His Summer Bride: Becoming Dr Bellini's Bride / Summer Seaside Wedding / Wedding in Darling Downs

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Libby brought in a tray of tea and quietly set it down on the coffee table. ‘The doctor’s gone into the kitchen to fill in his forms. He’s very sad. They were good friends—your father always spoke highly of him.’

Katie glanced up at Libby. The woman was ashen-faced, struggling to keep her emotions in check.

‘Perhaps you should sit down and give yourself some time,’ Katie suggested softly, still shaken but subdued. ‘You must be as upset as the rest of us. More so, perhaps… my father told me you’d been with him for years.’

Libby put a tissue to her face. ‘I have, yes, that’s true.’ She wrung her hands. ‘I ought to go and.’ She turned distractedly, as though to go out of the door, and then changed her mind and came to sit down on one of the straight-backed chairs by a polished mahogany desk. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said in a broken voice.

‘Don’t do anything. Just sit for a while and I’ll get you some tea.’ Katie moved as though to go and pour a cup, but Nick gently pressured her back into the sofa.

‘I’ll do it,’ he said. ‘You stay there.’

Steve looked towards the sitting-room door while Nick poured tea and handed it around. ‘I should go and have a word with the doctor,’ he murmured. ‘He’ll need someone to see him out… and I’d better call the paramedics and tell them what’s happened.’

He walked over to the door and opened it, walking out into the hallway. The sound of voices coming from there alerted Katie and made her sit up and take notice. Had the paramedics arrived already?

‘We just want to talk to Libby for a minute or two,’ a male voice said. ‘There will be things to arrange.’

Steve said quietly, ‘Perhaps it can wait for a while. Libby’s in shock, as we all are. Do you want to go and talk to the doctor instead, in the kitchen?’

‘Not just yet.’ The sound of the man’s voice drew nearer, and Katie looked across the room as the door opened. A young man walked in, followed by a slender girl who looked to be slightly older than him, about twenty-three or twenty-four years old. She was pretty, with auburn hair that fell in bright curls about her shoulders, but right now her features were taut, as though she was doing her best to hold herself together.

Katie stood up, dragging her thoughts away from all that had happened and making an effort to behave in the way that Jack would have expected. He would want her to politely greet his guests and make them welcome, even now.

‘Hello,’ she said, going over to them. ‘I don’t think we’ve met before, have we? I’m Katie. For a moment there I thought you were the paramedics.’

The young man shook his head. ‘I think the doctor rang and told them there was no urgency.’

‘Yes, that would be the sensible thing to do.’ Katie studied him briefly. He had black hair and hazel eyes, and she had the impression he was struggling to keep his emotions under control, his face showing signs of stress, with dark shadows under his eyes and a gaunt, hollowed-out appearance to his cheeks.

‘I’m Tom Logan,’ he said, ‘and this is my sister, Natasha.’ He put an arm around the girl’s shoulders. ‘You’ve caught us at a bad time. I expect you’ve heard that our father has just died. Did you know him? Were you a friend of his?’

Katie almost reeled back in shock. She stared at him. Their father? Surely there had to be some mistake? She felt as though all the breath had been knocked out of her and for a moment or two she simply stood there and tried to absorb his words.

‘I didn’t realise…’ she began after a while, but broke off. There couldn’t be any mistake, could there? Logan, he had said. How much clearer could he have made it?

‘Are you all right?’ Tom was frowning, looking perplexed, and his sister pulled in a shaky breath and tried to show her concern, too.

It wasn’t fitting that she should be here, Katie decided suddenly. These were Jack’s children, and they had the right to grieve in peace. She had to get out of here. ‘Yes, I…’ She swallowed hard. ‘I have to go… I need to get some air…’ This wasn’t the time or the place to explain who she was and where she had come from, was it? They’d obviously had no idea that she existed before this.

She swivelled round, desperate to get out of there, away from all these people. All at once she felt as though she was part of a topsy-turvy world where nothing made sense any more. She needed to be alone, to try to take it all in.

‘Katie’s upset,’ she heard Nick saying. ‘This has all been a bit too much for her. Excuse us, please. I think I’d better take her home.’

Katie was already out of the front door, standing on the drive, when she realised that she didn’t have her own car there. But perhaps that was just as well. She was probably in no state to drive.

Was it too far away for her to walk home? She could always get a taxi, couldn’t she? But for now she just needed to keep moving, to get away from there, to get her head straight.

‘Katie, wait, please.’ Nick dropped into step beside her.

