Читать книгу The Saxon Brides: Mistaken Mistress - Tessa Radley - Страница 9

Alyssa felt terrible.

Joshua thought she and Roland had been lovers. Worse, he believed she’d come to Saxon’s Folly to steal Roland away from his fiancée. She bit her lip to stop herself blurting out the truth. How could she refute what he believed without revealing the truth about her relationship to Roland?

Yesterday, just before midnight, his parents had demanded that she leave; now Joshua was ordering her to go, too. A sense of hurt settled around her. The sooner she got away from here, the sooner she could retreat to the solitary comfort of her Auckland apartment and lick her wounds in private.

But for now she had to shrug off the hurt. This morning she would hold vigil for as long as necessary. Because this wasn’t about her. It was about her brother.

“Nothing to say?”

The words jerked her attention back to Joshua. He was watching her through dark, suspicious eyes.

“You should go upstairs,” she said quietly. “You don’t want to miss what might be your only chance to say goodbye to Roland because you wasted time arguing with me.” The thought of her brother lying there with little chance of regaining consciousness was unbearable … heartbreaking … and she sniffed back the fresh wave of tears.

“Do you love him very much?” Joshua’s voice held a strange tone.

“Yes, I love him a great deal.” Alyssa didn’t look at him in case he read the depth of the loss and confusion in her eyes. Instead she stared at her feet and noticed that the laces of her left sneaker had come undone. What was a lace? So unimportant in the greater scheme of things.

“He never mentioned you.”

She sighed. How tricky this had all become. Clearly Roland hadn’t wanted his brothers to know that he wasn’t a Saxon by birth. Now, because of her promise to Kay Saxon and out of her respect to her brother, she couldn’t tell Joshua the truth—even though she desperately wanted to. They’d connected on some primal level, she and Joshua. She didn’t like lying to him. Finally she settled for, “We hadn’t known each other very long.”

One brief meeting last night … she’d shaken Roland’s hand. And this morning she’d touched his unconscious body.

From the old cuttings in the town’s archives she knew he’d played rugby as a boy and captained his team to a regional win. She’d shuddered in fear as she’d watched television footage of Roland as a late teen riding his horse over solid fences with a determination that had won him numerous eventing titles. An article in a wine magazine had said Roland joked that he’d liked fast women and good wine. Alyssa had wondered what Amy had thought about that! A recent appearance on a lifestyle television programme hosted by a pretty blonde had revealed that he wore jeans with panache. Every last fact she could glean about him, she had uncovered.

Yet Roland didn’t know her at all.

“Maybe he didn’t say anything because he knew you wouldn’t be pleased with his friendship with Alyssa Blake, despised journalist.” Now, through desperation, she’d cornered herself into an outright lie. Before last night’s meeting, Roland had only known her from the letters and e-mails … written in the name of Alice McKay.

“Friends?”

Joshua looked her up and down in a way that made her regret donning the ancient sweats. A disturbing prickle of awareness followed in the wake of his gaze. She shut it out ruthlessly. “Yes, friends. Why not?”

“I can accept that Roland didn’t want us to know he was sleeping with you.” Joshua’s lip curled. “First, because he knows I think you’re a hack writer and have no respect for you after that hatchet job you did. And sec—”

“Hack?” She glared at him in outrage. “I only did—”

He held up a hand. “Let me finish. Second, I’m sure Roland didn’t mention you because you’re of little importance—certainly not worth losing Amy over.” Joshua gave her a long, hard stare. “Roland was always a bit of a ladies’ man. But I’m not going to let Amy be hurt.”

Alyssa drew a deep, steadying breath and counted silently to three before saying slowly and distinctly, “I have absolutely no intention of hurting Amy.”

“Good. Then we understand each other.” Joshua stabbed the button to summon the elevator. “You’re trouble. As long as you keep far away from Saxon’s Folly, my family—and Amy—everything will be fine!”

“You should go and see Roland,” she said with urgency.

He gave her a snooty look. “My brother has the luck of the devil—he’s a survivor.”

Alyssa prayed to God that he was right. But his words caused a flare of hope. Joshua knew his brother. If he thought Roland might live …

“And when he’s out of here, you stay far away from him.”

No chance.

Joshua blamed her for the argument between Amy and Roland last night. She thought about the pretty TV-show hostess who’d interviewed Roland only a month ago. Alyssa had gone to see her. The woman had giggled that Roland was a great lover—and lamented the fact that he was already taken. Not that it had stopped him, she’d added, giving Alyssa a lascivious smile.

