by Gina Wilkins
Bryan wouldn’t admit to Chloe, of course, that he’d been disappointed that Grace wasn’t there when he arrived. It was disconcerting enough to acknowledge to himself that it was Grace who had drawn him here today. “How’s she holding up?” he asked. “With the scam we’re pulling off, I mean.”
Chloe wrinkled her nose as she removed a plastic pitcher of tea from the small refrigerator in one corner of the crowded room. “She fusses about it, of course, but Grace does love to fuss.”
He chuckled. “I’ve noticed.”
“And she is not happy that one of your men is following at a discreet distance while she runs her errands.”
“Tough. Fussing won’t do her any good when it comes to her security—not while I have anything to say about it, anyway.”
Grace poured tea into two glasses she had removed from a cabinet above the minifridge. “Daddy used to call us Sissy and Sassy. I was Sissy, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Anyway, he stopped calling us that when we were about twelve. Grace threatened to run away if he didn’t.”
“And, knowing her, she would have followed through on that threat.”
“Daddy must have thought so. He dropped the nicknames.”
There had been a time when Bryan had considered Grace’s mercurial, temperamental tendencies annoying. Yet the better he got to know her, the more he enjoyed being with her. And the better he understood her. If from early childhood she had been known as the “difficult” twin, it was certainly understandable that she’d gotten into the habit of living up to the reputation.
There was something else, too. Some hidden part of Grace that he hadn’t quite figured out yet. He was becoming more determined all the time to try.
“What about you?” Chloe asked, handing him his glass of iced tea. “Are you growing tired of the charade yet? You know, of course, that you can stop anytime if it’s becoming too uncomfortable for you. You’ve already diffused a great deal of the gossip that was upsetting Donovan so badly a few weeks ago.”
“True—but there’s no need to risk having it resurface before your wedding. Besides, I’m rather enjoying keeping the tattle mongers guessing.”
“I know you love playing practical jokes, especially on the tabloid writers, but you’re spending a lot of time with my sister—who, you have to admit, has not been your biggest fan in the past and isn’t shy about expressing her feelings.”
He sipped his tea, then spoke lightly. “I don’t mind spending time with Grace. She’s certainly…challenging.”
Chloe laughed. “She is that. Grace is rarely boring, you have to give her that.”
“Grace is never boring,” he corrected with a smile.
Studying him speculatively over the rim of her glass, she murmured, “You sound as though you’re starting to like my sister.”
“Of course I like your sister. I’ve always liked her—even when she fantasized about hiring some big, beefy guy named Vinnie to make me conveniently disappear from your life.”
Chloe giggled. “Now you’re exaggerating. She was simply concerned that we were acting impulsively when we discussed the possibility of marriage—and it turned out she was right. You know full well that you would have changed your mind if I hadn’t. You probably had already changed your mind, but you were polite enough to let me be the one to put it into words.”
Bryan had asked himself several times if he would have actually married Chloe had she not fallen in love with Donovan. It had seemed like a good idea; they had both been eager to find partners and have children. He had finally convinced himself that a marriage of minds, rather than emotions, was the only solution. Maybe his background had left him unprepared for anything else.
His own parents’ marriage had been a profitable merger between two business dynasties. Once they’d done their duty and produced an heir, they’d been more than happy to pretty much go their own ways. Divorce had never been an option; since neither interfered with the other, there’d been no need to put an end to their partnership. The marriage had actually been a convenient excuse for both of them, since neither had been interested in marrying again. Bryan had grown up knowing that his parents were quite fond of him, in their own busy, distracted ways, and tolerated each other when it was socially necessary.
The telephone on Chloe’s desk rang suddenly, interrupting his reminiscences. She answered with her professional voice, but then her tone warmed. Bryan knew immediately who was on the other end of the line. He’d never seen Chloe react this way to anyone but Donovan.
She’d never felt even remotely the same way about him.
“I can leave as soon as Grace returns,” he heard her say into the phone. “It should be no more than half an hour.”
Bryan stood, intending to leave her to finish her call in privacy, but she stopped him with a motion of her hand. “I’ll see you in half an hour,” she told her fiancé, then disconnected the call.
“Donovan just called to see if I’m free for lunch,” she explained to Bryan after returning the receiver to its cradle. “You don’t have to rush off.”
He remained on his feet. “I’ve kept you from your work long enough. I just wanted to say hello. Thanks for the tea.”
She rose and moved closer to him, smiling. “I enjoyed the visit. I have always considered you a good friend, Bryan. I’m glad we’ve been able to maintain that relationship.”
“I will always be your friend,” he replied immediately. “And since the man you’re marrying is like a brother to me, we’re almost family now.”
Her smile deepened prettily. “I like that.”
“So do I.” Feeling rather as if he was officially sealing the new status of their relationship, he leaned over to brush a kiss against her cheek.
“Sorry. Am I interrupting?”
Grace’s dry question drew their attention toward the doorway. Chloe had left the door partially ajar, so neither she nor Bryan had heard Grace push it open. She stood in the doorway now with her hands on her hips and her eyes narrowed as she looked from him to Chloe and back again.
