The Tycoon's Virgin Bride (4 page)

If she told Bryce she'd changed her mind, he'd stay in Wellspring. If she went to the christening, she risked him remembering their long-ago encounter. Maybe in the next three weeks she'd come down with pneumonia. Or break a leg.

He held out his hand. “Someday you're going to tell me about the guy who made you so afraid. Then I'll go and punch him out for you.”

If only he knew how ironic his offer was. Reluctantly Jenessa placed her hand in his, searingly aware of the latent strength of his grasp and the heat of his palm against hers. His grip tightened. Her heart banging against the cage of her ribs, she said evenly, “Goodbye, Bryce. Safe journey.” Then she tugged her hand free.

She heard his footsteps cross the floorboards in the living room, and then the front screen squeak on its hinges. She should oil every door in the place, she thought. But house repairs never had been her strong point.

A minute or two 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.

B
RYCE
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 the Arts,” Charles remarked. “A very fine school.”

Bryce's heart gave a great jolt in his chest; the rose garden, the polite chatter of the assembly and the soft sighing of the waves vanished from his consciousness as if they no longer existed. “Columbia?” he rasped. “When?”

Not noticing Bryce's tone, Charles did some quick mental calculations. “She enrolled twelve years ago. So she must have graduated when she was twenty-one.”

Twelve years ago Jenessa had been seventeen. The same age as the spike-haired art student who'd said she wanted to sketch him after that lecture he'd given at Columbia.

But the art student had had eyes that were almost purple.

Contacts, Bryce. Colored contacts.

The way Jenessa moved, the elegance of her lean, capable fingers, that elusive sense that somewhere he'd seen her before…his intuitions had been dead-on. He had.

In his bed. Twelve years ago.

Jan Struthers had been Jenessa Strathern. What a fool he'd been not to make the connection.

“Bryce, are you all right?” Corinne asked.

Hastily Bryce pulled himself together, furious that he'd revealed, if only partially, the shock of his discovery to Charles and Corinne. “Sorry, I was just wondering if I'd met her on a visit I made to Columbia some years ago,” he said with a minimal degree of honesty.

Charles gave a hearty laugh. “Computers and art don't go together,” he said, “so I rather doubt it. Bryce, I saw
that article about you in the
Financial Times
recently, where they were explaining how extremely well you've done by maintaining your independence from any of the big corporations. You're to be congratulated, that's not an easy road.”

Talk about your career, Bryce. Talk about anything other than the fact that Jenessa Strathern, a woman you lust after, has already been in your bed. When she was still a teenager. “That's high praise, Charles,” he said wryly. “But you know me—what other choice did I have? I'm far too single-minded, not to say stubborn, to work for someone else.”

It was true. He'd always been a loner; for many years it had suited him to go his own way, both in his business life and his personal life. “But thanks for the compliment,” he added. “Now maybe I'd better go and say hello to the proud parents, and take a peek at Samantha. I only hope she doesn't cry when I pick her up.”

“If she does, pass her back to her mother,” Corinne said with a mocking smile.

“Good advice,” he grinned. Excusing himself, Bryce crossed a pebbled path and a stretch of manicured lawn toward the arbor. Through his long struggle to reach the international reputation Charles had applauded, he'd learned a number of lessons, the first of which had been to mask his feelings. Discouragement, ambition, anger, despair: he'd taught himself to hide them all. But could he dissemble the chaos of emotion in his chest right now from his best friend and from the woman who'd gone to his hotel room when she was only seventeen? He wasn't sure he could.

He'd soon find out. “Hi Travis, Julie,” he said. “Hello, Jenessa.”

Travis clapped him on the shoulder, his black hair ruffled by the wind; in a time-honored ritual, Bryce punched Travis lightly on the chest. The two men were similar in height, and since sports were one of their shared interests,
were both of athletic build. But there the similarities ended, for Travis's emotions, since he'd met Julie, were much more on the surface than those of his friend.
Open up, man,
Travis was apt to say to Bryce: with as much effect as if he'd addressed the walls of a squash court.

Julie gave Bryce a friendly kiss on the cheek, while Jenessa said in a voice as cool as the ocean, “Hello, Bryce.”

She looked rather like the ocean, he thought, in her pale turquoise linen dress, her matching hat circled by a froth of white flowers. Her unruly curls framed her face; her makeup accentuated the elegance of her cheekbones and the depths of her eyes. Blue eyes. Not purple. Fathoms deep, and unfathomable.

Spurred by an anger he wasn't ready to acknowledge, he took her by the elbow and bent his head, kissing her on both cheeks, European fashion. Her body tensed at his touch. Her perfume was subtle, her skin smooth as silk and warm as the sun that lanced through the trees.

Kissing Jenessa wasn't remotely like kissing Julie. Not that he'd expected it to be. “How nice of you to come,” he said, and watched fury bring an added flush to her already hectic cheeks.

A second realization thudded through his chest. Jenessa was no more immune to him now than she had been at Columbia. She'd wanted him then; and unless he was losing his marbles, she wanted him now. Was that why she'd been so afraid of him in her little house in Wellspring?

His anger increasing another notch, Bryce remembered how he'd offered to punch out the man who'd made her so afraid; and how she'd gone along with this story. But the whole time she must have been laughing at him behind his back.

It would give him great pleasure to find out if she still desired him. But not now. Later.

Glancing at her sister-in-law's high color, Julie said hastily, “Samantha's done nothing but sleep all day…we
figure she's getting ready to scream her way through the ceremony.”

“Jenessa flew up last night,” Travis added, “so we've had a great visit. How was Helsinki?”

“Wet, dreary and profitable,” Bryce said succinctly. “When are you going back, Jenessa? I left my car at the wharf on the mainland, I could drive you to the airport.”

“Oh, no thanks,” she said hastily. “I arranged with Oliver for a drive later on today.”

Oliver was the captain of the launch that plied between Manatuck and the mainland. “You're not staying overnight?” Bryce persisted. “Charles will be disappointed.”

“Hardly,” she snapped, glaring at him.

“I got the impression a couple of minutes ago that he'd like to see more of you. That he feels badly you haven't been on Manatuck for so long…I hope you've sent him an invitation to your show.”

He was being unforgivably intrusive. Not to say rude. Julie was gaping at him, while Travis seemed to be struggling not to laugh. Had Travis really sent his best friend to Wellspring in the hopes that Bryce and Jenessa would fall for each other?

You're right out of luck, buddy. No way am I taking on your kid sister.

Then, like a sledgehammer, a horribly obvious thought hit him between the eyes. He, Bryce Laribee, had taken Travis's sister to bed when she was just seventeen years old.

Travis would kill him if he ever found out. Kill him and ask questions afterward.