Feeling a sudden lump in his throat, Sam patted his wife's arm, then turned and gave Emily a beaming smile, pleased to see how lovely she looked, despite the stresses of the past few hours.
Emily returned his smile, but her eyes didn't light up the way they usually did. "You okay, muffin?" Sam asked. He didn't understand why Emily set such great store by always doing the right thing, but he knew her well enough to guess that tonight was going to be torture for her.
"I'm fine, Dad, thanks." Despite the confident words, she drew in an audible breath, and her voice shook when she continued speaking. "I guess I'll be relieved when this evening's over, that's all."
"Don't you give another thought to what people are going to say about this, muffin." Sam tried his best to reassure her. "Just remember what's important. You and Jordan are in love and you want to get married. In the long run, that's all that matters. Five years from now, nobody will remember you and Michael were ever an item."
"I'm sure you're right, Dad." At least outwardly, Emily had already managed to recover her poise, which was no surprise to Sam. His daughter was a grand master at concealing her true feelings.
"Thanks for being so supportive," she said quietly. "You've been really understanding about all this. I honestly don't know how I…we…ended up in such an impossible situation. I'm sorry to be causing you and Mom so much embarrassment…"
Her voice trailed off again, and Sam waited for Raelene to jump in with some words of encouragement. When none were forthcoming, he gave his daughter a quick hug. "Emmie, you've never caused either of us a moment's embarrassment in your entire life. I reckon you've earned the right to one night when you give the gossips something to talk about. Right, Raelene?"
"Right," his wife said faintly. "You can't marry Michael if you don't love him. Of course you can't, Emmie. But are you absolutely sure you love Jordan? I mean, how did you manage to get to know him? Maybe it's just a passing infatuation—"
"Our Emmie is too sensible to confuse love and infatuation," Sam said.
"Is she? Then why did she get engaged to Michael in the first place? Apparently she didn't really love him. If she made one mistake, how can she be so darn sure that she loves Jordan?"
"Emmie wouldn't be doing this unless she was sure, honey." Sam smothered a sigh. Raelene was worried sick about the turn of events, but he'd bring her around. Truth be told, he didn't care if Emmie's behavior seemed a bit illogical. What did love have to do with logic, anyway? Frankly, he was relieved to discover that his daughter had enough fire in her belly to spurn Michael and follow her heart.
He appreciated somebody with a solid sense of duty, but Emily paid way too much attention to what the world considered right, regardless of the cost in terms of her own emotional needs. It was good to see his little girl swept off her feet by love. When you got right down to it, without a bit of passion to grease the gears of everyday life, no marriage could hope to survive. He sometimes worried that his daughter concentrated too much on the pragmatic side of things and forgot about the sparkle of magic that made all the practical struggles worthwhile.
"Good evening, sir. Mrs. Sutton. Ms. Sutton." The club's general manager greeted them with an obsequious nod. "Mr. and Mrs. Chambers are expecting you. They're waiting upstairs in the ballroom, if you would care to follow me."
"Thanks," Sam said. "Much obliged." He'd eaten at the famous club several times in the past few months, and he had to admit that he rather liked the opulent marble columns, the statues of ancient Greek heroes, and the plush crimson carpet on the stairs. Not the sort of style he'd ever want in his own home, but it was satisfying to know that Sam Sutton, son of a handyman, grandson of an itinerant peddler, had earned the right to enter a fancy place like this. And tonight, the food was preordered, so he and Raelene didn't have to worry about snails, snakes or alligators turning up on the menu. So what did it matter if they were going to give grist to San Antonio's notorious gossip mills? What could the stuffy dragon ladies of the upper crust say, after all, except that his daughter had followed her heart? And thank God for it.
Sam gave Emily another encouraging hug. "Come on, muffin, chin up. Where's that radiant smile of yours? I can't wait for Jordan to see how beautiful you look in that dress."
