Nathan's Child - By Anne McAllister Page 0,5
He could still get furious just thinking about it! Did she think he wouldn’t care that he had a daughter? That he wouldn’t have wanted to know?
Even now he could recall the punched-in-the-gut feeling he’d experienced when Dominic had told him he’d met Carin again at Pelican Cay.
Nathan had done his best not to think about Carin Campbell—or the week they’d spent together—for years.
It had been an impossible situation right from the start—the two of them thrown together, more or less alone in the house on the island for an entire week. Nathan, taking a well-deserved vacation from six solid months of being in the field in South America, had shown up at the family house on the island, ready to do his bit as his brother’s best man the following Saturday, and had been astonished to find Carin, said brother’s quiet, sensitive, pretty fiancée, already there. She’d been sent down early to fulfil a residency requirement for their Bahamian marriage. She’d been there two weeks already—and she’d spent them, as far as Nathan could figure, worrying nonstop about her upcoming nuptials.
“What’s to worry about?” he’d asked cavalierly. As long as it was someone else getting married and not him, he hadn’t seen the problem.
But Carin had. Her cheeks had turned a deep-red as she’d admitted, “Your brother.”
“Dominic? What’s not to like about Dominic? He’s handsome, wealthy, powerful, smart.” Definitely the best catch of the Wolfe brothers, that was for sure.
“Yes, he is. All of the above,” Carin had said faintly. She had barely smiled, and he’d realized she was serious.
He should have realized then she was no match for Dominic. But Nathan had had no experience thinking like an unsophisticated, green girl. Relationships of any sort didn’t interest him. Sure, Dominic was hardheaded and used to having his own way, but he was kind, he was honorable, he was the best of men.
“That’s the trouble,” Carin said when he’d pointed that out. “I don’t know anything about men.”
“How the hell did you get engaged to him then?”
“Our fathers introduced us.”
He should have known. So Dominic was marrying to please their old man. And Nathan supposed Carin was marrying to please hers.
Even so, they had seemed well matched. Both had fathers who were high-powered businessmen, independent entrepreneurs who had used their brains and plenty of hard work to build multinational concerns. Both Dominic and Carin had grown up on the East Coast, had gone to the same sorts of preppy schools and Ivy League colleges, had the same sorts of friends.
And Nathan couldn’t imagine that his brother was indifferent to his bride-to-be.
Slender and fine-boned, with long long long blonde hair and wide sea-blue eyes, Carin was your basic, everyday, downright gorgeous female.
If Nathan had been interested in a woman of his own—which he wasn’t—he’d have felt a prick of envy at his brother’s lot.
But the last thing Nathan wanted was a wife—especially a wife who would tie him to a corporate lifestyle he had rejected. But Carin was the sort of wife who would suit Dominic to a T. She’d be a terrific accessory to his career and not bad on the home front, either.
So he’d said cheerfully, “You want to learn about men? You want to get to know Dominic? Hell, I’m just like Dominic—” perhaps a stretch of the truth there, but in a good cause “—just stick with me.”
He figured they’d have a good time that week. He would enjoy a little friendly platonic female companionship, would cement his role as favored brother-in-law in years to come, and at the same time he’d do Dominic a good turn.
After all, Dominic had gone to bat for him when Nathan had told their father he didn’t want to work for Wolfes’, that he wanted to be a photographer instead.
The old man had been downright furious. “What do you mean you don’t want to work for Wolfes’? It’s buttered your bread your whole life, you ungrateful whelp.”
Then Dominic had stepped in, pointing out that what Nathan wanted to do was no more than what Douglas had done when he’d built Wolfes’ in the first place—be his own man.
“He’s the most like you of any of us,” Dominic had said forcefully.
Not something Nathan cheerfully acknowledged. But it had stopped the old man. It had made him look thoughtful. And the next thing Nathan knew, his father had been beaming and shaking his hand.
“Chip off the old block,” he’d said, nodding his head. “Dominic’s right. You’ve got guts, my boy.” He’d fixed