Grace Green - His Unexpected Family

“Megan doesn’t remember her father.” “Megan doesn’t remember her father.” “What kind of man was he, Kendra?” Brodie quirked a questioning eyebrow. She rose to her feet. “You’re out of line, Brodie.” “What’s the big secret, Kendra? Why won’t you talk about him? What are you hiding? Tell me something about your husband...or I’ll start to believe you never had one!” Her face turned whiter than a snowdrop petal. And her eyes filled with dismay. “Dear God.” Shock had him reeling. It had all been a lie—she’d been living a lie! But why? About the Author Grace Green was born in Scotland and is a former teacher. In 1967 she and her marine-engineer husband, John, emigrated to Canada, where they raised their four children. Empty-nesters now, they are happily settled in west Vancouver in a house overlooking the ocean. Grace enjoys walking the sea wall, gardening, getting together with other writers...and watching her characters come to life, because she knows that, once they do, they will take over and write her stories for her. Title Page His Unexpected Family Grace Green www.millsandboon.co.uk Dedication FOR MY NIECE CAROLYN CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN EPILOGUE Copyright

“Megan doesn’t remember her father.”

“What kind of man was he, Kendra?” Brodie quirked a questioning eyebrow.

She rose to her feet. “You’re out of line, Brodie.”

“What’s the big secret, Kendra? Why won’t you talk about him? What are you hiding? Tell me something about your husband...or I’ll start to believe you never had one!”

Her face turned whiter than a snowdrop petal. And her eyes filled with dismay.

“Dear God.” Shock had him reeling. It had all been a lie—she’d been living a lie! But why?

Grace Green was born in Scotland and is a former teacher. In 1967 she and her marine-engineer husband, John, emigrated to Canada, where they raised their four children. Empty-nesters now, they are happily settled in west Vancouver in a house overlooking the ocean. Grace enjoys walking the sea wall, gardening, getting together with other writers...and watching her characters come to life, because she knows that, once they do, they will take over and write her stories for her.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

FOR MY NIECE CAROLYN

CHAPTER ONE

“MOM, I want to go in by myself.” Megan Westmore’s dark eyes sparked with frustration. “I’ll be eight next month, for heaven’s sake—I’m not a baby!”

“But Lakeview Elementary’s a new school for you and you’re four days late starting the term—”

“Mom. I can handle it.” Megan pushed open the door of the white Honda and scrambled out. “We talked with my homeroom teacher Friday. I know where to go. OK?”

Kendra Westmore looked at her daughter and marvelled, as she so often did, that she could actually be the mother of this child. Oh, they looked alike—they both had wheat-blonde hair and nut-brown eyes; fine bones and a petite build—but their personalities were poles apart. Megan was self-confident and fearless, while she, Kendra, was—

“’Bye, Mom.” Megan hitched her backpack over her skinny shoulders. “See you at three-thirty.” She slammed the car door and took off into the playground.

Without once looking back.

Kendra sighed. She knew she was overprotective of her daughter but she couldn’t seem to break herself of the habit. Megan was all she had in the world. She didn’t know what she’d do if anything ever happened to her—

The clangor of the school bell made her jump.

Reluctantly, she put the car into drive.

But as she moved forward a red pickup truck screeched by, swung in front of her, and pulled in close to the curb.

She jammed on her brakes and barely missed crashing into the truck’s back bumper. Breathing deeply to calm herself, she waited for the driver to unload his passenger.

A child jumped down from the cab, a little girl around Megan’s age, but more sturdily built and with a mop of black curls. She scooted away, calling back over her shoulder, “’Bye, Dad! Thanks for the drive! See ya!”

The man tooted his horn in response and his truck moved forward, only to stop again sharply with a squeal of brakes.

Kendra had started forward as he did and now she had to brake sharply, too. She felt a twinge of irritation as the driver jumped down from the truck.

“Hey, Jodi!” he yelled. “Isn’t this Hot Dog Day?”

“Yikes!” The girl spun round and sped back to him.

He’d walked to the gates and Kendra drummed her fingers on the steering wheel as he whisked out his wallet and hastily handed over a bill. The child raced off again and in a moment had joined the lines filing into the school.

Her father started back toward the truck.

Kendra raked an impatient gaze over him.

He was tall, with wavy black hair; deeply tanned and very attractive in an earthy sort of way. Sexy, with a lean muscular build that was shown off to perfection in narrow-fitting blue jeans and a snug black T-shirt.

He chanced to glance her way and as their eyes met, he grinned, a slanting grin that revealed beautiful teeth, whiter than white.

“Kids.” Twinkling eyes fixed on her, he slid his wallet back into his hip pocket. “You’ve gotta—”

He broke off, his eyes widening, and stopped dead.

He had recognized her... and at exactly the same second as she had recognized him.

She swallowed, and stared back. The air between them seemed to shimmer, the way it always had when she’d looked at him in the past. It was odd and disturbing, and it was something she’d experienced with no other person.

