Bryn bent her head. “It was complicated.” Aunt Beverly knew most of the story, though she had no clue that Bryn had harbored a crush on Trent. She sat down beside her aunt. “Mac hasn’t said so, but I can tell from his face that he thinks Allen is Jesse’s son. He practically melted, just like a doting granddad should.”
Beverly extended her feet, clad in sensible walking shoes, and stretched. “How long will we be staying?”
Panic welled in Bryn’s chest. Mac was back in fighting form. Once Allen had a chance to immerse himself in ranch life and the nurse declared him fully recovered, there would no longer be any reason for Bryn and her son to stay.
Which meant Bryn had to confront Trent with the letters. Soon.
And that was problematic, because Trent had reverted to the coolly reserved, impossible-to-read man she had first encountered in Mac’s sickroom when she arrived. She no longer detected hostility from him, but his utter lack of emotion was even worse.
He either refused to believe the evidence of his own eyes, or he had no interest in getting to know his nephew.
When Allen woke from a long nap, he was grumpy, but a juice box and a cookie soothed him. The nurse checked him over, and soon, Mac and Bryn were on horseback, with Allen—wearing a mask as a precaution—riding in front of his grandfather. They covered a lot of ground, and Mac’s transformation was miraculous. No longer an invalid, he was suddenly hale and hearty again, his skin a healthy color and his eyes sparkling with enthusiasm.
At one point when Allen was occupied playing with puppies on the front porch, Mac took Bryn’s arm. “We need to talk this evening.”
Bryn nodded solemnly, a lump in her throat. “Okay. After I get Allen settled for the night, I’ll come find you.”
“Trent will need to be there, also.”
She nodded again, but couldn’t think of a thing to say. Trent’s feelings on the subject of Jesse’s son were an unknown quantity.
Allen tired quickly. They whisked him back to the house and Beverly occupied him with a simple board game while Bryn talked to the nurse. The prognosis was promising. They would have to be vigilant about inhalers and the like, but there was a very good chance Allen would outgrow the worst of his asthma.
After dinner Allen was allowed to watch one of his favorite Disney DVDs, and then it was bedtime.
When Bryn entered Mac’s office a short while later, he was already there. And so was Trent. Mac greeted her with a smile. Trent barely noticed that she’d entered the room. He sat in front of the computer, his forehead creased in concentration as he studied the screen.
For a moment she flashed back to that dreadful day six years ago. But she was not here to plead her own case on this occasion. She was an advocate for her son. Bryn wanted nothing for herself from the Sinclairs unless it was freely given. Not money, not love, not anything.
Mac motioned for her to sit in the big, comfy armchair. It was a man’s chair, and it dwarfed her, but she complied. Still, Trent remained apart from the conversation. Mac reached in a drawer and pulled out a five-by-seven silver frame.
He handed it to Bryn. She stared at it, but it took a few moments for understanding to click. The birthday cake in the picture was decorated with five candles. And the gap-toothed birthday boy with the wide grin and the cowlick was Jesse.
He could have been Allen’s twin. Her throat tightened. “I don’t know what to say.”
Mac’s eyes glazed with wetness, but he coughed and tried to cover his emotion. “I think you know how sorry we are for what happened six years ago, but Trent and I want to make a formal apology and ask you to forgive us. Isn’t that right, Trent?”
Finally, Trent revolved and faced her, his expression unreadable. “Yes, of course.”
Bryn squirmed in the chair, bringing her knees up beside her in an effort to get comfortable. For years she had thought an apology was what she wanted, but now that the time had arrived, she realized that it changed nothing. “I appreciate the thought,” she said slowly. “But I understand why you did what you did, especially Trent. Jesse was the light of this family…the heart and soul. You all poured your love into him, and it would never have occurred to you that he was capable of such barefaced lies.”
