by Zara Chase
She wasn’t sure how long she’d been in the shower, but in that time the caterers had restored the house to its former state and were long gone.
“Hey,” Isaac called from the den. “Feeling all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“So we see.” Nick raked her body with his gaze. Her clothing didn’t leave much to the imagination, and he obviously appreciated what was on show. “Come on into the kitchen. We’ve got something for you.”
“What is it?” Her gaze landed on the items prominently displayed on the counter, and she burst out laughing. “Oh, I see.”
A handsome china teapot and all the other stuff she’d requested sat there. “I guess the time has come to educate you Yanks on the only way to make a cup of tea,” she said, sighing.
“This ought to be good,” Isaac said, taking a seat at the counter.
“First of all, you empty the old water out of the kettle and fill it from the tap with cold water.” She did so and switched it on. “Then we wait.”
“What for?” Nick asked. “Don’t you have to spoon tea leaves into the pot?”
“Always in such a hurry.” Paige tutted, wagging a finger at Nick. “When you take me to bed, you boys are always telling me off for being impatient.” She picked up the packets of tea leaves one by one and lovingly ran a hand down each packet. “Ah, welcome, old friends. Now, which of you shall I sacrifice to these heathens?”
The kettle boiled and switched itself off. “First of all you have to warm the pot,” she said. “That’s very important.” She poured a little water into the teapot, swirled it around and tipped it down the sink. Then she carefully spooned Earl Grey leaves into it. “Now we can add the water,” she said reverently.
“Are all Brits as dedicated to this process as you are?” Isaac asked with a grin.
“Just because we have history and tradition,” she said, sniffing, “that doesn’t make us bad people. Okay,” she added. “Now we give it time to steep.”
“To what?”
“I think she means we let it brew,” Nick said.
“Precisely.”
She extracted delicate bone-china cups and saucers from the cupboard and set them up on the surface.
“I guess a mug’s out of the question,” Isaac quipped.
Paige threw him a withering glance. She poured milk into a jug and found sugar cubes for the bowl.
“Tea doesn’t taste right if it’s not supped from thin china,” she said loftily as she checked her watch. “Right, that should do it.” She placed the tea strainer over the first cup and carefully poured, repeating the process until all three cups were filled. “See what you make of that,” she said, handing the cups round.
“Milk and sugar?” Nick asked.
“No thanks, I’m a purist.”
She held her steaming cup up to her nose, inhaled the aroma, and sighed. Then she blew on its surface and risked a tiny sip.
“Heaven!” She closed her eyes and tipped her head backward. “How can you guys live without this simple pleasure?”
They both sipped, looked at one another, and nodded.
“Guess it’s an acquired taste,” Nick said.
Paige flapped a hand at him. “I give up!”
“Hey, what’s this?” Isaac asked, picking up a piece of paper from beside the phone.
“Oh, thanks,” Paige said, taking it from his grasp. “That’s my online boarding pass. I’m going back to England the day after tomorrow.”
Isaac glowered at her. “The hell you are!”
“There’s nothing to keep me here now,” she said, a part of her definitely wanting to stay whenever she looked at Isaac and Nick. “I was only waiting for the funeral. I’ll go back overnight Friday, have Saturday and Sunday to get over the jetlag, and then I’ll hit the ground running on Monday. I have an office to run, remember.”
Isaac took Paige’s empty cup from her hand, placed it on the counter, and frog-marched her into the den.
“He seems to be in control-freak mode again,” she said to Nick, rolling her eyes.
“Why didn’t you mention that you’d booked your flight?” Isaac asked her.
“Slipped my mind, I suppose.” She slumped down on the couch and frowned at him. “Why are you so angry? What’s the big deal? You knew I was going back straight after the funeral.”
“Look,” Nick said, “I’ll leave you two to it. I think Isaac has something he wants to ask you, Paige.”
“Well, he can ask me whatever it is in front of you.” She grabbed Nick’s hand and pulled him down next to her. “Don’t leave me here with this bully, unprotected.”
