Joined By Marriage

“I just wouldn’t like us to become—close, and then discover a relationship between us is impossible.” About the Author Books by Carole Mortimer Title Page Dedication PROLOGUE CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN EPILOGUE Copyright

“I just wouldn’t like us to become—close, and then discover a relationship between us is impossible.”

Nathan pulled her into his arms. “We’re already close, Brianna,” he murmured huskily, his breath stirring the hair at her temple. “Didn’t this morning prove that?”

CAROLE MORTIMER says: “I was born in England, the youngest of three children—I have two older brothers. I started writing in 1978, and have now written over ninety books for Harlequin Presents®.

“I have four sons—Matthew, Joshua, Timothy and Peter—and a bearded collie dog called Merlyn. I’m in a very happy relationship with Peter senior, we’re best friends as well as lovers, which is probably the best recipe for a successful relationship. We live on the Isle of Man.”

Books by Carole Mortimer

HARLEQUIN PRESENTS

1863—ONE-MAN WOMAN

1894—WILDEST DREAMS

1929—A MARRIAGE TO REMEMBER

1965—THE DIAMOND BRIDE

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Joined by Marriage

Carole Mortimer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Peter,

Eternity

PROLOGUE

A SINGLE sheet of paper lay on the table in front of her, the words written upon it. as she looked down at them, at once seeming not enough and yet at the same time too much. Perhaps she shouldn’t have written this letter. But a part of her had wanted to so much. She couldn’t let go without leaving something, something to say that she had been here at all.

She picked up the letter and read it once more, unaware that her tears fell onto the paper. She had read the words so many times already, knew them all by heart. And yet she read them again, reluctant to let them go, too, now that the time had come.

Would they ever be read by the person she’d written them for, anyway?

Or would someone, perhaps someone wiser than her, deem it better that her letter be destroyed?

Slender fingers tightened on the sheet of paper as she held it to her protectively. It wouldn’t be destroyed. It would reach the person it was intended for. It had to. It was all she had left to give. Of herself.

She had long since given up the emotional struggle as to whether what she was doing was right. She had taken that inevitable step some time ago. What was right and what was wrong had passed long since. And leaving this letter, whether right or wrong, was something she needed to do. Had to do.

Then do it, that warring voice inside her head instructed. Do it, and let that be an end to it.

An end...

This letter was the end.

Or a beginning...

CHAPTER ONE

THE letter was decidedly unhelpful, Brianna decided. It told her nothing. And yet at the same time it promised her everything.

Dear Miss Gibson,

Could you please contact our office at the above address, either by telephone or mail, at your earliest convenience, so that we might arrange a time for you to call in and see one of our partners?

The notepaper heading was that of a firm of prestigious London lawyers, but the signature at the bottom of the short request wasn’t that of any of the partners listed at the top of the letter.

Everything and nothing.

‘What have you got there, sis?’ Her brother Gary leant over her shoulder, the bowl of cereal he was eating for breakfast tipping precariously in the direction of Brianna’s plate of toast as he did so.

Brianna reached up and straightened the bowl. ‘A case of mistaken identity, I think,’ she said dryly, crushing the letter into a ball in preparation for throwing it into the bin when she had finished eating.

‘What’s that, love?’ her father said vaguely as he came into the kitchen straightening his tie, a tall, loose-limbed man in his early fifties.

She shook her head, smiling. ‘Just a firm of lawyers who haven’t done their homework very well and have sent a letter to me by mistake.’ She stood up, the letter already forgotten. ‘Would you like some toast for—Dad, what is it?’ She frowned as she saw he hadn’t moved to the refrigerator for his customary glass of early-morning orange juice but had come to a sudden halt just inside the kitchen door, his face pale. ‘Dad?’ she prompted again worriedly.

He sat down heavily on one of the chairs at the kitchen table. ‘Could I see the letter?’ he said abruptly.

‘This?’ Brianna looked down at the crumpled piece of paper in her hand. ‘But I just told you, it’s obviously a case of mistaken identity—’

‘Landris, Landris and Davis,’ her father said flatly, his gaze steadily meeting hers.

