“I don’t mind that you’re not making this easy,” she told him. “The victory will be all the sweeter.” She picked up her ice cream and put the cover back. “I’m done.”
“Sugar and fat needs met?”
“I no longer need the comfort. My bad mood is gone.”
So like a woman, he thought as he leaned against the counter. “Because I kissed you?”
She smiled and jumped to the floor, then walked to the freezer. “Because you liked it.”
He wasn’t going to argue the point.
She closed the freezer door with her hip, then looked at him. “Tell me about the women in your life.”
“Not much to tell.”
“It’s tough, isn’t it?” She leaned against the counter opposite his. For once, her eyes weren’t bright with humor or challenge. “Being who we are and trying to get involved. The money thing, I mean.”
Because they both came from money. Because they’d been raised with the idea that they had to be careful, to make sure they didn’t fall for someone who was in it for the wrong reasons.
Without wanting to, Jack remembered sitting in on a painful conversation between Hunter and Meredith. He’d tried to escape more than once, but his friend had wanted him to stick around to make sure Meri really listened.
“Guys are going to know who you are,” Hunter had told her. “You have to be smart and not just think with your heart.”
Meri had been sixteen. She’d writhed in her seat as Hunter had talked, then she’d stood and glared at him. “Who is going to want me for anything else?” she demanded. “I’m not pretty. I’ll never be pretty. I’m nothing more than a giant brain with braces and a big nose. I’m going to have to buy all my boyfriends.”
Hunter had looked at Jack with an expression that begged for help, but Jack hadn’t known what to say either. They were too young to be guiding Meri through life—what experiences did they have to pass on? Doing twins from the law school hardly counted.
“I have it easier than you do,” he said, forcing himself back to the present, not wanting to think about how he’d failed both Hunter and Meri. “The women I go out with don’t know who I am.”
“Interesting point. I don’t talk about my family, but word gets out. I’ve actually reached the point in my life where I have to have men investigated before I start dating them. It’s not fun.”
“You’re doing the right thing.” Not that she was the only one checking out her dates. He ran a check on all of them, too. For casual dates, he only bothered with a preliminary investigation, but if it looked like things were getting serious, he asked for a more involved report.
She glanced at her watch again.
“You have an appointment?” he asked.
She grinned. “I have a surprise.”
“Another one?”
“Oh, yeah. So there’s no little woman waiting in the wings?”
“I told you—I’m not the little-woman type.”
“Of course. You’re the kind of man who enjoys a challenge. Which is what I am.”
Okay, so kissing her hadn’t gotten her to back off. He needed another direction. He refused to spend the next three and a half weeks dodging Meri. All he needed was a plan. He’d never been defeated before and he wasn’t about to be defeated now.
“But I want something different from the men in my life,” she continued. “Maybe my tastes have matured, but I’m looking for someone smart and funny—but normal-smart. Not brainy. I could never marry another genius. We’d have a mutant child, for sure.”
He chuckled. “Your own version of genetic engineering?”
“Sort of. I made a list of characteristics that are important to me. I used to have a whole program I wrote one weekend, but that seemed so calculated. A list is more ordinary.”
“Not if you wrote it in binary code.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. I’d never do that. C++ maybe.”
He was going to guess C++ was another computer language, but he could be wrong.
“Not that I needed a computer program to know Andrew is a great guy.”
Jack stared at her. “Andrew?”
“The man I’ve been dating for a while now. He checked out great, and things are getting serious.”
Jack didn’t remember hearing about any guy named Andrew. Not that he got personally involved unless things were heating up—which, apparently, they were. Why hadn’t he been told?
“How serious?” he asked as he heard the sound of a truck heading toward the house.
“I’m probably going to marry him,” Meri said, then ran out of the kitchen. “You hear that? They’re here!”
Marry him?
Before he could react to that, he found himself following her to the foyer and beyond that to the front of the house. A shuttle van pulled to a stop in front of the porch, and the door eased open.
“Who’s here?” he asked, but Meri wasn’t listening.
She bounced from foot to foot, then threw herself into the arms of the first person off the shuttle. He was short, skinny and wearing glasses thick enough to be portholes. Nothing about him was the least bit threatening, and Jack immediately wanted to kill him.
“You made it,” Meri said, hugging the guy again. “I’ve missed you so much.”
The guy disentangled himself. “It’s been a week, Meri. You need to get out more.”
She laughed, then turned to the next person and greeted him with exactly the same enthusiasm. Okay. So nerd guy wasn’t Andrew. Good to know.
Meri welcomed all eight visitors with exactly the same amount of enthusiasm, then she turned to Jack.
“Everybody, this is Jack. Jack, this is my team.”
“Team for what?” he asked.
She grinned. “Would you believe me if I said polo?”
Judging from their pale skin and slightly peering gazes, he was going to guess none of them had ever seen a horse outside of the movies or television.
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. This is my solid-rocket-fuel team. We’re working on ways to make it less toxic and more efficient. There’s a technical explanation, but I don’t want to watch your eyes glaze over.”
“I appreciate that. What are they doing here?”
“Don’t freak. They’re not all staying in the house. Only Colin and Betina. The rest are staying at nearby hotels.”
Jack didn’t like the idea of anyone else hanging around. He needed to concentrate on work. Of course, if Meri were distracted by her friends, she wouldn’t be such a problem for him.
“Why are they here?” he asked.
“So we can work. I can’t leave the mountain, so they agreed to a field trip.” She leaned toward him and lowered her voice. “I know you’re going to find it difficult to believe, but this is a really fun group.”
Most of her colleagues were squinting in the sun and looking uncomfortable. “I can only imagine.”
She walked over to the oldest woman in the group—a slightly overweight, stylishly dressed blonde—linked arms with her and led her forward.