Trying not to blush—because the second Tanya had said play, her uncle had given Lisa a look that left her feeling scorched—she caught at her blowing skirt again and focused anywhere other than on Rourke. “Are those your brothers and sisters?” She nodded toward the other children.
“They’re my cousins. I’m a lonely only,” Tanya said so pathetically that Lisa had to bite back a laugh.
“Lonely my foot,” Rourke chided, lifting her off his shoulder and flipping her heels over head before setting her on her feet. “Where’s your grandma?”
“Aunt Tricia said she hadda sit in the shade with her foot elevatored.” She gestured toward the lagoon-shaped swimming pool where several lounges and chairs were arranged around tables shaded by large beige market umbrellas. If it weren’t for the thick border of trees well off in the distance that were showing faint shades of fall, it would have seemed like the middle of summer.
“Run ahead and tell her I’m here with a guest.”
Tanya immediately turned on her little sneakered feet and raced across the stone courtyard, dashing down the terraced steps and across the lawn toward the pool.
Lisa caught at her drifting skirt again. A rerun of her trousers from the day before would have been smarter. “Rourke, you could have just said you wanted to check on your mother. I would have understood the need to reschedule our meeting.” If anything, his evident concern for his mother made him seem much more human than she’d previously suspected.
“Rescheduling isn’t necessary.”
The teeter-totter was back in full force. “Because.?” She trailed off warily.
“Because I already know what I need to know.” He lifted his hand in a wave when a petite woman appeared from beneath one of the umbrellas and started toward them. “That’s Tricia. Be prepared. She likes bossing everyone around.”
Her jaw tightened. He was being deliberately obscure. “Runs in the family, evidently,” she murmured.
But he just grabbed her wrist and strode off again, pulling her with him whether she wanted to go or not and not releasing her until he met his dark-haired sister and swept her into an unrestrained hug that surprised Lisa all over again.
Then he held out his arm toward Lisa, introducing them. “This is my sister Tricia McAllister. Trish, this is Lisa Armstrong.”
Feeling awkward, Lisa stuck out her hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”
Tricia had the same scrutinizing black eyes her brother possessed and they were clearly speculative as she looked from Lisa to Rourke and back again. “And you,” she returned, exchanging a quick handshake before addressing her brother again. “Cara and Lea are bringing lunch down any minute now. It’s so lovely out, I said we had to eat outside. So come say hello to Mother and then pull two more chairs over to her table.” She headed off.
Rourke caught Lisa’s eye. “See?”
“Is she the oldest?”
“Of my sisters, yes.”
Which, she assumed, meant he was older than they were. “Brothers?”
He shook his had. “Until Trish had her third kid—Trey—I was the only guy in the group, save a couple of brothers-in-law.” He wrapped his hand around her elbow, steering her toward the tables beyond which the pool shimmered like pale clouds floating in liquid silver. “Now smile and stop looking like you’re heading to your own execution.”
“I’m sorry. But I feel like I’m intruding here.”
“It’s just family.”
“Right. Your family.” The back of her neck itched. “I’m here on business but they probably think this is social.” At least that was what the speculation on Tricia’s face had indicated.
He lifted an eyebrow. “So?”
“So—” She broke off, her hands flapping uselessly. She’d left the briefcase—along with her means of contact with the outside world—in the limo. And with each step they took, her heels sinking into the still-lush lawn, she felt as if she was getting further away from that familiar world in favor of this resortlike home. “It’s…it’s not.”
“You’ll have your money. All of it. Now relax.” Completely disregarding the shock that had her legs nearly going out beneath her, his steps didn’t hesitate as he continued pulling her toward the others. “Think of us as one happy family.”
Chapter Three
All of it?
Lisa barely heard anything after those three little words. She supposed she must have functioned through the meal—carried from the house by Cara and Lea, who turned out to be Rourke’s other sisters. Rourke sat her across from his mother, Nina. She had one bandaged foot elevated on a second chair, a position that didn’t prevent her from busily working the colorful blanket she was crocheting. Like a general maneuvering her troops, Tricia called in all the children from the tennis courts, directing them around the two other tables even as she tossed out introductions that Lisa had no hope of following.
Not when all of it kept circling in her head, even trumping that ironic “happy family” comment.
He couldn’t have meant it literally. Could he?
Before she knew it, the meal was done, the oddly prosaic plastic plates and utensils disposed of and after being indulgently waved off by Nina Devlin, Lisa found herself walking through an honest-to-goodness hedge maze with Rourke while three of his nieces—Tanya in the lead—raced ahead of them.
“What exactly do you mean by all of it?” she finally asked.
They’d both left behind their jackets at the table. He’d rolled the cuffs of his white shirt up his forearms. Even his tie was gone. And at her abrupt question, he stopped and looked at her. The hedge was tall enough that it couldn’t be seen over, but not so high that it felt claustrophobic. She could hear the high-pitched little-girl voices ahead of them, and still feel the breeze tugging at her chignon and her skirt.
But when he focused his attention on her face just then, they might as well have been locked together, alone, in a four-by-four vault. “I mean all of it,“ he repeated as if she were witless.
Which was pretty much how she felt. Ultimately, the institute needed millions, and the most practical solution—if the least desirable—to that would have been from multiple sources. Not even Ted had really believed that Rourke would consider covering their entire need. “But—”
He lifted a hand, silencing her. “This isn’t up for discussion. I’m willing to invest as much as it takes, but I’ll be the only investor. No others.”
Her blood was zipping through her veins more quickly, excitement making her pulse pound. This was it, then. Truly it.
The answer to a prayer.
“Are you agreeing because of your friendship with Ted?”
“Does it matter?”
She slowly shook her head. “What matters is the institute.”
“Right.” His lips twisted a little. “As it happens, I do want to see Ted and Chance have every opportunity available to them. And Ted won’t leave the institute.”
Her shoes crunched on the smooth gravel of the path as she took two steps one way, then back again. “You asked him?”
His eyes glinted, reminding her needlessly that—indulgent uncle or not—he was a calculating businessman. “Of course.”
She swallowed. Paul had courted Ted and Chance away from San Francisco. With the institute in its currently