“No, Ma,” Jace said, his charming smile not quite masking the wariness in his eyes. “I’m still here.”
Jace’s mother turned a bright glance on Joss. “Hello.”
Jace made the introductions. Joss smiled and nodded at his mom, whose name was Claudia.
Claudia asked, “Do you live here in town, Jocelyn?”
“No, I’m from Sacramento.”
Jace said, “Joss is staying here at the resort.”
“With your family?” his mom quizzed. Claudia had that look, Joss thought, the look of a mother on the trail of every bit of information she could gather about the new girl her son had brought to the family party.
“I’m here on my own,” Joss told her. “Having a great time, too. I love the spa. And the shopping in the resort boutiques. And I’m learning to play golf.” All of it on Kenny Donovan’s dime, thank you very much.
An ordinary-looking man a few years older than Jace’s mom stepped up and took Claudia’s arm. Claudia beamed at him, her golden-brown eyes glowing with affection. “Darling, this is Jocelyn, Jason’s new friend. Jocelyn, my husband, Pete—we’re staying here at the resort, too. A romantic getaway, just us two old folks in the Governor’s Suite.”
Joss was in the Honeymoon Suite, but she didn’t say so. It would only be asking for more questions than she was prepared to answer at the moment—which was kind of amusing in a dark sort of way. She hadn’t even hesitated to tell Jace that she’d run away from her own wedding. But somehow, with everyone else, well, she didn’t want to go there. And she really appreciated that Jace was keeping his mouth shut about it.
He seemed like a great guy. And his parents were adorable, she thought. So much in love, so attentive to each other. There should be more couples in the world like Claudia and Pete.
Claudia said, “I hope you’ll join us for dinner tomorrow night, Jocelyn. It will be at the home of Jason’s twin, Jackson, and Jackson’s wife, Laila. They have a nice little property not far from town.”
“Yeah, you should come,” Jace said with enthusiasm. “I’ll take you.”
Joss gave him a look that said he shouldn’t push it and asked, “You have a twin?”
Claudia laughed. “A fraternal twin. Jackson is older by an hour and five minutes. That makes Jason my youngest son. I also have one daughter, Rose. She’s the baby of the family. Dillon, Ethan and Corey are the older boys.”
Joss did the math. “Wow, six kids. I’m jealous. I was an only child. My mother raised me on her own.”
Claudia reached out and touched Joss’s shoulder, a fond kind of touch. “Sweet girl,” she said softly. And Joss felt all warm and fuzzy inside. “You come to dinner tomorrow night,” Jace’s mom said again. “We would love to have you join us.”
“Thank you,” Joss said, and left it at that.
A few moments later, Jace led her out onto the Rib Shack’s patio where the band was set up but taking a break. They found a reasonably quiet corner where they could talk without having to shout.
“My mother likes you,” Jace said.
“You say that like you’re not sure if it’s good or bad.”
“Yeah, well, Ma thinks I got my heart broken and she really wants me to be happy. She’s decided I only need to meet another woman, the right woman, so I can get married and settle down like my brothers and my sister. Now she’ll be finding all kinds of ways to throw us together.”
“We’ll resist, of course.”
“Of course we will.”
“Who broke your heart, Jace?”
He hedged. “It’s a long story.”
“I told you mine,” she teased.
He looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Well, you know, this isn’t the place or the time.”
She got the message. “You don’t want to tell me—and you know what? That’s okay.”
“Whew.” He made a show of wiping nonexistent sweat from his brow. “And even though I hate to give my mother the wrong idea about us, I think you ought to come to dinner at Jackson’s tomorrow. You know, just to be social.”
She gave him a slow look. She knew he was up to something.
And he was. He admitted, “I also want you there because I like you.”
“Uh-huh. What else? Give it to me straight, Jace.”
“Fair enough. If you come, everyone will think we’re together—I mean really together, as in more than friends. And that means my family will stop trying to set me up.”
“You want me to pretend to be your girlfriend?”
“You don’t have to pretend anything. If you’re with me, they’ll assume there’s something going on. It doesn’t matter if you tell them that we’re just friends. They won’t believe you. It doesn’t matter that I will tell them we’re just friends. They’ll only be certain we’re in denial about all that we mean to each other.”
“Still, it seems dishonest.”
“Is it our fault if people insist on jumping to conclusions?”
Strangely, she found that she wanted to go to dinner at his brother’s house. “I’ll think about it.”
“Good. And don’t let my mother get you alone. She’ll only start in about the family business and how she needs me in Midland and she hopes that you will be open to the idea of moving to Texas because she’s already hearing wedding bells in our future.”
“What is the family business anyway?”
“I didn’t tell you? It’s oil. Except for my oldest brother, Dillon, who’s a doctor, we’re all in oil.”
She laughed. “Knee-deep?”
“All the way over our heads in it, trust me. We’re Traub Oil Industries. I was a vice president in the Midland office. I quit the first of April. I was supposed to be out of there by the end of May. My mother and Pete kept finding reasons why I had to stay. I finally escaped just this past Wednesday. I’m never going back.”
“You sound determined.”
“Believe me, I am.”
“How come you call your dad Pete?”
“He’s my stepdad. My father, Charles, was something of a legend in the oil business. He died in an accident on a rig when I was little. My mom married Pete about two years later. Her last name is Wexler now. None of us were happy when she married him. We were loyal to our dad and we resented Pete.”
“We?”
“My brothers, my sister and I. But Pete’s not only a good man, he’s also a patient one. He won all of us over eventually. Pete had a heart attack a couple of years ago. We almost lost him. That really taught us how much he means to us.”
“It’s so obvious he’s head over heels in love with your mom.”
“Yes, he is. A man like that is damn hard to hate.” He took her arm. “Come on, I want you to meet my brothers.”
They wandered back inside. Joss met Dillon and Ethan and Corey and Jace’s twin, Jackson. The two did look a lot alike—meaning tall, dark and handsome. But it wasn’t the least difficult to tell them apart. Joss also met the Traub boys’ only sister, Rose, and Rose’s husband, Austin, and she visited with