Mac scowled. “Trent can be absolved on that account, but even back then I realized that Jesse’s sweetness and compliance was an act. I was trying to protect him and you, too, Bryn. But I handled it badly. If I had encouraged you to stay and had challenged Jesse to own up to the truth, I’m convinced that things would have gotten very ugly, very fast.”
“So you sent me to Beverly.”
“Your mother spoke highly of her older sister, and after you ran out of the study that day, I contacted Beverly to explain the situation. We both agreed that you needed to be with a woman during your pregnancy.” He came over to the chair and laid a hand on her shoulder. “But it wasn’t that I didn’t love you, darlin’. I never stopped loving you.”
Bryn reached up to stroke his hand. “Thank you, Mac. And I’m sorry I was such a brat and sent all your presents back.”
He grinned. “They’re in a closet in my bedroom. You’re welcome to them.”
Her eyebrows went up. “Ooh…an early Christmas. I might have to take you up on that.”
Mac sobered. “Allen is your son, and any decisions about his future are up to you. But I want you to know that I already have my lawyers preparing the paperwork to make him a legitimate heir to my estate.”
Bryn looked at Trent, begging him without words to say something, anything.
He was stoic, watchful.
Her stomach churned with tension. What did Trent’s silence mean? Was he angry? Would he challenge the will?”
She straightened. “I assume you’ll want to do DNA testing to establish the relationship between Jesse and Allen.”
Mac snorted. “Allen’s a mirror image of Jesse at that age. Any fool can see it. I don’t think we need a test.”
At long last, Trent spoke up. “It might be important to the boy one day to have the proof positive. So no one can ever doubt him.”
Bryn’s heart sank. Trent still wasn’t sure she was telling the truth. “Does this mean you don’t believe me, Trent?” She had to know.
Impatience darkened his features. “Of course I believe you, Bryn. Even before I saw the boy I believed you. But I deal in legalities, and it never hurts to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.”
She nibbled her lower lip, not at all certain what was going on inside his head. It seemed as though he couldn’t even bring himself to say Allen’s name. Was he angry that Bryn had borne Jesse’s child?
Mac raked a hand through his thick silver hair. “Today was a big day, and I’m almost as wiped out as the kid. I’ll say good night. See you both in the morning.”
His departure left an awkward silence in the room. Bryn had hoped to approach Trent in a better mood when she revealed the letters, but the time had run out. No wills could be notarized, nor big declarations made, until the truth about the letters from Etta came to light.
She took a deep breath. “Trent, there’s something I need to show you. Something important.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “What is it?”
“It will be easier if I show you. It will only take me a minute. Please wait here.”
His gaze followed her out of the room, and she went rapidly to extract the shoe box from its hiding place.
When she returned, Trent hadn’t moved. His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What is that?”
She held the box to her chest. “Not long after I arrived—the day you took your dad to the doctor and I was here alone—I realized that Jesse’s room had not been cleaned since his death. I did some laundry…straightened up the mess. And in the process, I found a box of letters written to him by Etta. As far as I can tell, they started arriving about the time he turned sixteen.”
Trent’s eyes blazed with emotion, and he took the box from her hands with a jerk. “Let me see that.”
&nb
sp; She hated showing them to him, knowing it would cause him pain. “They’re bad, Trent…wicked in cases…and cruel. Perhaps Jesse’s self-destructive behavior was being fueled by something none of us knew anything about.”
Trent reclaimed his original seat at the desk and opened the box. He riffled through the contents for maybe ten seconds before selecting an envelope and extracting the enclosed piece of notepaper. As he read it, his scowl blackened.
She could only imagine what he was thinking. She, herself, had been shocked and dismayed the first time she had read the letters. How much worse would it be for Trent, knowing that his own mother had been so intentionally mean-spirited?
No, it was actually worse than that. A child was supposed to be able to know that his parents loved him unconditionally. Jesse would have been better off thinking that his mother had left for parts unknown and was never coming back. Desertion was a terrible blow to a vulnerable boy. But in writing the series of notes designed to manipulate Jesse’s fragile emotions, Etta had moved from abandonment to deliberate harm.