Maybe Amy had quarrelled with him over the hostess, but it wasn’t up to Alyssa to reveal that scandal to Joshua. It might turn her stomach having Joshua accuse her of being Roland’s lover … but no one except she and his parents knew how vile that accusation really was.

She wasn’t the troublemaker Joshua had branded her.

Alyssa started as the elevator pinged beside her and the doors slid open. “Think what you want about me—I don’t care,” she said at last, suppressing the sting of his words.

Joshua strode into the waiting elevator. His gaze swept over her, cool and dismissive. “I’m sure you don’t care about anything except yourself.”

Alyssa decided that it was just as well she could seethe over Joshua’s departing comments while she sat in the hospital café drinking stale coffee. But under her fuming she still fretted about how Roland was faring upstairs in that sterile ward.

Drained of all emotion, Joshua paused in the entrance of the coffee-cum-flower shop in the hospital lobby. His eyes burned. After almost twenty-four hours awake, he needed a shower, a change of clothing and sleep.

But right now there were other things—important things—to which he needed to attend.

His chest expanded as he hauled in a deep breath.

And the first that needed sorting was sitting at a table beside a rack of magazines, staring into a coffee cup, a napkin crumpled in her fist. Some sixth sense must have alerted Alyssa to his presence because her hand tightened around the mangled, once-white napkin and she looked up.

The vulnerability in her eyes vanished the instant she spotted him, replaced by wariness. Okay, so this conversation wasn’t going to be easy. But it couldn’t be delayed. He started forward.

“Alice—” No, not Alice. “Alyssa,” he corrected himself. He’d kissed Alice. He’d never willingly touch Alyssa. “My mother sent me to tell you …” He broke off and swallowed the burning bile at the back of his throat.

She was on her feet, her hand against her mouth. “Roland … is he conscious? Can I see him?”

He shook his head. An appalling sorrow splintered inside his chest. There was frustration and bewilderment, too.

“Why? Just for a few minutes? Please?”

Her eyes were wide, beseeching. As much as he disliked her, it was clear that she loved his brother, that she’d do anything, even beg, to be with him. Damnation! This was more difficult than he’d expected.

His legs carried him to her without his realising it. He cleared his throat awkwardly. “Alyssa—”

Her hand touched his sleeve. He flinched, and she jerked it away.

“I won’t make waves. I won’t do anything to cause Amy anxiety. I just want to see my—Roland.” She was frantically shredding what was left of the paper towel.

He caught her flailing hands and tossed the napkin on the table, hating what he had to do. “Alyssa, you don’t understand. Roland is dead.”

“What?” She rocked on her feet, looking as if she was about to faint.

“Steady.” He moved closer, shifting his hold to her shoulders, propping her up with his body.

Her eyes were wide, staring. Shocked. Little flecks of black floated in the unseeing smoky purple irises.

“Alyssa?”

“Is it true?” She pulled away from him, wrapping her arms around herself, looking shaken to the soul.

Joshua nodded, swept by a wave of terrible pity. She’d said she loved his brother. Had Roland known the depth of her love? Had he even appreciated it? Joshua doubted it. But he couldn’t afford to relent. Family came first.

Alyssa Blake was more than capable of looking out for herself.

Besides, she was too much of a forbidden temptation. “So you’ll be leaving in the morning?”

Her head came up. The magnificent eyes flashed. “I’ll go after the funeral. Please, leave me alone until then.”

And as he watched the tears pool, the foolish and chivalrous part of him wished he had the right to hold her, comfort her and wipe those tears of hopelessness from her eyes.

Alyssa crept in and stood in the back of the church, keeping her head bowed, and stared blankly at the order of service booklet that had been given to her by the usher at the door.

Yesterday she had called David Townsend, her editor at Wine Watch magazine, requesting a few days’ leave, without giving him any explanations. If she mentioned the word bereavement, she suspected that the tears that dammed up the back of her throat might overflow. Once she started, she feared she might never stop.

David had given her two days.

Alyssa had told him she’d be back in the office on Wednesday. But standing here in the crowded church, work … and Auckland … seemed so far away. A numbing mist enveloped her. Beneath the booklet she held, her gray pin-striped pantsuit seemed woefully inadequate. She’d intended to wear the outfit to the one-on-one meet she’d coerced Roland into. A quick glance around revealed that the boutique businesswear was out of place among the designer black and sedate pearls.