‘Why would I do that?’ She shot the words at him through gritted teeth. ‘I really don’t have anything to say to you.’ She kept on walking. Hadn’t he known all along?

‘But we need to talk this through,’ he said. ‘You’ve had a shock—a double shock, given what’s happened to Jack.’

‘Yes, I’ve had a shock—and whose fault is that, precisely?’ The words came out flint sharp. ‘Did you really think you could hide it from me for ever? Why would you want to do that?’ She clamped her lips together. ‘No, don’t answer that. I don’t want to hear it. You colluded with him, let me go on thinking I was the daughter he loved and cared about, when all the time he…’ She couldn’t get the words out. Her anger was rising in a tide of blood that rushed to her head. It made her feel dizzy, and it thumped inside her skull like the stroke of a relentless mallet.

‘It wasn’t the way you think…believe me…’

‘Believe you?’ She gave a harsh laugh. ‘Why should I believe you?’ She looked at him, her green eyes glinting with barely suppressed fury. ‘Why should I listen to anything you have to say? I was foolish enough to think that you had some integrity, that you were different to the others… that you could be honest with me. Well, I was wrong.’ She was still walking, her footsteps taking her out through the large wrought-iron gates, flanked on either side by stone-built gateposts.

‘Katie, this is madness. At least stop and talk to me. Let me explain.’

‘There’s nothing to explain, is there? I know exactly how it went. You knew all along that my father had another family, a family he didn’t want me to know about… or my mother, for that matter. How old is Natasha, do you imagine? Twenty-four? That means she was born while he was still married to my mother. How do you think I feel about that? Can you imagine? And yet I still would have wanted to know that they existed. Don’t you think I had a right to know?’

‘Of course you did. And he would have told you, given time. It’s just that he wanted to pick his moment. You were getting along so well together. He didn’t want to spoil that.’

He frowned. ‘Katie, you’ve only just discovered that he’s passed on. You’re bound to be upset and not thinking clearly about things. You’re emotional and overwrought, and you should give yourself time to get used to the idea that he’s gone before you start dissecting his behaviour and giving yourself grief over it. You’ll have a much more balanced outlook in a day or so’s time.’

‘Will I? I think I have a pretty firm handle on the situation right now. I might even forgive my father for his deception…after all, I’ve been there before. He left us back in England and eventually I managed to come to terms with what he had done. I know what kind of man he is…’ her voice lowered to a whisper. ‘Was.’

She stopped walking and faced him head on. ‘It’s you I have a problem with. You’re the one who kept the pretence going. You banded together to keep me in the dark about it, about my family—my brother and sister, for heaven’s sake.’

She shook her head as though to throw out all the debris of broken dreams that had gathered there. ‘You knew how lonely I was through all those years after he left us,’ she said, her eyes blurred with tears. ‘You knew how much it hurt me to be rejected and how desperately I needed to know the reason for that. You should have told me the truth… that he had another family out here, one that he was prepared to stand by, to love and protect. It would have helped me to understand. I wouldn’t have kept my hopes up that my relationship with my father could have been something more than it was.’

Her gaze locked with his. ‘Instead, you let me flounder and lose my way. You made it so that I stumbled across his children at the worst possible moment. You could have stopped all that, and yet you did nothing.’

‘Katie, I had to keep it from you. Jack made me promise. He wanted to tell you himself when the time was right.’

‘Well, you should never have made that promise,’ she told him flatly. ‘Because of it, all my illusions are shattered. I thought I knew you... I thought I could trust you but I was wrong.’ She took in a shuddery breath. ‘You should go back to the house, Nick. I need to be alone.’

CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_282b3ad7-d3d9-5e56-a4cc-eddd85626c51)

‘IF THERE’S anything at all that I can do to help you through these next few weeks, Dr Logan, please be sure to give me a call…at any time.’ The lawyer handed Katie his embossed card. ‘I know this must be a particularly difficult time for you.’

‘Thank you.’ Katie accepted the card and slipped it into her bag. She was still numb from everything that had happened over the last couple of weeks. Her father had died, the will had been read and now she had to try to pick up the pieces and go on with her life.

How was she to do that? Nick had betrayed her. The one man she’d thought she could trust had let her down, with devastating consequences. He’d once told her that she was special and that she’d shaken him to the core, and yet those had been empty words. It seemed those feelings were fragile, and he was easily diverted.

His duplicity left her feeling utterly lost and alone and she couldn’t see how she was ever going to recover from this.