Trent read every word of every letter. Bryn sat in silence as the clock ticked away the minutes. The house was quiet. Everyone else had gone to bed. Trent’s face was terrible to see. His shoulders slumped, his skin grayed, his lips tightened.
When he finished the last one and turned to face her, his eyes were damp. She had expected him to be angry…and perhaps that would come…later. But at this precise moment, he was in so much pain, he was unable to hide it, even from her.
He swallowed hard. “Why? Why would she do such a thing?”
Bryn clasped her hands in her lap, searching in vain for the right words to ease the torment etched on his face. “I don’t know, Trent. Maybe she thought that if she could worm her way back into Jesse’s life, Mac would let her come home.”
He dropped his head in his hands, elbows on his thighs. “Jesse must have been so confused, so torn. He adored Dad, but she insinuated—”
Trent had seen it, too. Bryn squeezed the arms of the chair. “Etta made it sound as if Mac wasn’t Jesse’s father.” The words scraped her throat raw. “And if that is true, then Allen is not a Sinclair. Not at all.”
Trent was so still, he worried her. She went to him and put her arms around his neck from behind. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, putting her cheek to his. “She was your mother. I know this hurts.”
He shrugged out of her embrace and got up to pace, his hands shoved in his pockets. She took the seat he had vacated and wrapped her arms around her waist, trying not to let him see how upset she was. Trent had enough to deal with at the moment without comforting her.
Intense emotion blasted the air in unseen waves. He ranged around the small space like an animal trapped in a cage. He paused finally and leaned against the wall, fatigue in every line of his posture. “Why didn’t you show them to me when you first found them?” he asked dully.
“I was afraid. Afraid of hurting Mac…hurting you.”
“Afraid of losing your quarter of the Sinclair fortune?”
Her actions hadn’t been blameless. She shouldn’t have been surprised by the question. But Trent’s question sliced through her composure and left her bleeding.
“Fair enough. I understand why it might look that way. But I was always going to show you these eventually. I had to. You deserved that from me. Because sometimes the only way to help with grief is to find answers.”
“Did you think about destroying the letters?”
“No,” she said bluntly. “I would have had to live with guilt for the rest of my life. I want Allen to be a Sinclair, but only if it’s true. If Jesse was not Mac’s son, we’ll deal with it somehow.”
“You didn’t show these to Mac.” It was a statement, not a question.
“No. He’s been so frail. I did wonder if maybe he knew about them already. They weren’t exactly hidden. The box fell off the top shelf in the closet when I was putting things away.”
“But Mac wouldn’t have snooped in Jesse’s room.”
“No, I guess not.”
They both fell silent.
When Trent didn’t say anything more, apparently lost in thought, she pressed him. “Do you think we should show them to him now? He’s like a new man since Allen came.”
Trent frowned. “True. But if he didn’t know about them, then the contents might give him another heart attack. And I don’t know if I can risk that.”
“We can’t let him change the will if he’s not Allen’s grandfather. It would be wrong…unethical…”
“But if bringing Allen into the family makes Mac happy, who are we to stand in the way?”
It was her turn to frown, her stomach knotted. “You made it clear six years ago that being a Sinclair is a bond all of you shared, and I didn’t. My growing up here meant nothing. So what would make you soften that stance now?”
Trent’s expression was inscrutable, his mouth a grim line. “Six years ago I hadn’t lost my baby brother to a drug addiction. Six years ago I hadn’t watched my father nearly die of a heart attack. Six years ago, I was a self-centered jackass.”
His unaccustomed humility made her uneasy. She counted on Trent to be a rock. She didn’t need his self-abnegation. Not now. Not with so much riding on the outcome of the next several days.
She glanced at her watch. The hours had flown. It was midnight—the witching hour. That dark moment when everything bad in life was magnified into a crushing burden. No longer able to sit still, she stood up and went to the window, her back to Trent.
