What a Bride Wants (12 page)

“
You don’t flirt anymore, according to Mardie.”

“
She lies.”

“
Will you come to the ball?”

“
Yes.”

“
Can I come to your bunkroom tonight?”

“
Hell
, no.”

“
You’re as bad as my father.” She sat back, her gaze speculative and her smile playful. “Did I mention that my father’s away?”

Tuesday
afternoon and the end of Sawyer’s stint behind the bar at Grey’s Saloon rolled around all too soon. Reese offered him on-call work and guaranteed him Friday and Saturday nights if he wanted them. Mardie thumped him on the arm hard and got alarmingly teary-eyed when he told Reese, no.

“
She’ll be fine,” Reese said as she stalked from the kitchen. “She just doesn’t want you to go. Figure you might have a few people in that position.” Reese’s gaze sharpened. “Come on through to the office. I want to show you something Jason found on the Web this morning. Breaking news.”

T
he news was… significant.

Richard Sawyer – businessman and
CEO of JB Brewing Industries—was going down. Embezzlement, forgery, three counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, one count of sexual assault, and an apprehended personal violence order taken out against him that cited intimidation, harassment, stalking, and more assault. And they’d still granted him bail. Laurence Sawyer, former CEO and major shareholder of JB Brewing, had been given conditional board approval to step in and mop up. The predominantly family-owned brewery was on the brink of collapse, blah blah, blah blah. The scavengers and speculators were having a field day.

Sawyer sat back in the office chair and blew out his breath. H
e felt sick just looking at it. “Does Jason know that he’s my brother?”

Reese nodded.
“He dug a little deeper after reading that.”

“
Tell him you can’t pick your relatives.”

“
He knows.” Reese smiled thinly. “Does Ella know your family background?”

“
She knows some of it.” Sawyer shoved a hand through his hair. “My brother’s been heading in this direction since—” God, even as a kid, the things Richard had done to get his own way had been extreme. “Long as I can remember.”

“
Where do you stand in all of this?” Reese nodded toward the monitor.

“
Out of it.” And yet… “Doesn’t matter how far you run, does it? When it comes to family you’re never really gone.”

It took Sawyer
ten minutes to throw his gear in the pickup, and eleven and a half hours to get to his Washington home. From there he phoned his mother, and there was no
hello
or
how are you?
forthcoming, just a quietly defeated, “You’ve heard.”

“
Yeah.”

“
I did a very foolish thing when you left. I never told you. I was so
angry
with your father for brushing Richard’s actions aside. As for Richard, then and now…” Her voice broke. “How did I create such a person, Cameron? What did I
do
?”

Sawyer closed his eyes on the view from his bedroom window. A sweeping ocean view.
“He just was.”

“
When you left, I sold half our shares in the brewery and put the proceeds in trust for you. They were mine to sell, so I did it. Your father and Richard have been struggling to control the business ever since. I think that’s what pushed Richard over the edge.”

“
What he did to Zoey was already over the edge.”

“
They granted him bail.”

He couldn
’t keep his bitterness down any longer. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe you should have left him behind bars?”

“
Yes.” He could barely hear her. “I wasn’t the one who paid Richard’s bail. Nor did your father. He got the money from somewhere. Nowhere good.”

“
Buy back into the business, Mother. You’ll probably
make
money if you buy in now. Give Dad the control he needs to run things his way.”

“
No. That money is for you.”

“
It’s what I’d do.”

“
Then come home and do it.”

“
Mum—”

“
Cameron, I’m at the end of my rope. Your father’s barely sleeping, Richard’s God knows where and I don’t know how much longer I can hold this together. You’ve always been the strongest of us all. The best of us. Come back to us, please, if you could just consider it.”

“
I have a life here. A woman I don’t want to leave behind.” There, he’d admitted it. “You’re asking me to walk her into that?”

“
No. I—no.” His mother sounded defeated. “I didn’t realize.”

Sawyer paced. He
’d been pacing ever since he picked up the phone.

“
I’ll let you go,” she murmured.

“
I’ll come alone. I’ll give you one month and I can be there by mid next week, but I can’t help you if you don’t co-operate. Buy back the stock. Get me a seat on the board. I’ll send you my CV. Tell my father to give that to the board as well. Tell him I’ll not be his yes man but I will support good management decisions. Tell him I know damn well that he’s always been good at those. Unless it involved Richard.”

