She threw a chunk of butter on to the heating griddle as a knock came on the front door. It struck her as funny that Ryder should still be politely knocking after what they had shared during the past two days and she was smiling when she opened the door.
“Craig!”
Brenna took one startled look at the dark-haired young man on her doorstep and then hurled herself delightedly into his arms. “Craig Llewellyn, did you come all the way up here to see me or are you here to mooch a few free days at Tahoe!” Laughing, she hugged her brother and stepped back. “You’re just in time for breakfast. Come on in.”
“Thanks, you know I’m always available for a free meal. How’s it going up here, Brenna? Having a good summer?” Craig stepped into the room, his arm draped around his sister’s shoulders. He had inherited the deep brown hair of all the Llewellyns and the gold in his amber eyes matched Brenna’s, but she had always privately thought him rather handsome into the bargain. The natural bias of a sister, she decided warmly, glancing up at him. His body had a young man’s lean ranginess, which reflected his interest in outdoor pursuits. The planes of his face were maturing into strong features. She already knew he didn’t lack for female companionship although he’d never gotten overly serious about anyone since the night of his high school prom when he’d come home convinced he was in love. The emotion, however, had faded within a week, Brenna remembered. She had been enormously thankful at the time.
“Is everything okay back in Berkeley? I thought you were taking some summer classes this year?”
“Everything’s fine,” Craig said slowly, taking a seat at the table while she puttered around the kitchen.
Brenna looked up at the careful steadiness in his words. “I’m glad to see you, Craig, but how is it you’re here during the week? I would have thought you wouldn’t have any free time until the weekend. I know how intensive summer classes usually are.”
He seemed to take a long breath. “Brenna, I came up here to talk to you about…about next year.”
She froze, straightening from the drawer where she had been looking for an extra setting of stainless. “Next year?”
“Brenna, I’m not going back to school in the fall.”
All the other crises in Brenna’s life were quickly pushed to a back burner. “Oh, Craig, no! You’re not going to drop out! Not now when you’re so close to finishing. You can’t!”
The breakfast preparations forgotten, she came across the room in a daze to stand at the opposite side of the table. Her face was a mask of anxiety and protest. Two pairs of amber eyes stared at each other in pain and determination.
“Brenna, please try to understand. I’ve had enough of school. I want…I want to go out and see a little of the world. I have an opportunity to get a job on a freighter next month.”
“A freighter!”
The young man’s mouth tightened at the disbelief in her voice, but he kept his own tone level and desperately reasonable. “It’s a unique opportunity and it’s something I want to do very badly. It feels right for me, Brenna, do you know what I mean? This past year at the university hasn’t had the feeling of being right. I’ve just been marking time…”
“Well, can’t you mark another year of it? Craig, your education is so important, you must see that! You can’t abandon it all now!” Her fingers curled into the wood as she clutched the chair in front of her. “It’s only another year.”
“And then I’ll have a degree for which I have no use. Brenna, I’m a history major, for God’s sake. Do you realize what that means? The only thing I can do with that is go on to graduate school and that’s the last thing I want!”
“It makes a hell of a lot more sense than shipping out on some damn freighter! Craig, that’s like a kid talking of running off to join the circus! It’s crazy!”
“It’s what I want,” he repeated quietly. Craig’s hand was coiled as tightly as Brenna’s. She read the determination in him and wanted to cry with frustration. To have come so far and then give it all up now. It was wrong. Very wrong. She had to convince him.
“Please, Craig,” she tried, keeping her voice under control with a tremendous effort. “There’s only one more year to go. After that you can decide if you really want to leave the academic life altogether. But at least you’ll have that degree to fall back on if you ever change your mind.”
“I can always go back to school to finish if that’s what I want to do…”
For the second morning in a row Brenna was so wrapped up in the tension generated by an early visitor that she failed to hear the front door of the cabin open. The first either she or Craig knew of Ryder’s presence was the sound of his dangerously laconic voice behind her brother.
“This is getting to be a habit, isn’t it? Finding strange men sitting down to have breakfast with you in the mornings is not one of my favorite ways to start a day.”
“Ryder!” Brenna looked up quickly, her eyes suddenly anxious for reasons other than the immediate crisis with Craig. “Wait, this is…”
But Craig was already getting to his feet to face the newcomer. He was apparently unruffled by the challenge in the older man’s words. There was a physical tension in him that Brenna read at once as preparation for battle, but when he spoke, Craig’s voice was calm and clear.
“I’m Craig Llewellyn.” He waited as Ryder assessed him with a cool silver glance. “Brenna is my sister.”
“Yes, with those eyes and that hair, you’d have to be related, wouldn’t you?” The moment of strain dissolved as Ryder stuck out his hand, his grin inviting Craig to forgive the brief male challenge that had threatened for a few seconds. “I’m Ryder Sterne.”
Craig accepted the proffered hand and accompanied the handshake with a searching, curious smile. “You obviously feel you have some right to be concerned with other men at Brenna’s breakfast table?”
“Craig Llewellyn!” Brenna gasped, horrified.
