth, sipping, thirsting, taking his fill.
A doorbell can be a shrill intruder to lovers long denied each other, and Brenna murmured protestingly at its insistent ringing, nuzzling demandingly against Nathan’s mouth.
Finally he raised his eyes. ‘Are you expecting anyone?’
‘No one. Except—Lesli!’ she realised desperately, pulling out of Nathan’s arms to run and open the door.
Lesli, poor unhappy, very pregnant Lesli, threw herself into Brenna’s arms. ‘I can’t go back there,’ she sobbed. ‘I can’t!’
Brenna let her cry in her arms, too relieved to at last have her sister here to notice when Nathan appeared in the doorway behind them. Lesli’s natural beauty had begun to glow during her pregnancy, her shoulder-length black hair was thick and shining, the hazel of her eyes clear and glowing with health, and she did not seem to have put on any weight other than the gentle swell that was her baby. But the ravages of the last few days showed in the unhappy droop to her mouth, her pale cheeks and the shadows in the depths of her eyes.
Finally Lesli was the one to see Nathan as he watched them with narrowed eyes. ‘Nathan—!’ she gasped accusingly, stepping back from Brenna, looking poised for flight. ‘What’s he doing here?’ she demanded.
Brenna felt a sharp stab of pain at her sister’s mistrust. So much for Nathan’s claim that Lesli liked him; she looked as if she wanted to run from both of them at the moment!
‘That’s a silly question,’ Nathan scolded firmly, moving to take Lesli’s arm and direct her away from the open doorway and through to the lounge. ‘We’ve all been concerned about you,’ he reproved once he had sat her down on the sofa.
‘Even Grant?’ she said harshly, her eyes rebellious, her mouth quivering emotionally.
‘Especially Grant,’ he told her firmly.
‘I suppose that’s why you’re here and he isn’t?’ she said bitterly.
Nathan glanced at Brenna for help, their own conflicts forgotten, even that lightning passion they had shared in each other’s arms minutes ago, in the need to reassure Lesli that they all loved her and wanted to help her.
Brenna moved down on to her knees in front of her sister, taking her chilled hands into her own. ‘I’ve spoken to Grant, Lesli,’ she told her softly. ‘He’s very worried.’
‘About me or his child?’ Lesli rasped.
Brenna looked up at Nathan as she heard his sharp intake of breath, guessing the reason his eyes glazed over coldly as he returned her gaze; Lesli had almost repeated word for word her own scorned comment of yesterday! Surely he couldn’t really think she… Who gave a damn what he thought, she dismissed hardly; Lesli was the important one.
‘Lesli, you know Grant loves you.’
‘No,’ Lesli cut in coldly. ‘I thought he loved me. I was wrong.’
‘Lesli, whatever he’s done—’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Lesli answered Nathan in a hard voice.
‘Darling, you have to—’
‘No,’ Lesli shook her head dully. ‘I don’t even want to think about it.’
Brenna turned helplessly to Nathan; she had never seen her sister like this before, so uncaring, so hardened. She didn’t know how to deal with it.
‘Lesli, I’m going to telephone Grant now,’ Nathan told her briskly.
She stiffened. ‘I don’t want to speak to him,’ she quivered.
‘No one is asking you to do that,’ he rasped. ‘But since he’s your husband I think he at least deserves to be told that you’re safe. No one even knows where you’ve been the last four days.’
‘I went to Oxford. I… we used to live there, when we were children,’ Lesli revealed abruptly.
It hadn’t even occurred to Brenna that her sister would go there, and she gave Nathan a look of apology for not thinking of it. Lesli had always liked Oxfordshire; she should have realised she might go there.
‘We have to call Grant now,’ she squeezed Lesli’s hand reassuringly. ‘But you don’t have to talk to him if you don’t want to.’
‘I don’t,’ Lesli shook her head in jerky movements.
Brenna shrugged in Nathan’s direction as he made the call, concern for her sister etched into her face as she watched her anxiously. Whatever had gone wrong between Lesli and Grant was much more serious than she had thought, and she half believed the claim she had made to her father about pregnant women being over-emotional. Lesli was calm—too calm.
She could hear Nathan’s half of the conversation with his brother, guessed that Grant wanted to talk to Lesli from the glances Nathan kept shooting their way as he refused the request. For all the notice Lesli took of the exchange it might not have been taking place.
Nathan put his hand over the mouthpiece as Grant must have insisted he speak with his wife. ‘Lesli?’ he frowned.
She shook her head firmly, her mouth set mutinously as she didn’t even glance at him.
‘He says if you won’t come back to Canada, he’s coming here,’ Nathan told her softly.
Panic filled Lesli’s eyes. ‘I don’t want him here!’
‘That doesn’t seem to be bothering him at the moment,’ Nathan drawled.
‘No,’ she acknowledged bitterly. ‘Brenna?’ she questioned sharply.
Compassion softened Brenna’s eyes, and she felt far older than her sister at that moment than two years younger. ‘I think you should go back,’ she encouraged softly.
Lesli’s fingers clutched painfully at her hands. ‘Only if you’ll come with me!’
‘Oh, but—’
‘Brenna!’ Nathan rasped warningly.
He didn’t know what he was asking, neither of them did. But Lesli needed her, and her own feelings about returning to Canada had to come far second to that. She wordlessly nodded her head in agreement, wishing she hadn’t seen that blaze of triumph in Nathan’s eyes before he turned away to assure Grant that the three of them would be returning to Canada.