Bride at Briar's Ridge

‘I have observed your dark side,’ she commented, pausing to admire a stone cupid. Someone had placed a mixed bouquet of flowers in the cupid’s lap. A romantic touch.

‘Now, how the heck did you manage to do that?’ he asked wryly.

‘A woman’s instinct,’ she said, turning to allow her eyes to roam his face.

‘Maybe you would have made a good psychologist, had you followed that path.’

‘Maybe I would. Do…do you have a girlfriend? Someone you care about?’

‘Is this simple curiosity, Daniela?’ His silvery green gaze, made even more startling against his darkly tanned skin, openly mocked her.

She walked on, picking up pace. ‘All right, don’t tell me.’

He caught her up easily. ‘Like most guys, I’ve had plenty of girlfriends, but no one in particular. Tell me about the guy in London. The one you’re on the run from.’

She felt a violent thrill of shock. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘It would explain why you’re so wary.’ He spoke tautly, angry at the very thought some guy might have been hassling her.

‘You’re way off the mark.’ She wasn’t going to tell him he had scored a bullseye.

‘Am I? You’re a beautiful woman. A lot of beautiful women feed on their own self-regard. At least that’s been my experience. You’re not like that. You don’t see your beauty as something special, more a danger. Am I right?’

What else had he learned about her? ‘Maybe I’m beautiful only by your set of criteria?’ she suggested evasively.

‘Nonsense,’ he clipped off. ‘You’d warrant a double take anywhere. Unfortunately it’s in some men’s nature to hunt beautiful women.’

She stood looking up at him, trying to hide her emotions. ‘Why are you speaking to me like this? You don’t know anything about me.’

‘You don’t know anything about me,’ he countered. ‘Yet you said I have a dark side. I assure you, hunting beautiful women is not my style. So you can relax. I had a mother I adored. I would hate to throw a scare into any woman.’

She believed him. He would never do so deliberately. ‘You said had?’ She changed the subject again. ‘Your mother is dead?’

‘Breast cancer.’ His tone, considering how he felt, was extraordinarily level—even matter-of-fact.

It didn’t fool her. ‘And after she died you didn’t know how you were going to go on with life?’ she suggested gently. ‘You must have been a boy?’

There was definitely something between the two of them now. ‘Are you deliberately turning the tables, Daniela? I was twelve, my brother Charles eighteen months older. Sad, sad times for both of us.’

She kept her eyes on him, fascinated and disturbed by his dark good looks and magnetic presence. ‘And your father? Was he able to offer much love and support? He, too, must have been devastated.’

‘Oh, he was!’ He could hear the cutting cynicism in his own voice. ‘He remarried barely two years later.’

‘A younger woman?’ She felt his world of anger, pain and bitter resentment.

‘Young women are nectar to older men,’ he said with a twisted smile, ‘but my dad’s second wife, Valerie, was in the same age group. She’d been a long-time acquaintance of both my parents. Cheryl, on the other hand, is around Chuck’s age.’

‘I see,’ she said quietly. ‘It sounds like Cheryl is the wrong kind of woman?’ The raven loop of hair had fallen forward on his tanned forehead again. She saw it annoyed him, but she thought it very dashing.

‘It sounds like your womanly instincts are far too acute,’ he drawled. ‘Are you going to dance with me?’

She shook her head and walked on. Guests were spread out across the magnificent grounds, all laughing and talking, thoroughly enjoying their beautiful surroundings and the magic of the day. ‘No.’

‘Isn’t that a bit harsh?’

‘Maybe,’ she said calmly. ‘But I have serious reservations about becoming too friendly with you, Carl Mastermann.’

That didn’t surprise him. He had concerns himself. ‘Well, at least you don’t fool around. You get right to the point. Is it because I have a dark side?’

Now she did smile at him. The first real smile he had received. It was so beautiful it took his breath away. ‘Because you also have a light side,’ she said. ‘Maybe it’s even brilliant on occasions. You’re a mixture of both.’

‘And this makes it impossible for us to be friends?’

‘Is that what this is? Friendship that is passing between us?’ she asked with a gentle air of melancholy.

‘Maybe not.’ Both of them seemed caught in a whirlpool. ‘But if I’m a mix, so are you.’

‘No, no!’ She shook her blond hair so the heavier side fell forward to hide her profile. ‘I have always been a very happy person, much cared for by a loving family.’

‘Only someone came along to change all that?’

It was a troubling challenge. He saw too much. ‘Let’s drop it, shall we?’

‘Certainly,’ he assented, ‘as it clearly bothers you. Just one condition. You break your newly established set of rules and dance with me. It need only be one time.’

In an instant he knew she was going to consent.

CHAPTER THREE

THE day after the buying of Briar’s Ridge was settled—Kieran had been delighted by Linc’s offer, and because he had a substantial deposit and the bank on side, it took no time at all—Linc drove into town. Not a single night had he slept properly since his friend’s wedding. If he wasn’t lying awake thinking about Daniela, how they had danced together, the way she had let him hold her, she insinuated herself into his dreams. He even felt her in his bed. He woke with her fragrance on his skin.

You’re crazy, Mastermann! His inner voice said in disgust. Give up while you’ve got a chance.

He was so far gone he was indifferent to the voice. There could be nothing remarkable about his calling in at the bistro, he reasoned. Say hello, then ask her if she would like to see over the property he had so very recently acquired. He knew she was resisting him at one level, as if she knew she ought to—wasn’t he feeling something of the same thing?—but they seemed to share a powerful kinship. How was that so? In many ways she was a mystery to him, yet he had been seduced on sight. Drawn closer. He thought he recognised her soul. When they had danced together at Guy’s wedding he’d felt as though she belonged to him. Even their bodies seemed to recognise one another.

That sort of thing didn’t happen often. It had never happened to him, and he had held lots of pretty girls in his arms, made love to them, learned much. But he had never come close to a grand passion, the great enduring love lady novelists liked to write about. He remembered hearing his mother crying quietly during the nights his father was away from home. That had been when he was just a little kid, stealing along the hallway, checking on her but not wanting to intrude on her very private time. He couldn’t have borne to humiliate her, but the sound still haunted him.

What had she been crying about? His old man’s infidelities? The way he had turned from her when she’d first been diagnosed? Or how he never touched her after she had lost a breast and her glorious mane of hair? His dad had an irrational fear of sickness, but that didn’t excuse his cruelty. Linc thanked God he had been around to console his mother. Even Chuck hadn’t wanted to know how sick their mother was, though he’d been heartbroken and contrite afterwards.

Since leaving home, Linc had kept in regular touch with Chuck. Chuck sounded as if he was missing him like hell—especially in running the big sheep farm. But Chuck, good brother that he was, had been genuinely thrilled for him when he’d told him about Briar’s Ridge.

‘Man, I couldn’t be more pleased for you. You always have to do things in your own way. And do them better than anyone else.’

‘For the love of God don’t tell Cheryl where I am.’

Chuck, who had eyes in his head that had been very uncomfortable with their stepmother’s attraction to his younger brother, had assured him he wouldn’t say a word.

‘Dad still mad?’