room and left, slamming the heavy wooden door behind him.
The sound cracked loudly in the study, followed by total silence for a long moment before the door opened again. Bracing herself, she looked at the door, afraid Sean was back for a second round, but her father was there. “I just passed Sean in the hallway.”
“He’s leaving.”
He stepped inside, a tall, slender man with a shock of white hair, wearing a dark suit he’d put on for what was supposed to have been an engagement dinner. “I take it it’s over?”
He’d always been able to read her mind, or maybe he just knew her too well. “Oh, Dad, I’m so sorry.”
“What was it this time?” he asked, closing the door quietly behind him as he came into the study. “What was the sign that came to you that told you not to get married?”
She turned from him, moving to the French doors and staring out into the early evening, across the stone terrace to the rolling hills of the centuries-old vineyard on the property. “I had a dream last night, and I couldn’t shake it. I knew this was all wrong.”
“A dream,” he said from behind her somewhere. “That’s a new reason. I laughed at the first excuse, the ‘he eats steak and animal products’ one, considering you’re a vegetarian and all. Not compatible at all, of course. Then the second time, there was the ‘it came to me in a blinding flash when I was getting fitted for my bridal gown’ reason. That was more dramatic, and who could ignore a blinding flash?”
“Dad,” she muttered, staring hard at the distant hills. “Daniel not only thought I was ridiculous for being a vegetarian, he raised beef, for heaven’s sake. At first I liked him too much to let it bother me, but then, well…And William, well, I just knew suddenly that it was wrong.”
He was right behind her now. “What a mess,” he said in a low voice.
“I wouldn’t exactly call this a mess,” she said quickly, but knew it was exactly that…a mess.
“Three broken engagements in four years,” he murmured. “A third wedding gown put in storage. I don’t know what you’d call it, but I’d say this is becoming a full-time job cleaning up the fallout, a real father-child thing, I guess.”
“I’m twenty-seven years old, and hardly a child,” she muttered.
“You could have fooled me.”
It had been just him and her for years, ever since she was nine and her mother had “gone away for the weekend.” The story of the small plane crashing in upstate New York, had made the news for days. He’d always been so supportive, so steadfast in being there for her no matter what she did. But this very real tone of disapproval shook her and she wasn’t all that steady to begin with at the moment. She turned, and he was sitting on the corner of the desk, his arms folded on his chest, his dark eyes studying her intently. “What did you want me to do, Dad, marry Sean and be miserable? To look at him in five years and wonder how I could have ever thought I loved him? I’m just thankful that I came to my senses before that happened.”
“What did you want to do?” he asked, answering her question with another question.
She bit her lip. “I wanted what you and Mom had, to be really in love, to know it and to have it forever.”
His expression tightened and, even after all these years, she could see a touch of pain in his eyes. “We were lucky, very lucky,” he said in a low voice. “The thing is, what are you going to do now? Another repeat of what just happened?”
“No, I’m no good at finding love. I know when to admit defeat.”
“Maybe that’s your problem. You’re looking for it. Maybe it has to find you.”
“Semantics,” she muttered.
“So what direction is your life going to take now that you’ve sworn off love?”
“Direction?” She had never thought about directions for life, just living it. “What do you mean?”
He raked his fingers through his thick hair. “Well, as you pointed out, you’re twenty-seven years old. Sane, at least in most things. Intelligent, or you should be after all your forays into higher education. Talented, if you applied yourself, and you’re my daughter. The genes have to be there somewhere.”
“Dad, I—”
“Shhh, just listen to me for a minute.” He stood and came closer to her. “I’ve made a decision. You either have to get direction for your life or I’m out of it. I probably should have done this before, but…” He sighed. “Better late than never, I guess.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Being an indulgent father, as if I could make up for your mother not being here for you. Giving you what you wanted, when you wanted it. Going along with everything you did or wanted. That’s over. I knew this thing with Sean wasn’t going to work. I could tell. So, I made some plans. You can take them or leave them. But know if you leave them, you’re going to have to make it on your own.”
“This is crazy. I’m just breaking an engagement, not doing drugs or embezzling from the company.”
“No, you’re just drifting. You’ve got a smattering of knowledge about a lot of things, but you don’t have any knowledge about accomplishment or challenges.”
She pulled out the high-backed leather chair at the desk and dropped down into it. She tugged her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, then rested her chin on her knees and looked up at her father. “Where’s this all going? You want me to get a degree in something? How about art? I could get a degree in that if you want. I can go to the university in the city, get into D’Angelo’s classes, take private lessons. I’ve got all the time in the world. How about three or four years? Is that what you want?”
“No.” He pressed his hands flat on the desk and leaned toward her. “Just six months, Brittany, six months to try it my way, and if it doesn’t work, you can take classes in art for years if you want.”
“Six months, to do what?”
“I’ve had a few phone conversations with Matthew Terrel at LynTech in Houston.”
They’d both accepted the fact ages ago that she was hopeless at business and wouldn’t step in to take over when he retired from the company he’d founded. That had been a great disappointment for him, but a truth. She didn’t have a business head. She didn’t care about business at all, but she cared about him, and LynTech had been very important to him ever since she’d been old enough to remember. “Terrel’s the guy that’s working with the other one, the one who was going to split up LynTech, then decided to stay on and develop the company?”
“Zane Holden and Matthew Terrel. Terrel is operating it at the moment, so he’s the one I contacted.”
“Why were you talking to him? Is there trouble at the company?”
“No, it’s transitional, but it’s doing fairly well,” he said. “I was talking to him about clearing it for you to go back to Houston.”
“What does this Terrel person
