His Brother's Bride Read online

  “It’s still hard to believe that a tree has to live forty years before it’s ready to be tapped. And then it only gives ten gallons of sap a year.”

  “What’d Mr. Smith tell us? That for every ten gallons of sap he yielded only a quart of syrup?”

  “Something like that.”

  She and her classmates had worked hard that spring, Scott included, to help the Smiths harvest their trees after Mr. Smith suffered a heart attack. Scott had driven her over almost every afternoon until the job was done.

  He’d worked beside her drilling holes, hanging buckets, making her laugh. Making her forget how lonely she was, how much she was missing Paul.

  Making her forget everything except that she was bonding with her classmates, being part of a family, a town.

  Not only had they saved the Smiths financially that year, they’d helped Laurel discover happiness.

  * * *

  “YOU THINK YOU’LL ever get married?” Scott’s question jarred Laurel from the hazy contentment she’d fallen into, throwing her back into a world she was quite happy to leave behind. She was lying flat on her back, staring up at the tree’s branches. Scott was lying beside her, two feet of blanket, used paper plates and napkins between them. They each held a half-full cup of wine on their stomachs, occasionally raising their heads enough to take a sip.

  She thought of Shane. Of how much she enjoyed his company, his wit.

  Of how long he’d been waiting for them to be more than friends.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you want to?”

  Did she? The question scared Laurel. “I guess. If I can be as sure as I was with Paul.”

  The sun was starting to go down. Laurel was sad to see that happen. She didn’t want the day to end. She wanted to just continue lying there on that blanket with Scott close by and think about Paul. About belonging.

  “Don’t you want kids?”

  She turned her head to look at him. “I used to.” More than anything. A family of her own was the only thing Laurel could remember ever wanting.

  “Used to?” His gaze was direct, searching.

  Laurel’s gaze returned to the leaves above. “I’m thirty-three,” she said. “I’d have to do something relatively soon.”

  Back in New York Shane wanted children. And her.

  But Laurel just wasn’t sure.

  “What about you?” she asked Scott. “I never pictured you growing old alone. Don’t you want to get married?”

  As she caught his gaze, his eyes seemed to be saying something to her. Laurel just couldn’t figure out what. And then he looked away.

  “Theoretically, yes.”

  Laurel chuckled. “What does that mean?”

  “I have nothing against the institution of marriage, but, like you, it would have to be with the right person. Someone I not only wanted physically, but was best friends with as well.”

  Thoughts of him dating didn’t bother her. Thoughts of him being best friends with someone Laurel didn’t know did.

  She guessed it was the protective-sister thing.

  Except that, as she lay there next to Scott, she wasn’t feeling sisterly at all.

  “So you’re saying you just haven’t met the woman you want to marry yet,” she said, refusing to pursue her own feelings any further.

  She wasn’t going to tarnish her friendship with Scott by transferring her feelings for his brother onto him. He deserved far better than that.

  “I’ve met her,” Scott said, and Laurel’s heart almost stopped.

  “You have?”

  She felt bereft. Someone else had Scott?

  Why hadn’t he said anything? Where was this woman while Laurel was lying here by Scott’s side?

  When he didn’t answer, she looked over at him. He met her gaze only briefly, then nodded.

  “So...”

  “She isn’t free.”

  “She’s married?” Poor Scott.

  “No.”

  “Does she return your feelings?”

  This mattered a lot, and Laurel was really bothered by that fact.

  “No.”

  She couldn’t believe that, and ached for him. She also couldn’t believe how relieved she felt.

  “Has she said so?”

  “No.”

  “Have you asked her?”

  “No.”

  Laurel asked questions for a living. Ferreted out information for stories that would grab and hold the attention of millions of viewers. That was why she continued to question Scott.

  She sensed a story.

  “Does she know how you feel?”

  “No.”

  Up on an elbow, she studied him. His eyes were closed, but she knew he was wide-awake. She could see his pulse throbbing. His thumb was tapping against the cup he held on the flat plane of his stomach.

  “Then how do you know she doesn’t return your feelings?”

  His eyes opened and met hers. “I just do.”

  Laurel believed him.

  She lay back again but couldn’t find her earlier contentment. Knowing that Scott was in love left her feeling very unsettled.

  The sun lowered slowly. There were still several hours of daylight left, but it was getting cooler.

  “Do you ever wonder what’s real and what’s really just your head playing with you?” Laurel asked, breaking the long silence that had fallen between them.

  “Not often,” he said. “I just weigh the facts.”

  “But what if the facts, as you see them, aren’t really the facts at all, but rather your head changing them to fit some preconceived picture you have?”

  “But then that would still be reality, wouldn’t it?” he asked. He was lying on his side, his head propped with his hand. He took a sip of wine. “Reality as you know it?”

