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And yet he had the disconcerting feeling, when he was around Chelsea, that she wasn’t able to see real beauty, that her world had become so superficial it had blinded her to what was real and good and genuine.
Jake kissed his fingertips and touched the images of his daughters’ cheeks. His heart swelled within his chest, feeling as if it would break for loving them.
One year. Would that be enough to help his daughters discover what life was really all about? He wasn’t going to play matchmaker. That would be disgraceful and manipulative.
But he had successfully created and run one of the largest corporations in the U.S. He knew that sometimes bringing the correct combination of people together, then leaving them alone, made remarkable and magical things happen.
Surely, a man who knew power as intimately as he did could do something so simple as set it up so his daughters could make the discovery that he himself had just made?
In the end, only one thing mattered.
Love.
Long ago, he had loved a woman, truly. She had not been like Marcie. She had not even been particularly pretty. But she had glowed with a genuine sweetness that, at the time, he had not fully appreciated. Lately, he awoke at night remembering the feeling of her head pressed into his neck, her dark hair scattered across his chest. He felt a sense of shattering loss now that he had not felt then.
Then, so busy building Auto Kingdom, so driven, that when she had talked to him of the future, of babies, he had been impatient. Perhaps he had even been cruel. Certainly insensitive, preoccupied with “important” matters.
He must have been, because she had gone away.
“Fiona,” he called softly, and for a moment he could have sworn he felt her presence tingle across his spine, as warm and sweet as ever. It filled him with longing, which he impatiently brushed aside. He would not start acting old and feebleminded!
But he did realize that, save for his daughters, he might have missed love’s glory all together. Was it too late to return to them the gift they had given him? If he could help them find love…
The shock lifted from him, the haze he had been walking in since opening the doctor’s letter fell away. He became a man with a mission, a brilliant strategist who needed to get his most important affairs in order before he left this earth.
His most important affairs: Brandy, Jessie and Chelsea.
He returned to his desk. He would have to be crafty. He couldn’t summon them all at once. They were smart girls, every one of them. Together they would sniff out a plot to meddle in their lives as easily as his hounds caught the scent of a fox.
No, he had to help them one at a time, and hope and pray that the clock wouldn’t run out.
Aware that time was of the essence, he picked up the phone to his personal assistant. “James? Find Brandy. Get her home at once.”
He picked up the letter and envelope from his doctor, crushed them in his hand, and moved to the fireplace. He hurtled them in.
Too late, he realized he had inadvertently crumpled the two letters—the one still unopened—together. He watched the girlish handwriting emerge from under the other burning paper, curl and then turn brown before it disappeared into flame.
A chill went up and down his spine, even though he could not know that he would have found the content of that second letter as devastating as that of the first….
Chapter One
“I do not love Clint McPherson,” Brandy told herself tersely.
She had been repeating the phrase like a mantra since she’d left Kingsway, her father’s home in Southampton on Long Island.
She was now driving, alone, on an unfamiliar road that twisted and wound around the shores of Lake of the Woods, a body of water so enormous that it was shared by two Canadian provinces and the state of Minnesota.
Finding one small cabin on it was beginning to look like an impossible task.
A cabin that belonged to none other than Clint McPherson.
Of course, she could say she hadn’t been able to find it or him. End of mission. Who would really expect her to find a place on a map dotted with names like Minaki and Keewatin and Kenora? People who were under the illusion English was spoken in Canada should just have a look at this map!
What are you afraid of? an unwanted voice within her asked.
Brandgwen King had spent the majority of her life proving she was afraid of absolutely nothing, so the question irked. She was not afraid of Clint McPherson, or in love with him either! So, she’d had a girlhood crush on the man once. Big deal. It meant nothing. At twenty-six, she was all grown up now. The pain of how he had scorned her was long gone.
The point should be moot. The man in her life was Jason Morehead, her long time companion in adventure. Recently things had turned romantic, then unromantic, and now Jason was avidly begging her hand in marriage.
Why not marry him? He was wealthy, he was awesomely good-looking, he shared her taste for all things fast and furious.
“I don’t love him,” she said vehemently, and knew she was talking about Clint, even though she had been thinking of Jason, whom she was pretty sure she didn’t love either. With pure frustration, Brandy pounded on the steering wheel of the red Ferrari she was driving.
Her father had arranged for her to have a car through a dealership connection in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where her flight from New York had landed several hours ago. She had been given the keys, told to use the car for as long as she needed it, no charge. It was a fact of life, in her circles, that the more money you had, the less you needed it.