Her breath fogged up the chilled glass. “So what do we do?” She wanted him to come to her, take her in his arms and tell her everything would be all right.
But as always, Trent was not a man to be easily understood or bent to a woman’s will. She sensed him watching her, but he remained where he was. “I have to think,” he said gruffly. “Too much is at stake to make any snap decisions. Will the boy take a nap tomorrow?”
The boy. Trent still couldn’t say her son’s name. “Yes.” She drew a heart in the condensation on the windowpane.
“Then let’s you and I take a ride in the afternoon. We’ll go to the far side of the meadow…where the creek cuts through the aspen. No one will interrupt us. We’ll talk and decide what to do.”
Trent was speaking matter-of-factly. Nothing in his tone or demeanor suggested a hint of passion. But unbidden, her mind jumped to memories of the night they’d shared in the cabin, and she felt her face heat. It might as well have been happening again at this very instant, so vivid was the recollection of each perfect minute.
Her moans and cries. His hoarse shouts. The rustle of the straw beneath the quilt. The snap and pop of the fire. The comforting drone of rain on the metal roof.
His touch lingered on her skin. She breathed in his crisp masculine scent. His hard body moved over her and in her. Soft sighs, ragged murmurs…pleasure so deep and swift-running she drowned in it.
She was glad they weren’t facing each other. Her face would have given her away. She stiffened her spine, drawing on every ounce of self-possession she could muster. She turned to look at him and almost flinched at the intensity of his gaze.
For one blazing instant she saw raw, naked hunger beyond comprehension in his narrow gaze. A predatory declaration of intent. But he blinked, and it was gone.
Had she imagined it? Did he still desire her, or had her actions in concealing the letters destroyed the fragile bond between them?
She bit her lower lip, unsure how to proceed.
Trent’s posture had relaxed somewhat. He leaned against the wall, looking tired and discouraged. Seeing him so vulnerable hurt her somewhere deep in her chest. He had taken on so much responsibility in the last few weeks. And her revelation about the letters, necessary though it was, had only added to the load he carried.
She toyed with the cord that controlled the wide-slatted wooden blinds, unable suddenly to meet his gaze. “I’ll be glad to go with you tomorrow,” she said quietly
. “To talk things through. But in the end, it has to be your decision, Trent. Mac is your father. You know what’s best for him and your family. I think he could help us get to the bottom of Etta’s correspondence and what it means. But if you think he can’t handle it, we’ll destroy them and no one will be the wiser.”
He ran a hand through his rumpled hair. “This is a hell of a mess. I need to call Gage and Sloan.”
“Can they come back so soon?”
“Gage is due here in a week anyway, because we all agreed to give the old man a month of our time to help get things at the ranch back up and running. And Sloan, well, I’m pretty sure he’d come back under the circumstances. They deserve to know the truth about Jesse’s problems, but I don’t know if we can wait to talk to Dad about the letters.”
It hit her suddenly that Trent was planning to leave…and soon. His month was up. He’d be going back to Denver. Without her. She’d known it was going to happen…eventually. But she had deliberately closed her mind to the thought of it. It hurt too much.
She went to him and laid her head on his chest, circling her arms around his waist. “I’m so sorry, Trent.”
His hand came up to stroke her hair. Beneath her cheek she felt his heart thundering like a freight train. “Go to bed,” he said softly. “Get some rest. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Twelve
Trent saddled his horse and headed out, following the route he and Bryn had taken to the cabin. But tonight Trent pushed his mount, skirting the edge of recklessness, trying to outrun the barrage of thoughts whirling in his brain. Every word of the damn letters was emblazoned in his memory. And it hurt. After all these years, his mother’s betrayal hurt.
And then there was Bryn. What was he going to do about Bryn? From the moment he’d set eyes on Allen, he’d been consumed by guilt. The kid was Jesse’s son, no question. Yet, six years ago they had thrown Bryn out in the street. Like she was some sort of sinner. And all along, Jesse had stood by and let it happen.
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