Amelia Chambers heard the sounds of approaching footsteps and glanced around the ballroom, reassuring herself once again that everything was in order. The grandiose setting struck her as imposing rather than ugly or outdated, and from her point of view, imposing was good. The club's atmosphere of pompous formality was ideally suited to impressing her friends and intimidating her inferiors—the latter a large group that comprised every last one of the guests invited to this evening's dinner by Raelene and Sam Sutton.
Impressing her friends was even more important to Amelia than intimidating her social inferiors, and in recent years it had become more and more difficult to keep up the expensive facade that the Chambers name merited and her own position as doyenne of San Antonio society demanded. She tried not to concern herself with finances— it was so blue collar to worry about money—but she was enough of a realist to recognize that the Chambers Investment Bank teetered on the brink of failure, and her husband's coffers were in desperate need of an infusion of ready cash. Sam Sutton's development project undoubtedly offered the best chance of making a couple of quick million before disaster struck.
Even so, despite what was at stake, Amelia had never quite reconciled herself to the idea of having Emily Sutton as the wife of her beloved Michael. Bad enough if the girl had actually been a flesh-and-blood daughter to the Suttons, but she wasn't. She was adopted, and who knew what horrible defects she might be introducing into the Chambers gene pool? Look at all those babies who'd been imported from Eastern Europe. They'd seemed so cute until their adoptive parents found out that half of them were sociopaths, or suffering from deadly inherited diseases. Of course, Emily had been born in the States, but that was no guarantee her pedigree was acceptable. On the contrary. If she was so perfect, why had she been given up for adoption?
During one of their planning sessions for the wedding, Raelene had confided that Emily's birth mother was a college student who'd made one terrible mistake, and then had lacked sufficient funds to keep her baby. Amelia gave a mental snort, just as she had when she first heard the unlikely story. If Raelene wanted to believe the fairy tales spun by the adoption agency, then good luck to her. Amelia wasn't so gullible.
When you adopted a child, you never knew what potential problems you were letting yourself in for, as she'd pointed out to Michael weeks ago. She'd recommended that he take a look into Emily's true antecedents. Quite apart from the risk of choosing a woman who was an unknown quantity to be the mother of his children, he needed to be quite sure that some enterprising reporter wasn't going to turn up any facts about Emily's birth parents that might embarrass him now that his campaign for governor was poised to go into high gear. They absolutely didn't want some drunken street person turning up on the campaign trail, announcing to the world that she was Emily's real mother.
Amelia didn't know if Michael had actually ordered a background search, but her reservations about Emily had been proven amply justified today, with the shocking announcement that the wretched girl was breaking off her engagement to Michael at the very last minute. And all because she had fallen in love with Jordan! A lack of taste that was just what Amelia would have expected from a child raised by Raelene and Sam Sutton. Of course a lower class nobody like Emily would feel more at home with a man like Jordan, who actually enjoyed working with his hands. Of course she would feel awkward with a man like Michael, who was such a credit to his ancient and distinguished lineage.
She glanced across at her younger son, who was drinking a beer with apparent pleasure. A beer, for heaven's sake. Amelia shuddered involuntarily. She couldn't imagine where her younger son's peasantlike tastes sprang from. Certainly not from her side of the family—the Beaumonts were even more refined than the Chamberses. Sadly, these
days they also had even less money.
As she watched Jordan take a final swig before setting his glass on the table, Amelia frowned. Thank goodness he wasn't drinking from the bottle the way he often did. For a man who made his living banging nails into kitchen cabinets, he certainly had more than his fair share of self-confidence. Here he was in the most exclusive establishment in San Antonio, managing to make it look as if beer were the beverage of choice for the world's social elite.
Instead of being impressed by her son's aura of power, Amelia was offended, as if Jordan's ability to look at ease without her blessing were some sort of subtle insult. But she didn't let her irritation show. She couldn't afford to. She needed to get through the next thirty-six hours without giving her social rivals any chance to pounce. And God knew, that was going to take every ounce of skill she could muster. She needed this wedding to go off smoothly, despite Emily Sutton's best efforts to turn the event into a comic spectacle. Amelia reminded herself to keep focused on what was truly important: Michael's campaign for governor, and her husband's need for money.
