“Probably.” He shrugged. “But I think you may have misunderstood what I meant when I said I live here. Piper, I own the house. You’re here as my guest.”
Two
“You what?”
He owned the house? How could that be? The house had been built by her forebears in the mid-1800s. Passed on, generation by generation. Had Wade somehow finagled the property from her father while he was weakened by his illness? It seemed unlike him, but what else was she to think? His voice broke through her chaotic thoughts.
“Look, now probably isn’t the best time to go into it. It’s been a tough day all round. We can discuss this tomorrow.”
“Like hell,” she countered. “We can darn well discuss this right here, right now.”
“If you insist,” Wade said, closing the distance between them and gesturing toward the library. “Care to take a seat?”
With tension vibrating through every nerve in her body, Piper preceded him back into the room. She threw herself into the chair she’d only recently vacated, watching Wade as he lowered himself into his with far more elegance and grace than she’d exhibited. It only served to rankle even more.
“So, tell me. How is it you’ve come to be the owner of my father’s house, and his before him, and his bef—”
Wade cut in. “Don’t get melodramatic on me, Piper. It won’t work.”
Melodramatic? He thought that was melodramatic? That was nothing compared to how she felt right now. But before she could speak again, Wade continued.
“Your father and I came to a financial arrangement early on in his illness. The doctors here could offer little hope and he wanted to embark on some radical alternative therapy being offered overseas.”
“What kind of arrangement?” she demanded. “And why on earth did he have to come to any kind of arrangement, anyway? Our family has always had money.”
“Had being the operative word,” Wade said, lifting his eyes to clash with hers.
“What? You’re blaming me? I have my own trust fund. I was never a drain on my father’s finances.”
Wade’s lips thinned and she saw a muscle clench in his jaw before he pushed a hand through his dark brown hair, sending the short cut into charming disarray. Despite her anger, her fingers itched to smooth his hair down—to feel if its texture was as smooth as she remembered it to be. Piper curled her fingers into her palms and squeezed tightly, ridding herself of the urge as quickly as it had surfaced. This wasn’t the time to be thinking of any kind of touching.
“Not everything is about you, Piper. When you calm down, you’ll see that what we did was supposed to be for the best, at the time.”
“At the time? Explain it to me.”
“Rex was single-minded about beating the disease and wouldn’t take no for an answer, not even when his situation was very clearly laid out to him by his doctors. He was determined to fight, regardless of the cost—and the cost was very high. I’ve no idea what rock you’ve been hiding under for the past eight years but there has been a global recession out there. Our business was hit just as hard as everyone else’s. Despite everything, there was a stage where we were bleeding money and Rex used a lot of his own funds to shore that up.”
“You didn’t use yours?” she asked pointedly.
“He wouldn’t let me. Mitchell Exports was always his baby, you know that.”
She probably knew it better than anyone. She’d always known that Rex’s devotion to his business came well before his devotion to her.
“So he needed money for this treatment?” she probed.
“Yes, and he wouldn’t take the money from me, even though I offered it freely. He was, however, happy to enter into a loan agreement with me, registering a mortgage in my name over the property.”
“But this place is worth millions.”
“He was very determined to live, Piper. He was prepared to pay whatever it took to beat the disease. At that stage, he never believed for a minute that he wouldn’t live to pay me back.”
“And he knew you already loved the property and would look after it.”
Wade nodded slowly. “It was a more palatable solution for him than putting it on the open market to raise the funds, and seeing the land be gobbled up by developers, or risking borrowing the money through some financial institution and watching it go in a mortgagee sale if the treatment failed. When he knew he was going to die, he signed the property over to me in its entirety, provided he had a lifetime right to stay here. I had no problem with that.”
Piper blinked back a new rush of tears. What Wade had said all sounded plausible. She knew how much her father had trusted Wade. Moreover, she knew—just as her father had known—how hard Wade’s upbringing had been, how much he had wanted to prove he was better than his roots. If he’d been given the chance to demonstrate his friendship to Rex while simultaneously establishing himself in both the home and the business he’d always admired, then of course Wade had taken it. He was right to have taken it. But knowing that didn’t take away the sick sense of loss Piper felt at the evidence that her father had given his entire legacy away to someone other than her.
If she’d been more determined to prove to her father that she was just as good as the son he’d always dreamed of having, if she’d stood by his side through the hard times instead of running away as soon as she didn’t get her way, maybe she’d have been able to help him. But with her having remained overseas for as long as she had, often without any contact until she’d run out of money, again, and needed another advance from her funds, it was no wonder her father had sought a suitable custodian not only for his business but also for the house.
It didn’t make it hurt any less, though. She’d never known another home and now she couldn’t even call it hers anymore. Hopelessness hit her with a vengeance. Here she was, twenty-eight years old, no fixed abode, no job and no prospects. Sure, she still had her trust fund, but she didn’t want to dip into that unless absolutely necessary. What on earth was she going to do?
“I meant what I said before, Piper,” Wade said, his voice breaking into her tortured thoughts. “Rex asked me to look out for you. You’re welcome to stay as long as you need to.”
As long as she needed? How was she to know how long that was? She’d come back to New Zealand, back home, to restore the relationships she’d damaged so very badly with her selfish decisions and past behaviors. The past four years, volunteering with aid relief in less privileged countries, had been a major eye-opener. One that had systematically changed her focus and made her realize just how empty her life had been and how much she continued to owe the people who’d been a part of it. People who she’d only later realized had tried to give her the love and stability she’d always craved. People she’d cast off in her anger and hurt for not loving her the way she’d wanted, oblivious to the fact that she was hurting them with her actions, too. People like her father, and Wade. “Thank you,” she said softly.
What else was there to say? She was at his mercy. He had every right to turn her out of the house.
“If there’s nothing else, I’ll say good-night,” Wade answered.
He rose from his seat and started to leave the room, hesitating a moment at the door as if he had something more to say. But then, with an almost imperceptible shake of his head, he continued into the hallway.
Around her, Piper heard the wooden timbers of the hundred-and-sixty-year-old home settle in the cooling night air. A sound she’d never even stopped to listen to before, yet a sound that was a solid reminder of all who’d been before her and left their mark on her world. Their expectations lay heavy