"I already had one of those from Michael," she replied tightly. "I believe I'm a little burned out on proposals from the Chambers men."
His gaze narrowed. "Proposition might be a better word in my case. I'm offering you a face-saving deal, Emily. You owe it to yourself to listen. Marry me tomorrow, and the joint business venture between my father and yours can go on as planned. Marry me tomorrow, and the ceremony will probably be over before half the guests even notice that you're exchanging rings with the wrong brother."
"Thanks again for the generous offer, Jordan, but before we get carried away, let's remember there's one teensy-tiny problem with your scheme."
"What's that?"
"Half the guests might not notice that I'd married the wrong brother, but I would." Emily spoke more harshly than she'd intended, mostly because for a few insane seconds, she'd actually found herself considering his proposition. Surely she was hitting a new low to even contemplate accepting Jordan's proposal just because it would provide a groom for tomorrow's ceremony.
Jordan shrugged. "It wouldn't be a lifetime sentence," he said. "We can have the big, splashy wedding our parents planned, and then, in a few months, we can get a quiet, civilized divorce."
"Divorce is never civilized," Emily said. "It's a heartbreaking betrayal of promises."
"There would be no heartbreak in our case. You can't betray promises that were never made. We're not promising each other anything except to go through a ceremony and live in the same house just long enough for the media to lose interest in the Chambers family. These days, I'd figure that's about a week."
"You're forgetting Michael's campaign for governor."
"Hmm…true. In view of my brother's prominent position, the media interest might have a lingering half life. I guess we'd better agree up front that we'll stick it out until the start of the new year. Michael's campaign should be firmly established by then."
"That's more than four months from now!"
Jordan shrugged. "Four months is hardly a life sentence. We don't have to live in each other's pockets the whole time. In fact, we should probably give the marriage a year. That would allow the Chambers-Sutton land development deal ample time to get off the ground."
"Oh," she said, suddenly understanding Jordan's motives in making the offer to marry her. She quashed an entirely irrational twinge of disappointment. "So that's what this proposal is really about—money. You're worried that my father's money is going to vanish from the Chambers bank accounts if I don't marry your brother."
Jordan didn't contradict her. "Your father and mine have put together a complicated business deal that requires a lot of trust on both sides. My family is giving up land that we've owned for generations. Your father is supplying development capital and design ideas. A feud between the two parties isn't going to make for a successful development. If this project isn't a success, both parties could end up losing their shirts."
She was surprised that Jordan had been paying sufficient attention to know some of the details of the proposed Laurel Acres partnership deal. He was notorious for his lack of involvement in his family's investment and banking business. To his parents' dismay, he had dropped out of college in his junior year and struck out on his own, claiming that he wanted to become a carpenter. The Chamberses considered any profession that involved sweat and hammers beneath them, so they were seriously unhappy about his choice of career. Their complaints got louder and more frequent as Jordan's circle of blue-collar friends expanded and his visits to the family mansion became less and less frequent. Even Michael was annoyed by his brother's refusal to participate in the complicated network of social events that bound together the rarefied world of Texas high society.
Jordan remained unmoved by his family's reproaches. He never argued with them—he simply refused to change his career or drop his friends in order to suit their sense of what was socially acceptable. Ignoring bribes and threats from his parents, he designed a line of inexpensive kitchen cabinets, found financial backing, set up a manufacturing plant out in the boonies, and seemed to make enough money to live comfortably. He often disappeared for weeks at a stretch, leaving no clue as to where he had gone or what he was doing. His parents and brother, whose business, social and political ambitions were tightly interwoven, found his elusiveness absolutely infuriating. Unlike the Chamberses, Emily had no problem with Jordan's choice of career, and she admired his ability to make a success, however modest, without turning to his father for startup capital. She even understood his need for independence, since she'd struggled with similar issues with her own parents. It was his moral code she couldn't tolerate, especially the fact that his romp with Mary Christine was rumored to be only one in a long series of affairs with married women.
"Why the sudden interest in the Laurel Acres project?" she asked him. "I thought you made a big deal out of the fact that you weren't involved in any of the Chambers business ventures."
If she'd hoped to penetrate Jordan's self-possession, she should have known better. "I made an exception in this case. I got involved."
"Running short of money, Jordan?"
He sent her a glance that was somewhere between cynical and indifferent. "I don't need my father's money. I have access to plenty of my own."
"Got a new rich girlfriend?" she asked spitefully, then wondered why Jordan invariably managed to provoke her into bad behavior.
His smile betrayed not a twinge of shame. "Of course."
She turned abruptly, more hurt than she understood or wanted to acknowledge. "Jordan, this conversation is crazy. I would like to go back to the family room so that we can start a serious discussion of exactly what we're going to say to the guests tonight."
"Before you worry about what you're going to tell the guests, don't you think you should at least tell your parents the truth?" he asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Your engagement didn't end by mutual agreement," Jordan said. "Michael called it off. He left you absolutely no choice in the matter, and yet you're still protecting him. Why? I don't believe you love him that much."
"How do you know Michael called off the engagement?" she demanded.