She hadn’t brought much with her—she’d only expected to be in Hawkes Bay for the weekend. She didn’t even have pins to put her hair up. The dark silky mass lay around her bowed face in a sleek wave. But shopping for mourning clothes and hairpins had been the last thing on her mind yesterday. Roland’s death on Sunday had left her reeling.

She opened the order of service booklet and found herself staring at a photo of Roland … a piece about his achievements, a short eulogy where he was described as “the much loved son of Kay and Phillip, brother of Joshua, Heath and Megan.”

Of course, there was no mention of his real parents, or the sibling who had been robbed of the chance to know and love him.

The hymns reverberated around Alyssa, moving her until her heart ached so much she thought it might burst. Then Joshua stood and started to talk about Roland, and her heart shattered.

By the time she arrived at the cemetery on the farm where Saxons had been buried for nearly a century, Alyssa was so wrung out by emotion that her legs felt a little shaky.

She’d debated about the wisdom of coming to the burial. She’d known it would be upsetting. The last funeral she’d attended had been her adoptive mother’s—and that had been simply awful. But in the end, the need to see her brother—her flesh and blood—laid finally to rest had won out. Perhaps now she might get some peace, too.

The first person she recognised as she made her way through the white-painted picket gate was Joshua.

She hesitated. He hadn’t seen her yet.

Alyssa halted a distance off from where the Saxons crowded around the grave and sneaked another look at Joshua.

His arm was around his white-faced mother and on his other side stood his sister, Megan, sobbing into a hanky. Behind them stood Heath and Phillip Saxon, looking solemn. Amy hovered dry-eyed at the edge of the raw grave, her expression bleak.

From her vantage point, Alyssa could see the rows upon rows of vines planted on the hills that lay below the cemetery. They would only just be starting to bud for the coming summer. It struck her that, unlike the vines, Roland would never see another summer.

Blinking back a fresh prick of tears, she barely noticed the breeze that swept her hair off her face as she listened to the priest delivering the prayer.

“Amen,” she murmured with the rest of the crowd as it ended.

“Don’t plan on staying,” Joshua said very softly from behind her.

She didn’t turn her head to look at him. She hadn’t heard him approach. But every hair on her nape stood up. “I won’t.”

“Good.” He moved to stand beside her as the final hymn started. “I don’t want Amy suffering any more than she already is.”

Alyssa stared at the words on the sheet of paper in her hand and stifled an impatient sigh. Amy. His parents. That’s all he could think about. What about her? “Please believe me, I’m not going to do anything to harm Amy.”

He gave her a hard look. “I wouldn’t let you.” His eyes scanned her face. She could feel the intensity of his gaze, as he examined every inch of her face.

“Well?”

“You’re beautiful.” His tone was dispassionate. Unmoved. He might have been studying an inanimate block of marble.

“Thanks,” she said tersely, her gaze dropping away from his. The knowledge that he considered her beautiful didn’t bring satisfaction. Joshua didn’t even like her—the real Alyssa Blake beneath the veneer—he’d made that clear enough.

A disturbing thought struck her. Perhaps he fancied Amy? And, now with Roland out of the way, did that mean Joshua expected a chance with his brother’s grief-stricken fiancée?

She gave him a covert glance from behind her lashes. “Amy’s beautiful, too.”

He stilled, the skin over his slanted cheekbones suddenly taut. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Her lashes swept up. Her eyes clashed with his frigid ones. “Just that you seem to admire her immensely.”

“You think I have the hots for my brother’s fiancée?” Darkness moved in his eyes.

“It would be understandable.”

Amy would be the perfect wife for Joshua Saxon. She was even Kay’s goddaughter. It was a no-brainer. “Amy is vulnerable right now. You’ll need to take care that she doesn’t view you as a rebound relationship.”

“I don’t need your pop-psychology advice. I don’t poach my brothers’ women.” His gaze was bleak. “Or at least, I never did. Not until the night I met you.”

What was that cryptic statement supposed to mean? A burst of adrenaline shot through Alyssa, quickly followed by a flare of desire.

What would happen if he learned Roland wasn’t his real brother. And that she, Alyssa, was Roland’s younger sister.

And what was the point of agonizing over it all. It was moot. Because Joshua would never learn the truth.

Despite the pale golden light of the sun, a cold shiver started at the base of her neck and inched down her spine, leaving Alyssa feeling like an emotional wasteland.

He moved away and Alyssa shut her eyes, and let the singing voices swirl around her. After what seemed an interminable time she heard car doors slam, the roar of engines starting.