Nick shot a glance Isaac’s way. It annoyed Paige. She got the impression that if Isaac had told him to leave then he would have gone. It was like her opinion counted for nothing. Isaac merely shrugged, and Nick stayed put, a circumstance that Paige chalked up as a small victory to her.
She expected Isaac to start lecturing her about whatever it was that she’d done to upset him, and so she shifted sideways in the corner of the couch, her back to Isaac and her legs thrown over Nick’s lap. He laughed and gently rubbed her instep with his thumb. Only when Isaac didn’t speak and the silence was in danger of becoming embarrassing did she flash a glance over her shoulder. He sat beside her, grinding his teeth, looking ready to commit murder.
“What have I done this time?” she asked glibly.
“Were you really going to leave us, just like that?”
“Of course.” Paige shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Apart from anything else, you’re not fit to fly. You still have stitches in that cut.”
“They come out tomorrow.”
“So you were going to leave the first moment you could?” Isaac stood and paced in front of her, repeatedly shaking his head. “After everything we’ve been to each other? Do Nick and I mean so little to you?”
“It was fun,” she said. “A great way to get through our initial grief over Ellie. But we agreed, remember, no emotional commitment.”
“I didn’t agree.”
Paige pulled her foot out of Nick’s grasp and stood to face Isaac. “What’s this really all about?” she asked. “Is your ego hurt because I’m not willing to cling? Is that it?”
She’d never seen him so unsure of himself, except when he thought she was dead, of course. He placed his hands on her shoulders and pulled her against him.
“I didn’t plan to tell you this, not today of all days, but you leave me with little choice.” He took a deep breath, causing Paige to wonder what he was about to say. “I want you to stay here, permanently.”
She blinked up at him, totally astounded. “Why?” she asked dazedly.
“I want to marry you, Paige. I love you.” The uncertainty in his expression pulled at her heartstrings and made her realize he was serious. “Say you’ll marry me.”
She pulled away from him, folded her arms across her torso, and turned her back on him. “No, that wasn’t part of the plan.”
“No one plans to fall in love.”
“I told you,” she said, whirling to face him again, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. “I’m bad news.”
“You don’t love me?”
“If I didn’t love you, I might agree to marry you. You’re quite a hunk,” she said with a brief flash of humor. “But then so is Nick. How could I ever choose? I do care about you both, very much. Too much to bring you bad luck. I thought I made that plain.”
“You’re just being silly.”
“Am I? Think Doug. Think Ellie. Everyone I care about, everyone I give my heart to, gets taken from me.”
“You can’t possibly blame yourself for either of them, especially not Doug.”
“Oh, and why would that be? You found it easy enough to blame me.”
“Because,” Isaac said bleakly, shaking his head. “If anyone’s responsible for Doug’s death, it’s me.”
Chapter Twenty
“You!” Paige stared at Isaac
as though she’d never seen him before, a whole kaleidoscope of emotions at work behind her remarkable eyes. “How do you figure that one out? You weren’t even there when Doug died.”
Isaac resumed his seat, grabbing Paige’s hand and pulling her down with him. Now was the time to be completely honest with her. If she was worth fighting for then he must bare his heart and admit that which he’d hardly admitted even to himself. His darkest, most shameful secret was the only thing likely to bring Paige to her senses and convince her to agree to marry him. It might all backfire and she’d end up hating him, of course, but it was a chance he’d just have to take. A woman like Paige wouldn’t settle for excuses and half-truths. That wasn’t what she deserved and wasn’t what he’d give her.
“I think this calls for something a little stronger than tea,” Nick said, intuitive to the brittle atmosphere. He got up and returned a short time later with wine for Paige and beers for himself and Isaac. “Go on then,” he said to Isaac, settling himself comfortably in the corner of the couch unit. “Unless you want me to leave, of course.”
“No,” they said together.