Even now, Nick was watching her from across the room. It was bad enough that he was there at all, but there was nothing she could do about that. She could feel his dark gaze homing in on her, piercing like a laser, but she was determined to ignore him. She wanted to avoid him at all costs. He’d known all along about Tom and Natasha, but he had said nothing. How could he have left her to find out about them that way? If he had cared anything for her, wouldn’t he have told her?

‘It can’t have been easy for you, discovering that you had a family out here in California,’ the lawyer commented.

‘No,’ she confessed. She’d had two long weeks to think about that awful day at her father’s house, and now she was here with her half-brother and-sister, gathered together under the same roof once more, and it was every bit as unsettling now as it had been then. ‘I’m finding it all a bit of a strain, I must admit. I’m still struggling to take it all in. It hadn’t occurred to me that my father would leave the vineyard, the house—everything, in fact—to the three of us.’ She frowned. ‘I’m not sure what I expected, really… after all, I hadn’t been part of his life for some twenty years.’

‘The terms of the will were very precise.’ His brows drew together in a dark line. ‘After his second wife died, he stipulated that the property and the land should go to his children, and he named each one of you specifically. It wasn’t an afterthought. He had the will drawn up several years ago. Other bequests were added later—like the monetary gifts to his housekeeper and manager.’

‘And the collection of rare books that went to Nick Bellini.’ That was the reason for him being there, wasn’t it, on a day when she’d thought she would be safe?

He nodded. ‘Jack knew that he had a special interest in them, and he wanted to thank him for his help over the years. He said Nick had always been there to advise him about matters to do with the vineyard, and lately he had looked out for him when he was ill.’

‘It sounds as though you knew my father very well.’ Her mouth softened. ‘He must have talked to you quite a bit about these things.’

‘That’s true. I often had occasion to meet with him, so we got to know one another on a friendly as well as a professional basis. I had a lot of respect for your father.’

Katie’s mouth made a faint downward curve. It was a pity she couldn’t share that opinion. Her world had been turned upside down when she had discovered her father’s secret. Now she would remember him as a weak man who hadn’t had the courage to admit to his shortcomings. How much grief would he have spared his family if he had done that? Even her mother had echoed those thoughts at his funeral.

For Katie’s part, she wanted to weep. What was it about her that made people treat her this way? As a child, for a long time after her father left she had felt that she was unlovable… worthless… and now those feelings of rejection and isolation were intensified.

Was there anyone she could rely on? Her ex had cheated on her, and her own father had left her so that he could be with his other family. And now Nick had hurt her deeply by keeping her in the dark about her brother and sister. If he’d cared about her at all, wouldn’t he have confided in her, tried to smooth her path and let her know about something so significant as a family that was being hidden from her?

‘How are you bearing up?’ Nick came to join them, and the lawyer discreetly excused himself to go and talk to her new siblings. ‘If there’s anything I can do—’

‘You could stay away,’ she said, slanting him a brief, cool stare.

‘I’m sorry you feel that way.’ His gaze flicked over her, taking in the silky sheen of her chestnut hair, the troubled curve of her mouth, and then shifted downwards over the slender lines of her dove-grey suit. The jacket nipped in at the waist, emphasising the flare of her hips, while the slim skirt finished at the knee, showing off an expanse of silk-smooth legs. ‘I was hoping by now you’d have had time to think things through… and maybe come to the conclusion that I’d acted with the best of intentions.’

‘Then you’ll be disappointed. I won’t forgive you for holding back from me. You let me down. You betrayed my trust… my faith in you. I’d begun to think you were someone I could believe in, but it turns out you’re no different from any of the other men in my life.’

His head went back at that and sparks flared in his eyes, as though she had slapped him. A moment later, though, he recovered himself and said in an even tone, ‘I can see I’ve a lot of fences to mend. I hoped you would understand that I did what I felt was right. I had to keep my promise to your father.’

She gave an indifferent shrug. ‘That’s as may be. I’m not disputing that. You made your choice and you stuck by it. That’s fine. Just don’t expect me to agree with you. If you had any thought for my feelings at all, you would have warned me. Instead, you let me blunder on, thinking I actually had a father who loved me but who had simply made a mistake.’ Her jaw clenched. ‘But, of course, it turns out that I was the mistake. That’s laughable, isn’t it? The offspring who really mattered to him are standing over there, talking to his lawyer.’ Her gaze was steel sharp. ‘You colluded with him.’ She gave an imitation of a smile. ‘I must have thrown the cat among the pigeons, turning up here out of the blue.’

His mouth compressed. ‘You know I’m not to blame for any of that, Katie. You’re putting the sins of your father onto me. Don’t you think you’re mixing things up in your head just a little?’

