Joined By Marriage

She felt the embarrassed colour enter her cheeks after this outburst, realising instantly that she owed him an apology; after all, he hadn’t needed to bother with her at all, he could just have left her for the receptionist to deal with—which she was sure, without this man as an audience, the other woman was more than capable of doing!

‘I’m sorry, Mr Nathan.’ She sat back with a heavy sigh. ‘It’s just that letters like that one—’ she indicated the letter in front of him ‘—arriving in the post without warning, can be quite unnerving.’

‘I’m sure they can,’ he returned smoothly. ‘But could I just set the record straight on one thing before we continue this conversation?’

She looked across at him expectantly. ‘Yes?’

He gave a small inclination of his head, the late spring sunlight coming through the window behind him showing a slight touch of red in the darkness. ‘My name is not Mr Nathan.’

‘But it’s what the receptionist just called you,’ Brianna protested confusedly.

His mouth quirked, not quite into a smile, but into something—in this man’s case, Brianna felt—that came very close to it. ‘It’s what she has always called me.’

‘But I don’t see why, if it isn’t your name.’ Brianna frowned. ‘You—’

‘If you will just allow me to finish?’ the man continued imperiously. ‘Are you usually this—impetuous, Miss Gibson?’ He frowned at her darkly, as if she were a species he very rarely came into contact with! And she didn’t mean women; she was sure there was a wife in the background somewhere, someone as stiffly formal and haughty as he was. He obviously just wasn’t used to someone as bluntly forthright as she was.

Well, that was okay, because she had never met anyone quite this stuffy and arrogant before, either. It wasn’t even as if he was that old; possibly he was in his mid-thirties, and yet he talked and behaved like someone so much older than that. What he really needed was to—

Never mind what he needed, she impatiently admonished herself; she would never see him again after today, anyway. She wasn’t going to get anything out of him at all if she didn’t curb her impetuosity a little.

‘Probably,’ she conceded with a grimace. ‘Otherwise I wouldn’t have come here today at all, would I?’ she added with a shrug.

His face showed his irritation with her levity. ‘As I was saying...’

‘Before you were so rudely interrupted!’ Brianna couldn’t control the facetious mental ending to his statement—or the smile that threatened to curve her lips and bring a sparkle to the deep blue of her eyes. The first she stifled by biting her bottom lip, the latter she could do nothing about, although she did make an effort to try and look avidly interested in what he was saying. If only he weren’t so pompous...!

‘Hazel calls me Mr Nathan because she has known me most of my life,’ he bit out tersely, as if he guessed some of her amusement was at his expense.

‘That sounds fair enough—except you’ve just told me it isn’t your name!’ Brianna shook her head frustratedly.

Maybe it was her, or maybe what he was saying had lost something in the translation—because for all she understood his explanation he might as well have been talking a foreign language! But if his name wasn’t Mr Nathan, why on earth did the receptionist persist in calling him that?

He drew in a harshly controlling breath, studying her with narrowed eyes behind his dark-rimmed lenses, as if he sensed only too well that she was laughing at him.

Which she wasn’t. Well, not really. She was sure she was the one missing something here; this man was far too sensible ever to talk the load of nonsense this conversation had so far seemed to her to be. No doubt he would explain properly in a minute, and all would be understood. She hoped...

‘My name is Nathan.’ He spoke slowly now, as if he were talking to a slightly backward child. ‘And, as Hazel has worked on Reception here for the last thirty years, she has known me since I began visiting these offices when I was five years old.’

Brianna put her head back, looking puzzled. She still didn’t understand, but she was beginning to think it wasn’t her fault, after all...

‘You’ve been a lawyer since you were five years old...?’ she said in slow disbelief.

He scowled. ‘You know, if I didn’t think your bewilderment was genuine—’

‘Oh, but I can assure you it is,’ she hastily replied, not liking the dark clouds she could see appearing over his furrowed brow.

God, this man must be daunting in a court-room. But not since he was five years old... She didn’t even know what had made her make such a ridiculous remark. A slight touch of hysteria probably. But not because of him; it was this situation over the letter that had her so wound up.