"You don't lie very well, Emily. Besides, I'm a hundred percent sure you'd never have pulled a stunt like this hours before the ceremony was due to take place."
"You don't know me as well as you think—"
"Maybe not. But you already told me yourself that Michael was responsible."
"I told you? Of course I didn't—"
" 'Is the insanity you and your brother suffer from hereditary?' " he quoted. '"If so, I guess I should be grateful that Michael decided to dump me.'"
She had said that, Emily realized. It was yet another of the disconcerting things about being with Jordan. Her normal barriers seemed to crumble and she let drop information she would never have revealed to another person.
"I'm not protecting your brother," she said tiredly.
"No? Seems to me he dumped you, knowing darn well you'd cover his ass. And he was right."
She flushed. "There just doesn't seem to be any point in getting everyone angry with everyone else. The engagement is over, there isn't going to be a wedding, and we need to move on."
"Good thinking," he said. "Is that what you plan to say at the bridal dinner tonight?"
Jordan asked the question without expression, yet Emily reacted with a sickening lurch of her stomach. She knew she spent too much of her life worrying about making a good impression, but however much she wished she could throw the inhibitions of a lifetime out the window, she couldn't. She cared that she was going to humiliate herself and her parents in front of a very large crowd of very important people.
To her dismay, her throat tightened and she felt tears well in her eyes. It had been an exhausting, emotion-charged day, and she was afraid that if she started crying, she would be sobbing hysterically within seconds. She fumbled in the pocket of her tailored pants for a tissue and remembered they were all in her purse,
which was still in the family room.
The first tears started to roll down her cheeks. She ordered herself to stop crying, but before she could get herself back under control, Jordan was at her side.
"Don't cry," he said softly, taking her into his arms, stanching the flow of tears with his thumbs. "Come on, Em, cheer up. It's only a bunch of stuck-up old geezers who aren't worth worrying about."
She would have expected mockery from Jordan, or at least indifference. His sympathy was so unexpected that it had the disastrous effect of shattering what small remnant of self-control she still possessed. Aware at some deep level that she was allowing herself to do something incredibly dangerous, she laid her head against Jordan's chest and gave way to the luxury of a noisy, uninhibited bout of weeping.
She heard the tattoo of multiple footsteps coming down the hallway but paid no attention until the pounding began on the study door.
"What's going on in there?" Michael demanded.
"Let us in!" her father said. "Emily, Jordan—it's been fifteen minutes already."
"Are you all right?" Raelene asked anxiously. "Emily, honey, I can hear you crying!"
Jordan's arms tightened fractionally around her. "I have to let them in," he said.
"Yes, I know you do." She tried to drag herself back together again.
He held her at arm's length, wiping away a final tear. "You okay?"
She nodded. "Yes." She looked at him, unsure of herself, but surprisingly unembarrassed. "Thanks, Jordan."
"You're welcome." He unlocked the door and everyone spilled into the library.
"Why are you crying?" Michael demanded.
"What did you need to discuss so urgently with Emily, Jordan?" Amelia sounded barely more friendly to her son than she had been earlier when speaking to Emily.
Jordan was still standing close enough to her that she could see the almost imperceptible flicker of a muscle in his jaw. "We were deciding that Emily really needed to tell you the truth about her broken engagement," he said.
Her father sent Jordan an approving look. "That's about the only sensible remark I've heard so far today. Since you seem to know what's going on here, and Emily won't tell us, why don't you explain why the wedding's been called off at the last minute?"
Jordan clamped his arm around Emily's waist. "She wants to marry me," he said. "We've been trying to fight our feelings for each other, but we couldn't. Since you have a wedding planned for tomorrow anyway, we were hoping you'd all agree to go ahead on schedule. Except with me as the substitute groom."
CHAPTER FOUR
On the very day that Michael and Emily became engaged, Amelia Chambers announced her decision to host the prewedding bridal dinner at the San Antonio Federal Club. Founded the year after the Republic of Texas joined the United States, the club was originally intended as a meeting place for the city's leaders, and its role hadn't changed much during the 155 years of its existence. Its decor remained stuffy Victorian, with nineteenth-century English hunting prints on the walls, plaid carpet in the bar, and enough walnut paneling to rival a French chateau. The most powerful people in San Antonio still belonged to the club, and mere money wasn't enough to get a person elected. For that, you needed the sort of connections the Chambers family had enjoyed for generations. Connections that Holt, Amelia and Michael Chambers continued to cultivate with painstaking care.
Sam Sutton, by contrast, had been too busy establishing a profitable business to waste time acquiring the type of friends who could get him drafted into the inner circle of San Antonio's social elite. It was only in the past couple of years that he'd started to think how nice it would be to give Raelene the pleasure of belonging to the same snooty club where her granny had washed dishes during the Depression—and been grateful for any leftover food she was allowed to take home.
He had to admit he'd originally thrown Michael and his daughter together in hopes that they might hit it off, and he wouldn't deny that it had been mighty useful when Emily decided to marry the guy. Holt Chambers's offer to propose Sam for membership in the prestigious club would never have happened if Emily hadn't been marrying his son, and the Laurel Acres deal would have been a lot more difficult to negotiate.
