‘YOU do realise that Nathan is likely to string me up by the thumbs when he finds out I helped you get away from him like this?’ Grant grimaced as he stood in the airport with Brenna waiting for her plane to leave. ‘I’m supposed to be checking the hotel next door, not putting you on a plane that will take you away from him!’
‘Then we’d better stay out of sight, hadn’t we?’ They stood in the area near her boarding gate, waiting for her flight to be called.
Grant looked at her anxiously. ‘Are you sure you’re doing the right thing? Nathan isn’t going to take this lying down a second time, you know. He’ll come after you.’
‘I don’t intend staying long in London,’ she assured him softly. ‘I’ll be back.’
Grant sighed. ‘If he doesn’t find you first. The only reason he doesn’t realise you’re here now is that he’s expecting you to get the London flight tomorrow as you originally planned to do.’
Because she still had a seat booked on that flight. But she had also managed to get a seat on a flight to Toronto tonight, and would pick up her connecting flight to England from there. As she had expected when she left the ranch tonight, Nathan was looking for her at all the Calgary hotels and motels.
In the meantime Grant had driven her to the airport, although he wasn’t too happy about deceiving his brother in this way.
‘I have to go to London,’ she said determinedly.
‘Look, I know I was angry earlier, but I’ve apologised, and I didn’t really mean it about you leaving.’
‘Grant, I’m not going because of that,’ she assured him firmly. ‘I want you to know your apology meant a great deal to me.’
‘Yes. Well,’ he looked sheepish. ‘I should never have said those things to you. I’m sorry it’s messed things up again between you and Nathan.’
‘I don’t think they’ll ever be right between us,’ she sighed.
‘He’s angry right now,’ Grant conceded. ‘But once he calms down he’s going to love you the way that he always has. Hell, if he’d married you when he wanted to you would have beaten Lesli and me! But Dad persuaded him to let you go to college first before telling you how he felt about you.’
‘I didn’t know anything about that,’ she gasped, her eyes wide.
‘You would never have agreed to go to college if you had,’ Grant said sarcastically. ‘You were in love with Nathan even then, you would have married him if he had asked you.’
And if she had she would have spared herself all the pain of the last four years of denying her love for him. Time and distance had erected barriers between them that couldn’t be broken down.
‘Dad and Anna thought you should go to college first,’ Grant added.
‘Mum knew too?’ she frowned.
His mouth twisted. ‘I’m afraid my loving Lesli and Nathan loving you were foregone conclusions the moment we met. Oh, Nathan and I had to accept that you both had a lot of growing up to do first, but it was always the Jordan sisters for us,’ he admitted. ‘I couldn’t be as patient as Nathan and let Lesli go off to become a lawyer before we were married! We thought it was all going to work out according to plan last Easter when you and Nathan became so close. Nathan withdrew into himself when you didn’t come back,’ he shook his head at the memory. ‘None of us understood what had gone wrong, but Nathan said you’d made your decision and he wouldn’t come after you. Lesli said you refused to even talk about Nathan in your letters.’
Because her mind had been poisoned, systematically, and very effectively.
But she couldn’t tell Grant that, she needed time to take it in herself. And she had a couple of flights before her when she could do exactly that. Tomorrow she would face her enemy knowing who it was.
‘That’s all in the past now, Grant,’ Brenna dismissed briskly.
He shook his head. ‘Nathan is determined to find you this time.’
‘So that he can marry me,’ she nodded. ‘I’ll come back to the ranch, but I don’t think either of us are so self-destructive that we would marry each other!’
‘I accept that there are misunderstandings between the two of you, but—Damn,’ muttered Grant as her flight was called. ‘You’ll come back, Brenna?’ he urged.
She nodded. ‘But Nathan will never forgive me,’ she sighed. ‘And I certainly can’t say I blame him.’
‘Call us when you get home,’ Grant hugged her tightly. ‘Promise?’
She nodded slowly. ‘I’ll do that.’
He shrugged, knowing it was all he could expect for now, lifting his hand in final parting as she glanced back once before going through to get her flight.
The flight to Toronto seemed longer than it should have, the wait in the lounge while she waited for her connecting flight was even more so, and she was pale and hollow-eyed by the time she finally boarded the plane for London.
She took only a few minutes in her flat to shower and change, quickly checking her mail, dismissing most of it as unimportant, smiling as she read the brief card Carolyn had sent her from her weekend in New York, relieved when she read the letter from their publisher saying that story and drawings were great.
She gave her appearance only a cursory look before leaving, knowing she had matured considerably over the last twenty-four hours, that she had been disillusioned and hurt by one of the people she had loved.
He was sitting at his usual table, a paper propped up in front of him as he ate, a glass of water at his elbow, but she felt none of the warmth that usually engulfed her at seeing him again.
He wasn’t aware of her presence as she walked across the room to him, and for a moment, as she looked into his handsome face, she wondered if she hadn’t misjudged him. But then she knew that she hadn’t, blinking back the tears as she straightened challengingly.
‘Hello, Father.’
His hazel eyes registered his surprise before his face creased into a pleased smile. ‘Hello, love,’ he greeted her warmly. ‘This is a lovely surprise!’
‘Is it?’ she said bitterly, wondering if she had ever really known this man, or if it had only been that side of himself that he had wanted her to see. She thought it was the latter.
‘Of course, darling.’ Andrew Jordan stood up to hold back a chair for her, and Brenna dropped down into it woodenly. ‘All sorted out with Lesli now?’ he asked lightly.
Brenna looked at him with cold green eyes. He looked the same to her as he always had, a recklessly handsome man, the drink giving him lines of dissipation beside his eyes that he shouldn’t really have had at only forty-eight. Yes, he still looked the same, and yet she knew she would never feel the same about him again.