Her eyes widened as her father correctly named the firm of lawyers who had sent her the letter. How on earth—?

‘Please, Brianna.’ He held out his hand for the letter, then slowly and meticulously straightened out the creases before attempting to read its typed words.

‘What’s going on, sis?’ Gary asked in a loud whisper, his cereal being eaten now as he got ready to leave for school. In his final year at school, and taking his ‘A’ levels, Gary looked like most of his peers: hair a bit too long, clothes studiously untidy, not yet a man but no longer a child.

‘I have no idea,’ Brianna told him frankly, distractedly handing him some money for his bus fare and lunch.

He grimaced at the way their father just sat looking at that letter Brianna had received in this morning’s post. ‘Looks serious,’ he muttered.

Brianna wasn’t altogether certain how it looked. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to know, either. Her mother had died just over two years ago, and since that time their father, with help from Brianna, had managed to keep them going as a family.

Perhaps this letter was something to do with her mother? Although that didn’t make much sense to her either; her mother had left them all that she had to give, which was her love, and the happiness of close-knit family life. That was a legacy not everyone could leave behind them.

‘School,’ she reminded her brother as he hovered curiously, then ‘Homework,’ as she handed him a folder from the top of the fridge. ‘Bus,’ she finished pointedly.

He looked disgruntled at having to miss finding out what the mystery was all about, and pulled a face as he went. But he was going to miss his bus if he didn’t leave now, and having to walk the distance to school wouldn’t suit him at all; any form of exercise was total anathema to Gary!

Brianna busied herself tidying away the breakfast dishes, knowing that when her father was ready he would talk to her. She had learnt this practice from her mother, although it hadn’t been an easy lesson to learn; Brianna was more inclined to impulsive action than thinking things through. But, as her mother had pointed out affectionately long ago, her father could be led but he wouldn’t be pushed.

And so Brianna waited—although she hoped her father wouldn’t take too long over his musing, or the two of them were going to be late for work, her father at his consulting rooms, Brianna at the hospital where she worked as a receptionist.

Her father suddenly spoke, his voice gruff with emotion. ‘I believe that this letter has something to do with your real mother.’

Brianna turned slowly, frowning. Her parents had never made any secret of the fact that she was adopted. It had been explained to her as soon as she was old enough to understand that she was special, a gift to Graham and Jean Gibson after childless years of marriage.

It had never bothered Brianna that she was adopted or that, as often happened in these cases, her adoptive parents had actually conceived a baby of their own when she was four years old. She was ‘special’, loved all the more dearly because her parents had believed they would never have a child of their own. It was because of that love she had never felt any inclination to search out her real parents; she simply didn’t feel the need to know them, accepting that there must have been a reason she was given away in the first place, and that it was probably a reason that might still cause hurt and distress to the people involved.

She had certainly never expected that her real mother would seek her out!

She sat down in the chair opposite her father, her face pale, blue eyes wide above a small nose, generous mouth, and stubbornly determined chin. Her father had often teased her about that stubbornness during her childhood, saying her shoulder-length hair should have been red rather than the colour of gold-ripened wheat. But gold it was, straight and fine to her shoulders, with a wispy fringe above those deep blue eyes.

‘Why do you think that?’ she asked through stiff lips. She didn’t want to hear any of this!

Her father looked at her with steady brown eyes. ‘Because I received a letter from them myself about three months ago. Just before your twenty-first birthday...’

‘The letter clearly states that you should contact us before coming to the office,’ the frosty middle-aged receptionist told her dismissively. ‘I would be happy to make an appointment for you to see—’

‘I don’t want an appointment,’ Brianna told her equally coldly—after all, she was a receptionist herself, knew every put-off there was, both polite and otherwise. She also knew that if she waited here long enough, refusing to budge, someone would eventually see her. ‘I wish to see one of the partners mentioned in the letter. Now.’