Her shoulders sagged with relief. Conscious of the careless caress of the wind on her skin, of a tui whistling in a nearby phutukawa tree, Alyssa stood still as the cemetery rapidly emptied.

Finally, she opened her eyes. Only a few people remained. Joshua was gone. But the memory of his intensity as he’d told her that he didn’t want Amy suffering any more than she already was, remained vivid. What would it be like to be the focus of all that masculine protection?

She wished….

What was the point of wishing? The connection she’d sensed with Joshua had ended the minute he learned who she was. She was accustomed to being alone. As the indulged, only child of two older parents she’d grown up curiously isolated. She’d been thirteen when she’d discovered that she was adopted, that she’d been born Alice McKay—not Alyssa Blake.

She’d been so excited at the prospect of finding siblings … more family. But her mother had cried at the idea of Alyssa searching for her birth parents. For years Alyssa had put it off, fearful of upsetting Margaret. But finally she’d been compelled to make a start, secretly. Only after her mother’s death three years ago had she been able to focus single-mindedly on her quest.

She’d never tracked down her birth father. But she’d found her vacant-eyed birth mother in an institute for stroke victims and she’d become a regular visitor. But from the moment Alyssa discovered that she had a brother, she hadn’t rested.

She’d wanted to find him … Roland.

And now Roland was gone forever.

A cloud drifted across the sky and passed over the face of the sun, blocking out the sunlight and casting a shadow over the mound where Roland lay. Alyssa shivered.

Why? Why had she not forced the issue with Roland sooner, made him see her. They could’ve had a few weeks … months. She sighed. But would extra time have made any difference?

Alyssa supposed it wasn’t a big deal to him. Roland hadn’t needed a sister; he’d already had a sister—and two brothers. A whole proud, supportive family.

While, to her, finding her brother had become everything.

“Alice….” Kay spoke hesitantly from beside her.

She gave a start of surprise. “Call me Alyssa.” Alice was gone. Buried in the ground as surely as Roland was. Alice had existed only as evidence that she had once been someone else … someone with a brother.

Coming to a decision, Alyssa said flatly, “Joshua thinks that I’m Roland’s lover.” Alyssa still felt sullied by the accusation in his eyes. “I don’t like it—especially not since Roland was already engaged. I’d like you tell Joshua the truth, please.”

Kay shook her head, and gestured to the raw, new grave. “Roland is dead. Phillip and I don’t want the trauma of explaining to the children that he was never their blood brother.”

Children? Alyssa goggled at the older woman. Joshua Saxon was no child. “They’re adults, not children anymore. Surely they’ll understand?”

Kay looked uncomfortable. “It would mean their whole upbringing was based on a lie.”

“They deserve the truth.”

“It’s too late for that.” Kay shook her head and started to move away toward the white gate where Phillip stood, his back to them, talking with a group of mourners.

Frustration and despair pooled deep inside Alyssa’s chest, setting a heavy lump.

“Why didn’t you tell them sooner?” Then Roland might even have come looking for her. He’d have had time to come to terms with having a sister, of not being a Saxon by birth.

Kay stopped. “At first we intended to tell them, but the years passed, and then it was too late. Neither Phillip nor I want them to know now. It’s not necessary.” Kay faced Alyssa, her eyes a cool, implacable gray. “I’d like you to respect that.”

Alyssa had known how Kay would react, but she’d hoped …

It wasn’t to be. Roland was gone. Yet there was so much Kay could share about her brother. Maybe.

Alyssa’s heart started to beat anxiously in her chest at the audacity of what she was contemplating. “Kay, I won’t tell anyone. But only if you share your memories of Roland with me. Every day for a week. I want to see the photos of him, hear the stories of what he did, share the places he knew growing up.”

“That’s not poss—”

Alyssa read the other woman’s refusal in her eyes. Thrusting her apprehension away, she firmed her lips into a deter mined line and stalked past the older woman. “Then I have no reason to give you my promise to keep my relationship with Roland a secret.”

“Wait.”

She turned her head.

“You can’t do that.” Kay looked horrified. “And if I do as you want? How can I trust you not to say anything later?”

“I’ll give you my word.” Alyssa sagged under the weight of the tension. “And I’ll never break it, no matter what pressure I’m put under. This is important to me … It’s all I’ll ever have of the brother I’ve been searching for since I turned eighteen.”

“Okay.” Kay wore a peculiar expression. “Come to Saxon’s Folly in the morning. You’d better bring your bags. You may as well stay for the week.”

Alyssa felt a surge of victory … until she remembered Joshua’s hard, judgmental gaze.