No other man.

Only he hadn’t been a man then. He’d been a teenager. Bad and wild and from the wrong side of the tracks.

“Not your kind of boy, missy!”

But she hadn’t needed her grandfather to warn her of that. She’d been well aware of it. Of the differences between them.

She wondered now what he was thinking. Were his thoughts paralleling hers? Probably. She’d never made any secret of her disdain for him.

His smile was no longer lazy or friendly, but mocking.

Yes, he remembered...

“Well, now!” With the careless swagger that had been his trademark as a teenager, he moved over to her car. Her nerves seemed to jump as he planted a hand on the Honda’s roof and leaned down to her open window. “If it isn’t the snooty Westmore brat. Come home to claim her inheritance.”

“Well, now, if it isn’t that no-good Spencer kid!” She tilted her chin up and looked straight into eyes that were blue-green and fringed with thick black lashes. “Would you mind moving your old beater, Brodie? I have things to do.”

It was only nine o’clock but the September morning was already hot. Kendra became aware that perspiration was rolling down between her breasts, under her yellow tube top.

“Guess you’ll be selling the family homestead and taking off again,” he drawled. “I heard you got hitched, a while back. Your hubby here in Lakeview with you?”

His gaze dropped to her hands. Her fingers were gripped around the steering wheel. On the left hand, her gold ring glinted. It looked bare. She felt a twinge of unease. Perhaps she should have invested in an engagement ring before coming home; it would have been more...convincing.

Not that she had to convince this man of anything!

“Would you mind moving?” she said coolly. “As I said, I have things to—”

“What’s your hurry? How about having a coffee with me, for old t—”

She flicked the gear lever into reverse and after a hasty check in the rearview mirror, yanked the Honda back. She heard his startled “Whoa!” as he had to jump aside, and she felt a stab of satisfaction.

Turn signal blinking, she swung out into the street. And then she drove off as fast as she could without actually breaking the speed limit... and without even peeking back once to see if he might be watching.

But as she made her way home, following the Main Street that ran parallel to the lake, the chance meeting lingered in her mind like an unpleasant aftertaste.

It was more than eight years since she’d left the small town of Lakeview in B.C.’s Interior, and in all that time she’d never once given Brodie Spencer a thought. Why should she? He’d never meant anything to her. His father, Danny, had been the Westmore gardener and because Brodie had helped Danny in the summer she’d seen him around the place.

Other than that, because he’d been two years ahead of her in high school, their paths had rarely crossed.

That had suited her just fine!

And it would suit her just as fine, she decided grimly, if that state of affairs was to continue!

The booming Lakeview Construction Company—consisting of offices, lumberyard, warehouses, and store—sprawled over several acres at the east end of Lakeview.

Brodie drove directly there from the school.

After parking his truck in the yard, he jumped down onto the sunbaked dirt and bounded up the wooden steps to the rear entrance.

As he strode along the corridor, he heard voices coming from the office ahead. He recognized Mitzi’s breathy tones. When he neared the open door, he heard Pete talking.

“...and she signed the contract Friday. It’s a big job, Mitzi.”

“I’ll put Sam Fleet on it.”

“Yeah, Sam can handle it—oh, hi, boss.” Pete, the company estimator, nodded to Brodie when he noticed him in the doorway.

Mitzi’s bouffant bleached-blond hair swayed as she got to her feet. Stroking down the miniskirt of her white knit dress with its splashy pattern of crimson hearts, she said, “I’ll get your coffee, boss.”

“Make it an iced tea, Mitzi. Thanks.”

As his office manager teetered in her high-heeled sandals to the small lunchroom across the hall, Brodie ambled over to her desk. He picked up a sheaf of papers.

“You were saying, Pete...about a big job?”

“That’s it you’ve got there. For the Westmore place. Rosemount. It’s an enormous glitzy property at the west end of the lake, up on the hill. Fantastic view.”

“I know it.” Brodie was aware that Pete had only been in town six months and didn’t know much of its history. “The old guy who owned it passed away recently. Edward Westmore. Made his money way back when, in the stock market. His son Kenneth and his daughter-in-law Sandra both died about twenty years ago. Their daughter—old Westmore’s granddaughter—is the one who has inherited the place. So...she’s signed up with us, has she?”

“On the dotted line. She wants the kitchen gutted, modernized.”

“Is she going to move in...or sell?”

“She’s moving in. She wants commercial appliances in the kitchen, she’s planning on running Rosemount as a B and B.”

As Brodie assimilated that, Pete went on. “She also wants the staircase torn down, and some airy open circular staircase put up in its place—”

“She’s going to tear down that mahogany staircase?” Brodie rolled his eyes in disbelief. “The woman’s crazy! It’s a work of art! Good God, those spindles, that intricate carving—”

“Yeah, I know. I tried to talk her out of it, but she sure put me in my place! She’d been sweet as pie till then, but sheesh! when I put my two cents in—” He slashed his index finger across his throat.