“
Richard—”

“
Deserves what he gets.”

“
Cameron, we do this and he’ll come after you. I’m not guessing. I’m sure.”

“
I know. Where does he think I am now?”

“
I don’t think he knows.”

“
Tell him I’m on my way. And I will be, just give me a few days. Tell him I want my life back. And I want my family back, and I want to be able to offer the woman I love safety and security rather than a life full of fear. I’m not coming home to hold Richard’s hand, Mother. I am done with staying out of his way. I’m coming home to finish him.”

Sawyer had left. Ella heard the news third-hand when she went to Emerson’s Transport on Wednesday morning to find him. She wasn’t impressed. Gutted, more like. Upset enough to call in on Mardie at the saloon. Mardie, who’d taken one look at her and told Reese she was taking her lunch break now and had then proceeded to sit Ella down in front of a plate of fried food.

Sawyer phoned her while she was still at the bar contemplating the delights of fried onion rings dipped in mayonnaise. He was at his beach house in Washington. Ella didn
’t even know the name of the town, and it seemed a little late to ask.

“
I didn’t think you were leaving quite so soon. Couldn’t you have said goodbye?”

Mardie
nodded vigorous agreement. Damn right he could have said goodbye.

“
I’ll be back on Friday – with a suit for the ball. I wasn’t exactly thinking in terms of goodbye.”

“
You weren’t?” Now she sounded tentative as well as needy.

“
I just have to sort out a couple of things while I’m here. I will be back, Ella. Don’t give my ticket away.”

“
I won’t.”

“
See you soon.”

“
Yeah.”

And then he was gone.

Ella met Mardie’s troubled gaze with one of her own. “He said he’d be back in time to take me to the ball.”

“
Yeah?” Mardie’s face brightened.

“
Do you think he will be?”

Mardie
nodded. “Sawyer says he’s going to do something, he does it. That’s my experience of him. What’s yours?”

“
Same.”

“
See? We can’t
both
be wrong.”

Ella smiled wryly.
“Pretty sure we can.”

Mardie
rolled her eyes. “Hey, Reese. Is Sawyer going to get back here in time for Friday’s ball?”

“
Ask him,” said Reese.

“
See?” Mardie picked up a fried onion ring, dragged it through the mayonnaise and offered it to Ella, dripping and all. “Reese says he’ll be here, and Reese is male and
never
wrong.”

“
I heard that,” muttered Reese. “Don’t you have work to do?”

“
See?” Mardie murmured sagely. “Never. Wrong.”

Ella
worked herself to exhaustion for two days solid, until on Friday lunchtime, her father ordered her to get on up to the house and stay there and get ready for the ball.

“
I haven’t heard from him these past two days,” she muttered, and her father stopped stacking hay and regarded her narrowly. “At all.”

“
Phone him.”

“
You think I should? He said he’d be here. I don’t want him to think that I don’t trust him to keep his word.”

Ella
’s father just looked at her.

“
You know he’s not in Marietta anymore?”

“
Ray said.” Her father took his cap off and wiped at his brow with the sleeve of his shirt. “Still. I presume he owns a phone?”

Ella nodded.

“Text him. Ask him what time he’ll be here.”

“
Oh, that’s clever.”

“
Yeah,” her father drawled dryly. “I’m Einstein.”

“
Could be I’m feeling just a
little
insecure.” Ella held up her forefinger and thumb about an inch apart and watched her father smile. “But I will. I’ll text him. I’m not sure I ever gave him a time we had to be there.”

The doors opened at
7 pm. Before that, there were drinks in the bar. Dancing commenced at eight. At some point during the evening someone would launch Marrietta’s Great Wedding Giveaway competition. As far as Ella was concerned, as long as they turned up before pumpkin hour she could still say she’d been to the ball.

Although turning up a few hours
before
midnight would be better. “I’ll call.”

“
That’s my girl.”

But when she called, Sawyer
’s phone was either turned off or out of range.

Ella picked her way through a late lunch and then decided she needed to make bean soup with ham hocks. She took a shower once it was simmering gently, but there was no sense putting on her ball gown yet. She had soup to stir and biscuits to make first.

