His Brother's Bride

“You thought it was from William,” Laurel guessed.

“Yes.” Cecilia nodded. “I thought he’d crossed out the Renwicks’ names because he and I were Leslie’s parents. I thought it was an olive branch. I’d sent him a note a couple of years before telling him his father had passed on, and I just thought it had taken him that long to forgive me for marrying his dad.”

“You knew William before you married Mr. Hamilton?” Laurel asked.

“Oh, yes,” Cecilia said, exchanging another look with William. “I was in love with him.”

“But you married his father.”

Laurel’s voice held no censure, only a nonjudgmental encouragement to Cecilia to tell her story. Scott was impressed. If circumstances were different, he’d have saved the thought to mention to her later.

“Dennis was in trouble,” Cecilia said. “I’d gotten him a job at Hamilton Lending and he’d stolen from the company. He was only sixteen. William’s dad threatened to press charges unless I married him.”

“My father was not a very compassionate man,” William said, his voice less forgiving than it had been moments ago. “He knew what he wanted and how to go after it.” And then, obviously shaking off distasteful memories, he continued his story. “A few weeks ago, when Cici called me and told me we had to meet, I thought she was the one offering the olive branch. I knew if I met her, it could appear that I was really after my inheritance.”

“He wanted our first meeting to be in private, so he had me come to Twin Oaks after everyone left for the barbecue. He had the negligee I’d forgotten in his hotel room the night that Leslie was conceived,” Cecilia said, blushing. But that didn’t stop her from leaning over to give her lover a soft, albeit long, kiss.

Scott felt more than heard Laurel’s sigh beside him. He couldn’t help but wonder if, after all was said and done, he’d have a moment alone with Laurel, a chance to say goodbye to her in private before they all went their separate ways. Would she let him take her back to Cooper’s Corner?

Or would she fly straight to New York and arrange to have her car sent?

More to give the older couple a moment to recover than anything else, he glanced over at Laurel. She looked back at him, and he ached at the uncertain emotions he read there. He’d never meant to hurt her. Disillusion her.

He’d only ever wanted to love her.

* * *

LAUREL WATCHED AS Leslie Renwick, dressed in a hospital gown and robe, came into the room a few minutes later and sat at the end of her mother’s bed. She hadn’t needed an IV, but they were still keeping her overnight for observation. She’d showered and her short dark hair was fashionably mussed, her gamin features healthy looking.

Somberly, Scott told the threesome about Dennis’s death. William held Cecilia while she cried softly, but, though she was sad, she said she hoped that he’d finally made it to a place where he could feel loved and be happy.

Laurel wasn’t sure how all that worked, but she hoped Cecilia was right.

As quickly as she could without seeming insensitive, she guided the conversation back to the story she had everyone’s permission to write. She was eager to get the facts she needed and leave these people to their privacy.

It seemed that while Dennis had just been intending to blackmail his sister, whiting out the Renwicks’ names on the birth certificate as a warning to her that he knew the truth, he’d unknowingly brought two lifelong lovers together after a thirty-five-year separation. It didn’t take Cecilia and William long to figure out who’d really sent it. Cecilia had thought that William was the only one who knew she’d given birth to his baby three years after she’d married his father, William Hamilton Sr. But William knew one other person who had that knowledge, because he’d shared it with Dennis himself. He’d confessed that he and Cecilia had finally lost the battle against their growing love and had one night of passion neither of them would ever forget. William had hoped that his frankness would shock the kid into taking care of his own troubles, finding a way to pay his own debts, to set Cecilia free to marry William and raise her daughter.

Of course, Dennis had simply let Cecilia continue to take care of him and lose herself in the process.

So, telling her aging husband that she was accompanying her alcoholic mother to a clinic and rehab center in Iowa for six months, Cecilia had gone off to have her baby. She’d kept in touch with William Sr. by phone the entire time, and together she and William Jr. arranged the private adoption of their daughter, giving her to Hamilton Lending’s wealthiest, but also despairingly childless, clients, Robert and Gloria Renwick. Cecilia had never met the couple personally, but she knew of their reputation through their business dealings with Hamilton Lending. She had no reason to believe she’d ever come in contact with her daughter as the Renwicks lived in another town. And, as it turned out, she never had.

“That was when I finally told my father I was quitting the family business,” William said. “Of course he disowned me, which I’d always known he would. I left then and moved to Connecticut, where I was able to do the things that I love—travel and write books.”

“And I grew up with a great set of parents,” Leslie said, her eyes misting as they met Laurel’s. “Unfortunately they were killed by a drunk driver a little over five years ago.”

“I’m so sorry,” Laurel said, feeling much more than she could possibly express. Never had she had such trouble keeping the personal and professional separate.

“So what about Dennis?” she asked softly, trying to keep things on track so she could finish her job and leave these good people alone. Scott shifted beside and Laurel tried to ignore the small jump her nerves took. “I’m imagining you cared for him a lot?”

“My brother told us that he’d only dated Leslie as a bargaining chip.” Cecilia interrupted, sounding almost like a protective mother hen as she answered for her daughter. “Thank goodness he didn’t try anything with her.”

“My folks and I talked a lot about Dennis that first day we were in captivity,” Leslie said, her eyes meeting Laurel’s. “I still can’t believe I was so gullible, so easily duped, but I can’t be sorry I knew him when it brought me my parents....”

Her voice trailed off, and Laurel knew the other woman was going to have some recovery to do emotionally as well as physically, but she was completely certain that Leslie would have all the emotional support she needed to learn to trust herself again. Laurel looked at Scott, wondering if he’d ever know that same peace. He was looking right back at her, his gaze resigned.

She couldn’t bear the emptiness she saw there.

“The picture in your travel book on the nightstand,” Laurel asked William quickly, reminding herself why she was there. “Was that of you and Cecilia?”