don’t expect me to believe you’ve come back after thirteen years with nothing but the shirt on your back—’
‘Not only that,’ he murmured, ‘but with a nine-month-old son to support. Cressida, bless her heart, must have known that one day I’d—’
‘Must have known you’d never amount to anything, Luke Brannigan!’ She glared at him. ‘Thank heavens your grandmother didn’t live to see this day!’
‘Now that’s where I beg to differ,’ he said mildly. ‘But right now I don’t have the strength to argue—I’ve been on the road since yesterday and I’m beat. If you’ll show me where we’re to be quartered...’ He moved across to the sofa, where he scooped up the baby, before easily swinging up his enormous bulging duffel bag. ‘I’d like to get settled in.’
Whitney put a hand to her brow, and felt her fingers tremble. Was she really stuck with this man? Was selling the estate not an option? If that was the case, how was she going to cope! Edmund Maxwell had said that Cressida had run out of money; she, Whitney, had a couple of thousand dollars in her own bank account...but that kind of money was peanuts, compared to what would be needed to make the Emerald Valley Vineyard a profitable entity again.
‘Why don’t you just take over your father’s suite.’ With a distracted gesture, she shoved back her hair.
‘I’d prefer not to use my father’s rooms.’ His jaw tightened. ‘How about the one looking down on the pool?’
‘No,’ Whitney said stiffly. ‘That’s mine.’
‘Then I’ll take the one next door.’ He raised his brows. ‘Any problem with that?’
Yes, she wanted to say. A big problem. The last thing she wanted was to have him sleeping in the next room to hers. ‘That’ll be fine. For now.’
The baby shifted, muttered and snuggled his face against Luke’s shirt. And Luke dropped an absent kiss on top of the child’s head, on the crown of the blue hat.
Something about the picture tugged Whitney’s heart; and as Luke turned on his heel and strode off, she stared after him, wondering why she felt so emotionally affected. Was it because Luke was so hard and invulnerable, while his child was trusting and helpless? Was it the tenderness of his gesture that had touched her heart? She didn’t want to think of Luke as tender; she wanted to keep believing him to be horrid and arrogant...and impossible.
Only then would she feel justified in using every trick she could come up with in order to get rid of him. Where was the mother of his child? Was she alive? Were they married? Divorced? Had they indeed ever been married? Was she still in his life?
One question she didn’t need to ask herself, because she already knew the answer. Luke still hated her...just as he’d hated her thirteen years before, when Cressida Brannigan had brought her to live at Brannigan House.
Looking at it now, from an adult point of view, she didn’t find Luke’s attitude toward her so surprising. After all, she had been the cause of all the quarrels between him and his grandmother, in particular that last ugly quarrel that had led to Cressida’s giving Luke the ultimatum that had resulted in Luke’s leaving the family home.
Whitney had always felt burdened by guilt over that, because Luke had disappeared, never to be heard from again.
Till today.
On learning of his grandmother’s death, he’d appeared shocked. Had he been? Or was he just a very good actor?
It was possible that word of Maxwell’s attempts to contact him had reached him. It was also equally possible that his arrival at Brannigan House, on this particular day, had been sheer coincidence. After all, it was a well-known fact that truth was stranger than fiction. And it didn’t really matter, did it! The bottom line was that he had turned up, like the proverbial bad penny...
Whitney frowned. He’d said he had no money. If indeed he was penniless, then he was entitled to move into this house and make it his home.
But she was not about to take his claim at face value. She had a responsibility to Cressida, to make sure the terms of her will were carried out to the letter.
She’d get Edmund Maxwell onto it immediately, have him make some investigations...and ferret out the truth.
CHAPTER TWO
‘WELL, I am impressed...’
Whitney hadn’t heard Luke come into the kitchen. His voice startled her, and she took a moment to calm herself before turning around.
‘Impressed? By what?’
He glanced at the stacks of clean dishes, and the dozens of crystal glasses, which Whitney had carefully handwashed and then polished with a linen tea towel till they sparkled. ‘By your efforts to impress.’
She put her shoulder to him, and hefted up a pile of plates. ‘Excuse me. I need to get into that cupboard.’
He stepped aside, and opened the cupboard door. ‘You don’t have to prove anything to me,’ he said softly. ‘I know exactly where you’re coming from. Relax, honey...go pour yourself another drink and let the housekeeper finish up here.’
Keeping a tight rein on her anger, Whitney crossed to collect a second pile of plates. Pretending he didn’t exist, she busied herself putting the rest of the dishes away. Then she started on the glasses, arranging as many as she could do on a large wooden tray, before carrying them out into the hall and across to the living room.
Resentfully she became aware that Luke was right behind her; a burr couldn’t have stuck much closer.
He made no attempt to help as she set the glasses in the buffet.
‘So.’ His tone was dripping with sarcasm. ‘Here we are, darlin’. Home alone.’
‘I’m not in the mood for jokes—’
‘Oh, it’s no joke. Whoever would have thought, when you arrived here as a saucer-eyed orphan, that one day we’d be setting up house together.’
‘We shall not be setting up house together. It seems, at present, that I have no option but to give you a room, but beyond that, you are entirely on your own. You can do your own cooking, and cleaning—’
‘The servants’ll look after me. That’s what they’re paid for.’
She turned on him sharply. ‘Cook and Myrna will not be looking after you! They’ve already gone—and they won’t be coming back. They were over retirement age and only stayed on as long as they did because they loved your grandmother.’
She turned on her heel and with the tray swinging from one hand, walked with purposeful steps back to the kitchen. There she began loading the remaining glasses onto the tray.
Once these were put away, she decided, she was going to soak in a hot bath and then have an early night. Her exhaustion had now intensified to the point where she knew that if she once sat down, she’d never get up again!
‘I tried to get into the attic,’ Luke’s voice came from behind, making her grit her teeth, ‘but