And she was determined that she would. She had been totally shocked this morning when her father had told her Landris, Landris and Davis had written to him some time ago, enquiring as to whether he had an adopted daughter by the name of Brianna. Her father had written back confirming that he did, and asked exactly why it was they wanted to know. But he had received no reply from the lawyers in the three months that followed and had finally decided the law firm must have made some sort of mistake. The second letter, this morning, from the same practice, seemed to indicate there had been no mistake after all...

Brianna had gone off to work as usual, but she had been distracted all morning, thoughts going round and round inside her head, and she’d finally decided that enough was enough. She hated mysteries, and the sooner she found an answer to this one, the better. Which was why she had taken a taxi to this office during her lunch-break.

The premises of Landris, Landris and Davis were designed to be imposing, the grey-haired dragon of a receptionist a further deterrent to anyone not here on serious business. Or someone without an appointment...

‘I’m afraid that’s impossible,’ the woman told her firmly. ‘None of the partners are available to see you at the moment.’

‘Then I’ll wait until one of them is available,’ Brianna informed her stubbornly.

‘Look, Miss—Gibson—’ the woman filled in her name after another quick glance at the letter Brianna had received this morning ‘—I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way. I can make you an appointment, possibly some time next week—’

‘I don’t think so,’ Brianna cut in mildly, deep blue eyes silently warring with stony brown.

‘Miss Gibson, I really must insist—’

‘Problems, Hazel?’

Both women turned sharply at the sound of that deeply male voice, the receptionist at once looking flustered and Brianna’s interest in the intruder deepening as she saw the other woman’s reaction to him.

Not a simple clerk, by the look of him. He stood well over six feet tall, and was powerfully built beneath the formality of the dark suit and white shirt he wore. He looked down his arrogant nose at the two of them with icy blue eyes through dark-rimmed glasses: eyes that were not the deep blue of Brianna’s own, but a pale blue that sent an arctic chill down her spine.

Some of the doctors she worked with on a day-to-day basis were a little full of their own importance, but this man’s air of arrogance was nothing like theirs; it seemed to be inborn and his air of severity was added to by the shortness of his dark hair, his hard, chiselled features and firm, unsmiling mouth. In fact, the man didn’t look as if he found much in life to smile about!

Brianna’s irritation with the receptionist turned to pity as she imagined having to work with the Ice Man day in and day out...!

‘No, not really, Mr Nathan,’ the receptionist assured him in a voice that seemed suddenly breathless, sounding more like a little girl’s than that of a mature woman in her fifties. ‘It’s only that Miss Gibson doesn’t have an appointment—’

‘Gibson?’ He repeated the name in a clipped voice, once again looking through those dark-rimmed glasses down his thin, aristocratic nose at Brianna. ‘Exactly who is it you are wishing to see, Miss Gibson?’

Her father was right about her temper, and, as this man not only looked down at her but spoke down to her too, she could feel it rapidly rising. ‘Landris, Landris or Davis,’ she returned, as coolly as he had spoken to her.

Irritation flickered across his aristocratic features, his mouth twisting mockingly. ‘That’s rather a generalisation,’ he drawled derisively.

Her eyes flashed. ‘I can’t be any more specific than that. The letter I received from this office was just as ambiguous,’ she returned scathingly.

‘Letter?’ Those icy blue eyes narrowed behind the glasses. ‘What letter is that? Maybe if I could see it—’

‘I have it here, Mr Nathan,’ Hazel offered eagerly, holding out what was turning out to be a much-read letter.

‘Mr Nathan’ took it. His hands were long and slender—far too artistically sensitive for such a man, Brianna decided critically.

She realised she had taken an instant dislike to him. She usually got on with most people, that was why her job at the hospital was so interesting and enjoyable. Maybe it was just that she was already so emotionally strung-cut. After all, she didn’t even know him, although a part of her said she didn’t want to, either!

‘Hmm.’ When he looked up again, his. gaze was even more chilly than before. ‘It states quite clearly here that—’ He broke off as an elderly couple entered the reception area. ‘Would you like to come to my office, Miss—Gibson?’ This time he added her name after another glance at the letter, which he still held. ‘We can talk more privately there.’

