Tessa Radley - The Saxon Brides

Joshua relaxed slightly. So Amy didn’t know that Roland and Alyssa were lovers. But surely Amy must have suspected Roland was embroiled in a heated affair with a woman because Joshua certainly had. All the signs had been there. The constant visits to Auckland, the cell calls that his brother took privately while talking in a low, intimate voice. By not denying her clandestine relationship with Roland, Alyssa had confirmed the suspicions he’d had about his brother for months.

“You must know that if Amy found out about you, it would devastate her. Not to say what it would do to my parents to discover that Roland had been two-timing Amy, their goddaughter. Right now they need to think about all the good things he’s achieved.”

Alyssa’s eyes widened. “You think—” She broke off.

Joshua waited for her to refute that she’d been attempting to seduce Roland away from Amy. Deep down, he wanted that denial. Even though he knew it would be a lie. Instead she stood shifting from foot to foot, her eyes reflecting her inner turmoil.

Raking his hands through his already ruffled hair, he sighed. “It would be better if you left now and returned to Auckland.”

“I haven’t got your jacket here—it’s back in my hotel room.”

He shrugged. “I don’t care about the jacket. I want you gone.”

She said flatly, “I’m not going until—” her throat moved as she swallowed “—until it’s all over. But Amy needn’t worry, I won’t be staying a second more than I have to. I know when I’m not wanted.”

Not wanted? Joshua suppressed the urge to groan. He wanted the woman standing in front of him more than he’d ever desired a woman in his life. But no good could come out of it. Not only had she assassinated his character in print, she’d been his brother’s lover.

And he had no intention of following in Roland’s well-worn footsteps.

Alyssa felt terrible.

Joshua thought she and Roland had been lovers. Worse, he believed she’d come to Saxon’s Folly to steal Roland away from his fiancée. She bit her lip to stop herself blurting out the truth. How could she refute what he believed without revealing the truth about her relationship to Roland?

Yesterday, just before midnight, his parents had demanded that she leave; now Joshua was ordering her to go, too. A sense of hurt settled around her. The sooner she got away from here, the sooner she could retreat to the solitary comfort of her Auckland apartment and lick her wounds in private.

But for now she had to shrug off the hurt. This morning she would hold vigil for as long as necessary. Because this wasn’t about her. It was about her brother.

“Nothing to say?”

The words jerked her attention back to Joshua. He was watching her through dark, suspicious eyes.

“You should go upstairs,” she said quietly. “You don’t want to miss what might be your only chance to say goodbye to Roland because you wasted time arguing with me.” The thought of her brother lying there with little chance of regaining consciousness was unbearable … heartbreaking … and she sniffed back the fresh wave of tears.

“Do you love him very much?” Joshua’s voice held a strange tone.

“Yes, I love him a great deal.” Alyssa didn’t look at him in case he read the depth of the loss and confusion in her eyes. Instead she stared at her feet and noticed that the laces of her left sneaker had come undone. What was a lace? So unimportant in the greater scheme of things.

“He never mentioned you.”

She sighed. How tricky this had all become. Clearly Roland hadn’t wanted his brothers to know that he wasn’t a Saxon by birth. Now, because of her promise to Kay Saxon and out of her respect to her brother, she couldn’t tell Joshua the truth—even though she desperately wanted to. They’d connected on some primal level, she and Joshua. She didn’t like lying to him. Finally she settled for, “We hadn’t known each other very long.”

One brief meeting last night … she’d shaken Roland’s hand. And this morning she’d touched his unconscious body.

From the old cuttings in the town’s archives she knew he’d played rugby as a boy and captained his team to a regional win. She’d shuddered in fear as she’d watched television footage of Roland as a late teen riding his horse over solid fences with a determination that had won him numerous eventing titles. An article in a wine magazine had said Roland joked that he’d liked fast women and good wine. Alyssa had wondered what Amy had thought about that! A recent appearance on a lifestyle television programme hosted by a pretty blonde had revealed that he wore jeans with panache. Every last fact she could glean about him, she had uncovered.

Yet Roland didn’t know her at all.

“Maybe he didn’t say anything because he knew you wouldn’t be pleased with his friendship with Alyssa Blake, despised journalist.” Now, through desperation, she’d cornered herself into an outright lie. Before last night’s meeting, Roland had only known her from the letters and e-mails … written in the name of Alice McKay.

“Friends?”

Joshua looked her up and down in a way that made her regret donning the ancient sweats. A disturbing prickle of awareness followed in the wake of his gaze. She shut it out ruthlessly. “Yes, friends. Why not?”

“I can accept that Roland didn’t want us to know he was sleeping with you.” Joshua’s lip curled. “First, because he knows I think you’re a hack writer and have no respect for you after that hatchet job you did. And sec—”

“Hack?” She glared at him in outrage. “I only did—”

He held up a hand. “Let me finish. Second, I’m sure Roland didn’t mention you because you’re of little importance—certainly not worth losing Amy over.” Joshua gave her a long, hard stare. “Roland was always a bit of a ladies’ man. But I’m not going to let Amy be hurt.”

Alyssa drew a deep, steadying breath and counted silently to three before saying slowly and distinctly, “I have absolutely no intention of hurting Amy.”

“Good. Then we understand each other.” Joshua stabbed the button to summon the elevator. “You’re trouble. As long as you keep far away from Saxon’s Folly, my family—and Amy—everything will be fine!”

“You should go and see Roland,” she said with urgency.

He gave her a snooty look. “My brother has the luck of the devil—he’s a survivor.”

Alyssa prayed to God that he was right. But his words caused a flare of hope. Joshua knew his brother. If he thought Roland might live …

“And when he’s out of here, you stay far away from him.”

No chance.

Joshua blamed her for the argument between Amy and Roland last night. She thought about the pretty TV-show hostess who’d interviewed Roland only a month ago. Alyssa had gone to see her. The woman had giggled that Roland was a great lover—and lamented the fact that he was already taken. Not that it had stopped him, she’d added, giving Alyssa a lascivious smile.

Maybe Amy had quarrelled with him over the hostess, but it wasn’t up to Alyssa to reveal that scandal to Joshua. It might turn her stomach having Joshua accuse her of being Roland’s lover … but no one except she and his parents knew how vile that accusation really was.

She wasn’t the troublemaker Joshua had branded her.

Alyssa started as the elevator pinged beside her and the doors slid open. “Think what you want about me—I don’t care,” she said at last, suppressing the sting of his words.

Joshua strode into the waiting elevator. His gaze swept over her, cool and dismissive. “I’m sure you don’t care about anything except yourself.”

Alyssa decided that it was just as well she could seethe over Joshua’s departing comments while she sat in the hospital café drinking stale coffee. But under her fuming she still fretted about how Roland was faring upstairs in that sterile ward.