The Tycoon's Virgin Bride. Sandra Field
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later, Bryce’s car drove away down the lane. Jenessa sagged against the studio door. For the space of three weeks she was safe.
It didn’t feel like very long.
CHAPTER FOUR
BRYCE stepped off the launch onto the long wharf that jutted out from the island of Manatuck, where, money no object, Travis’s father Charles had built a castle that wouldn’t have been out of place in the Austrian alps. Bryce had seen the towers and turrets of Castlereigh before, and they had never failed to amuse him. Today, however, he had something other than castles on his mind.
Had Jenessa come to the christening as she’d promised? Would he discover when he saw her again that she was just another woman, beautiful of course, but nothing exceptional? Certainly nothing to warrant the way she’d been lodged in his mind the last three weeks. He’d spent one week in Brussels, and the last couple of days in Finland; the rest of the time he’d been home in his house on Beacon Hill. He’d thought about her in all three places far more than he was comfortable with.
She hadn’t phoned. Not that he’d expected her to. Nor had he visited her, although he could have; she lived only an hour or so outside the city.
He strode up the slope, aware that he was probably the last guest to arrive; there’d been a delay unloading the luggage at the airport. Friends and family were gathered in the rose garden between the boathouse and the woods. The June weather had cooperated wonderfully, giving a clear sky with only a few scudding clouds. A light wind was laden with the scents of evergreens, of roses and the sea.
Then he saw Jenessa standing under a white-painted arbor, talking to Travis and Julie, and a spring that had been tightly coiled inside his chest relaxed. She’d come. She’d kept her word.
Judging by his heart rate, he’d just rowed across the bay that separated Manatuck from the coastline of southern Maine, rather than standing peacefully on the deck of the launch. Dammit, Bryce thought. I don’t need this. She’s an uptight, unfriendly woman who’s the sister of my best friend, and if I was smart I’d keep my distance. Big time.
What he really wanted to do was march past the roses, take her in his arms and kiss her senseless.
That’d really impress the guests. As for her reaction, he could think of several possibilities, all of them hazardous to his health.
“Hello, Bryce.”
He dragged his eyes away from Jenessa and said with genuine pleasure, “Leonora, how are you?”
Leonora Connolly was the mother of Travis and the twins, Brent and Jenessa. Soon after the twins were born, she’d fled to Paris to pursue her career as an avant garde dancer. The reaction of her husband, Charles, had been to tell six-year-old Travis that she was dead; by dint of threats ensure that she never got in touch with any of her children; and then divorce her secretly. Two years after her departure, he’d married Corinne, a woman who couldn’t have been more different from Leonora.
Last summer Leonora had traveled to Maine and had sought out her children. In the intervening months she and Travis had built a solid relationship; but according to Travis, Jenessa was indifferent to the sudden appearance of a mother she’d never known and had always assumed was dead.
“Another family gathering,” Leonora said dryly. “I’m as well as could be expected.”
“Under the circumstances, you look great.”
She was tall and slim, her long black hair streaked with gray, her every movement imbued with a dancer’s grace. “So you’re to be Samantha’s godfather,” she said.
“And Jenessa’s the godmother,” Bryce replied with a lift of his brow. “I met her for the first time three weeks ago. Talk about the original ice maiden.”
“When I first saw Travis last summer, he was very angry with me for abandoning him when he was only six. In retrospect, I prefer his anger to the impeccable good manners with which Jenessa treats me. As though I was a chance-met stranger who means nothing to her.”
“She’s a very talented artist.”
“You’re right. I’d like to go to her opening at the Morden Gallery next month…will you be there?”
“I might.”
“She’s also exceptionally beautiful,” Leonora said, a twinkle in her eye.
“I’ve wondered if that’s why Travis asked me to go and visit her. Matchmaking. He ought to know better.”
Leonora laughed. “Perhaps you should go and say hello to him. The ceremony’s supposed to start in a few minutes.”
“We’ll talk again afterward,” he promised, and headed toward Travis and Julie; but on the way, he was hailed by Brent Strathern, Jenessa’s twin brother. “Hi there, Bryce, how’s it going?” Brent said breezily.
Brent was handsome, charming and—in Bryce’s opinion—spoiled rotten. “Fine. I’ll be happier when I’ve done my thing with Samantha,” he replied amiably.
Brent bared his teeth in a smile. “You’re like me—you’ve had the sense never to get hitched.”
Bryce didn’t like being bracketed with Brent, who was known to be a womanizer and suspected of dubious financial dealings. He said mildly, “Your sister doesn’t seem to have matrimony in mind, either.”
“Jenessa? Who’s she going to meet in a dump like Wellspring?”
“Artistically, it’s not doing her any harm.”
“Contemporary art’s nothing but a big scam,” Brent said edgily. “So she can slop paint on a canvas…big deal.”
It was interesting, Bryce thought, that the privileged twin was jealous of the twin who’d been ignored by her father for years. “I suspect there’s a little more to Jenessa’s paintings than that,” he said. “I guess I’d better say hello to my host and hostess…excuse me, Brent.”
“See you later,” Brent said.
Not if I can help it, thought Bryce, and strode between the rose beds toward Charles and Corinne.
Charles Strathern was tall and thin-haired, his handsome face underlaid by obstinacy rather than real strength. Corinne, as always, looked as serene and imperturbable as if she’d stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine. However, her passion for roses was responsible for the beauty of their setting; Bryce had often thought there was more to Corinne than met the eye.
He shook Charles by the hand and kissed Corinne’s cool cheek. “It’s a real pleasure to be here,” he said. “The garden’s lovely, Corinne. And the weather couldn’t be better.”
“A very happy occasion,” Charles said bluffly.
“She’s a sweet baby,” Corinne added. “The charm of being a grandparent, of course, is that you can hand your grandchild back to the parents whenever you like.”
It was difficult to imagine Corinne dealing with a dirty diaper. Bryce kept this thought to himself, and answered Charles’s queries about his latest travels. “So you and Jenessa are to be the godparents,” Charles said. “I’m glad Jenessa came. She hasn’t been to Manatuck for many years.”
From Travis, Bryce already knew that Jenessa had no use for her father, whose main aim from the time she was little had been to crush her artistic impulses: impulses she’d presumably inherited from her runaway mother. “Then she’s seeing it at its best,” he said smoothly.
“She has a show opening next month in Boston,” Charles labored on. “We thought we might attend.”
Charles and Corinne owned a luxurious mansion in Back Bay, one of Boston’s most prestigious addresses. “Jenessa could be on the brink of a highly successful career,” Bryce said blandly.
“She graduated from Columbia’s School of