‘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.’
‘I thought he was very sexy—’
‘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.’
‘Why?’
‘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 ski
ttish—’
‘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 ca
n’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!’
The Wade Dynasty Page 5