Moving a step away from Chloe, Bryan nodded. “Hello, Grace. How’s it going?”
“Fine. Chloe, Justin needs you at the counter. Something about a special order for Mrs. Crothers?”
“Oh, right. I’ll go take care of that before Donovan comes to take me to lunch.”
Still giving Bryan a look that made him feel as though he should shuffle his feet and apologize for something—anything—Grace moved out of her sister’s way. She stepped back into the doorway before Bryan could follow Chloe out. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s nice to see you, too. You look lovely, by the way. I’ve always liked you in green.”
Grace’s reaction to his flattery was just the opposite of her sister’s. She seemed to grow even more suspicious of him. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“Why am I here? I had a couple hours free—okay, actually I ducked a meeting that seemed both pointless and much too boring for such a nice day. I took a walk through the River Market district and ended up here. Chloe poured tea for me and we had a nice chat. Would you like a transcript of our conversation?”
She didn’t respond to the lame jest except to glare even harder. “It doesn’t look right—you kissing my sister when she’s engaged to someone else.”
“Jealous?” he shot back, holding on to his patience with an effort.
Her cheeks flamed—a response he found quite interesting. “Don’t be a jackass, Bryan. I’m just thinking about what the gossip columnists would write if someone reported to them that you were kissing Chloe in her office. The whole point of this game we’re all playing is to defuse any talk about you and my sister, remember?”
“It was a friendly peck on the cheek between friends, nothing more. No one saw us except you—and I doubt you’re going to alert the media. And I’m tired of standing here defending my actions to you. So, if you’ll excuse me, I have things to do.”
She moved slowly out of his way as he approached. “I simply…”
He didn’t want to hear any more lecturing from her at the moment. “See you around, Grace,” he said.
On an impulse, he stopped in front of her and reached out to thread his fingers into her hair. He covered her mouth with his before she could guess his intentions. “Report that to the media,” he murmured after he released her, then turned and made a hasty exit.
Chapter Four
Grace wished she could spend Thursday evening scrubbing floors. Or paying bills. Even cleaning bathrooms seemed preferable to yet another evening socializing with the rich and semifamous.
This time it was a political fund-raiser at an exclusive Little Rock country club. The governor would be there, along with a gaggle of other politicians, several notable business leaders, a few sports heroes and Arkansas-born celebrities, and a military dignitary or two. Grace figured she would be as out of place there as a cat at a dog show, but she had made a commitment and she wouldn’t back out—no matter how badly she might want to.
Dressed in a sleeveless black silk dress—her limited wardrobe was going to force her to go shopping soon if she had to keep attending these glitzy events—she entered the ballroom at Bryan’s side. It had been somewhat awkward between them so far. Bryan was in one of his annoying, teasing-and-flirting moods, and she was still sulking over that parting kiss Tuesday in her office. He’d left her sputtering for a snappy comeback and mentally kicking herself for not physically kicking him. And he’d probably guessed everything she was thinking, the jerk.
Conversations in the ballroom were discreetly muted, with only an occasional burst of laughter here and there. An orchestra played elevator-suitable show tunes, and unrecognizable, but probably very expensive, hors d’oeuvres were artfully arranged on tables decorated with candles and ice sculptures—a potentially unfortunate combination, in Grace’s opinion.
Everyone in the room seemed to be on a first-name basis with Bryan—including the governor. They spent what seemed like a few days circling the room, swapping greetings and meaningless pleasantries and incredibly lame jokes.
“You can stop smiling now,” Bryan murmured when they had paused in a dim corner after making the obligatory rounds. “No one’s looking.”
“No,” she snapped back, “I can’t. My face is permanently stuck in this stupid expression. It’s going to be like this for the rest of my life, and then I’m going to die and lie in my coffin grinning inanely at all the mourners who pass by.”
He laughed and looped an arm around her shoulders. “Don’t worry, darling. I’m sure I’ll do something to wipe the smile from your face soon.”
“Watch that roving hand,” she growled.
He laughed again and moved his hand to a more innocuous position. “What did I tell you?”
“Can we leave yet?”
“Darling, we just got here.”
“It feels as if we’ve been here for a week. And do you have to call me darling every ten seconds or so?”
“Of course not. Sweetheart.”
Because punching one’s escort in the stomach was considered impolite, and because she had made a vow to herself to be on her best behavior that evening, Grace decided to let that one pass.
She happened to be looking at Bryan when his smile suddenly froze, then slowly faded. “Well, hell.”
Her left eyebrow rose. “What’s wrong?”
“My parents just walked in.”
Turning to follow the direction of his gaze, she tried to spot a likely looking couple among the well-dressed crowd. She’d never met Bryan’s parents, and he rarely spoke of them, at least to her. “I take it you weren’t expecting them?”
“I thought Dad was on a fishing trip in Belize.”
He didn’t seem particularly pleased to find out otherwise. Grace turned to study his expression, which was difficult to read. “You don’t get along with your parents?”
