The Wager by Metsy Hingle

Author:Metsy Hingle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Twelve

“That’s enough,” Olivia informed them. “I will not tolerate such talk in this house. Laura is your father’s daughter and my granddaughter and I’ll not have any member of this family treat her otherwise.”

Katie watched as her grandmother, looking every bit like the duchess Josh called her, moved over to the bell pull and rang for the butler. Simmering with resentment and hurt, Katie stared at Laura Harte. Reluctantly she admitted that she saw the resemblance. As much as she wanted to believe her grandmother, Josh, Mitch and even her twin had been duped by the young woman, she couldn’t deny the fact that Laura had her father’s eyes. Her father.

And Laura’s father, too. The admission ripped at her heart, made her ache inside as nothing ever had before except her father’s death. Learning her father had betrayed her mother hurt all the more because she’d believed her father had been too honorable to ever stray. Certainly the man she’d loved and tried so hard to please growing up had been too honorable not to own up to his mistakes.

Unless he hadn’t known.

Laura’s mother hadn’t told him, she decided. It was the only explanation. From what her grandmother had said, Laura had been conceived before her parents’ marriage. If her father had known about Laura’s existence, he would have acknowledged her. Despite what Laura thought, the one at blame here wasn’t her father—it was Laura’s mother.

“You rang for me, Mrs. Jardine?” Alfred said from the doorway, jarring Katie’s attention from her musings.

“Yes. Would you have Miss Harte’s bags moved from Mr. Logan’s car into the rose guest room. Ask Mrs. Baxter if it’s possible to delay dinner for an hour and then send Ellen up to my rooms with my medication. I’ll give myself the injection,” she said, referring to the insulin shots she had been administering to herself for the past two years.

“I told you, I’m not staying,” Laura said, a trace of panic in her eyes that didn’t reach her voice.

“That will be all, Alfred,” she dismissed the butler. “Of course you’re staying. You agreed to a three-week visit, and as I told you, this is your home now and we’re your family. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Adrienne should be home shortly and I need to speak with her. I’ll see all of you at dinner. And, Joshua, I hope you’ll change your mind and join us.”

“Wait,” Laura cried out to her grandmother’s retreating back. “I’m not staying. This isn’t my home and you’re not my family.”

“But, Laura, we are your family,” Alison pointed out, drawing Laura’s focus back to them. “And since this was our father’s home, that makes it your home, too.”

Not for the first time Katie marveled at the difference between her and her twin. Evidently when the egg from which they’d come had split in two, Alison had been the one who’d gotten all the sweetness, patience and goodness there was. Because as Josh had often pointed out, she was not only foul-tempered, but impatient and distrusting to boot.

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