Joined By Marriage

She stood up, picking up her handbag. ‘I’ll leave the two of you to sort out your differences. And then, when you have, perhaps you would like to send me a letter stating exactly what all this is about, Mr Landris,’ she suggested to the older man. After all, he was the one who had just claimed she was a client! ‘I really don’t have any more time to waste today,’ she added.

‘You were right, Nathan.’ Peter Landris spoke quietly as she crossed the room. ‘Brianna is as wilful as her mother.’

Brianna stopped, feeling the colour drain from her cheeks as she slowly turned to face him. ‘My mother?’ she repeated slowly, her lips suddenly feeling so stiff she could barely speak. ‘You know my mother?’

‘Yes. Nathan, help Brianna back to her chair before she falls down,’ Peter Landris added calmly, as she swayed on her feet.

She was barely aware of the arm about her waist, of being guided back to the chair she had so recently vacated, of sitting down. She could only stare at Peter Landris with suddenly very dark blue eyes. ‘You’re talking about my biological mother?’ she asked weakly. Having her father suspect that this was the reason for the letters was one thing; it was quite another for it to turn out to be true!

‘Of course,’ Peter Landris answered briskly, taking a file out of the top drawer of his desk. ‘I would—’

‘Father!’ Nathan barked tensely. ‘There are papers to see first, to be verified—’

‘Nathan, I will not tell you again!’ his father returned forcefully, eyes glacially blue. ‘Do not attempt to tell me how to do my job. I am well aware of what has to be done. But Rebecca was my client, and now that makes Brianna so.’

‘Rebecca is my mother?’ Brianna wasn’t in the least interested in the argument between father and son; in fact the more she heard the less sure she was that she wanted to know about any of it. Her mother had been Jean Gibson—she was the person who had cared for Brianna as a helpless baby, who had cuddled her when she hurt herself, who had wept for her on the day she began school, helped to ease the pain of her first broken love affair, sat and talked to her in the night when she panicked about her exams, had been pleased for her when she secured the job she wanted. Jean was her mother. She didn’t even want to know that this other woman’s name was Rebecca—suddenly felt as if the life she had always known was being invaded, violated...

‘She was,’ Peter Landris confirmed in a gentle voice.

Brianna swallowed hard. Was...? ‘She’s dead?’

‘I’m afraid so, my dear,’ he said. ‘Rebecca—’

‘I don’t want to know!’ she cut in emotionally. And she didn’t. She had wanted this meeting, the reason for it, out of the way, so that she could forget about it and get on with her life. But now she had a feeling that once she had heard the truth her life would be changed for ever. She didn’t want that.

‘I don’t want to know,’ she repeated flatly as the two men looked at her. ‘Whoever this woman Rebecca was, whatever she was, she most certainly was not my mother.’ She felt no loss at knowing of Rebecca’s death. How could she? She had never known the lady. And now that Rebecca was dead, there was no reason for her to know that, either. ‘Whatever this is about,’ she told Peter tersely, ‘I want no part of it.’

‘It isn’t as easy at that, Brianna—’

‘It most certainly is,’ she interrupted the older man firmly. ‘My mother abandoned me, gave me up; I now have the right to do the same where she’s concerned.’ She looked at him challengingly.

‘You’re oversimplifying things, Brianna—’

‘I most certainly am not,’ she replied strongly, feeling her self-determination returning rapidly. She had been thrown for a few minutes, but now she was in control again. ‘If a parent can choose to abandon a child, then that child can choose to abandon the parent.’

‘Nathan, will you either come into the room or get out of it.’ Peter Landris spoke sharply to his son as a young woman walked by along the corridor outside. ‘This is an intensely personal matter; I do not want all and sundry to hear about it!’

‘I’m well aware of how private it is,’ Nathan told him icily, moving further into the room and shutting the door firmly behind him.

His father looked at him intently. ‘Exactly what do you mean by that remark?’

The younger man gave him a scathing glance. ‘Exactly what I said,’ he snapped back, before turning his attention to Brianna. ‘I think you should listen to my father, Brianna,’ he told her harshly. ‘You stand to be a very wealthy woman at the end of this conversation!’

She gave him a pitying look. He was neither Clark Kent nor Superman; he couldn’t even see that wealth didn’t interest her in the least. Maybe it was because he obviously came from such a well-off family himself that he just couldn’t imagine anyone being happy without money!

‘I’m not interested,’ she told the elder Landris firmly. ‘I have a family already; I don’t need to know of another one.’

He raised dark brows; she was clearly adamant. ‘I understand your adoptive mother is dead.’

