“I don’t understand. I’ve been approaching the trustees for months with no satisfaction. How did you get hold of it?”
“Ellen gave it to us.”
She lifted her eyes and stared at him, gauging his reaction, no doubt, and he didn’t disappoint. The shock that hit him now was second only to the shock that had shaken him when he’d opened his front door to her just a few minutes ago.
“Ellen?”
She nodded. “It seems she bought it many years ago with money she’d saved from what my father had sent her. He paid her a lot to stay away and Lorenzo wouldn’t let her use it for their new life together. I think that’s why my father’s solicitors had your address for mailing—did she maybe have her mail redirected to your address?”
Realization dawned. Lorenzo and his parents had shared a letter box on the road and when Finn had built up here on the hill he hadn’t seen any point in changing what had worked for a couple of decades or more. He quickly explained it to Tamsyn.
“So that’s why my mother’s checks were coming here, except you wouldn’t have known that, would you?”
He shook his head. “We just leave each other’s mail in the box for whoever it was addressed to, to pick up. It’s always been as simple as that.”
“Ellen was determined to leave something for Ethan and me, something that had meaning to her and that she hoped would have meaning to us, as well. Ethan and I have only talked about this briefly, but we’re one hundred percent on the same page about it. We both feel it’s very important to honor her memory and in that vein, we want to gift the land to the respite center.”
“Are you sure? I mean, you know what getting that easement is going to mean to the overall development, but—”
“Finn, you misunderstand me. We’re not offering you the easement.”
Confusion muddled his already aching head. He supposed he deserved it if she wanted to deny him the easement, but then what had she been talking about?
“What do you mean, exactly?”
“We’re offering you everything, the entire acreage.”
His fingers tightened around the coffee mug. “Seriously? The whole thing? What’s the catch?”
“Just the one—well, two actually.”
He wasn’t entirely surprised. He sighed. “Okay, let’s get it over with. Give me your terms.”
“One, I want naming rights to the retreat.”
“No way. It already has a name and I’m not changing it.”
She leaned back in her chair and he watched as her face lit up, a smile pulling her lips into a gentle curve. “Oh-kay, I can live with that, but the other condition is nonnegotiable.”
“And it is?”
“That you’ll let me continue to work with you on the development.”
“Are you serious? You want to stay?”
“With you, if you’ll have me.”
He was on his feet and pulling her from her chair before his brain even fully assimilated what he was doing.
“If I’ll have you? You have to be kidding me. I thought I’d never see you again, that I’d destroyed every last chance I could have to keep you in my life.”
She lifted her hands and bracketed his face. “Finn, I know how hard it was for you, how torn you must have been toward the end. I’ve been so focused on just one thing, finding my mother, for so many months now and you were the person standing in the way. I thought that you couldn’t possibly love me because you didn’t simply hand over what I wanted. I never stopped to think, until just recently, what that was doing to you. How it pulled at your honor, at your heart. You didn’t just lose one mother, you’ve lost two, and I forgot all about that because all I wanted was mine. I couldn’t see all the ways you showed me you loved me since I was so focused on the one thing you wouldn’t do. I was single-minded and selfish and I’m sorry.”
“No,” he protested. “What Lorenzo and I did was wrong. I’m the one who’s sorry, Tamsyn, you’ll never know how sorry.”
“Shh,” she said, laying a finger across his lips. “We have to let it go now. Put it in the past where it belongs. We need to honor the women who brought us here, who brought us to this, to each other.”
“You can forgive me?”
“I already have, Finn. Sure, I wish things could have been different, but no one can change the past. The only thing we can do is move forward.”
She lifted her face to his, her lips a tender entreaty, one he accepted with every beat of his heart.
When they broke apart he shook his head. “I can’t believe I was so wrong about you right from the start. I’ve been a total idiot.”
“What do you mean?”
“From when I was about fifteen I started keeping tabs on you and your brother, on your family’s lifestyle. It used to make me mad to see you guys had so much, that your life was so easy, when Ellen had so little and worked so hard. You all seemed so happy without her. I allowed those impressions, formed when I was too young to fully understand, to color how I treated you when you arrived here.”
“You were pretty cold, but you’ve thawed out nicely,” Tamsyn said with a forgiving smile he really didn’t deserve.
“You thawed me out. You made me see the real you, the beautiful woman inside that perfect exterior. It’s why I want to hold on to naming rights for the center.”
“You really want to call it Tamsyn’s Place?”
“You know about that?”
“Alexis sent me a link to the clip on TV.”
He smiled. Of course she had. “Are you okay with that?”