‘Are you going to be too disappointed if I say yes?’ she challenged, her eyes hard.
His eyes narrowed slightly, and it was the only change in his expression. ‘Don’t you have that the wrong way around, darling? I—’
‘Don’t call me that,’ she snapped. ‘And no, I’m sure I don’t have it at all wrong. Just tell me why you did it,’ she grated.
‘Why did I do what?’ he prevaricated in a puzzled voice.
Why had he deliberately set out to alienate her from the Wade family when they were reunited four years ago? Why had he made her mistrust Nathan’s love for her by telling her Nathan had to want her because of her share of the ranch, that a Wade always had a reason for everything he did? Why had he written that letter to Lesli trying to shatter the very foundation of her marriage? He certainly couldn’t have been motivated by love, of that she was certain.
She looked at him with dislike. ‘I must have been so easy to influence,’ she said disgustedly. ‘I was already slightly in awe of the love I had for Nathan when I came to England four years ago. I’d felt a different sort of awe for Patrick since the moment I met him, I was overwhelmed by the way he always went determinedly after what he wanted—’
‘The way he went after your mother,’ her father accused harshly. ‘We had a good marriage—’
‘You had a lousy marriage,’ she retorted. ‘Even I remember that you were rarely at home!’
‘Because I was forced out by Patrick Wade,’ he defended. ‘You know that was why I began to drink, to stay away from home.’
Brenna looked at him with narrowed eyes. ‘I know that you told me they had had an affair for years, but that nothing could come of it because of Patrick’s marriage to Christine, her ill health meaning he couldn’t divorce her,’ she accused.
‘Brenna, what’s making you act like this?’
‘I saw the letter you sent Lesli,’ she snarled. ‘“A Wade takes what he wants even if he has to use someone else to do it”,’ she quoted vehemently. ‘“Grant only married you to keep control of the ranch, without your share of it you would have been thrown out of his life”,’ she quoted again. ‘It was all too familiar, Father,’ she said scornfully. ‘It was almost word for word what you’ve been telling me over the years!’
‘I didn’t expect the stupid little fool to keep the letter,’ he rasped disgustedly.
‘You thought she would read it and then destroy it in her distress,’ Brenna guessed cynically. ‘But that the things you’d written would slowly eat away at her love for Grant until it was destroyed, the way my love for Nathan was so slowly eroded! But she didn’t destroy the letter, she kept it, and as soon as I read it I knew who was responsible for writing it!’
‘Okay,’ he challenged. ‘So I wrote my daughter a letter. There’s nothing wrong in trying to protect her!’
Oh, she had been taken in so easily by this man during the last four years, had believed him when he said Patrick was the reason he began drinking, had claimed that he had become an outcast in his own marriage after Patrick and her mother met and fell in love, that after her mother had divorced him he had tried to keep the two girls, but that Patrick Wade had claimed in court that he was a drunk and not responsible enough to be a father to his own children, that Patrick had paid money into a bank account for him knowing he would drink himself into the grave with it.
But after seeing what her father had tried to do to Lesli she could see how he had distorted things, that her mother had probably turned to Patrick because of her husband’s drinking, that her father had probably demanded that money as a pay-off for not pursuing his case to get custody of the girls. She had a feeling that this was a more accurate explanation of what had happened, and she felt ill at the way she had misjudged her mother and all the Wade men.
She gave a weary sigh. ‘What really happened all those years ago?’ she demanded.
‘I told you—’
‘This time I want the truth!’ Her eyes shot flames at him.
‘I’d be interested in hearing your account of that too!’
Brenna gasped at the sound of that coldly angry voice, turning to find Nathan seated at the table behind them. How long had he been sitting there? What was he doing here? How had he got here?
‘What the hell…?’ her father scowled at him as he stood up to occupy the seat between the two of them, his eyes narrowing as he fully took in the appearance of the younger man. ‘A Wade!’ he ground out with dislike.
Nathan nodded abruptly. ‘A dreaded Wade,’ he confirmed harshly, turning his attention to Brenna, clasping her hand as it moved restlessly on the table-top. ‘It’s going to be all right,’ he told her gently. ‘I understand now.’
Her avid gaze searched the harshness of his face. He had come after her, as Grant had said he would, but was it still in anger or in love? She couldn’t tell just from looking at him.
He squeezed her hand tightly, maintaining that contact as he turned coldly compelling eyes on the older man. ‘You were about to tell us what happened all those years ago…?’ he prompted contemptuously. ‘Your version of it, that is.’
Andrew Jordan flushed angrily. ‘This is none of your business, boy—’
‘The fact that it’s my family you’re maligning makes it my business, Jordan,’ Nathan bit out. ‘That Brenna is going to be my wife makes it doubly so,’ he added challengingly.
Her father rose to that challenge. ‘She isn’t going to marry a Wade,’ he snarled. ‘She—’
‘Brenna?’ Nathan promptly softly.
She couldn’t defy the command that told her to meet his gaze, almost burning at the fierceness of the love that shone there for her. Her fingers tightened convulsively about his; Grant had been right about this too; once Nathan had calmed down he had still loved her!
She turned to her father with glowing eyes. ‘I’m going to beg to marry this Wade,’ she told him fervently.
‘You…!’ Her father looked ready to explode. ‘He’s a Wade, Brenna,’ he spluttered.
‘I know,’ she nodded happily.
‘My God, you—’
‘And needless to say you will not be invited to the wedding,’ Nathan put in coldly.
‘Hell would have to freeze over before I—’
‘I said you weren’t invited!’ Nathan rasped. ‘And neither of us is going to beg, Brenna,’ he added softly. ‘We’re just going to get married as we would have done long ago without your father’s poisonous lies coming between us.’
‘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.
* * * * *