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Destiny Of A Donovan (The Donovans Book 15) Page 15


  His fingers tangled in her hair as he held her head in place, loving the feel of her tongue so wet and warm on his skin. She kissed him lower, down his abs while her hands worked the buckle of his pants, the button and then the zipper. He was free and in her hands and moaning with pleasure. She was working him with her hands, until a drop of his essence pearled at the tip of his arousal. Brynne looked up at him and Wade looked down at her. The pure, unadulterated lust in her eyes, coupled with the brimming heat that had him on the brink of explosion was too much for him.

  In seconds, Wade had her pressed against the wall beside her dresser. With one hand he pushed her panties down her legs, while the other moved the material of her bra down until he could palm her bare breast in his hand. She was panting, or was that him? He had no idea. There was heavy breathing, touching, feeling, needing. With hurried movements, Wade reached into his back pocket and found his wallet. His fingers stumbled over the condom packet and he placed his wallet on the dresser. She pushed his pants and boxers down his legs and Wade sheathed himself.

  “We’re not a mistake,” he said as he looked at Brynne once again. “This, what we have together was meant to be.”

  She cupped his face in her hands. “Not a mistake,” she said to him. “I know.”

  He licked her lips then. First the top one and then the bottom. He sucked her tongue into his mouth and loved the way she melted against him. When he’d pulled away slowly and she’d whispered his name Wade knew he was lost, probably forever. Wrapping his arms around Brynne he lifted her legs and secured them around his waist. He moved his hips until he was slipping silkily into her waiting warmth.

  “Not a mistake, Wade,” she whispered as she held him closer. “Definitely not a mistake.”

  “Brynne,” Wade sighed as he began pumping inside of her. “Dammit, Brynne.”

  She held onto him so tightly, whispering his name as he moved deeper and thrust harder. When she came Wade wanted to scream her name, her release covered him with warmth, while Wade’s mind thought of promise.

  “I can’t let you go,” he murmured, feeling his own release coming on quickly. “I can’t.”

  She kissed his neck and then his cheeks, finally finding his lips. She licked them the way he had licked hers and when she sucked on his tongue, Wade came hard and fast. While he was holding her so tight he thought he might crush her, his eyes closed as he nuzzled her neck and let his release break free, she sighed and then whispered in his ear, “Don’t let go, Wade. Please, don’t let go.”

  One week later

  Dane stepped out of the car he’d rented and closed the door. He looked up at the iron lettering arched above the open gates that led to a stately brick structure.

  Bonjour Winery.

  This is where the private investigator he’d hired to trail his mother had said she was staying. He required a written report as well as the phone call that provided him with daily updates. An hour after this report was received Dane had been on a plane. The PI had taken a flight with Roslyn after she’d left Dane’s apartment in New York. They’d landed in San Francisco and Roslyn had checked into a hotel. For three days she’d stayed in the city before driving her rental car to Napa Valley.

  Dane checked his phone where he’d pulled up the written report and read the address once more. He then checked the GPS. This was the place. Confused, but determined to get to the bottom of this, Dane walked from the car to the front door and used the doorbell. It was a few minutes before someone answered and then it was an older man, his body hunched slightly in the dark brown suit he wore, but his smile quick and genuine.

  “May I help you?” the man asked.

  “My name is Dane Donovan. I’m looking for Roslyn Ausby,” he replied.

  Dane had decided that he would be using Donovan from now on. Anything that had his name listed, as it was on his original birth certificate, as Dane Ausby, was in the process of being officially changed. Whether or not he ever had a relationship with the man who fathered him, or the family, he would be who he was born to be.

  The man at the door looked perplexed. His forehead wrinkled a little more and his bushy eyebrows furrowed. Then he began to nod. “Yes. Yes. Mrs. Terrington’s guest. Come in.”

  Dane followed the man inside and noted the opulently decorated foyer. Somebody had lots of money with zero decorating skills. The man walked extremely slow so Dane followed, looking around as he did. There was gold textured wallpaper on all the walls in the foyer. It was a light shade but still, it was gold. He tried not to frown at the large chandeliers and plush Oriental rugs that didn’t seem to go together at all. Not that decorating was his thing, Dane simply prided himself on knowing when something was ugly.

  “Mrs. Terrington,” the man said when they moved inside a room at the end of the foyer. “This gentleman is here to see your guest, Ms. Ausby.”

  Mrs. Terrington looked up from the computer screen she’d been staring at. She sat behind a black glass toped desk. This room boasted a modern décor, still ostentatious, but modern at least. The woman, on the other hand, was older than Dane and dressed like she was preparing for a board meeting in a black pantsuit and white blouse. She stood as Dane moved closer to her desk and the man that had led him here, walked out.

  “Who are you?” she asked him without preamble.

  “I’m Dane Donovan. Roslyn’s son,” he replied with the same candor.

  “Oh,” she said. “You’re Dane. Roslyn has told me about you.”

  That didn’t sound good. Dane didn’t care.

