Spring Bride

“You’ll all be thrashed unless the guilty boy steps forward.”

“But we’re trying to tell you, Father,” Cade whispered, “we don’t know which of us did it.”

“So be it. Who will be first?”

There was a moment’s silence and then Grant stepped out in front of his brothers.

“No,” Zach and Cade shouted, but Grant hushed them.

“I did it,” he said.

“Did you? Or are you trying to protect your brothers?”

Grant stared at his father. “I—I—”

“You all need a dose of responsibility,” Charles said through his teeth, and he herded them into the library and slammed the door.

Kyra didn’t think, she simply reacted, bursting into the library after them. Charles swung toward her, his face dark, his hand on his belt, and she forced a painful smile to her lips, somehow knowing with a wisdom far beyond her years that to plead for mercy would not work.

Instead, she began babbling about her new pony and how she’d spent the afternoon learning to nde it. Slowly, the flush faded from her father’s face. Finally, she asked him to come and watch her ride.

She held her breath and waited.

Charles looked from her to his sons. After what seemed an eternity, he jerked his head toward the door.

“Go to your rooms,” he snapped, “and figure out how you’re going to replace that urn. You’re getting off easy this time.”

His hand had closed over Kyra’s, and it had taken all she had to keep smiling.

And just like that, she’d become the perfect daughter.

Her brothers had never guessed. As far as they were concerned, she was just a sweet little kid with an easygoing temperament who’d never realized what the old man was really like.

And why should they have believed anything else? Kyra thought with a sigh as she left the aspen grove behind and made her way toward the house. She’d found a way to make life easier for everybody and all it took was a little creative effort.

Except she’d never intended to play the role for quite so long. Her brothers were gone and she was of age. It was time—but the first, subtle signs of Charles’s failing health had brought her plans to an abrupt halt.

How could she have turned on him then, when he needed her? For all his terrible faults, he was her father. And if she hadn’t liked him, she had certainly loved him.

Her boot heels clattered on the steps as she made her way to the kitchen door and pushed it open With a sigh, she crossed the room, plucked a mug from the cupboard and filled it with coffee.

Well, there was nothing to hold her back now. Her father was gone. Grant, Cade and Zach had returned to their own lives. It was time to go about hers. But what kind of life did she want? Did she want a job? A career? A college degree?

Kyra didn’t have a clue. She only knew she needed to do something. Something she chose, for herself, by herself, with no advice from anybody—not even from her brothers.

It wasn’t that she didn’t love them. She did, with all her heart. It had been wonderful, having them home the week of the funeral, but it had only reminded her that, as far as they were concerned, she was still just a kid.

Cade had spent every moment—very sweetly, of course—telling her what to do and how to do it. Zach had asked a hundred times if she didn’t want him to take a look at the household accounts or show her how to balance her checkbook. And Grant had done everything but pat her on the head and call her his good little girl.

It had all come close to driving her crazy but she’d gritted her teeth and endured—until the reading of the will. In retrospect, she knew it was the will that had finally tipped her over the edge.

Charles had left his private fortune, the mansion and all its vast acreage to Kyra; he’d left Landon Enterprises, his multimillion-dollar empire, to his sons.

Anger had swept over her as the attorney’s voice faded to silence. Her father had done it again, she’d thought bitterly; even in death, he’d managed to keep her from the real world.

And, as soon as the attorney was gone, her brothers did it, too, giving her benevolent smiles and saying how happy they were that the mansion would be hers.

“We’re so happy for you, Princess,” Grant said, putting his arm around her shoulders. “We know how you love this house.”

And before she could say hell, no, I hate it, he turned to Cade and Zach and they began discussing the quickest way to divest themselves of Landon Enterprises. They wanted no part of the Landon legacy but she—she was expected to jump for joy over her inheritance!

The realization left her tight-lipped with fury but she said nothing. What could she say in the face of such damnable male insensitivity?

And then, just as she was getting over her anger, Grant met with Victor Bayliss, who’d been their father’s second-in-command at Landon’s, and came back with news that put a halt to her brothers’ plans to sell the company.

There were serious problems to deal with in Dallas, Hollywood and New York, Grant told Cade and Zach, ignoring Kyra even though she was in the room. She told herself it was understandable; thanks to Charles’s will, she didn’t have anything to do with Landon Enterprises. But the more she listened, the shorter her temper got.

Didn’t Cade or Grant or Zach see the obvious solutions to the difficulties facing them? She certainly did, but no one was asking her for her opinion. No one ever had.

That was when she exploded.

“For goodness’ sake,” she snapped, “are you all stupid? The answers to your problems are right under your noses!”

She pointed out how easily Cade could deal with the Dallas crisis, how readily Zach could handle the problem in California. There was a moment’s pointed silence and then, to her amazement, her brothers agreed

No, Kyra thought grimly as she remembered the scene, no, they’d done more than agree. They’d acted as if the ideas were theirs, not hers. Not a one of them had thought to say, wow, Kyra, that was pretty good thinking. Thanks for your help. We really needed it!

But how could they? The big jerks had been too busy flashing each other goofy grins and putting on that disgusting display of male bonding they’d called, since childhood, the Deadeye Defenders’ secret handshake.

“Damn,” Kyra muttered.

She could not, she would not, go on being treated like a child! She would not settle into the life that was expected of her, chairing dumb committees for causes she didn’t believe in, attending silly functions where she was supposed to smile prettily and pretend she was having fun…

…and where a man like the Spaniard could say the things he’d said and then vanish into the blue.

Her coffee mug clattered against the table top.

The Spaniard? What on earth had made her think of him? Not that it was the first time. Like it or not, the man had been lurking inside her head for days.

Well, it was understandable. It wasn’t easy to forget such a pretentious, self-important cretin.

Impatiently, she rose from the chair, kicked it back into place, and dumped her mug into the sink To think she’d let him get away with such rude behavior. Why hadn’t she told him he was a jerk? In Spanish, of course, Spanish every bit as perfect as his. Her mouth twisted in a wry smile. According to her father, learning to converse in three different languages had been part of the education of a proper lady.

So why hadn’t she hurled an insult straight back into his handsome, insolent face?

You are a toothless dog, she could have said. You are a worm. You are an animal…

Except he was none of those. That was the trouble. He was the best-looking hunk she’d ever set eyes on and he knew it. It was why he thought he could get away with eyeing women and then sidling up to them and insulting them…