By the same token, it was darned inconvenient that his daughter had decided not to marry Michael—and at the very last minute, too. Lord knew, if Emily had been trying to screw things up, she couldn't have picked a more surefire method. Not to mention how her behavior was going to set tongues wagging.
But Sam was a father first and a businessman second. He would never want Emily to hook up with a man she didn't love. Not for the sake of the Laurel Acres project, that was for sure, and much less for the sake of membership in a club where you paid too much money to eat dubious food with fancy French names. Names that left you wondering just what the heck you were actually swallowing. Raelene lived in mortal dread that one of these days she'd order rattlesnake or snails or alligator, all wrapped up in puff pastry and stuffed with truffles.
But for all that he wanted his little girl to be happy, Sam believed in calling a spade a spade, and he never swept problems under the rug, so there was no getting around the fact that Emily's broken engagement left him real worried about the future of his dealings with the Chambers family. His gut told him that a personal link between the two families was necessary if Holt Chambers was going to honor the complex verbal agreements that underpinned the official Laurel Acres contracts. Sam had worked damned hard and made a tidy profit over the years— enough to make him mighty proud of what he'd achieved. But the Laurel Acres project was among the biggest developments he'd ever tackled, and if it didn't work out, he could lose enough money to hurt. To hurt pretty bad, in fact. The knowledge that Michael had his finger firmly on the pulse of his family's business interests had been reassuring, keeping Sam's stomach from feeling too queasy as he poured truckloads of money into the initial stages of the development.
Sam tried to comfort himself with the thought that Emily wasn't completely severing her link to the Chambers family. After all, Jordan was a Chambers, too, and marriage to him ought to forge just as tight a connection as marriage to Michael. Ought to, but probably wouldn't, since Jordan seemed to be ignored by his father and brother as far as business dealings were concerned. Jordan had never put in an appearance at a negotiating session and never signed a single legal document connected to the Laurel Acres project. As far as Sam could tell, he hadn't even been consulted about the decision to sell land that had been in the Chambers family for over a hundred years.
Under the circumstances, Sam had to wonder if Emily's marriage to Jordan would prove a strong enough bond to keep the deal on track. If Michael Chambers was pissed off with his brother—not to mention angry with Emily— he could make things difficult for everyone. Mighty difficult, in fact.
Despite these very real concerns, Sam had been surprised to discover that he felt more relief than anything else when Michael had dropped his bombshell and announced that Emily no longer wanted to marry him. Sam didn't entirely cotton to Michael Chambers, even though the guy was considered San Antonio's most eligible bachelor. His campaign for governor added the perfect finishing touch to his already desirable image, but it didn't reassure Sam any. Not now that he knew the guy a little better.
Sam had been impressed by Michael when they first met, and Raelene had been thrilled to think that their daughter—their own sweet Emily—might one day become the First Lady of Texas. But the better he got to know Michael, the less Sam liked him. The guy was too much of a slick politician, with smiles that came a tad too easily, and a way of conversing that had him managing to agree with two or three different viewpoints all at once. Sam's exuberance over the match had cooled dramatically in recent weeks, and even the prospect of having Emily living in the governor's mansion hadn't been enough to rekindle his enthusiasm.
There had always been something wrong with the relationship between Michael and his daughter, Sam reflected, handing his car keys to the parking va
let and offering his arm to escort his wife up the steps into the club. From day one of Emily's engagement, he'd sensed an off note. Now that he'd seen his daughter with Jordan, he realized what the problem had been. Sam smiled to himself. It had been a real simple problem when you got right down to it: Emily had agreed to become engaged to Michael for the wrong reasons. She'd never been in love with him, at least not top-over-tail crazy, the way she ought to have been. Instead, his prim-and-proper darling had fallen for Jordan, the bad boy of the Chambers family. No wonder Sam had noticed increasing tension on Emily's part as the wedding day approached. Now he understood why: she'd been trying to work up the courage to follow her heart and break off her engagement to the oh-so-eligible Michael.
Sam chuckled inwardly, then turned to look at his daughter, thinking how pretty her golden brown eyes were, and how elegant her long chestnut hair looked, all swept up on top of her head, with just a few curls clustering at her neck. She'd brought him and Raelene so much joy over the years. He wished there had been more time for the three of them to talk before they had to rush out again to this stuffy party. He wanted to hear how she and Jordan had met, and when they'd fallen in love, but they hadn't had a moment to chat. Emily and Jordan had hurried off to get a marriage license, something that had proved difficult to achieve, even pulling strings and calling in favors from everyone that Holt Chambers knew at the county clerk's office. Once Emily got back to the house, there had barely been time to take showers and get changed for tonight's shindig. There'd been no time at all for finding out how his daughter's thoroughly conventional relationship with Michael had given way to a passionate, not at all conventional relationship with Jordan.
However it had happened, Sam sure was glad that his daughter had found real love at last. He wasn't a man who felt at ease expressing mushy sentiments, but he knew that without Raelene at his side, he'd never have made it through the lean years while he struggled to get his business established. Even more important, without Raelene and Emily, there would have been nobody to share the success with when it finally came.
His Brother's Fiancée Page 5