Of course, that nice man had probably thought the tomboy princess was going to be photographed in and around town in his car, not heading into some godforsaken wilderness.
“Love Clint McPherson?” she said out loud, with a derisive snort. “More like hate him.”
How had she gotten back to that when she’d been thinking, with determination, about the nice man who had lent her the nice car?
She sighed, annoyed with herself, and then surrendered. Hate? That seemed a bit strong for a man she had not seen for nearly seven years, not since he’d totally spoiled her nineteenth birthday party.
“Indifferent,” she decided, and then announced it out loud, putting down her window and calling it to the giant fir trees that lined the road. “I am indifferent to Clint McPherson.”
It rang of a lie. She knew it. The trees probably knew it, too. She put her window back up, took a twist in the road a trifle too quickly and slowed marginally.
How could her father have asked this of her? And why had she said yes?
She thought back to her meeting with her father, and the frown of concentration deepened on her face.
He had seemed old.
Of course, he was old. He’d always been old, even when she was young!
But he had never seemed old.
She was coming to see Clint because her father had asked her to. And maybe because she needed time to sort through all the implications of Jason’s unexpected announcement of his deep and undying love.
It was that simple. She had not agreed to this trip because she harbored some secret wish to see Clint again. She had come because her father asked things of her so rarely. He didn’t know it, but if he ever said to her that he wished she would not do some of the things that she did—like jumping out of airplanes or, more recently, off cliffs, buildings and bridges—then she would stop, just like that, no questions asked.
But he never asked.
Now he had asked something. He was old, yes, but beloved to her. The truth was Brandy would do anything for him, this gentle man who had loved her, and her sisters, so unconditionally, forever.
She thought back on the conversation she’d had with him. She had been distracted by the heat in the room, the fire blazing, so his request had really caught her up the side of the head.
“Brandy,” he’d said. “I need a favor. Clint—”
Her heart had done that traitorous flip-flop at the sound of his name.
“—has not recovered from Rebecca’s death.”
Rebecca, the woman Clint McPherson had married, was a woman who had been everything Brandy was not. Because Rebecca was a lawyer for Jake’s company, Brandy had known her slightly, well enough to know she was composed, classy, refined. Her hair was of the tameable variety, her makeup never ran and her clothing never rumpled.
Brandy’s chestnut locks, on the other hand, had a will of their own. Her style depended largely on humidity, direction of the wind and other forces beyond her control. Even when she tried to tame her masses of wavy hair, a few tresses always defiantly sprang free, giving her an impish look that went well with the nickname tomboy princess the press had given her long ago, and that she had never managed to outgrow.
Added to that, she had never learned the subtleties of proper makeup application, despite her younger sister Chelsea’s many efforts to show her.
And clothing? She relied heavily on many-pocketed cargo pants and T-shirts. To Chelsea’s horror, sweats were her sister’s favorite fashion statement.
Brandy knew her lack of fashion acumen was a disappointment to the American public who had long ago made Jake King’s motherless daughters into their princesses. At least she had not opted out of the role entirely, like her sister Jessie. No, Brandy tried never to disappoint in the fast-living department. Not parties or drugs, no, just lots of rich-kid fun: big engines, fast horses, white water. She had discovered the love of her life when she was sixteen and had sky-dived for the first time. The new thrill was BASE jumping.
Her lack of ability to make a stunning personal fashion statement was part of the reason she had not attended Clint’s wedding, though she had been invited, of course. Clint was like family, her father’s right-hand man since Brandy had been fourteen.
Younger, and so much more dynamic than the rest of that inner circle, Clint had fairly bristled with a kind of dangerous energy that had made her skin tingle.
“Back when I was young and hopelessly naive,” she told herself, taking a curve much too quickly. Clint would not make her skin tingle, now.
Good grief, no. She hung out with Jason Morehead, People magazine’s number-two pick as the world’s sexiest and most eligible bachelor.
Still, Brandy had made sure she was a world away the day Clint McPherson had spoiled her fondest fantasy by marrying someone else. She had sent a lavish gift—a complete set of antique silverware—if she recalled. On the day Clint had said, “I do,” Brandy had been paddling frantically through the foaming, freezing waters in the Five Finger Rapids section of the Yukon River.
And for the birth of Clint and Rebecca’s daughter—the same. An exquisite, expensive gift—a handmade bassinet from Italy—but Brandy had been a no-show at the christening party. She’d been arrested for jumping off the New River Gorge Bridge in Virginia for the utterly ridiculous reason that it wasn’t “Bridge Day,” the only day of the year that BASE jumping was legal off the 876-foot height.
