eyes narrowed. ‘Who?’ she demanded abruptly, slightly irked that he should have taken a call obviously meant for her.
‘Your friend Carolyn. Apparently you packed one of Nick's favourite T-shirts in with your things today.'
Colour flared in her cheeks at his contemptuous expression. ‘I was using it to sleep in,’ she defended hotly. ‘I forgot to leave it behind.'
Dark brows rose sceptically. ‘As I recall, you never used to bother with nightclothes,’ Nathan drawled.
Her mouth tightened as she recalled the time he had walked into her bedroom to invite her for an early morning swim, laughingly pulling back the bedclothes as she snuggled down in their depths as a refusal. For long timeless minutes he had stood looking down at her, and she had seen the beauty he found in her body reflected in his eyes before he snarled something about going on his own and slammed out of the room. After that she had always made sure her bedroom door was locked, not being prepared to change her sleeping habits on the off chance that he might invade her room again.
‘I still don't,’ she snapped. ‘But that could have proved a little awkward if Nick and I had met on the way to the bathroom!'
‘And you think the man's T-shirt was preferable?’ Nathan rasped angrily.
‘Carolyn doesn't wear nightclothes either!'
‘No, I can believe that,’ he dismissed impatiently. ‘I find it very difficult to believe she wrote a children's book!’ he added scathingly.
‘And just what do you really know about her?’ Brenna challenged. ‘Do you have any idea why she behaves the way that she does? What made her come on to you even in front of Nick?'
He sighed wearily, dropping down into an armchair, his left ankle resting on his right knee as he relaxed back against the brown material. ‘I'm sure you're going to tell me,’ he drawled uninterestedly.
‘God, you're so damned smug, sitting there behind your Wade name and your Wade wealth—–'
‘I thought we were talking about Carolyn Frank,’ he cut in flintily, his whole body tensed now.
‘We are,’ she confirmed tersely. ‘Carolyn lived in foster-homes from the time she was six days old until she reached sixteen and got a job—that's also how she became so adept at weaving children's stories, by telling them to all her little “brothers and sisters”,’ she bit out. ‘Even her name isn't her own, not really,’ she gave a pained frown. ‘There was a note pinned on her saying her mother's name was Carolyn and her father's name was Frank, and as they were both only fifteen they couldn't care for her properly. The young mother also begged for the baby not to be adopted, promised she would come back for her one day.'
‘But she never did,’ Nathan rasped flatly.
‘No,’ she said abruptly.
‘And ever since Carolyn has done everything she can to make people like her, as a salve to her mother's desertion,’ he guessed huskily. ‘I had no idea.'
‘How could you?’ Brenna couldn't forgive his contempt and condescension so easily, she had been at the receiving end of it herself for too long to do that. ‘You just looked at her and saw a flirtatious butterfly, you didn't stop to ask why she's like that—–'
‘For God's sake, Brenna,’ he snapped abruptly, ‘I only met the woman for a matter of minutes!'
‘Long enough to have passed judgment on her, obviously!'
‘I've said I was sorry,’ he sighed. ‘What more can I do?'
‘Stop standing up as judge and jury on me and the people I call friends,’ she said in exasperation.
‘You were my sister for nine years, Brenna, and I thought I was going to marry you for three months; I can't shut off my protectiveness towards you just because you order it!’ His voice rose angrily.
‘I never asked for it in the first place,’ she dismissed contemptuously.
‘That's like saying you didn't ask the sun to set,’ he sneered. ‘It was just as inevitable.'
‘I don't see why, you virtually ignored me until I was sixteen!'
‘I'm not going to even bother to answer that accusation, I think it speaks for itself,’ he drawled mockingly.
‘Isn't that just typical!’ she scorned. ‘I wasn't worth noticing until I started to look like a woman.'
‘Oh, for God's sake, Brenna,’ Nathan stood up forcibly. ‘Next you'll be coming out with that hackneyed male chauvinist pig line.’ He thrust his hands into the pockets of his trousers, pulling the material taut. ‘You were a damned little pest until you were sixteen, and it had nothing to do with being a woman. You arrived in Canada resenting everyone and everything connected with your mother's remarriage. Never mind that she was happy, you weren't, and you had no intention of being so in the near future either. Most young girls would have felt some excitement mixed in with their trepidation at moving to a new and vast country, of having two older brothers to suddenly grant their every wish—–'
‘Sitting me on top of a ten-foot horse wasn't my wish!’ Brenna still shuddered at the memory of her first experience on a horse's back. Grant had swung her up on top of the horse her second day in Canada, finding it incredible when she had protested she had never ridden before. He had finally taken pity on her and lifted her down, but it had taken months for her to get up on one again.
‘Grant was only trying to treat you like his baby sister,’ Nathan scowled. ‘How was he to know you had lived in a town all your life and hardly knew what a horse looked like, let alone ridden one!'
‘He could have asked! Besides, we might not have been told of your existence before we arrived there, but I would have thought your father would have told you about Lesli and me.'
‘Until my father announced his intention of marrying your mother and bringing her back to Canada with him we had no idea of either her existence or yours,’ he dismissed. ‘Why should we?'
Why indeed? Why should the arrogant Wade brothers care that their equally arrogant father had walked into a family unit and smashed it to pieces? Without Patrick Wade's interference her parents might have smoothed out their problems and made a success of their marriage. But not once Patrick Wade had decided otherwise.
Not that she had disliked her stepfather, not then anyway. She had just found the grand way that he lived, his wealth and power, very intimidating. No, the dislike had come later, much later.
‘Don't you think we should telephone Grant now?’ she suggested waspishly. ‘After all, he just might be worried.'
Sarcasm dripped from the caustically spoken words, and Nathan's eyes flashed like pinpoints of silver. ‘Why did I never notice before what a vicious little bitch you can be?’ he snapped.
Brenna blushed angrily at his contempt. ‘You noticed, Nathan,’ she ground out. ‘You even liked it on occasion,’ she reminded him coldly, that night in his arms, long hours of fiery, driven passion, forever imprinted in her mind and senses.
His mouth twisted. ‘I should have remembered I liked you