The receptionist looked alarmed. ‘You have an appointment at two o’clock, Mr Nathan.’

‘Plenty of time, Hazel,’ he dismissed with a wave of his hand, before taking a firm hold of Brianna’s arm. ‘If you would like to come this way, Miss Gibson,’ he suggested as the elderly couple approached the receptionist desk. ‘I’m sure you will be more comfortable in my office.’

And not such a visible nuisance, Brianna guessed wryly. It simply wasn’t done, at the offices of Landris, Landris and Davis, to have altercations, no matter how mild, in their reception area.

She wasn’t sure that ‘comfortable’ exactly described the room he took her into; grand and imposing sprang to mind, but not comfortable! The walls were panelled halfway up in the dark oak, and above hung paper the colour of a deep blue sky; there was a much darker blue carpet on the floor, and one of the walls was completely lined with books, all of them of legal origin, if the titles were anything to go by. In the centre of the room a huge bay window, edged with dark blue velvet curtains the same colour blue as the carpet formed the backdrop to a very wide oak desk. A high-backed dark blue leather chair sat behind it; a smaller chair in the same leather faced it.

Mr Nathan moved to sit in the large chair, indicating she should sit opposite him, her letter still firmly in his possession. He laid it down on the desk in front of him, reading it again quickly before looking up at her once again. ‘You really have no idea what this letter is about?’ he prompted.

She had only the guesswork of her father to go on, which she wasn’t sure was accurate. She had been put up for adoption when she was only two months old, so why on earth should her real parents be interested in her now?

Although that first letter sent to her father by this firm of lawyers three months ago was still a puzzle...

‘None,’ she replied quickly.

He pursed his firm, unsmiling lips. ‘I see,’ he murmured thoughtfully.

‘And I really think, Mr Nathan—’ Brianna sat forward in her chair ‘—that if you don’t know either, then you’re wasting my time as well as your own!’

She felt the embarrassed colour enter her cheeks after this outburst, realising instantly that she owed him an apology; after all, he hadn’t needed to bother with her at all, he could just have left her for the receptionist to deal with—which she was sure, without this man as an audience, the other woman was more than capable of doing!

‘I’m sorry, Mr Nathan.’ She sat back with a heavy sigh. ‘It’s just that letters like that one—’ she indicated the letter in front of him ‘—arriving in the post without warning, can be quite unnerving.’

‘I’m sure they can,’ he returned smoothly. ‘But could I just set the record straight on one thing before we continue this conversation?’

She looked across at him expectantly. ‘Yes?’

He gave a small inclination of his head, the late spring sunlight coming through the window behind him showing a slight touch of red in the darkness. ‘My name is not Mr Nathan.’

‘But it’s what the receptionist just called you,’ Brianna protested confusedly.

His mouth quirked, not quite into a smile, but into something—in this man’s case, Brianna felt—that came very close to it. ‘It’s what she has always called me.’

‘But I don’t see why, if it isn’t your name.’ Brianna frowned. ‘You—’

‘If you will just allow me to finish?’ the man continued imperiously. ‘Are you usually this—impetuous, Miss Gibson?’ He frowned at her darkly, as if she were a species he very rarely came into contact with! And she didn’t mean women; she was sure there was a wife in the background somewhere, someone as stiffly formal and haughty as he was. He obviously just wasn’t used to someone as bluntly forthright as she was.

Well, that was okay, because she had never met anyone quite this stuffy and arrogant before, either. It wasn’t even as if he was that old; possibly he was in his mid-thirties, and yet he talked and behaved like someone so much older than that. What he really needed was to—

Never mind what he needed, she impatiently admonished herself; she would never see him again after today, anyway. She wasn’t going to get anything out of him at all if she didn’t curb her impetuosity a little.

‘Probably,’ she conceded with a grimace. ‘Otherwise I wouldn’t have come here today at all, would I?’ she added with a shrug.

His face showed his irritation with her levity. ‘As I was saying...’