“Every right in the world,” Ryder was saying easily, sinking lithely into one of the chairs and smiling with brilliant casualness at an infuriated Brenna. “She belongs to me, you see.”
“Don’t listen to him, Craig,” Brenna instructed tightly as her brother reacted with only a mildly inquiring eyebrow. “He’s been in this…this teasing mood all morning.”
“All morning?” Craig glanced speculatively from Ryder to his sister, the question-behind-the-question there for all to hear.
Brenna, for the first time in her life, felt as if the tables had been somehow turned between her brother and herself. Suddenly it was her little brother who was questioning her actions. She knew the flush in her cheeks was not going to go unnoticed by either man at the breakfast table. Hurriedly Brenna got to her feet.
“Would either of you care for a cup of tea?” she demanded frostily.
“She’s still a little shy about the situation,” Ryder explained to Craig.
“Understandable.” Craig nodded, still eyeing his table mate. “The kind of men Brenna usually dates don’t generally go around claiming she belongs to them. They tend to talk a slightly different line.”
“I asked if either of you wanted any tea!”
“That will be fine, Brenna,” Ryder agreed soothingly. “I’m sure Craig will have some, too.” As she turned to put on the teakettle he asked Craig interestedly, “What kind of line do they usually talk?”
“You have to understand that there haven’t been all that many men in her life,” Craig answered reflectively.
“During the years I was in high school, she had her hands full making a home for me and getting her career started. It didn’t leave her much time for a social life. Lately the one or two men she’s introduced me to have been the kind who talked about career-oriented partnerships and having intellectual interests in common. They tended to worry a great deal about personal freedom in a relationship and not being stifled by such outmoded concepts as possessiveness. The kind of guys who would probably be involved in affairs with their graduate students si
x months after marrying Brenna.”
“Craig!” White-faced, Brenna whirled to confront her brother. “You’ve said enough. Please shut up!”
“I’m sorry, Brenna,” he apologized at once, sensing her genuine anger and embarrassment. “You’re already upset. I shouldn’t have teased you like that,” he sighed ruefully.
“Why are you already upset?” Ryder demanded as she began to pour pancake batter with an unsteady hand.
“It’s a private matter between Craig and myself,” she told him stiffly.
“If you’re this upset about it, you’d better tell me what’s going on,” he returned coolly. She could feel his narrowed, searching gaze on her taut profile but she refused to look at him.
“I don’t wish to talk about it,” she stated flatly.
Ryder pinned Craig matter-of-factly. “Are you in trouble?”
Craig straightened a little warily at the chilled softness in the older man’s voice. “No,” he said quickly. “No, I’m not in trouble. I’m…I’m dropping out of school. That’s what I came to tell Brenna.”
“And that’s why she’s upset? What are you going to do, Craig?”
Brenna set down the pitcher of pancake batter and stared in frozen silence as the two men faced each other. She had obviously been cut out of the conversation completely. Or perhaps she’d cut herself out when she’d refused to discuss the matter with Ryder.
Craig hesitated and then plunged earnestly into the reasons behind his decision. In a few minutes he had summed it up, and when he sat back in his chair, Brenna had the impression he was awaiting Ryder’s opinion as if it really mattered.
Ryder was silent for a while. He folded his elbows on the table and fixed a considering glance on Craig’s expectant features. “You’re absolutely certain this is what you want to do?”
“Absolutely certain,” Craig vowed feelingly. He didn’t look at Brenna, who stood taut and silent by the stove.
“What’s the name of the freighter line?”
Craig told him and Ryder nodded thoughtfully. “I’ve heard of it. They’ve been around a while. Do you know anything about working on a freighter?”
“Not much,” Craig admitted. “They said I’d be trained.”
Ryder’s mouth tilted upward sardonically. “I’m sure you will be. It’s hard work, Craig.”
“I know.”
“Have you ever been to sea at all?”
“No, not really.”
“Well,” Ryder suddenly announced calmly, “I’m sure you’ll find it very interesting. Remember you can always jump ship if the going gets too rough. It’s not like signing on with the military.”
Craig’s relief at Ryder’s apparent approval was blatantly obvious. “I’ll keep that in mind. Have you ever done anything like it yourself?”
Ryder paused and then said quietly, “I’ve done a little traveling the hard way. Seeing how the rest of the world functions is a very educational experience. Probably be worth five or ten years in graduate school!”
“That’s enough! Both of you!” Brenna’s fury boiled over as they shifted their glances to her tense face. “Craig, this is absolute nonsense and you know it. Ryder, you have no right to encourage him like that! This is a family matter between Craig and myself and I demand that you stay out of it!”
“Lady, you know anything that concerns you, concerns me. This is a decision Craig has to make for himself. He’s a man in addition to being your little brother. He has to make up his own mind about what he wants to do with his life.”
“You don’t understand!” she wailed, feeling at her wits’ end. “He’s only got one more year of school! He’s come this far, why can’t he finish? Ryder, what if something happens? What if he gets into trouble like the Gardners’ son did?”