  “Twisting facts does not make them reality.” She’d missed this so much—feeling comfortable enough with another person to just let her thoughts fly.

  “Not if you knowingly twist them.”

  Lying on her stomach, resting up on her elbows, Laurel persisted. “But what if it’s not knowingly, and so you act upon them, and then later find out that you had twisted them, after all.”

  He grimaced. “I think that happens to everyone at some point. Don’t you?”

  It wasn’t the answer she’d been looking for. “I guess.”

  She pondered some more. “So how do you protect yourself from making a mistake if there’s no way to determine if you’re making one? How do you keep your head from playing tricks on you?”

  He was quiet for a moment. “Maybe you don’t.”

  Laurel couldn’t accept that. “There’s got to be some way to be able to trust yourself. I mean, if you can’t even trust yourself, who can you trust?”

  “You can trust yourself to do your best. It’s all anyone can do. Their best.”

  She shook her head. “Not good enough.” Not if it meant she was going to talk herself into marriage to Shane and then wake up one morning and find that she’d just been twisting loneliness into love, need into want.

  Scott picked up a bottle of water, then rinsed their glasses and filled them. Settling back on his elbow he said, “I guess being aware of the possibility goes a long way toward prevention.”

  “Maybe.” The fear remained.

  “Talking it out with someone might be the best option,” he said slowly, thoughtfully. “If there’s a hole in your logic, if your hypothesis is false, then someone who isn’t traveling on the same mental journey would probably be able to detect the weak link.”

  Laurel considered that a moment before asking, “Do you think that, even after three and a half years, I could still be coping with Paul’s loss by substituting so
meone else for him?”

  His glance was suddenly completely focused. “Do you think that’s what you’re doing?”

  “No.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “I don’t know,” she said, changing her mind. “I’m just so afraid to find out. Afraid to even try to replace him in case I’m just transferring my feelings for him to someone else.”

  Only with Scott could she even be having this conversation, expressing fears she’d just started to admit to herself.

  He’d seen her first thing in the morning, half-awake, with messy hair. He’d seen her sick with the flu.

  He’d stood solid, taking her beating without flinching when he’d come to the church on her wedding day to tell her that Paul had been killed....

  “You think he’s the only man you can ever love?” Scott asked.

  Good question. “I don’t know, you know? I mean, I planned to love him for the rest of my life.”

  “And now he’s gone. And you still have a whole life ahead of you.”

  “I know.”

  She was watching a little black bug try to get over a wrinkle in the blanket. It would get almost to the top and then topple backward every time.

  “So what if he was the only man I’ll ever love,” she said, expressing her thoughts as she had them. “Is it wrong, then, to not want to be alone? To seek solace someplace?”

  Scott took a sip of water. His blue eyes were intimate, probing as they held her gaze. “I guess that depends on the situation. On the man. If you’re honest with him, if he’s not going to be hurt by the fact that you can’t love him, then no, I don’t think it’s wrong.”

  Laurel’s heart lightened a little bit.

  “As a matter of fact,” he added, “it’s probably very right. People are here to offer other people solace. It’s what we do. And as long as there’s complete honesty...”

  Yes, but...

  “What if I don’t know?” she whispered. “What if I think it could be love and then later find that it was just seeking solace? Then I’ve hurt him. And me, too.”

  She couldn’t do it. She was going to be alone until she died. Or until, miraculously, she woke up one morning and found Paul nothing more than a fond memory.

  “Life is full of risk, Laurel,” Scott said. “Sometimes you just have to jump off the cliff and hope for the best.”

  “You really think so?”

  “I do.”

  Laurel liked that. She liked him.

  Enough to have the feeling be a huge source of confusion.

  Scott was like a brother to her. He was her lover’s brother. It had been that way for more than eighteen years.

  Looking at him lying there, his body firm, strong—and so warm—she didn’t want Scott to be her brother anymore.

  She wanted those long fingers to leave that damn cup alone and touch her, pull her close to him. She wanted those arms around her, holding her.

  It had been so long. Since that day in the churchyard when she’d finally quit hitting him and had fallen against him in shock, ready to sink to the ground and die if he hadn’t wrapped his strong arms around her.

  But today, she wanted more than support from Scott. More than comfort. She wanted passion. She wanted to taste those lips she’d known for more than half her life but never tasted.

  She wanted him to taste her.

  It was just her loneliness, the memories they shared and his resemblance to Paul that were making her feel this way. It was just that transference thing.

  She knew that. Searching her heart, she knew with absolute doubt that she still loved Paul.

  Lying here with Scott Hunter, she was not at the cliff. She could not jump.

  CHAPTER NINE

  HE WAS RUNNING out of time. Scott had been watching the sun getting lower and lower in the sky, promising himself he’d tell her soon. In another few minutes. And then a few more. He just wanted to enjoy her company for as long as he could.

