That Old Feeling

And yet he had the disconcerting feeling, when he was around Chelsea, that she wasn’t able to see real beauty, that her world had become so superficial it had blinded her to what was real and good and genuine.

Jake kissed his fingertips and touched the images of his daughters’ cheeks. His heart swelled within his chest, feeling as if it would break for loving them.

One year. Would that be enough to help his daughters discover what life was really all about? He wasn’t going to play matchmaker. That would be disgraceful and manipulative.

But he had successfully created and run one of the largest corporations in the U.S. He knew that sometimes bringing the correct combination of people together, then leaving them alone, made remarkable and magical things happen.

Surely, a man who knew power as intimately as he did could do something so simple as set it up so his daughters could make the discovery that he himself had just made?

In the end, only one thing mattered.

Love.

Long ago, he had loved a woman, truly. She had not been like Marcie. She had not even been particularly pretty. But she had glowed with a genuine sweetness that, at the time, he had not fully appreciated. Lately, he awoke at night remembering the feeling of her head pressed into his neck, her dark hair scattered across his chest. He felt a sense of shattering loss now that he had not felt then.

Then, so busy building Auto Kingdom, so driven, that when she had talked to him of the future, of babies, he had been impatient. Perhaps he had even been cruel. Certainly insensitive, preoccupied with “important” matters.

He must have been, because she had gone away.

“Fiona,” he called softly, and for a moment he could have sworn he felt her presence tingle across his spine, as warm and sweet as ever. It filled him with longing, which he impatiently brushed aside. He would not start acting old and feebleminded!

But he did realize that, save for his daughters, he might have missed love’s glory all together. Was it too late to return to them the gift they had given him? If he could help them find love…

The shock lifted from him, the haze he had been walking in since opening the doctor’s letter fell away. He became a man with a mission, a brilliant strategist who needed to get his most important affairs in order before he left this earth.

His most important affairs: Brandy, Jessie and Chelsea.

He returned to his desk. He would have to be crafty. He couldn’t summon them all at once. They were smart girls, every one of them. Together they would sniff out a plot to meddle in their lives as easily as his hounds caught the scent of a fox.

No, he had to help them one at a time, and hope and pray that the clock wouldn’t run out.

Aware that time was of the essence, he picked up the phone to his personal assistant. “James? Find Brandy. Get her home at once.”

He picked up the letter and envelope from his doctor, crushed them in his hand, and moved to the fireplace. He hurtled them in.

Too late, he realized he had inadvertently crumpled the two letters—the one still unopened—together. He watched the girlish handwriting emerge from under the other burning paper, curl and then turn brown before it disappeared into flame.

A chill went up and down his spine, even though he could not know that he would have found the content of that second letter as devastating as that of the first….

Chapter One

“I do not love Clint McPherson,” Brandy told herself tersely.

She had been repeating the phrase like a mantra since she’d left Kingsway, her father’s home in Southampton on Long Island.

She was now driving, alone, on an unfamiliar road that twisted and wound around the shores of Lake of the Woods, a body of water so enormous that it was shared by two Canadian provinces and the state of Minnesota.

Finding one small cabin on it was beginning to look like an impossible task.

A cabin that belonged to none other than Clint McPherson.

Of course, she could say she hadn’t been able to find it or him. End of mission. Who would really expect her to find a place on a map dotted with names like Minaki and Keewatin and Kenora? People who were under the illusion English was spoken in Canada should just have a look at this map!

What are you afraid of? an unwanted voice within her asked.

Brandgwen King had spent the majority of her life proving she was afraid of absolutely nothing, so the question irked. She was not afraid of Clint McPherson, or in love with him either! So, she’d had a girlhood crush on the man once. Big deal. It meant nothing. At twenty-six, she was all grown up now. The pain of how he had scorned her was long gone.

The point should be moot. The man in her life was Jason Morehead, her long time companion in adventure. Recently things had turned romantic, then unromantic, and now Jason was avidly begging her hand in marriage.

Why not marry him? He was wealthy, he was awesomely good-looking, he shared her taste for all things fast and furious.

“I don’t love him,” she said vehemently, and knew she was talking about Clint, even though she had been thinking of Jason, whom she was pretty sure she didn’t love either. With pure frustration, Brandy pounded on the steering wheel of the red Ferrari she was driving.

Her father had arranged for her to have a car through a dealership connection in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where her flight from New York had landed several hours ago. She had been given the keys, told to use the car for as long as she needed it, no charge. It was a fact of life, in her circles, that the more money you had, the less you needed it.

Of course, that nice man had probably thought the tomboy princess was going to be photographed in and around town in his car, not heading into some godforsaken wilderness.

“Love Clint McPherson?” she said out loud, with a derisive snort. “More like hate him.”

How had she gotten back to that when she’d been thinking, with determination, about the nice man who had lent her the nice car?

She sighed, annoyed with herself, and then surrendered. Hate? That seemed a bit strong for a man she had not seen for nearly seven years, not since he’d totally spoiled her nineteenth birthday party.

“Indifferent,” she decided, and then announced it out loud, putting down her window and calling it to the giant fir trees that lined the road. “I am indifferent to Clint McPherson.”

It rang of a lie. She knew it. The trees probably knew it, too. She put her window back up, took a twist in the road a trifle too quickly and slowed marginally.

How could her father have asked this of her? And why had she said yes?

She thought back to her meeting with her father, and the frown of concentration deepened on her face.

He had seemed old.

Of course, he was old. He’d always been old, even when she was young!

But he had never seemed old.

She was coming to see Clint because her father had asked her to. And maybe because she needed time to sort through all the implications of Jason’s unexpected announcement of his deep and undying love.

It was that simple. She had not agreed to this trip because she harbored some secret wish to see Clint again. She had come because her father asked things of her so rarely. He didn’t know it, but if he ever said to her that he wished she would not do some of the things that she did—like jumping out of airplanes or, more recently, off cliffs, buildings and bridges—then she would stop, just like that, no questions asked.

But he never asked.

Now he had asked something. He was old, yes, but beloved to her. The truth was Brandy would do anything for him, this gentle man who had loved her, and her sisters, so unconditionally, forever.

She thought back on the conversation she’d had with him. She had been distracted by the heat in the room, the fire blazing, so his request had really caught her up the side of the head.

“Brandy,” he’d said. “I need a favor. Clint—”