The Wager. Metsy Hingle

had been dead for more than five years. Did it really matter if he kept his promise now that he was gone?

      It mattered, Josh admitted. He’d made a promise, and his grandfather had taught him that a man always lived up to his promises. He stared across the table at Olivia, and couldn’t help but feel that he was about to make a bargain with the devil, a bargain he would come to regret.

      “Do we have a deal?”

      “Yes, Duchess. We have a deal.”

      And as he tapped his glass against Olivia’s to seal the bargain they’d made, Josh’s gaze fell to the open folder on the desk where Laura Harte’s picture stared up at him. There it was again—that slam-in-the-gut punch of attraction. And he couldn’t help wondering if he had inherited Simon Logan’s impulsive streak after all.

      Three

      “You had no right to contact her, Uncle Paul,” Laura said, still reeling from the call she’d received from Olivia Jardine three days earlier. She stared down at the Caesar salad she’d ordered in the hotel’s café and recalled how the older woman had practically ordered Laura to come to New Orleans.

      “I’m sorry. I never meant to upset you like this.”

      At the expression on her uncle’s face, Laura immediately regretted her sharp tone. “I know you meant well. But you shouldn’t have contacted her.”

      “I was worried about you,” her uncle explained. “I’m still worried about you. Look at you. You’ve lost weight. There are shadows under your eyes. I hate seeing you like this.”

      “I’m fine,” Laura insisted, even though she knew that in the two months since the accident, her injuries may have healed, but the pain of her mother’s deception and the shock of learning the truth about her father had taken its toll.

      “Then how come the only time you leave your apartment these days is to go to work? And why can’t I even remember the last time I saw you smile?”

      “Maybe because losing my mother and then finding out everything I believed about myself was a lie hasn’t exactly left me in a mood to party or smile lately.”

      Her uncle visibly flinched.

      “I’m sorry, Uncle Paul. That was uncalled for,” she said, and reached for his hand, shamed that she’d hurt him with harsh words. “I shouldn’t be taking my frustrations out on you.”

      “It’s okay.” He gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “I know this hasn’t been an easy time for you.”

      No, it hadn’t been easy. It had been a nightmare. And even though she’d told herself a hundred times that nothing had changed, that she was still the same person now that she’d been before learning the truth, she didn’t feel the same. She felt different, as though she’d been stripped of her identity, of who and what she was.

      “You’ve been dealt several blows at once. That’s why I contacted Olivia Jardine. I thought that perhaps…maybe if you were to meet your family and—”

      “They are not my family,” Laura informed him, snatching her hand free. “My name is Laura Harte—not Jardine.” She reached for the glass of tea with unsteady fingers. She refused to think of Andrew Jardine as her father or any of his relatives as her family.

      “Laura, if you’d just—”

      “You’ll have to excuse me, Uncle Paul. I really do need to get back to work.” She tossed down her napkin and stood, eager to retreat to her office and put an end to the discussion.

      Her uncle frowned as he rose. “Will I see you for brunch on Sunday?”

      Pain swift and sharp hit her as memories flooded back—memories of the Sunday brunches shared with her uncle and her mother for most of her childhood and a great number of her adult years. It had been a lovely ritual, but now it, too, was a part of the past. “I’m afraid I can’t make it. I promised the Realtor who’s going to list mother’s house that I would finish packing up this weekend so they can begin showing the house next week.”

      “You’re selling Juliet’s house?”

      The devastation in her uncle’s voice matched his expression. She’d long suspected Paul Shaw’s feelings for her mother ran much deeper than those of a friend. Losing her had been as difficult for him as it had been for her, Laura realized. She touched his arm. “It’s for the best, Uncle Paul. A house needs to be lived in.”

      “But it’s your home, too.”

      Laura shook her head. “It hasn’t been for a long time now. It’s too far out for me to commute every day. And you know I work crazy hours and weekends. The house is being neglected, and it shows. Mother would hate that. It’s better if I sell it to someone who’ll take care of it properly.”

      “Juliet loved that house.”

      “I know.” Her mother had adored the country cottage, and she’d spent countless hours tending its gardens. But each time she’d been to the house since her mother’s death, Laura found herself missing her mother more. “She’s gone now, and I have to let her go. We both do, Uncle Paul. We need to get on with our lives.”

      “Yes. You’re right, of course,” he said, his voice sad but resigned.

      “Listen, I’d better get back upstairs before they send out a search party.” She kissed his weathered cheek.

      When she started to withdraw, he held on to her. “I really am sorry. About…about everything.”

      “I know,” she whispered, and gave his cheek a pat before stepping back. She was sorry, too—sorry to have the fantasies she’d believed about her parents shattered into a million pieces.

      Some of her thoughts must have shown on her face because her uncle caught her off guard when he said, “Maybe it would be a good idea if you were to talk to someone…a professional—”

      “No.” Laura stepped back from him, eager to escape. The last thing she wanted was to share the shameful truth she’d discovered. How could she possibly tell anyone that the father she’d worshiped all her life had actually been a philanderer? A man who had abandoned his pregnant lover and child so that he could marry his society bride and father three legitimate children? Anger welled up inside Laura again—toward her mother, toward the man responsible for giving her life. How she wished that she’d never learned the truth, that the secrets had gone with her mother to the grave.

      “But—”

      “Thanks, Uncle Paul. But really, I’m fine.”

      Only she wasn’t fine, Laura admitted the next afternoon as she rummaged through her desk drawer for a file. Her fingers stilled when she spied the framed snapshot of her parents. Her heart ached at the sight of the photograph that, until two months ago, had sat on her credenza. After learning the truth about her father, she’d banished the picture to the back of her desk drawer, hoping to banish with it the ache of betrayal. It hadn’t worked, she realized as she retrieved the photograph. Grief and anger warred within her as she stared at her mother’s young and smiling face. “Oh, Momma, I miss you so much,” she whispered, tears filling her eyes.

      She traced the edges of the small pewter frame and thought of all the years her mother had spent alone. Wasted years in which her mother had turned away suitors, claiming she had found and lost the only man she would ever love. Laura squeezed her eyes shut and recalled her mother’s voice, the dreamy look on her face whenever she’d spoken about her fairy-tale romance, her great love and loss.

      And it had all been a lie.

      Just as her childhood, her very identity, had all been rooted in that lie.

      Opening her eyes, Laura stared at the face of the handsome navy lieutenant with his arm wrapped around her mother.

      Her father.

      Not