The Far Side of Paradise. Robyn Donald

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      CHAPTER ONE

      STONE-FACED, Cade Peredur listened again to the tape of his foster-brother’s final call—a frantic, beseeching torrent of words recorded just before Peter Cooper killed himself.

      ‘Cade, where are you? Where the hell are you—oh, with Lady Louisa, I suppose. Damn it, Cade, I need you more than any woman could—why aren’t you home? Why can’t you be there for me?’

      A short pause, broken only by his breathing, jagged and irregular, and then, ‘Cade, I’ve been such a fool—such an idiot.’

      Not a muscle of Cade’s face moved at the sound of choked weeping.

      At last Peter said in a thick, despairing voice, ‘Taryn was my last—my only—hope. It hurts—so bloody much, Cade, so much …’ Another wrenching pause and then, in a voice Cade had never heard before, Peter said, ‘There’s nothing left for me now. She laughed when I asked … laughed …’

      The silence stretched for so long that when he’d first heard it Cade had been sure the call was over.

      But eventually his brother whispered, ‘It’s no good, Cade. I’m sorry, but it’s no good any more. I can’t—I just can’t live with this. She’s gone, and she’s not coming back. Tell the parents I’m sorry to be such a useless son to them, but at least they’ll still have you. You’re the sort of man they wanted me to be, and God knows I tried, but I’ve always known I didn’t have what it takes. Get married, Cade, and give them some grandchildren to adore. They’ll need them now …’

      He stopped abruptly. Then he said unevenly, ‘Try not to despise me, Cade. I love you. Goodbye.’

      Cade switched off the tape and walked across the luxurious room to look unseeingly across the London cityscape, fighting to control the rush of blind rage threatening to consume him. The call had come eight hours before he’d arrived home and by the time he’d got to Peter’s apartment his brother was dead.

      Peter had worshipped him, emulated and envied him, then finally grown away from him, but Cade had always been intensely protective of his younger brother.

      Hands clenching, he turned and walked into his office, stopping at his desk. The photograph on it had been taken at his foster-parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary a few months before Peter’s death—Isabel and Harold Cooper all smiles for the camera, Peter’s grin revealing a hint of feverish excitement.

      As always, Cade was the odd one out—taller than the other two men, his features harsher and his expression unreadable.

      His brother’s suicide shattered that secure, tight family unit. A fortnight after the funeral, Harold Cooper had died from a heart attack, and while Isabel was still trying to come to terms with the wreckage of her life she’d stepped out into the path of a car. Onlookers said she’d moved as though in a daze.

      She’d wanted to die too, but not before she’d begged Cade to find out what had driven her son to suicide.

      He’d held her hand while she’d whispered painfully, ‘If … if I knew why … it wouldn’t be so bad. I just want to know, Cade, before I die.’

      ‘You’re not going to die,’ he said harshly. ‘I’ll find out what happened.’

      Her lashes had fluttered up again, revealing a spark of animation in her gaze. ‘Promise?’

      To encourage that hope, that flicker of determination, he’d have promised anything. ‘I will. But you have to keep going for me.’

      She’d managed a pale smile. ‘It’s a deal.’

      That had been the turning point; valiantly she’d gathered her reserves and struggled back to cope with everything life had thrown at her. It had taken months of rehabilitation, and she was now adjusting to living the rest of her life in a wheelchair.

      The letter Peter had left for his parents lay in its envelope on Cade’s desk. He flicked it open and read it again. Unlike the telephone call, it was free of overt grief. СКАЧАТЬ