‘No, I don’t. Not at all.’ Her mouth tightened. ‘You should have told me, and you could at the very least have persuaded my father to tell me, instead of leaving things until it was too late.’

She started to turn away from him. ‘I’m going to talk to Libby for a while,’ she said, ‘and maybe I’ll go and help myself to something from the buffet.’ She threw him a warning glance. ‘I hope that doesn’t mean you’ll feel obliged to butt in there as well.’

A muscle flicked in his jaw. ‘You’re mistaking concern for interference, Katie. I only want what’s best for you.’

Katie’s mouth twisted. ‘Whatever. I don’t need your help or your concern. It’s way too late for that.’ She walked away from him, going over to the buffet table where Libby was standing alone, looking lost. She had to get away from him.

The truth was, she still could not sort out in her mind where everything had gone wrong. He had stolen into her heart and she had glimpsed a snapshot of how wonderful her life might be with him as part of it. She had begun to care for him and those feelings lingered on, in spite of herself. It wrenched her heart to know what a fool she had been to fall for him.

Natasha came to join them a minute or so later. ‘I’m just going to grab a quick bite to eat and then I’ll go and fetch Sarah down from upstairs.’ She bit into a cheese topped cracker, savouring it as though she hadn’t eaten for hours.

Katie frowned. ‘Who’s Sarah?’ she asked.

‘Oh, of course, you don’t know, do you?’ Natasha smiled. ‘She’s my little girl. I laid her down in the cot upstairs before you arrived. Even with the excitement of a house full of people, she was ready for sleep.’ She helped herself to a sandwich. ‘I thought I heard her stirring a minute ago. She usually naps for a couple of hours in the afternoon, so I take my opportunities while I can.’ She waved the sandwich in explanation.

‘I’d no idea,’ Katie said. ‘You look so young, and I’d assumed you were single, like Tom.’

Natasha smiled. ‘She’s eighteen months old—I’ve been married for four years, but Greg and I separated a few months ago, so it’s just Sarah and me now.’ Her mouth flattened briefly. ‘Not that she’s any trouble. Lately, she just wants to sit quietly and play with her dolls. None of that racketing about that she used to do when she first started to walk.’ She frowned, thinking about it. ‘Perhaps I ought to take her to the doctor. She’s definitely not as lively as she used to be… but, then, I don’t want to be labelled as a fussy mother, and it could be that she’s fretting over her father.’ She crammed another cracker into her mouth, brushed the crumbs from her hands and hurried away. ‘Must go and check on her,’ she said.

Katie watched her go, feeling a little sad. There were so many things she didn’t know about her newfound family. They had at least twenty-four years of catching up to do.

‘We ought to get together over the next day or so,’ Tom said, coming to the table to pour himself a cup of coffee from the ceramic pot. ‘There’s been a lot to take in today, and the land and holdings are all a bit complex, so we really need to iron out what we’re going to do.’ He looked around. ‘There’s no use doing it here. I can’t think straight in this house… too many memories. I can see Dad in my mind everywhere I go. And if today’s anything to go by, there are likely to be interruptions, with visitors stopping by to pay their respects over the next week or so.’

He swallowed his drink. ‘Nick has offered us the use of a conference room at his hotel. It’s quiet there, and the lawyer, Antony, has said he’ll come along and talk us through things in detail. I thought Wednesday would be a good day for it—you have a half-day then, don’t you, Katie?’

‘Um... yes, that’s right.’ Katie was looking at Nick, who had somehow managed to appear by Tom’s side. The last thing she wanted to do was spend time at Nick’s hotel. He must surely be aware of that.

His gaze meshed with hers and in that moment she knew without a doubt that he had set this up. There was a hint of satisfaction in the faint curve of his mouth. She might run, his blue eyes were telling her, but he would always be there, in her wake.

‘I ran it by Natasha, and she’s okay with that,’ Tom said, ‘so if it’s all right with you, Katie, we could go ahead and make arrangements.’

She could hardly disrupt their plans for her own selfish reasons, could she? Katie flinched inwardly, but heard herself saying, ‘Wednesday’s fine by me,’ and Nick’s mouth curved.

‘Juice!’ A child’s voice cut into their conversation, sounding clear and sharply commanding, and Katie looked round to see Natasha crossing the room. ‘Juice, Mummy.’ A chubby little hand appeared from out of the blanket-wrapped bundle that Natasha was carrying, the fingers curling and uncurling as the child poked her head above the fleece and spied the jugs of orange juice on the table. Pale faced, she had a mass of auburn curls that quivered around her cheeks with her excitement at seeing the buffet table.