And then, shockingly, only days after the christening, Rebecca had died. Brandy had known, because of Clint’s longstanding relationship with her family, that she’d had to go to the funeral. But somehow she had ended up at Angel Falls in Venezuela instead. She’d sent a card and an extravagant, tasteful, subdued spray of white roses.
“It’s been more than a year,” her father had said, sadly. “He does some work from home, but he’s become reclusive. He stays at that cabin in Canada, with a baby, and when I talk to him he seems so detached, unnaturally cool, as if nothing touches him.”
Brandy had listened to her father, and thought, a bit cynically, that there was nothing new about Clint being detached or unnaturally cool. But her heart insisted on hearing the words her father didn’t say. Clint had loved Rebecca so much that he planned to mourn forever.
“Brandy, I want you to go to him.”
It was probably been the heat in the room, but for a moment she actually thought she was going to faint. “What?” she stammered.
“You were always the one who could make him laugh. Go and make Clint laugh again.”
“I don’t recall making him laugh,” she said stiffly. “I recall making him very, very angry on several occasions.”
“Precisely,” her father said with satisfaction.
“Sorry?”
“Brandy, you make him feel strongly. Go there. Make him laugh, or make him angry, but make him feel something.”
The room was silent for a long time while she pondered what he was asking of her. She gave him the only possible answer.
“I can’t,” she said softly. “Really. I can’t.”
Then her father did something he had never done before.
He covered her hand with his, and she felt the tremble in it. His eyes locked on hers, and she saw the weariness there and the pleading. Then he whispered, “Please.”
She stared at him and heard his desperation, heard that he was begging her to do this thing for him.
She felt the shock of it, knew the depth of his love for the man who had stood so loyally at his side for so long, and knew she could not refuse her father this request, even if it threatened the most secret places within her, even if she knew it was absurd to put herself in this position.
She was not going to be able to rescue Clint.
Still, her father’s hand trembling on top of hers and the stifling heat in the room and the desperation in his voice had made her say yes, she would go there. She would try.
Besides, it would give her a week or two to figure out what to do about Jason.
So now, pretty sure she was lost in the Canadian wilds, she stopped once again and studied her instructions. She was in the heart of lake country now. Down the occasional long, winding driveway, she caught a glimpse of a posh resort, a private cabin, heavenly worlds that promised the perfect summer. But it was still early in the year, spring, and the countryside seemed largely abandoned.
“I do not love Clint McPherson,” she told herself, and gave herself a shake, wondering how her thoughts had gone there when she had been focusing so fiercely on the spring landscapes around her.
She put the car back in gear and took the next series of twists in the road fast enough to make her heart hammer within her throat.
That was how she always handled emotion. She shoved it away with adrenaline.
“My drug of choice,” she muttered. She thought it was a fairly good one, too. Much better than booze or drugs or food, or the worst one of all, men.
She slammed on the brakes, put the car in reverse.
A small copper sign, mounted on a tasteful stone post, glinted in the sun, nearly lost among the thick green foliage that surrounded it. It marked a private driveway.
Touch the Flame.
She was here then. She took a deep breath and recognized she was afraid. So she did what she always did when she felt that uncomfortable little fissure of fear.
She put the gas pedal down so hard that she was sucked back into her seat as if she were on a launch.
The car rocketed up a scenic lane, lined on both sides with gigantic fir trees. The road climbed a gentle rise, and she slammed on the brakes again at the top, her breath caught in her throat.
She had seen some of the most beautiful places on earth.
Yet this place caught at her heart. The road curved downward, opening suddenly out of woods into a beautiful clearing.
It wasn’t exactly a cabin that stood there, but a log house, golden, sweeping, windows everywhere. It was on the edge of a manicured lawn that swept downward to the sparkling gray-blue lake waters. The property was located on a sheltered bay, completely private, natural rocks standing like powerful sentinels at the mouth of the cove. Beds of flowers rimmed the lawns, looking wild and glorious. It did not look like the property of a man who was living in misery.
It occurred to her, within minutes, she would see him again. Her heart beating in her throat, she drove slowly down to the house. She parked her vehicle beside a carport that held a silver Escalade.
She got out of her car and shut the door quietly. The fragrance of the trees wrapped around her, clean and pure, heaven-scented. At first she thought it was silent, almost eerily so, but then she could hear the call of birds, the insulted chatter of a squirrel, the lap of the water on the nearby shore.
Had she expected Clint to come out and greet her? Perhaps he had not heard her arrive. There was still time for her to get back in that car, ease her way back out that long driveway, save herself.
“Save myself,” she muttered. “Sheesh.”