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s not here,” Mrs. Terrington said as she came around her desk to get a closer look, Dane presumed.

  “How long have you known her?” he asked, again, not caring if she approved of how he looked or not. He wasn’t here to exchange pleasantries with her. He was here because he’d decided that his mother needed to be in a facility that would take care of her mental health needs. She needed to be put away before she hurt someone else. Living with that thought was no longer an option for him.

  “Ten years,” she replied and leaned against the end of her desk.

  She removed the wire framed glasses she’d been wearing and shook her head so that her blonde hair lifted and settled at her shoulders.

  “Where did you meet her?”

  “At a charity function in Las Vegas,” she told him. “We shared a drink and a lovely weekend together.”

  It took Dane a minute but he thought he got the gist of what she was saying.

  “So you’ve been my mother’s benefactor for the last ten years,” he said. “And her lover.”

  He didn’t know why he wasn’t surprised. Maybe because in the past year he’d learned so many disturbing things about his mother that her being a lesbian or bi-sexual, even temporarily, didn’t cause much shock.

  Mrs. Terrington tilted her head. She was an attractive woman with a sharp eye.

  “You’re not surprised but I know Roslyn didn’t tell you about us. She’s been adamant about our relationship remaining a secret and for my own reasons I was alright with that. But since you’re family, I think it makes sense that you know.”

  And she wanted to tell him just in case he was under any pretenses about who his mother was. Dane almost laughed at the woman because she had absolutely no idea who she’d been sleeping with for the past ten years.

  “Where is she now?” he asked.

  “Out,” she told him.

  “When will she return?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t keep tabs on her. She’s free to come and go as she pleases, that’s what makes our relationship work so well.”

  “I just want to see my mother, Mrs. Terrington. So if she’s not here I’ll leave you my card. Can you or your staff call me as soon as she returns.”

  Dane removed the business card from his wallet and handed it to her. He was going to turn around and show himself out at that point but she made a sound that caught his attention.

  “Don
ovan,” she said. “You did tell me your name was Dane Donovan when you came in. I don’t know how I could have missed that.”

  Dane waited because he had a feeling there was more.

  “If you’re here to defend that wench Brynne for her abysmal behavior last week at the auction, I can tell you right now that no words can forgive that travesty. Actually, you should probably talk to whoever her parents are about that child’s manners,” Mrs. Terrington said in what seemed to Dane like a mini-tirade.

  The woman’s attitude had completely changed once she said the name “Donovan”.

  “You’ve seen Brynne?” Dane asked because not only had the family been looking for her, but he’d been trying to contact his other sister as well.

  Dane had wanted to reach out to Brynne the same way he had with Keysa. They were the innocent parties here. Him, Keysa and Brynne, because they weren’t asked to be born into this situation, but Dane felt as if they had an opportunity to make the best of it. He wanted to try, if with no one else in the Donovan family, he wanted to put forth that effort with his half-sisters.

  “Yes. I just told you that. I saw her last week at the Basset Banks silent auction and she was rude and despicable to me and my daughter,” the woman snapped.

  “Where is it?” he asked her.

  She blinked and shook her head. “Where is what?”

  “Basset Banks? It’s a winery right? Is it here in Napa Valley?”

  “Well, of course it is,” she told him. “It’s right down the road, but they have an inferior product. If you’re looking for a great cabernet or merlot, you’ve come to the right spot.”

  “No,” Dane told her. “The only thing I want from you is a call when my mother returns. I’ll handle the rest for myself.”

  He left her standing there and from the sound of her cursing figured he was probably the first person to walk away from her. But Dane didn’t give a damn. She said Brynne was here in Napa Valley. If that was the case, Dane wanted to see her. Now.

  Chapter 12

  Monica had returned to New York three days ago and since that time Brynne had been busy visiting all the locations she’d sent her in an email. They were all around the city of San Francisco so Brynne had spent a lot of time in her car. Today had been the first day where she had nothing on her schedule and she was thankful.

  This morning, she and Wade had walked through one of the vineyards he was concerned about.

  “The ability to blend grapes from different vineyards creates a more layered tasting wine. It gives a more robust flavor. That’s what we tried two years ago with that Mirage we served at the auction. It was a success but our sommeliers think we can get an even smoother taste if we give the grapes just a little more time on the vine,” Wade had told her just as the sun came up over the fields.

  “It’s much like an artist’s work which takes a creative eye and time for that particular artist’s skill to develop into a routine,” she told him.

  They were holding hands as they walked, talking in a slow and almost hushed tone as they moved through the quiet morning.

  “Perfection takes time,” he’d said.

  “I agree,” she’d replied.

  “So how long do we continue to date before we decide we belong together…forever?” he asked.

  She’d been able to continue moving, but her quick, yet thoughtful answers were immediately paused. She wasn’t sure but it sounded as if he were asking her to marry him. No, that couldn’t be. They weren’t at that point yet. It took years for people to decide they wanted to be married. Isn’t that what Monica had told her?