Her father came in just at six, took one look at her and the soup and the kitchen counter covered in biscuits, and wisely headed for the emergency kitchen whisky instead. “Did you get hold of him?”

“
Not yet. But he’ll be here. He will. And then I’ll get dressed.” Ella pulled a fresh batch of biscuits from the oven and dumped them on the cooling rack on the counter. “Biscuit?”

Her father
took a biscuit and wisely opted not to say another word.

S
awyer turned up just at dusk, wearing a suit tailor made for those magnificent shoulders and bearing an armful of mixed colored roses. He stood on the front porch, with the mountains in the background and Ella thought she’d never seen anything more magnificent.

“
These are for you,” he said and held them out to her. “There would have been chocolates too, only Sage sold them because I didn’t get there before closing time. And I don’t know if you still want to go to that Valentine’s ball with me or not, but we could.” He took in her jeans and plaid shirt. “If you wanted to.”

She took the flowers from him.
“I’ve been waiting for your call.”

“
I did call.”

“
On
Wednesday
.”

“
Yeah, but I said I’d be back for the ball.”

“
It never occurred to you to phone again today and confirm it?”

“
It did occur to me. There should be a message on your mobile. Or four.”

“
Oh.” Still. “Mardie thinks I should skewer you for leaving without notice.”

“
Mardie’s mean.”

“
My father hid all the shotguns.”

“
Smart man.”

“
It’s a good thing I don’t have an impulsive streak.”

“
Yeah. Hey, Ella.” All of a sudden he looked uncertain. “Got a couple of things to mention. Updates, of a sort. The kind could impact on whether you want to go to the ball at all. With me.”

Ella reached out and dragged him
in and shut the door. “What do you mean?”

“
Is your father in? Because maybe he needs to hear this too.”

“
My father’s in his study.” And that was where she headed.

Her father
took one look at them both and headed for the whisky.

“
Where’s mine?” Ella said as she set the flowers on the sideboard.

Silently her father poured
two more.

“
Here’s the deal.” The playful note in Sawyer’s voice had disappeared and about three ton of steel had taken its place. “My older brother is going down for rape, corporate embezzlement, assault, and half a dozen other assorted felonies. This isn’t a surprise because he’s done it all before.” He pinned Ella with a troubled green gaze. “Still want me to take you to the ball?”

“
Of course.”

“
I’m heading home next week to help save the family brewing business. It’s called JB Brewing and it holds a significant global market share. It’s not a small corporation and I don’t rightly know how long it will take to fix. I’d ask you to come with me, but until Richard is behind bars its best if you don’t. It’s not safe for you there.”

It was a lot to take in.
Ella ran a nervous hand around the back of her neck and slid her father a glance. Her father stared back, stony eyed. “Sawyer’s brother isn’t all that nice,” she offered.

“
So I gather.”

“
So, uh.” There was a distinct possibility that she probably should have mentioned Sawyer’s brother to her father earlier.

She turned her gaze back on Sawyer.
“Who was she this time?”

“
One of our corporate execs. The good news is that she pressed charges and has the will to see a nasty court case through. And then she’ll probably sue JB Brewing.”

“
I’m inclined to say good for her.”

Sawyer
’s lips hitched a little higher around the edges. “Let’s just say she won’t lack for support. The bad news is that Richard made bail. He’s had to surrender his passport but I don’t like it. He has a tendency to think that rules and regulations don’t apply to him. If Richard finds out about you there’s a chance he might come here looking for you, as a way to get to me. I’ve left him precious little else by way of leverage.”

“
I can handle it.”

“
Ella—

“
I can.”

“
Here’s a recent picture of him.”

Ella
took the paper Sawyer held out and studied his brother’s handsome face before passing it to her father. Sawyer’s brother didn’t look like a power-tripping egomaniac, and that was probably part of the problem. “No one comes onto this place without our notice. We can show the photo to Jem and Carl, Ray, and the boys. If your brother comes poking around here we’ll know it. And then we’ll handle it. Right, Dad?”

Her father nodded, his eyes flat and hard.

Sawyer looked torn.

“
Sawyer.” She waited until his gaze had shifted from her father back to her. “You need to trust us on this – no going back to Australia and obsessing over what if. I’ll be careful. We will
all
be on guard.”

“
Never meant to bring this kind of trouble down on you, Ella. Never wanted you to have to live in fear.”