‘What does that have to do with this?’ Brianna bristled indignantly, eyes sparkling angrily, not even interested as to how he knew of Jean’s death. ‘It appears that both my adoptive mother and my biological mother are dead—I can assure you I know which one I mourn! This other woman—Rebecca—means nothing to me. And neither does any money she may have left me. She didn’t care about me enough over the last twenty-one years to seek me out, so I have no intention of her recent death intruding on my life now!’ She was breathing hard in her agitation.

‘But your mother didn’t die recently, Brianna,’ Peter Landris told her quietly. ‘She died twenty-one years ago.’

Brianna blinked at him, totally speechless. She had never really thought of her real mother as she grew up, had been totally secure in the love of her adoptive parents. Even once she had reached adulthood it had never occurred to her to seek out the woman who had given birth to her. She had accepted that the woman probably had—probably still had—a life that wouldn’t welcome the daughter she had given birth to years ago. Somehow she had never imagined that her biological mother might have died so long ago...

She moistened her lips. ‘How did she die?’

‘The cause of death on the death certificate?’ Peter Landris returned hardly.

She frowned at him, at the way he had voiced the question. She knew all about death certificates—as a doctor, sadly her father had occasionally had to sign them—but from the way Peter Landris spoke there was clearly some doubt about her mother’s—Rebecca’s...

‘It’s usually pretty accurate,’ she said flatly.

‘Not in this case,’ Peter Landris countered. ‘The last I heard, they didn’t list a broken heart as the cause of death,’ he added bitterly.

‘Father, you’re too close to this,’ Nathan put in, stepping forward. ‘Too involved. Worse than that, you’re alarming Brianna.’

She wasn’t alarmed; she was confused. Just exactly when had her mother died twenty-one years ago? Obviously some time soon after Brianna’s arrival. But if she had died because of the birth of her baby, why hadn’t Brianna been taken in by relatives rather than put up for adoption. Who were her real family?

Peter Landris drew in a deeply controlling breath. ‘I’m sorry, Brianna. I just—It’s the waste!’ He shook his head, his face pale. ‘I was never able to accept the ending of that beautiful life. The utter futility of it all. You’re right, Nathan, I thought I could deal with this, but I—’ He gave a shaky sigh. ‘Seeing Brianna has brought it all back to me.’ He looked across the desk at her. ‘You look so much like—God, it’s unnerving!’

She looked like her mother... Like Rebecca...? And, from this man’s behaviour now, he had known her real mother very well...

Her mouth tightened. ‘Who was my father?’

Peter Landris grimaced. ‘Your mother refused to name your father.’

Brianna shook her head. ‘I find it hard to believe that no one knew.’

‘You wouldn’t if you’d known Giles,’ Peter Landris rasped with feeling.

‘Who was Giles?’ She sighed her impatience with this disjointed conversation. This was becoming more and more complicated by the moment!

‘Your grandfather. Rebecca’s father,’ Nathan told her without hesitation. ‘Rebecca was terrified of him.’

Brianna turned to him with shadowed blue eyes. ‘You knew my mother too?’ Twenty-one years ago Nathan would only have been fourteen!

‘I did,’ he confirmed curtly. ‘She was four years older than me, but—’

‘My mother—Rebecca,’ she corrected herself, ‘was only eighteen when she gave birth to me?’ No more than a child herself! ‘And when she died...’ Brianna realised dazedly. She had been far too young to die. And yet Rebecca had loved, and apparently lost, and had given birth to Brianna in those brief eighteen years...

‘I’m afraid this interview isn’t being carried out very professionally.’ Nathan gave his father a reproving look. ‘Ordinarily, in these circumstances, we would ask you for documentary proof of who you are. And then—’

‘She’s Rebecca’s daughter.’ Peter Landris was staring at her now as if he was seeing a ghost. ‘Without a shadow of a doubt!’

‘I agree with you,’ Nathan concurred. ‘I knew that the moment I saw her in Reception yesterday.’

‘You could have told me!’ Brianna snapped angrily. ‘Instead of which you carried out some sort of elaborate delaying charade. This all happened twenty-one years ago, isn’t that delay enough?’ she bit out accusingly, looking from one man to the other to emphasise the point that she was tired of this further prevarication. She wanted the facts, and she wanted them now. There would be time later, once she was alone, to sit and brood over the significance—or otherwise!—of them to her life now. ‘Nathan?’ she pressed. ‘You seem to know all about this, so you tell me what happened all those years ago!’ The need to return to work was right at the bottom of her priorities now!