  “The vines, the grapes, they’re a complex situation. Some of them go through the process and come out perfectly. Innovation being what it is, we have machines that can accurately select which grapes we want to go into each bottle, with just the push of a button,” Wade had continued talking. “Year after year there are more technological enhancements in the wine making process, but good vintners keep their hand in the procedure. Cultivating, coaxing, assisting, that’s what we do.”

  They’d turned down the last row of vines coming up on the stretch of land that broke into a pond with large rocks forming a border. Brynne looked to those rocks.

  “I know of some artists who can produce a painting in two to three weeks’ time,” she said after a pregnant pause. “They come up with an idea by making several sketches. Depending on whether they use oil or acrylic paint, they still begin the process of prepping their canvas. They take the time to insure they have all the colors they need for a particular painting and then they may even make more sketches before beginning. I met an artist once who only produced two paintings per year. He was just as brilliant as a woman I met just a few years ago who could produce a portrait a month.”

  “To each his own,” Wade had said as they came to a stop near the pond.

  Brynne had nodded. “I agree,” she’d told him.

  And she did.

  Keysa and Ian had dated only a few months before they’d decided to get married, while Noelle and Brock had taken a couple of years before speaking their vows. Uncle Henry and Aunt Beverly dated for years, sometimes long distance, her aunt had told her once when Brynne was a teenager. Then they were married. Her mother had been living in Spokane when she met Bernard at a marketing convention in Seattle. Jocelyn was working at a small firm and her supervisor had come down with the flu so the company sent Jocelyn to the convention in his place. It was fate, her mother had told her, that Jocelyn had met Bernard Donovan, the man of her dreams. Six weeks later they were married and two years later Brynne was born. Now, thirty years after taking those vows, Jocelyn was in the process of declaring their union over.

  Wade had rubbed a hand over Brynne’s hair as they stood there. He leaned in and kissed her on the forehead.

  “I love you, Brynne,” he said softly. “And just like I told you before, I’ll wait.”

  Her only response had been to sigh at the sound of his words. Then they were walking back to the house where they had breakfast alone because Lauren had already left for the office. A few hours after that, Wade was gone and Brynne had the Big House to herself. She’d taken advantage of that by grabbing a book she’d ordered a couple of weeks ago and was just getting to, and sitting out on the deck to read.

  That’s where she was when she heard the noise.

  Footsteps.

  Brynne sat straight up in the lounge chair where she’d made herself comfortable. She immediately looked toward the trees where she recalled hearing sounds and the clock ticking, a couple months ago. And just like before, there was nothing there.

  “Brynne?”

  She jumped at the sound of the deep male voice and dropped her book from her lap when she turned quickly in the direction from which it had come.

  He was standing there. Tall, dark and extremely handsome.

  “I’m Dane,” he said as he came closer. “Dane Donovan. I’m your brother.”

  The words, the name, they’d been moving about in her mind since last year when Bailey had called her to share the results of the DNA test. Brynne had been the only one of children of the three Seniors involved with Roslyn Ausby, that did not attend the meeting when that information was announced. She hadn’t wanted to be there, hadn’t wanted what she’d feared to be acknowledged. Of course, her absence hadn’t stopped it from happening, but it had shielded her somewhat, for a while at least.

  He knelt down to pick up her book, just as Brynne had turned and let her feet touch the wood surface of the deck. He was looking at her as he handed it to her. She stared at him as she accepted it. Then she set the book on the lounge chair and stood. She was wearing white capri pants and a purple blouse and flat white sandals on her feet. Brynne brushed down the front of her clothes as she stood straight and looked up into his eyes once more. Eyes that instantly made her think of him and of her father.

  “How did you know where I was?” she asked because she hadn’t told him and she knew neither Keysa nor Bail
ey would have given him that information either.

  If he knew, was this how his mother had known too? Was that why he was here? To do something to her in the name of his mother? She looked around quickly for a weapon or something, anything.

  “I didn’t,” he replied. “Not until about twenty minutes ago.”

  Her heart was still beating fast and her head had begun to throb with the beginning of a headache. “I don’t understand,” Brynne said.

  “I was visiting the Bonjour Winery and a Mrs. Terrington told me you were here,” he told her.

  “Oh great, you know the racist lunatic,” Brynne said. “I should have known.”

  He looked surprised at her words. He was wearing a black suit, white shirt and sage green tie that he reached a hand up to loosen.

  “Now, I don’t understand,” he said to her. “Let me explain first.”

  Brynne nodded because telling him that she didn’t want to hear anything he had to say and stay away from her seemed kind of immature and pointless considering his first declaration was true. He was her brother.

  “I received word that my mother was here in Napa Valley. I came to take her to get the help that she needs,” he told her.

  He expected a reaction from her. Brynne didn’t know what reaction to have.

  “When Mrs. Terrington realized what my name was, she mentioned you being here.”

  “I’ll just bet she did,” Brynne quipped.

  “Something happened between you two,” he said. “Do you want to tell me about it? Maybe I can help.”