She sighed, then told herself that she could do this. She'd spent her life sacrificing for the sake of the family heritage—she could certainly do it one more time.
Emily had eaten at the club with Michael on several occasions, and she normally spent a good part of each meal mentally refurbishing the hideous decor. Tonight, though, she had far too much on her mind to take refuge in her usual mental games. Oppressed by the weight of her parents' justifiable concern, she hardly dared look at either of them, although her father was being kindness itself, and her mother was doing her best to hide the fact that she hovered on the verge of tears.
The atmosphere of the club seemed stifling as she walked up the curving staircase toward the second-floor ballroom, and by the time they arrived at the arched entrance, the single strand of her tasteful pearl necklace felt as if it might choke her.
Struggling to get a grip on her chaotic emotions, Emily followed her parents into the ballroom, absorbing the fact of Jordan's presence before letting her gaze settle on Michael, Holt and Amelia Chambers. The three of them stood together beside a buffet table laden with hors d'oeuvres, although no one was actually eating. If their stomachs felt anything like hers, she understood why. Even the sight of food was enough to bring on a wave of nausea.
She risked another glance toward Jordan, who stood to one side of the carved granite fireplace, noticeably removed from the rest of his family. Apart from their encounter in the Bernauers' bedroom, when he'd been naked, Emily had never seen him wearing anything except worn jeans and casual shirts. It was a shock to see him in a dinner jacket, even more of a shock to see how at ease he appeared wearing formal clothes. She wondered what he was feeling now that they were poised on the brink of announcing their supposed passion to the world, but his expression was remote and self-contained, making it impossible for her to guess.
With a sudden unwelcome flash of insight, she wondered if Jordan's aloof expression might be as much of a defense mechanism as her own. She had always thought of Jordan as indifferent to the opinion of the other members of his family. Tonight, for the first time, it occurred to her that perhaps he stood apart not because he wanted to, but because he wasn't welcome within the tight-knit circle of the Chambers family.
Emily was astonished to feel a spurt of anger on his behalf. Why was Jordan getting the cold shoulder when Michael was the real cause of the problem? Then she remembered that Jordan wouldn't need to be here tonight, facing his family's hostility, if he hadn't made his outrageous claim that the two of them were madly, passionately in love.
She directed an explosive glance at her soon-to-be-husband, castigating him silently. Too bad if you don't like the mess you've gotten us both into, she muttered beneath her breath. She hardened her heart against any more flashes of sympathy. You interfered when you didn't need to, and now you can face the consequences.
She refused to listen to the annoying voice inside her head that kept pointing out she was far from blameless in the current situation. She could have told everyone the simple truth. She could have explained that Michael was the one who'd broken off the engagement, and that she was devastated by his rejection. She could certainly have denied Jordan's ridiculous statement that they'd fallen in love weeks ago, the first time they met.
But she hadn't said a word. When Jordan made his outrageous claims, she'd just stood there—a silent coconspirator in his mad scheme. Because of her excessive pride, she hadn't contradicted him when he told her parents that the two of them had been fighting against their deepest feelings almost the entire time she was engaged to his brother. She hadn't so much as blinked when Jordan stated that with the wedding to Michael looming within days, the two of them had no longer been able to contain their passion.
She'd had the grace to blush when Jordan invented a tale about how they'd ended up in each other's arms yesterday and been forced to admit the truth of their feelings for each other. But everyone had misinterpreted her blushes and nobody had asked her any direct questions— perhaps because they feared her answers would make for embarrassing listening. Even Michael appeared to have been taken in by his brother's lies. He'd erupted in fury as Jordan's tale of suppressed passion unfolded.