With a slight shrug, he replied, “We get along fine. Dad’s still a little annoyed with me for leaving the family business to go off on my own, but he rather enjoys the bragging rights that go along with my success. My mother has always had a fascination with celebrities, so she’s always nagging me to introduce her to movie stars and supermodels—even the ones I’ve never met. She knows everyone in the local social community, of course, but she’s always fantasized about mingling with the Hollywood elite—something my father couldn’t care less about.”
“Maybe you should have brought one of your starlet girlfriends tonight—for your mother’s sake.”
He responded to her flippant quip with a scowl. “I don’t happen to have any ‘starlet girlfriends’ at the moment.”
“I doubt that would have proven much of a handicap to you. I’m sure there are numbers you could call…”
Something glittered in his eyes that might have been a warning, but his smile didn’t waver when he said, “Why would I want to be here with anyone else but you, darling?”
Before she could answer, a woman’s voice crooned, “There you are, Bryan. I wasn’t sure we’d see you here this evening.”
Grace looked around curiously, studying the couple who had approached them. She knew their names— Richard and Judith Falcon. They were an attractive couple, as she might have expected, considering Bryan’s extraordinary good looks. She assumed they were in their mid-sixties, but both were in excellent condition. Richard was tall and straight, his silvered hair swept back from a tanned and strong-planed face. Bryan had inherited his bone structure and his piercing blue eyes from his father, Grace decided, but his charming smile had come straight from his mother.
Slender to the point of angularity and a couple of inches taller than Grace, Judith had kept her hair a dark auburn, worn in short waves around a carefully made-up face that bore few lines. Grace suspected that this was a woman on very close terms with at least one cosmetic surgeon, but she couldn’t deny that the efforts had paid off. Judith certainly didn’t look old enough to have a son who was pushing forty.
“Actually I’m surprised to see the two of you here,” Bryan said in answer to his mother’s greeting. “Dad, I thought you were in Belize. And, Mom, weren’t you going to France with a group of your friends?”
“My fishing trip fell through,” Richard explained. “Bob Wheatley had a heart attack last week. Since the reservations were in his name, Steve and I decided it would be better to cancel than to try to rearrange everything.”
It seemed to Grace that he was more irked by the inconvenience of changing his plans than concerned about his acquaintance’s health. Maybe Bryan was thinking along the same lines when he murmured, “I’m sorry to hear about your friend’s illness. I trust he’s recovering?”
“Oh, sure, he’ll be okay. The doctors did a couple of bypasses and they’ll be sending him home in a couple of days.”
“And what about your trip to France, Mother?”
“That’s been rescheduled until next month because of a problem with the tour service.” Apparently losing interest in the conversation, Judith glanced at Grace then. “I’m sorry, we’re being rude. You must be Chloe.”
Bryan sighed. “This is Grace, Mother. Chloe is her sister, who’s engaged to Donovan.”
“Yes, of course.” Judith didn’t seem at all embarrassed by her gaffe as she touched her fingers to Grace’s hand. “An understandable mistake, of course. The columnists linked your name with Chloe’s for several months before you corrected them about which twin you’re actually seeing.”
“I’ve warned you against believing everything you read about me in the tabloids.”
Her smile was tight-lipped. “How else am I supposed to find out about your social life? You certainly never tell me anything.”
“He probably doesn’t consider his personal life any more your business than the gossip columnists’,” Richard said bluntly. And then he nodded toward Grace. “Nice to meet you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to have a word with the senato
r.”
Grace had seen more warmth between Bryan and his business associates than he’d shared with his father. She looked at him through her lashes, wondering if his relationship with his parents had always been so strained.
Judith spoke to her son again after her husband moved away without a backward glance at her. “Have you seen that lovely young actress lately, Bryan? The one who won the Academy Award. She seems so nice.”
He pulled Grace closer to his side. “She didn’t win the award, Mother, she was only nominated. And I haven’t seen her—or anyone else—since Grace and I got together.”
“I see.” She eyed Grace speculatively. “Are you originally from Little Rock? Do I know your family?”
“No, I grew up in Searcy. My parents still live there.”
“Oh? What do your parents do?”
“My mother’s a schoolteacher. My father sells insurance.”
“I see.” And she couldn’t have been less impressed.
Bryan’s arm tightened around Grace’s waist. His voice was terse when he spoke. “Grace and her sister co-own a decorating accessories shop in the River Market district. They’re quite popular with local decorators because they carry such an interesting selection of mirrors and other unique items. You would probably love it.”
“We call the shop ‘Mirror Images,’” Grace added, feeling a need to help him keep the conversation moving.
“I must make a point to drop in sometime.”
“I would love for you to do so,” Grace lied in reply.
“Oh, there’s the first lady. Dreadful color she’s wearing, isn’t it? Ah, well…excuse me, I have to go speak with her. Her feelings will be hurt if I don’t.”
“Actually I think the poor woman would be relieved,” Bryan murmured into Grace’s ear. “My mother is a snob, but she’s not as bad as the first impression she gives.”
“I have a feeling she would have been friendlier if I had an Oscar on my mantel,” she answered wryly.
“She’s just sulking because I haven’t kept her up-to-date on who I’m seeing, and that keeps her out of the gossip loop. I never discussed Chloe with her because I didn’t want to talk about my plans until Chloe and I had a chance to get to know each other.”