“Shy?” He shook his head, dismissing the notion. Lisa had confidence to spare. There was no room for shyness there. “Not a chance.”
His sister huffed. “Why’d you ask if you’re going to ignore what I think, anyway? Trust me. The woman has a shy streak a half mile wide. You just don’t see it ‘cause you’re a guy. All you see are those long legs of hers and those big brown eyes.”
He saw a lot more than that. He saw the means to his future. One that, for a long while, he’d given up on ever having.
He never thought he’d be in the position of hearing his own biological clock ticking, but that was where he was. There was a helluva lot of macabre irony that the situation caused by Derek Armstrong was now providing Rourke with the means to succeed in the one thing he’d ever failed at.
Or maybe, it was simply poetic justice.
Elation edged ahead at last, and Rourke dropped his arm over his sister’s shoulder. “How fast do you think you can put together a wedding?”
Lisa stood on the front porch of her parents’ home and took a deep breath. She’d barely landed in Boston when her cell phone started ringing with messages, but it was the one from her mother that had brought Lisa here this evening.
Nobody ignored Emily when she summoned you to a family dinner.
Not even when one had, just that day, been coerced into agreeing to marry a devil.
Blowing out a breath, she pushed open the door, entering the foyer where the scent of furniture polish and fresh flowers greeted her. Knowing that her mother wouldn’t appreciate her arriving with briefcase in hand—tangible evidence that she was a businesswoman and not a society wife—she left it on the floor next to an antique console table that held the cut-crystal vase filled with flowers and walked through the house that she’d grown up in.
She found everyone already in the drawing room. Her mother was sitting on the settee, her typical glass of sherry in her hand. Surprisingly, Gerald was out of bed and sat in his wheelchair next to the settee, sipping amber liquid from a squat glass of his own. Paul and his fiancée, Ramona, were standing close together near the bay window that overlooked the back of the estate. Her blond head was tilted close to his dark one and they seemed lost in their own world.
Derek was notably absent, for which Lisa was painfully grateful.
She was pretty certain that in her present mood, she would have lost her control altogether if she’d had to see him just then.
It was going to be difficult enough trying to sell the idea of her sudden “romance” with Rourke Devlin as it was.
She went to her father first, bending over him to kiss his cheek. “Daddy. It’s good to see you up. You’re looking well.” And he did. His shoulders weren’t as broad and strong as they’d been before he’d become confined to his wheelchair and his face wasn’t as fiercely handsome as it had once been, but he was still an impressive, dauntingly intelligent man.
And right now, that intelligence was peering out at her from her father’s eyes. “You don’t,” he said bluntly. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing!” She straightened and managed a laugh. “Just too much to do and not enough hours in the day. That’s what you always used to say,” she reminded.
He lifted his glass, watching her over the rim. He didn’t look convinced, but she turned quickly for her customary air-kiss with her mother.
“You’re late,” was the only observation her mother had for her.
“I’m sorry.” She looked over the back of the settee to find her brother watching her, his eyebrows lifted a little.
She could well imagine he was curious about the results of her New York trip. She shook her head ever so slightly, glancing back at her mother. “You know I was in New York for most of the day. I had to stop at the institute when I got back.”
Emily’s lips pursed. “I suppose that’s why you didn’t have time to dress more appropriately for dinner.”
She was long used to her mother’s disapproval and ignored it in favor of going to the gleaming wooden bar on the far side of the room. “I thought Olivia and her clan would be here, too,” she said to no one in particular.
“She and Jamison had another function tonight.”
And of course those functions would be important enough not to earn Emily’s trademarked sniff of displeasure. “Too bad,” Lisa said. “I was looking forward to seeing Kevin and Danny again.” Since they’d joined the family, Lisa had been unfailingly charmed by the two sweet little boys her sister and brother-in-law had adopted. And right now, the three-and seven-year-olds would have provided a welcome distraction. “How long until dinner?”
She could hear her mother’s sigh from across the room. “Long enough for you to have an aperitif.”
As if to not have a pre-dinner drink was the height of crassness.
Paul appeared beside her and pulled a wineglass from beneath the bar. “White?”
She stifled her own sigh and nodded.
He poured her a glass. “I’m sorry I was tied up with patients this afternoon and missed you when you got back.” His voice was low. “How’d it go?”
Her fingers tightened nervously around the delicate crystal stemware. Her mother had switched her attention to fussing over Gerald, though Ramona was watching them. Lisa pulled her lips into a smile for her brother and his fiancée, lifting her glass a little as if in a toast. “We…um…we’re not going to have to worry about that…small problem anymore. It’s completely taken care of.” Or it would be soon enough.
She took a hasty gulp, drowning her anxiety in wine.
“He went for it, then?”
He, of course, meant Rourke. “Mmm-hmm.”
Her brother smiled. “I knew you could pull it off, Lis.”
“There is one thing I need to tell you—” She broke off when they heard the chimes ringing from the front doorbell. Her first thought was that Derek was showing up, after all, but she quickly dismissed it. This was his childhood home, too. He wouldn’t have stood on ceremony any more than she had. He’d have walked right on in.
“Go see who it is, Lisa,” her mother ordered. “Anna is off today.” Anna was her parents’ housekeeper.
She didn’t mind. It gave her an escape for at least a few minutes. She left her wineglass sitting on the bar and walked through the house back to the front door, pulling it open without so much as a glance through the heavily leaded sidelights.
Rourke stood on the porch. He was wearing a dark overcoat that made his shoulders look even wider than usual, and the golden light from the sconces positioned beside the massive door made his black hair glint.
She resolutely ignored the way her heart practically stood still and pulled the door shut a little behind her, lest anyone else’s curiosity led them to the foyer. “What are you doing here?”
“Is that any way to greet your fiancé?”
The term jarred her. “What would you like me to do? Throw myself into your arms?”
“That’d be more natural, wouldn’t it?”
“There’s nothing natural about any of this.” The magnitude of what she’d agreed to overwhelmed her all over again. As did the needlessness of it all. She stepped farther outside, nearly pulling the door closed entirely. “Why me?” she asked. “If you want a child—within the bounds of wedlock,”