Just thinking about the scene in the library was enough to make Emily break out in a cold sweat. What had possessed her? Why hadn't she spoken up? More to the point, once she was alone with her parents, why hadn't she quietly and calmly explained the truth to them? In retrospect, she couldn't believe that she had tamely accompanied Jordan to get a marriage license. And what in the world was she doing here at San Antonio's most famous club, about to announce a change in groom with rather less forethought than she had given last week to changing the color of the orchids planned for her wedding bouquet?
Emily couldn't answer her own questions, but that didn't bother her as much as it should have. She was in no mood to listen to the reproaches of her conscience. Damn it, she was the victim here. She had been spurned by Michael and exploited by Jordan for reasons that were still a mystery. She'd been badly used by both the Chambers brothers, and she intended to wallow in her justifiable sense of injustice. Squaring her shoulders, she tilted her chin defiantly upward and prepared to greet her future in-laws. At least that hadn't changed since yesterday, she thought with a touch of hysteria. The groom might have changed, but the Chamberses were still going to become her parents-in-law.
Holt and Amelia Chambers acknowledged the Suttons' arrival with icy formality, but they maintained a facade of courtesy. Michael, on the other hand, turned his back on them without speaking, as if he had washed his hands of the debacle that was about to unravel.
Emily's bravado disappeared, wiped out by Michael's rejection. She wondered why earthquakes never happened when you needed them. The tension swirled around the room, thick enough to choke anyone unwary enough to get trapped inside. Her parents must have shared her discomfort, since neither one of them said anything beyond a mumbled greeting. Emily tried to think of some topic of conversation that would cut through the oppressive atmosphere, but came up with nothing.
She was approaching the point of desperation when Jordan stepped forward and took her hands, cradling them against his cheek in a gesture that managed to seem more intimate than a kiss. Her skin prickled and her stomach performed its standard back flip. One of the few things she had carried from her old life into this new, uncharted territory seemed to be the annoying physical reaction she had to Jordan's presence. Now that he was her fiancé, though, she couldn't just stare through him and pretend the feeling didn't exist.
She swallowed over the lump lodged in her throat. "Hi, Jordan."
"Hi, Emily."
His voice was very soft, and his expression seemed almost tender. She gazed at him, hypnotized by the realization that although his eyes appeared dark brown when viewed from a distance, up close they had a fascinating silvery halo around the pupils. His hair was long enough to touch his
collar at the back, and although she normally preferred men with short, neat haircuts like Michael's, she felt a surprising urge to reach out and run her fingers through the thick, dark-brown strands. Of course, she didn't. Emily didn't approve of people who allowed trivial sexual urges to overcome their better judgment.
"You look lovely," Jordan said quietly. "Blue always suits you, but that deep shade is just perfect on you."
"Th-thank you."
"She didn't choose it for you," Michael said, his scowl ferocious. "She chose it for me."
"I hope she chose it for herself," Jordan said mildly, his gaze fixed on Emily.
She decided that she was about one second away from screaming. Why did Michael care about her dress and who she'd chosen it for? Wasn't he the man who'd spurned her only a few hours earlier? Good grief, was it really less than twelve hours ago that her world had seemed entirely normal, with nothing to worry about but the schedule for picking up guests at the airport?
Emily's hands were ice-cold and, to her embarrassment, she could feel them shaking. Jordan must have felt the tremble because he stroked his thumb over her knuckles in a gesture that was curiously comforting. His thumb eventually traced a loop around her engagement ring, coming to rest on the four-carat diamond solitaire that Michael had placed there three months earlier.
"I guess you forgot to take this off," he said.
She looked down at the ring, symbol of so many dashed hopes, and for a painful moment thought she was going to cry. But once again, pride came to her rescue. Damned if she would give Michael the satisfaction of seeing her weep over his rejection. She lifted her head and stared straight at him, challenging him even at this late stage to come clean and reveal what had really happened between the two of them this morning.
When he said nothing, she turned back to Jordan, her pain transforming into anger at Michael's cowardice. How dare he be angry with her and Jordan because they were trying to salvage something from the wreckage he had created?
His Brother's Fiancée Page 6