Bride For A Year. Kathryn Ross
he moved to catch hold of the animal’s bridle. ‘I’m out to ruin your life and I’ve told Buck to work his way through your garden.’ There was a gleam of humour in Brad’s dark eyes as he looked at her.
For just a second she wanted to smile with him. The memory of how relaxed she used to feel around him, of how he had always been able to make her laugh, was there very strongly in her heart.
‘We used to be friends, Paige,’ he said quietly as she continued just to stare at him.
Her heart thumped very unevenly. ‘Did we?’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t remember that.’
Then she turned away from him and hurried up the steps towards the front door, allowing the fly screen and the door to bang noisily behind her as she closed it.
She didn’t turn on the lights in the hallway immediately. Instead, she stood in the darkness, her back against the door, her breathing uneven.
‘We used to be friends...’ Brad’s words drummed through her and with them memories flicked like photographs through her mind.
From being a young girl she had looked up to Brad, respected him... loved him. At least he had never guessed at her true feelings for him; that would be too humiliating. To Brad she was just the girl next door, that was where his thoughts of friendship started and finished.
She remembered how, as a teenager, he had teased her mercilessly and yet always made her laugh...always melted her with one look from those incredible eyes of his.
She had yearned to be old enough to go out with him. had felt quite jealous of the succession of glamorous women in his life.
His mother had guessed the truth, though. Thinking about Elizabeth brought a lump to her throat.
Paige couldn’t remember her own mother, but Elizabeth was everything she would have wished her to be. Kind, amusing, open. Paige had felt able to talk to her...had enjoyed her company.
It had been Brad’s mother who had taught her to ride; she had talked to her about the land, about the grapevines; it had been she rather than her own father who had instilled a love of the land into her.
It was eighteen months since Elizabeth had died and Paige still missed her. Her hands curled into tight fists at her sides. Lord alone knew what she would make of this situation now.
Briskly she started to walk across the dark hallway. She didn’t want to think about the past; she was too tired, too tearful. She would go upstairs, have her bath and forget everything. Her thoughts broke off as she hit her foot quite violently against a solid, sharp object. She cried out instinctively as pain shot through her, then sank down on the floor to rub her injury, tears of anger and frustration in her eyes.
‘Damn, damn, damn,’ she muttered under her breath. She had forgotten that earlier today she had dragged some tea chests down from the attic and left them in the centre of the hall.
‘Paige, are you OK?’
Brad’s voice from outside the front door was very unwelcome.
‘Yes. Go away,’ she called out, wanting to be left alone.
He ignored her completely and she heard the door open. The next moment the overhead light flicked on.
He came quickly across to her, an expression of concern on the handsome features. ‘What the heck have you done?’
‘I was playing football and a tea chest fell on me,’ she muttered sarcastically.
‘You always were a bit of a tomboy,’ he grinned as he bent down and pushed up her jeans to have a look at her foot.
She winced with pain as his fingers touched her flesh. ‘You’ll live... You’ve just bruised yourself.’ He straightened and for a moment she thought he was just going to leave. Instead, he walked away in the direction of the kitchen. ‘I’ll get you some ice to put on it.’
‘There’s no need. I’ll manage on my own.’ She stood up and found her foot still throbbed too much to put her full weight on it, so she leaned against the chest.
He came back with a tea towel filled with ice cubes and knelt down beside her to put it against her foot.
For some reason his gentleness filled her with a feeling of acute sadness. She looked down at the darkness of his hair and for a moment was overcome by an irrational desire to touch him, to reach out a hand and stroke it through the soft thickness of that hair.
‘Feel any better?’ He looked up at her and she nodded.
‘Thank you.’ Her voice was husky.
He straightened and looked at her.
Paige could feel her anger against him evaporating in a wave of stronger emotion, a feeling that this was the man she had always loved...always looked up to. Sorrow filled her blue eyes, darkening them to the shade of deepest violet. If only her father hadn’t turned to Brad for financial help, she thought miserably. She didn’t want to think badly of Brad; she wanted to push all those thoughts away and turn to him as she had always felt able to turn to him in the past, trust him as she had always trusted him.
His eyes lingered gently on her face. ‘I hate to see you so sad, Paige; it tears me apart.’
She swallowed hard. She wouldn’t cry, she told herself staunchly. ‘You... you should have thought of that when my father asked you to extend your time limit.’ Her words held none of the accusing tones of before; now her voice was just filled with regret. ‘All we needed was a couple more months—’
He shook his head. His eyes moved around the hallway, taking in the large tea chests cluttering the area. ‘I never wanted it to come to this,’ he muttered grimly. ‘I certainly had no idea that you were already starting to pack things up. I had thought it would be a while yet before you came to that.’ He raked a distracted hand through his hair. ‘It will be a mammoth task packing everything from this house.’
She nodded. ‘Three generations of my family have lived here. It will take me some time to sort everything out.’
‘What will you do? Put it in storage?’
She shrugged. ‘The real-estate people have advised me to sell everything. But there are a number of things that are of great sentimental value so I’ll sort through and take what I can.’ She tried to sound practical, tried not to let him know that this was breaking her heart.
‘You love this place so much, don’t you?’ he asked softly.
She took a deep breath. ‘It’s my home...’
His eyes met hers. ‘No matter what you might think, this isn’t what I wanted,’ he said softly. ‘Just for the record, it was my mother who first lent your father the money he needed, not me,’ he said calmly. ‘And she did it out of a desire to help. She was very fond of you, Paige.’
The words stilled her. ‘I was fond of her, too.’ For a moment tears shimmered in the bright blue of her eyes. ‘And it was very kind of her,’ she admitted huskily.
‘Don’t cry, Paige.’
‘I’m not crying,’ she denied angrily, brushing away a tear as it dared to trickle over the smooth pallor of her skin.
He moved closer and folded her into the warmth of his arms. For a moment she leaned against him, breathing in the comfort of being held. Then she looked up at him and subtly the feelings of grief changed to an awareness of him and the way he was holding her.
He breathed her name in a whisper-soft way that made her skin prickle with consciousness. She wanted him to kiss her; the desire that flared inside her was so strong it was overwhelming.
Then his head lowered and she felt his lips against the cool salt of her tears, caressing warmth back to her body, stirring feelings of desire and need alive with vivid intensity.
For years she had secretly dreamed that one day he would kiss her. She had imagined that