“I’m hoping Destiny will back off if she’s convinced I’m doing exactly what she wanted,” Richard explained. “And if you tell another living, breathing soul I said that, I’ll make sure that Destiny tries to hook you up with the most avaricious, impossible female in this entire region. Believe me, I know some of the worst. I’ll give her a list of candidates guaranteed to make your life miserable.”
“Speaking of intimidation,” Mack said quietly, “you’re not bad at it yourself.”
“Thank you. Will you be there?”
“How could I possibly refuse such a gracious invitation to dine with my family?” Mack said with a sarcastic bite to his voice. “Are you calling Ben?”
“No, I think you’ll do for now.”
“But baby brother might enjoy this,” Mack objected. “He’s never seen you on the ropes before. We’ve always thought you were invincible, afraid of nothing.”
“Very amusing. Besides, Ben doesn’t enjoy anything that means he has to leave his farm in Middle-burg and stop brooding for an entire evening. On top of that, he’s too honest for conspiracies.”
“And I’m not?” Mack inquired with a touch of indignation.
“Not even close. You thrive on them. That’s why you’re so good at using sneaky, clever tactics to lure the best, most unavailable football talent to your team,” Richard said. “Seven-thirty, okay?”
“Despite the number of times you’ve insulted me in this conversation, I’ll be there,” Mack promised. “Hope I can keep a straight face.”
“Consider the alternative,” Richard told him grimly.
After he’d hung up, he kept staring at the phone. He loved his brother. He knew Mack would go to the mat for him or for Ben, but an actor? No way. It was entirely possible he’d just made his second-worst mistake of the day. Apparently he was on a real roll.
Melanie had anticipated a barrage of last-minute instructions from Richard on the drive to his aunt’s. Instead, beyond an approving once-over and a friendly-enough greeting when he’d picked her up, he’d remained stoically silent. It was getting on her nerves.
“Don’t you think maybe we should go over our plan?” she asked finally.
He glanced at her then, the line of his jaw hard. “You think I actually have a plan?”
“I was hoping for one, yes. You have a reputation for being very organized, for leaving nothing to chance.”
His laugh sounded forced. “So I do. Apparently it’s my day for doing the unexpected.”
“So there really is no plan,” she surmised, feeling suddenly queasy. She could wing it with a mob of reporters, but this? This was definitely not a situation in which she should be flying by the seat of her pants. Surely, Richard should understand that. She cleared her throat. “Um, don’t you think maybe we should stop for a second and get a few things straight?”
This time when he glanced her way, his gaze lingered. “You really are nervous, aren’t you?”
“Well, duh! What do you think? I am about to face a woman I like and respect and pretend that I’m falling for her favorite nephew. I anticipate a lot of questions. Don’t you?”
“I’m not her favorite. Destiny doesn’t have favorites. She’s always been very clear about that.” He grinned. “Mack and I both know it’s Ben. He has her artistic talent, if not her quixotic nature. Mack loves sports, which she doesn’t get at all, and she thinks I’m stuffy.”
“Okay, whatever,” Melanie retorted, not sounding remotely sympathetic. “The point is that we’re lying to her and we don’t have our stories straight.”
“Mack will be there. He’ll be a good buffer. He’s quite a talker. We may not have to say much.”
She stared at him in shock. “Oh, goody. I get to lie to your brother, too.”
“No, he gets that this is a sham.”
Her stomach dropped. “And that’s better? You expect him to lie, too?”
“No, I expect him to take some of the heat off of us. Mack has a way of stirring Destiny up. You’ll see. It’s actually rather fascinating to watch.”
“Why on earth would your brother agree to be a party to this?” When Richard didn’t answer, she reached her own conclusion. “You bribed him, didn’t you? Or threatened him?”
He frowned at that. “Only in a brotherly kind of way,” he insisted as if that made it so much better. “I told him if he didn’t help, I could see to it that Destiny turned her misguided attentions on him.”
“And?” She knew there was more. There had to be.
“I might have hinted that I could influence the choice she made and that the woman might not be to Mack’s liking.”
Melanie regarded him with dismay. “Do you hate your brother that much?”
“Of course not,” he said, staring at her as if she were crazy.
“Then why would you even suggest such a thing, given how thrilled you are to be in this particular mess?”
“Misery loves company,” he suggested glibly.
Melanie merely buried her face in her hands and prayed for a quick end to the entire evening.
Melanie didn’t seem happy, which made two of them, Richard concluded as he pulled into the three-car garage at what had once been his home. The brick town house in Old Town Alexandria combined two old homes into one gracious enough for entertaining and big enough for the large family his parents had anticipated. It had black shutters and brass trim and an occasional tendril of ivy that had escaped the gardener’s attention climbing up the pink brick.
In recent years Destiny had remained there as first he, then Mack and then Ben had moved into homes of their own. For the first time he considered that maybe his aunt was doing all this matchmaking craziness because she was lonely. Too bad he couldn’t fix her up. Maybe that would end this madness.
Unfortunately, even the thought of trying to turn the tables and hook Destiny up with some man made him smile. His aunt would not be amused. Her personal life was not a topic he or his brothers approached without serious trepidation. She always cut them off before they could complete their first query. He would have thought that a woman so tight-lipped about her own intimate secrets would be more careful about sticking her nose into his.
As he got out of the car, he took a second look at the flashy red convertible she’d bought recently and shook his head. It was entirely possible she was going through some sort of midlife crisis, though come to think of it the convertible suited her personality a whole lot better than the minivans she’d driven when they were boys.
“Your aunt loves that car,” Melanie noted. “I was with her when she bought it.”
He regarded her with surprise. “You were?” Then he recalled the rest of the story. “You were the woman who ran into her car that day and totaled it? That’s how the two of you met?”
Melanie winced. “I thought you knew.”
He shook his head. “This just gets better and better. I thought she’d met you on some committee or other. I figured she’d seen you doing PR and recommended you because of that. Instead, she met you in a traffic accident.” He rubbed his now-throbbing temples. “It all makes perfect sense.”
Melanie blinked. “It does?”
“Sure. She really has gone ’round the bend. Instead of going in there and trying to convince her we’re involved, I ought to be trying to convince her to see a shrink.”
Melanie glowered