“No,” Isaac said again, alone this time. “You need to hear this, too.”
“Shame,” Nick said, grinning. “I was rather hoping she’d turn you down flat. Then the field would be clear for me.”
“In your dreams, buddy!”
“Okay then.” Nick winked at Paige. “Go ahead and cleanse your soul.”
Isaac took a moment to gather his thoughts. The other two waited him out in tense silence.
“What I said at the funeral, about Doug and me meeting Ellie for the first time and agreeing to that stupid contract, was true,” he said. “But to understand how we got to that point we need to back up a bit.” He raised his beer bottle to his lips and took a healthy swig. “You had all sorts of material advantages as a kid, Paige, but parents who didn’t give a damn about you. Nick came from a one-parent family. His mom loved him, but there wasn’t much by way of money to help you on your way, am I right?”
Nick nodded. “Go on.”
“Doug and I had a perfect childhood. Two older siblings, middle-class parents who loved us all and did everything right, supporting us kids, encouraging us to go for whatever we wanted in life. Doug and I were, understandably, inseparable. In our case the thing about identical twins was spot-on. We could finish one another’s sentences, knew what the other was thinking, all that stuff.” Isaac raked a hand down his face. This was harder to talk about than he’d anticipated. “But there were differences, too.”
“Let me guess,” Paige said softly. “You were cleverer.”
“Yeah, I was, but only because Doug was too lazy to study. Instead of making him think for himself, he persuaded me that we could get away with writing each other’s names on assignments so his grades would improve. I’d take the blame if he did something wrong and our parents were mad at us, I covered for him when he bunked off school, things like that.” Isaac shrugged. “It seemed pretty harmless, until we got to college. By then, Doug had got used to me having his back. He knew how to play the sympathy card, ranting on about how we didn’t want to disappoint Mom and Dad, and I fell for it. He started using drugs at college, too. He convinced me they were just recreational, no big deal, everyone did it.”
“Everyone except you?” Paige suggested, gently touching his thigh.
“Right. Suffice it to say that Doug wouldn’t have graduated without my help, but I still thought we’d be okay. We settled in LA, started that music management business and—”
“Made a cock-up of it with Ellie,” Nick finished for him.
“Not exactly. I wasn’t completely honest about that. Still too loyal, I guess.”
“That was Doug?” Paige breathed.
“Yep. I was called away on some emergency. I wanted to reschedule with Ellie, but Doug persuaded me that wouldn’t look professional. He said he’d listen to her proposal and then discuss it with me.”
“But I’m guessing he wanted to impress you,” Paige said.
“Then and always. He never stopped trying.” Isaac threw his head back and let out a long, slow exhalation. “Ellie saw it at once, of course. She was in LA to set up the branch office of Carter Promotions and offered me the chance to manage it. I said I would if Doug could be my number two, but she persuaded me that would be a bad idea. Like I said in my eulogy, she had a knack of summing people up on the spot. She wasn’t emotionally involved with Doug, could see his weaknesses and strengths, and reckoned the best thing for him would be to stand on his own two feet, without me there to bail him out of trouble. ‘Let him clear up his own messes,’ she said to me. ‘He’ll soon learn.’”
“Sound advice, if you ask me,” Nick said, getting up to refresh everyone’s drinks.
“Yeah well, she brought him back to the Tampa office, kept him off drugs and drew out his ambitions, honing in on his strengths just like she did with everyone she took an interest in.” Isaac put his empty bottle aside. “After two years she offered him the management of the new London office. He went over there and raved on to me about this fantastic woman he’d met.” Isaac ran his fingers softly along Paige’s jawline. “For once he wasn’t exaggerating.”
“But he started leaning on me instead of you,” Paige said.
“He did, but I didn’t realize it at the time. I was really pleased that he had his own empire to run but didn’t realize that he was driving himself ragged trying to eclipse my achievement in LA, just to prove a point. Tragically, nor did Ellie.” Isaac lifted his shoulders. “He was never going to achieve that, simply because LA was a much bigger market.”