“Well, I would have preferred to see it named after Ellen, but maybe we can do that with the next one.”
“I like the sound of that. Tamsyn, I want our future to be together, planning everything together, no secrets, no lies.”
“Me, too,” she answered softly.
“Then, will you marry me? Will you have a family and grow old with me?”
“Oh, Finn, yes! I will.”
* * *
Much later, after they’d sealed their reunion with a wealth of physical promises and lay, replete, in one another’s arms, Tamsyn reflected on how she finally felt as though she’d come home. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day and while she would miss her family she knew she was exactly where she was meant to be. With this man, for the rest of her life.
Thinking of Christmas reminded her of the gift Finn had thrust at her after the funeral when she’d left for Auckland. She hadn’t gotten around to unwrapping it, yet hadn’t quite been able to bring herself to discard it, either.
“Finn? What was the parcel you gave me the other day?”
“You didn’t open it?”
“Not yet.”
“Then why don’t you?” he suggested.
She slipped from the bed and pulled on his T-shirt and went outside to her latest rental and dragged her case from the trunk. Bringing it upstairs to the bedroom, she unzipped it and burrowed through her clothes to where she’d stashed the package, cushioned in the center.
Sitting cross-legged on the bed beside him, she ripped away the paper, her eyes filling with tears as she saw the image of her mother looking back at her.
“Oh, Finn. She was so beautiful.”
“Inside and out, just like you,” he replied, dropping a kiss on her shoulder.
“But this picture, it must have been special to you. Why did you give it to me?”
“Because you deserved to have something of her. Something you could keep forever to remember her by and something that I know she, too, was proud of.”
Tamsyn carefully placed the picture on the bedside cabinet and turned to the man beside her. If she’d had any doubts whatsoever they were all banished now. She’d made the right choice in coming back to Finn, in coming home. Finall
y she could be secure in the knowledge that, for the first time in her life, she was finally where she truly belonged.
In his arms, in his life, and ahead of all others in his heart. Always.
* * * * *
If you loved Tamsyn’s story, don’t miss a single novel in THE MASTER VINTNERS, a series from USA TODAY bestselling author Yvonne Lindsay:
THE WAYWARD SON
A FORBIDDEN AFFAIR
ONE SECRET NIGHT
All available now, from Harlequin Desire!
Keep reading for an excerpt from SECOND-CHANCE SEDUCTION by Kate Carlisle.
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One
“You need a woman.”
Connor MacLaren stopped reading the business agreement he was working on and glanced up. His older brother Ian stood blocking his office doorway.
“What’d you say?” Connor asked. He couldn’t have heard him correctly.
“A woman,” Ian repeated slowly. “You need one.”
“Well, sure,” Connor said agreeably. “Who doesn’t? But—”
“And you’re going to have to buy a new suit, maybe two,” his brother Jake said as he strolled into his office.
Ian followed Jake across the wide space and they took the two visitors’ chairs facing Connor.
Connor’s gaze shifted from one brother to the other. “What are you two? The social police?”
Ian shook his head in disgust. “We just got off the phone with Jonas Wellstone’s son, Paul. We set up a meeting with us and the old man during the festival.”
Connor frowned at the two of them. “And for this you expect me to buy a new suit? You’ve got to be kidding.”
“We’re not kidding,” Ian said, then stood as if that was the end of the discussion.
“Wait a minute,” Connor insisted. “Let’s get serious. The festival is all about beer. Drinking beer, making beer, beer-battered everything. This is not a ballet recital we’re going to.”
“That’s not the point,” Ian began.
“You’re right,” Connor persisted. “The point is that I’ve never worn a suit and tie to a beer festival and I’m not about to start now. Hell, nobody would even recognize me in a suit.”
That much was true. Connor was far more identifiable in his signature look of faded jeans, ancient fisherman’s sweater and rugged hiking boots than in one of those five-thousand-dollar power suits his two brothers were inclined to wear on a daily basis.
Frankly, this was why he preferred to work at MacLaren Brewery, located in the rugged back hills of Marin County, thirty miles north and a million virtual light years away from MacLaren Corporation in the heart of San Francisco’s financial district. The brothers had grown up running wild through those hills. That’s where they had built their first home brewery, in the barn behind their mom’s house.
Over the past ten years, the company had grown into a multinational corporation with offices in ten countries. But the heart and soul of MacLaren Brewery still thrived in those hills, and Connor was in charge of it all: not just the brewery, but also the surrounding farmland, the dairy, the fishery, the vineyards and the brew pub in town.
And he wasn’t about to wear a freaking business suit while he did it.