Ryder looked at her. “If he gets into trouble I’ll go and get him out of it,” he stated with gentle simplicity.
Brenna stared at him helplessly for an instant longer as a wave of panic and defeat rolled over her. Then, without a word, she turned and walked out of the cabin, leaving the pancakes to burn on the griddle.
Chapter 8
No one pursued Brenna to try to soothe her or “talk sense into her,” and for that she was inordinately grateful. She needed time to think and to adjust. Her sense of responsibility toward her younger brother had existed for so many years, she realized, that it had become almost maternal in nature.
Her mouth twisted ruefully even as the tears stung her eyes. She stood, hands jammed into the front pockets of her jeans, and stared out at the calm surface of the lake. She had walked far enough to be out of sight of the cabins.
Craig was a man now, she told herself. A young man who lacked experience, it was true, but still a man. Ryder had been right to correct her when she had termed her brother a “kid” a few days ago. Even mothers had to let go when the time came, Brenna reminded herself. It was still more important that she, who was not his mother, step out of the responsibility role. After all, she wanted herself and Craig to be friends. It would be unhealthy and stupid to try to persist in the dominant older sister mode.
Funny, she’d never thought of herself as domineering, but when she’d heard herself yelling at her younger brother that he had to stay in college, there was no denying the fact that she had assumed too much responsibility, for too long.
Not that Craig was going to allow her to control his life, apparently, she added wryly. He had come up to Lake Tahoe to break the news to her, not to ask her advice in the matter.
She thought of the tale of the Gardners’ son, the one Ryder had been hired to rescue from a foreign prison, and shuddered. Working on a freighter, Craig was bound to encounter the rougher side of life. What if he wound up in real trouble? Her imagination worked overtime supplying possibilities.
Brenna put a halt to that line of thought with a firm mental decision. Craig was not Evan Gardner. He was not a mixed-up kid engaging in an act of rebellion. He was simply ready to start living his own life. And if he got in trouble Ryder would go and get him and bring him home.
Ryder. He had promised her that much and she could trust him. Brenna turned from the shore and started back toward the cabins.
The two men had apparently finished breakfast on their own, Brenna realized as she walked back into her cabin. The dishes had been piled in the sink and the griddle turned off. She was warming it back up again in preparation for her own meal when she glanced out the window and saw Ryder and Craig in front of the archery target.
For a few minutes she simply watched, ignoring the sizzling griddle as Ryder demonstrated shooting techniques to the younger man. Craig appeared fascinated and picked up the basics quickly. Even as she stared at the two men, Brenna slowly acknowledged that Craig and Ryder had a lot in common. There was a self-reliant masculine assurance and determination in both of them that would always set its own standards. They were the kind of men who lived by their own codes and for whom honor and integrity would always be crucial. The kind of men a woman could trust to the ends of the earth even when she became thoroughly annoyed or outraged by the host of macho characteristics that went along with their honor and integrity. Brenna turned away from the window and sat down to eat her pancakes.
It was Craig who came back to the cabin an hour or so later, alone. He looked concerned but very determined. Brenna glanced up from the essay on the dualism of mind and matter that she was attempting to read and smiled. The expression was a bit misty, perhaps even wistful, but it was a genuine smile and Craig relaxed visibly. His mouth lifted in response, and for a moment brother and sister stared at each other in understanding. Then Craig came forward and slipped into the chair across from Brenna.
“It’s going to be okay, Brenna, Ryder’s going to look after you for me,” he said gently.
Brenna, who hadn’t been thinking along those lines at all, blinked in astonishment. “What on earth are you talking about, Craig?”
He shrugged, sensing her sudden wariness. “Ryder and I had
a long talk and he let me know how things stand between the two of you. He’s going to take care of you. I won’t have to worry about your marrying some turkey like that Fielding character.”
Some of the wistful, sisterly gentleness faded from Brenna’s startled eyes. “Craig, I don’t know exactly what Ryder told you about our relationship, but I can assure you it is only temporary at best. Furthermore, it’s not important at the moment. You’re the one who is embarking on a new adventure and I…I want you to know that if this is what you really want to do, I’m behind you a hundred percent.”
He leaned forward and hugged her affectionately. “Thanks, Brenna. I know what it must have taken for you to come to that conclusion. I know how important the academic world has been to you, and it was only natural you’d feel more comfortable putting me in that world, too. But it’s not for me.”
“I think I’ve sensed that for the past couple of years. The problem has been that it was the only world I knew, the only one I could guide you toward,” she sighed.
“A man has to find out for himself where he belongs,” Craig announced very solemnly. “It’s time I went out and started looking.”
———
They spent the rest of the day together, talking quietly, sharing the closeness of being a brother and sister who had been alone together in the world for a long time. Ryder discreetly disappeared into his own cabin and didn’t reappear until Craig went over to invite him for dinner.
Brenna glanced up from the stuffed mushrooms she was removing from the oven and met his calm, inquiring gaze as he walked in the door behind Craig. Wordlessly he was asking her if she had accepted her brother’s decision.
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