Paige sighed. “And the strain pushed him back toward drugs.”
“Hmm, and you know the rest.” Isaac stopped talking and settled his gaze on Paige’s face. “Not a pretty story, is it.”
“It’s very sad,” she said, reaching for his hand. “But I don’t see how you can be blamed for what happened to him.”
“If I hadn’t indulged him when we were kids—”
“But that’s exactly it. You were kids, identical twins. Of course you were gonna look out for your twin brother. You’re no more to blame than I am. Than Ellie is.”
“Precisely!” Isaac offered her a glittering smile. “So no more of this bullshit about being bad luck.”
“Do you think that’s why Ellie included me in her will?” she asked pensively. “I’ve been wondering about that. I mean, you two I could understand, you’ve both known her for years, but although she and I hit it off…” Paige giggled. “In more ways than one, I didn’t know her that well.”
“Like I keep saying, if she took to someone, she was generous to a fault,” Isaac said.
“I see what Paige is getting at,” Nick said. “She felt guilty about Doug, too, knew she’d called it wrong, and wanted to make it up to you both.” Nick laughed. “Knowing her, she probably suspected that you two would hit it off as well.”
“This is killing me.” Isaac slipped off the couch and onto one knee. “Paige Fairfax, will you marry me?”
“You’d try to control me,” Paige said, her lips quivering as though she was trying not to laugh. “You know you would. You can’t help yourself. You’re a leader by nature. Besides, I have a career in London.”
“I haven’t told you yet what I’ve worked out here at the office.” He sat back on the couch and pulled Paige onto his lap. “I had a long talk on the phone with Mike yesterday. Obviously, he can’t come back to this office, but I’ve offered him LA.”
“That’s kind of you,” Paige said. “But I thought he wanted out of this business.”
“Yeah well, it’ll be different now. Besides, he’s a good guy and knows the business backward. He wants a new start for himself and the kids away from here. It seemed like the obvious answer. The other directors here are happy to vote me in as new CEO. We just need to run it past Sam at Carter Consortium, but I don’t see a problem there. What I do need is a second-in-command.”
He ran his hand along Paige’s thigh. “What do you say, gorgeous?” He smiled at her. “Your own department, your own staff, complete autonomy.”
“I don’t have the experience.”
“Sure you do. We both know who the power behind the throne in London was, even when Doug was in charge.”
She offered him that soft, sultry smile of hers that so got to him. “I suppose we could give it a go.”
“So you’ll marry me?”
“I can’t. It wouldn’t be fair to Nick.”
“In marrying me, you’d be marrying Nick, too. He can stay.”
“Actually, children, if you’d kindly stop talking about me as though I wasn’t here, perhaps I could speak for myself and tell Paige our thoughts on that.”
“Go right ahead,” Paige invited sweetly.
“I wanna do something with the boat, obviously, and Isaac suggested using it as a corporate hospitality tool.” He glanced out the window to the shiny motor cruiser sitting on the dock. “You know, weekend cruises to the islands to tempt would-be clients.”
“I think that’s brilliant,” Paige said, throwing her arms round his neck. “Ellie would have thoroughly approved.”
“That’s rather what we thought. That way, we’ll have a classy edge on the competition when it comes to enticing new clients, and I’ll be involved in the business, too.”
“So we could all stay here together,” Paige said pensively, nibbling her index finger. “I’d be officially married to Isaac, but we could carry on like we always have.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” Isaac said, swooping on Paige and pulling her into a drugging kiss. “I’ll take that as a yes then, shall I?” he asked when he finally let her up for air.
She wriggled out of his grasp, pulled her top over her head, and stood in front of them both, massaging her breasts.
“Shall we go up?” she asked sweetly. “I’ll make up my mind after you’ve taken me to bed.” Nick swept her into his arms and headed for the stairs. “It all depends on your performance, obviously.”