  He was sitting up, forearms resting on his knees, while Laurel lay on her side, her head propped up on her hand. She finally looked relaxed.

  He’d forgotten how great it was just to talk to Laurel. Had forgotten those long hours of conversation they used to have, the insights she’d given him, and the eager way her mind had absorbed ideas that were new to her.

  Paul and their dad had always been close, whereas Scott had argued with the old man a lot. To their father, Paul was the perfect son, but Scott couldn’t be like Paul, conservative, following such a narrow path. Scott had seen the world as a huge pool of opportunity, and needed to test all the waters. He’d known that without risk, there was no hope of greatness.

  In high school, after Paul had left for college, Scott and his father had butted heads to the point where Scott had threatened to move out, and his dad hadn’t tried to get him to stay.

  Laurel had come over while he’d been packing his things. In her calm way she’d surveyed the situation, then turned her back and walked out of his room. He’d thought she’d left until he’d heard her quietly talking with his father.

  And then she’d been back.

  She’d helped him see that his dad viewed the world from an entirely different perspective than Scott did. She had helped him realize that in order to understand his father, he had to first look at his father’s words and actions from his dad’s perspective, not from his own. And with the awareness he’d gained by doing so, he found a way to help his father understand him.

  Because of what Laurel had done for him, he’d unpacked and begun the first day of a new relationship with his father. A relationship that had never again faltered.

  “Where are you?”

  Her words were soft, bringing him back to the present.

  Scott looked over at her. “Remembering how you saved my relationship with my dad.”

  “I didn’t do anything. You were the one who was big enough to go to him. To open up your mind and listen to him.”

  “Only because you convinced me it was the right thing to do. And taught me how to listen to what he was saying.”

  “But you still had to be willing to swallow your pride and try. To ask him for another chance. You did the hard stuff, Scott. You always have.”

  No. He hadn’t.

  And it was time to tell her so.

  “You have a strength beyond anything I’ve ever known,” she continued.

  He shook his head.

  “You don’t know how many times in the past three and a half years I’ve tapped into that strength. In my darkest times, just knowing you were out there, making the world a better place, gave me the jolt I needed to get up and do something—anything—that would help me rejoin the world.”

  The man she was talking about was an illusion.

  “I need you, friend,” she said softly, her eyes wide and luminous. They were full of honesty and an openness that was rare in a girl who’d never been able to count on anything in her life.

  Scott clenched his jaw and swallowed. He had to tell her. Didn’t he?

  If they spent any real time together, it would all come out eventually—the fact that he hadn’t been driving the car because he’d been irresponsible and incapacitated. Paul had never been a good winter driver—Scott should have been at the wheel during that storm. And even if they’d had an accident, Scott would have been the one with the faulty seat belt, the one he’d had a recall notice for but just hadn’t had time to take the car in for repair.

  But what if they didn’t spend time together? What if he was able to help her by leaving her illusions of him intact so she had something to cling to, to draw strength from?

  What harm could that do?

  As long as she had her life in New York, and he was here in Cooper’s Corner...

 
As long as he didn’t see her, didn’t ever let her know that he was in love with her...

  As long as he didn’t do what he was longing to do—pull her beneath him and pour fifteen years’ worth of love into her...

  Glad as he was to have a reason not to confess his sins and face her anger and disrespect, Scott knew that this new plan was going to be the hardest of all to implement.

  Because as he lay there with her, looking into her eyes, he knew for certain that if he pulled her into his arms, she’d come willingly.

  Life had found the cruelest way of all to make him pay....

  * * *

  “HOW QUICKLY CAN you be ready?”

  Showered and dressed, Laurel stood beside Maureen’s desk on Wednesday morning to take the call. “Now.”

  “I’m on my way....”

  Scott rang off before she could ask even a single question. He must know something.

  He did. She could tell by the energy emanating from him as he met her out in the yard at Twin Oaks.

  “Cecilia Hamilton was married to William Byrd’s father for more than thirty-five years,” he said without preamble. “He died three years ago.”

  Laurel wished she’d been sitting down. “What? How do you know? That doesn’t even make sense.” Her mind raced across the facts they’d accumulated. “Seth said Cecilia was in her late fifties.”

  “She’s fifty-seven.”

  “William’s three years older than that.”

  “I know.”

  “But...”

  “She’s from Boston and owns Hamilton Lending of New England, which has its corporate offices there. Guess who their biggest client is?”

  “William?”

  “No,” Scott shook his head. “Renwick Construction.”

  She stared at him. “As in Leslie Renwick?” she asked slowly.

  “Or her parents.”

  “Or maybe no relation at all?”

  “Maybe. But that doesn’t seem likely.”

  It took Laurel a couple of seconds to digest the impact of his news. “William’s last name isn’t Hamilton,” was the only coherent thought she could come up with. “It’s Byrd.”