‘Before you were so rudely interrupted!’ Brianna couldn’t control the facetious mental ending to his statement—or the smile that threatened to curve her lips and bring a sparkle to the deep blue of her eyes. The first she stifled by biting her bottom lip, the latter she could do nothing about, although she did make an effort to try and look avidly interested in what he was saying. If only he weren’t so pompous...!

‘Hazel calls me Mr Nathan because she has known me most of my life,’ he bit out tersely, as if he guessed some of her amusement was at his expense.

‘That sounds fair enough—except you’ve just told me it isn’t your name!’ Brianna shook her head frustratedly.

Maybe it was her, or maybe what he was saying had lost something in the translation—because for all she understood his explanation he might as well have been talking a foreign language! But if his name wasn’t Mr Nathan, why on earth did the receptionist persist in calling him that?

He drew in a harshly controlling breath, studying her with narrowed eyes behind his dark-rimmed lenses, as if he sensed only too well that she was laughing at him.

Which she wasn’t. Well, not really. She was sure she was the one missing something here; this man was far too sensible ever to talk the load of nonsense this conversation had so far seemed to her to be. No doubt he would explain properly in a minute, and all would be understood. She hoped...

‘My name is Nathan.’ He spoke slowly now, as if he were talking to a slightly backward child. ‘And, as Hazel has worked on Reception here for the last thirty years, she has known me since I began visiting these offices when I was five years old.’

Brianna put her head back, looking puzzled. She still didn’t understand, but she was beginning to think it wasn’t her fault, after all...

‘You’ve been a lawyer since you were five years old...?’ she said in slow disbelief.

He scowled. ‘You know, if I didn’t think your bewilderment was genuine—’

‘Oh, but I can assure you it is,’ she hastily replied, not liking the dark clouds she could see appearing over his furrowed brow.

God, this man must be daunting in a court-room. But not since he was five years old... She didn’t even know what had made her make such a ridiculous remark. A slight touch of hysteria probably. But not because of him; it was this situation over the letter that had her so wound up.

‘Of course you haven’t been a lawyer since you were five.’ She dismissed her own stupidity. ‘I’m just a little confused.’

He gave her a look that clearly said he thought she was very confused!

He absently moved the letter around the top of his desk before replying. ‘I was visiting my father at these offices, Miss Gibson,’ he bit out in those coldly clipped tones that were rapidly becoming familiar to her. ‘He was—and still is—a lawyer.’

‘Oh.’ Brianna nodded, sure there was more to come. Although she was getting a little tired of waiting. They hadn’t even really begun talking about her letter yet. Were all lawyers this pedantic?

‘My first name is Nathan,’ he finally explained. ‘And since I came to work here Hazel has always called me Mr Nathan, simply as a sign of respect, I suppose. Although, in the circumstances, it’s probably less confusing for her too,’ he added thoughtfully, his icy blue gaze boring into Brianna as he looked at her steadily. ‘My name is Nathan Landris, Miss Gibson,’ he bit out.

At last! Nathan Landris. One of the partners... ‘Which Landris are you—Landris or Landris?’ She frowned.

‘Neither,’ he returned dryly. ‘My father is Landris, and my uncle James was Landris—but he died ten years ago. And my uncle Roger is Davis.’

How extremely confusing. ‘So you aren’t Landris or Landris?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ he confirmed. ‘In five years’ time—’

‘When you’re forty?’ Brianna quickly and instinctively calculated, still trying to come to terms with who this man was. Oh, she had decided very quickly that he couldn’t be anything as lowly as a clerk—this office he had brought her into had only confirmed that—but she certainly hadn’t realised he was the son of one of the partners in the firm. No wonder Hazel called him Mr Nathan!

‘When I’m forty,’ he echoed curtly, again watching her with narrowed eyes, as if uncertain whether or not she was laughing at him.

Which she wasn’t now. Okay, so he was pompous, obviously took himself—and everything else—far too seriously, but he was also the son of one of the partners of this prestigious firm; getting as far as talking to him had to be better than being turned away until ‘possibly some time next week’ by the ever-vigilant Hazel.