Bride For A Year. Kathryn Ross
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had murmured to her, the words of hate against Brad Monroe. ‘Cold, hard, ruthless’, he had called him. The words drummed through her mind like a reproach and she felt heavy with guilt, her passion for Brad somehow seeming a vast disloyalty to her father’s memory.
She pushed him away from her. ‘I don’t know why that happened, but it was a big mistake.’
One dark eyebrow lifted. ‘I thought it was quite enjoyable myself,’ he murmured flippantly.
‘I don’t suppose your girlfriend would be quite so amused,’ Paige said tersely.
‘I don’t have a girlfriend,’ Brad retorted. ‘So it’s nobody’s business but my own.’
Paige frowned. She knew for a fact that Brad was dating Carolyn Murphy. He had been seeing her for the last six months and most people were expecting the sound of wedding bells. ‘So what about Carolyn?’ she enquired.
‘Carolyn and I have split up.’
‘But I thought... Everyone thought that you two were, well, going to get married.’
His eyebrows rose even further at that. ‘Everyone takes a lot for granted around here,’ he muttered dryly. ‘But no, it’s all over between Carolyn and me.’
‘Oh!’ She stared at him, really startled by this news. ‘Are you upset?’
Brad’s lips twisted. ‘Why, do you want to comfort me?’ he drawled sardonically. ‘A few more kisses like that one and I might start to feel a heck of a lot better.’
‘Don’t be absurd.’ Her heart missed several beats. It didn’t matter whom he was involved with, how free he might be, she told herself fiercely. She wasn’t interested. And yet a small part of her was remembering that kiss...remembering how good it had felt to be in his arms.
She turned away from him. ‘I think you should go now.’
‘If that’s what you want.’ Silence fell between them. ‘I hope you’ll believe me, Paige, when I tell you that I never intended to ruin your father.’
She didn’t say anything to that...didn’t know what to think any more. She was bewildered and scared and had never felt more alone in her life.
‘If it will help, I want you to know that I can wait for the money you owe me. It doesn’t matter when you pay it back.’
She spun around at that. ‘I can’t believe you!’ she said with a stunned shake of her head. ‘Just a few months ago I begged you to extend our time limit. You refused point-blank. Now my father is dead and you have the audacity to calmly tell me it doesn’t matter when I pay you back.’
‘I want to help you.’
‘Well, it’s too late.’ Her voice was anguished now. ‘And you know damned well it is.’
‘I can’t stand by and watch you go to the wall,’ he muttered.
‘At the risk of repeating myself, you were willing to stand by and do just that a few months ago.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Either you’ve got a massively guilty conscience or you’re a damn good actor.’
‘I don’t have a guilty conscience,’ he told her swiftly. ‘I had my reasons for refusing your father. They were good reasons.’
‘So good that I can’t understand them,’ she snapped. ‘Well, I’m not so unintelligent that I don’t see behind this charade of an offer now.’ She put one hand on her hip. ‘You are bothered about what people will think if I blab about the details of my father’s financial problems. A man who is running for mayor wouldn’t want this kind of blot on his copybook. So you come over here with the grand, charitable gesture of letting me off the hook a while longer.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t need or want your charity, Brad.’
‘I’m not offering you charity,’ he rasped dryly. ‘I’m extending the hand of a concerned neighbour—’
‘Oh, please!’ She cut across him with laughing disdain. ‘As you are well aware, Brad, it’s too little, too late. That’s the problem when you’re heading towards bankruptcy, you see...’ Her voice shook with derision. ‘It’s like a domino effect. You get behind with one debt then others pile up... Then someone demands their money immediately and one by one things start to collapse.’ She glared at him. ‘I’m the last domino standing in place and all I can do is sell up fast before I fall flat on my face. You offering, oh, so benevolently, to prop me up for a little while longer won’t make a scrap of difference now. I needed your support several months ago... It’s no damn good to me at all now.’
‘Things are that bad, then?’ he asked quietly.
She slanted him a dry look. ‘You were the one telling me how bad things were as we walked in from the vineyard.’
‘I didn’t realise that things had moved quite so quickly.’ He shook his head. ‘Have you spoken with the bank?’
She nodded and bent to lift the icepack from her foot. It had stopped throbbing now, maybe overshadowed by the greater pain inside. ‘They strongly urge me to go ahead with the auction...and not to waste a moment.’
‘Can’t you just sell off pieces of the property, without losing your house?’ he asked. ‘I’d be interested in acquiring some of your land.’
‘I’m sure you would.’ She flashed him a knowing look. ‘I knew that’s what you were angling for—’
‘That’s not what I want,’ he cut in tersely.
‘So which piece of land are you thinking of?’ she carried on swiftly, as if he hadn’t spoken.
He shrugged. ‘How about the slice that runs along the far back of my property?’
‘You mean the piece that contains the only water I have?’ Her voice trembled with fury. ‘This place won’t fetch very much on the open market, not in this rundown state, but without that water it will be virtually worthless.’
‘You can modernise. Install a new irrigation system in—’
‘Do you have any idea how much money you are talking about?’ she demanded fiercely.
‘Of course,’ he replied coolly.
‘Then you’ll know that even if I did sell you that land there wouldn’t be enough left over from paying back my debt to you and the others to install a bore hole, never mind anything else.’ She raked a hand through her hair. ‘No, I’ll have to sell the whole place... There’s no alternative.’
She swung away from him and walked over towards the kitchen to put the rapidly melting ice in the sink. For a moment her eyes moved over the rustic charm of the place. The dresser, the pine scrubbed table and the dried flowers on the farmhouse rack... Her home. Her heart twisted painfully.
‘So where will you go?’
Brad’s voice in the doorway behind her made her turn and look at him.
She shrugged. Tve got friends that I made when I was away at college. I’ve had letters of condolence and an offer that I can share a friend’s flat while I look around for a job.’
‘A male friend?’ Brad asked, a caustic note in his voice.
She frowned. The offer had been from a girlfriend, but she wasn’t about to enlighten him. ‘That’s none of your damned business,’ she grated with annoyance. ‘The fact remains that I have very little option but to move away from this area altogether. I need to get myself a job, start again.’
‘There are always other options.’
‘Such as?’
‘We could become partners,’ he said quietly.
She was so surprised she could hardly say anything for a moment ‘You mean you would write off my loan and straighten out all my other debts if I made you a sleeping