‘Of course you haven’t been a lawyer since you were five.’ She dismissed her own stupidity. ‘I’m just a little confused.’

He gave her a look that clearly said he thought she was very confused!

He absently moved the letter around the top of his desk before replying. ‘I was visiting my father at these offices, Miss Gibson,’ he bit out in those coldly clipped tones that were rapidly becoming familiar to her. ‘He was—and still is—a lawyer.’

‘Oh.’ Brianna nodded, sure there was more to come. Although she was getting a little tired of waiting. They hadn’t even really begun talking about her letter yet. Were all lawyers this pedantic?

‘My first name is Nathan,’ he finally explained. ‘And since I came to work here Hazel has always called me Mr Nathan, simply as a sign of respect, I suppose. Although, in the circumstances, it’s probably less confusing for her too,’ he added thoughtfully, his icy blue gaze boring into Brianna as he looked at her steadily. ‘My name is Nathan Landris, Miss Gibson,’ he bit out.

At last! Nathan Landris. One of the partners... ‘Which Landris are you—Landris or Landris?’ She frowned.

‘Neither,’ he returned dryly. ‘My father is Landris, and my uncle James was Landris—but he died ten years ago. And my uncle Roger is Davis.’

How extremely confusing. ‘So you aren’t Landris or Landris?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ he confirmed. ‘In five years’ time—’

‘When you’re forty?’ Brianna quickly and instinctively calculated, still trying to come to terms with who this man was. Oh, she had decided very quickly that he couldn’t be anything as lowly as a clerk—this office he had brought her into had only confirmed that—but she certainly hadn’t realised he was the son of one of the partners in the firm. No wonder Hazel called him Mr Nathan!

‘When I’m forty,’ he echoed curtly, again watching her with narrowed eyes, as if uncertain whether or not she was laughing at him.

Which she wasn’t now. Okay, so he was pompous, obviously took himself—and everything else—far too seriously, but he was also the son of one of the partners of this prestigious firm; getting as far as talking to him had to be better than being turned away until ‘possibly some time next week’ by the ever-vigilant Hazel.

‘Then I’ll be made into a full partner,’ he informed her crisply. ‘And we will become Landris, Landris, Davis—’

‘And Landris,’ Brianna finished knowingly.

What else? They couldn’t possibly remain just Landris, Landris, and Davis—oh, no, the fourth partner—despite the fact that one of their number was dead, and his nephew’s surname was the same—would have to be officially added to the partnership.

It all sounded positively feudal to Brianna. But then, other aspects of this law firm seemed slightly out of time, anyway, this man opposite her along with them... She could picture him now, as a feudal overlord, dispensing law and wisdom with an arrogant flick of his wrist or a raising of his eyebrow. He—

‘Have you ever thought of taking up law yourself, Miss Gibson?’

His speculative voice interrupted her wandering thoughts and Brianna focused on him with effort, back in the here and now, having been in the middle of imagining him riding across his lands on a magnificent black stallion, his hair neither as short nor as controlled as it was now, dressed in magnificent robes of blue and gold. Ridiculous. In reality, he was a stiff, unyielding man, full of his own importance.

And at this moment he was looking at her with cold impatience as he waited for her response to his remark!

‘Sorry?’ She blinked long dark lashes.

‘The law, Miss Gibson,’ he drawled derisively. ‘I have a feeling you would make a formidable lawyer. I have never met you before today—in fact we have only been acquainted for ten minutes or so—and yet I seem to have talked to you of my childhood, my age, and my intention of being a partner here by the time I’m forty.’ He shook his head in denial of such intimacy with a relative stranger. ‘But, at the same time, I know little or nothing about you. Quite remarkable, Miss Gibson,’ he added.

‘Brianna,’ she supplied absently, grinning as he raised his brows questioningly. ‘As we seem to have become such confidantes,’ she added teasingly, ‘you may as well call me Brianna.’

‘Your name is Brianna?’ he said slowly.

Almost disbelievingly, it seemed to her. ‘Of course it’s my name,’ she snapped. ‘I would hardly have said so otherwise, now would I?’ Not everyone suffered such confusion over their name as this man did!

‘I didn’t mean to sound offensive, Miss—Brianna—’