Meanwhile his older brothers, Jake, the CEO, and Ian, the marketing guru, took care of wheeling and dealing at their corporate headquarters in San Francisco. They both lived in the city and loved the fast pace. Connor, on the other hand, avoided the frantic pace of the city whenever possible. He only ventured into headquarters on days like this one because his brothers demanded his presence at the company’s board meetings once a month. Even then, he wore his standard outfit of jeans, work shirt and boots. He’d be damned if he’d put on a monkey suit just to discuss stock options and expansion deals with his brothers.
Connor glanced at the two men, who were closer to him than any two people on the planet. “What made you think I would ever dress up for the Autumn Brew Festival? I’d be laughed off the convention floor.”
True, the festival had become a very important venue for the fast-growing, multibillion-dollar beer production industry. In the past few years it had expanded to become the largest gathering of its type in the world. The powers that be had even changed the name of the event to reflect its importance. It was now called the International Brewery Convention, but Connor and his brothers still called it the festival because more than anything else, people showed up to have a good time.
It was a point of pride that the festival was held annually in their hometown at the Point Cairn Convention Center next to the picturesque marina and harbor. It was one of the biggest draws of the year, and the MacLaren men had done their best to ensure that it continued to be a not-to-be-missed event on the calendars of beer makers and breweries around the world.
But that still didn’t mean Connor would dress up for it. What part of “good time” did his brothers not understand? The words did not equate with “suit and tie” in anybody’s dictionary.
Jake gazed at him with a look of infinite patience. As the oldest of the three, he had perfected the look. “Wellstone’s scheduled a dinner meeting with all of us and his entire family. And the old man likes his people to dress for dinner.”
“Oh, come on,” Connor said, nudging his chair back from the desk. “We’re buying out their company. They’re dying to get their hands on our money so the old man can retire to his walnut farm and enjoy his last days in peace and quiet, surrounded by nuts. Why would he care one way or another how we dress for dinner?”
“Because he just does,” Jake explained helpfully. “His son, Paul, warned us that if Jonas doesn’t get a warm and cozy, old-fashioned family feeling from the three of us at dinner, there’s a good chance he could back out of the deal.”
“That’s a dumb way to do business.”
“I agree,” Jake said. “But if it means snagging this deal, I’ll wear a freaking pink tuxedo.”
Connor frowned. “Do you honestly think Jonas would back out of the deal over something so minor?”
Ian leaned forward and lowered his voice. “It happened to Terry Schmidt.”
“Schmidt tried to buy Wellstone?” Connor peered at Jake. “Why didn’t we know that?”
“Because Wellstone insists on complete confidentiality among his people,” Jake said.
“I can appreciate that.”
“And Paul wants it to stay that way,” Jake continued, “so keep that news under your hat. He only brought up the Schmidt situation because he doesn’t want another deal to fail. He wants our offer to go through, but it all depends on us putting on a good show for Jonas. Apparently the old man’s a stickler.”
Ian added, “Terry blew the deal by wearing khakis and a sweater to dinner with the old m
an.”
“Khakis?” Shocked, Connor fell back in his chair. “Why, that sociopath. No wonder they kicked him to the curb.”
Ian snickered, but just as quickly turned sober. “Jonas Wellstone is definitely old school. He’s very conservative and very anxious that the people who take over his company have the same family values that he has always stood for.”
“He should’ve gone into the milk shake business,” Connor muttered.
“Yeah, maybe,” Jake said. “But look, he’s not about to change, so let’s play the game his way and get the old man firmly on our side. I want this deal to go through.”
Connor’s eyes narrowed in reflection. “Believe me, I want that, too.” Wellstone Corporation was a perfect fit for MacLaren, he mused. Jonas Wellstone had started his brewery fifty years ago, decades before the MacLarens came along. He had been at the front of the line when lucrative markets in Asia and Micronesia first began to open up. Yes, the MacLarens had done incredibly well for themselves, but they had to admit they were still playing catch-up to the older, more established companies. Last year, the brothers had set a goal of acquiring a strong foothold in those emerging territories. And here they were, less than a year later, being presented with the opportunity to purchase Wellstone.
So if all it took to attain their objective were some spiffy new clothes, the decision was an easy one. Connor would go shopping this afternoon.
“Okay, you guys win.” He held up his hands in mock surrender. “I’ll buy a damn suit.”
“I’ll go with you,” Jake said, adjusting the cuffs on his tailor-made shirt. “I don’t trust your taste.”
The hand gesture Connor flipped his brother was crude but to the point. “This is the reason I hate coming into the big city. I get nothing but grief from you two wheeler-dealers.”
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