His Brother's Fiancée

by Jasmine Cresswell

  The sun pushing its way through the slats of the wooden blinds woke Emily early on Saturday morning, just as it had for each of the preceding six days of her honeymoon. Stretching lazily, she lay for a few minutes beneath the covers, drowsy and content, debating the merits of getting up or going back to sleep. Finally, the smell of freshly brewed coffee wafting upstairs from the kitchen tempted her out of bed and into the shower.

  She stood, letting the hot water pound her shoulders, working out the kinks. Yesterday, she and Jordan had gone white-water rafting, a new experience for her, and the muscles in the top of her arms were protesting the unfamiliar exercise in no uncertain terms. Still, considering the hours they'd spent navigating rapids that Emily swore were only slightly less ferocious than Niagara Falls, she wouldn't have been surprised to wake up this morning with her body paralyzed from head to toe. Anyway, she had no complaints. Yesterday had been such fun that stiff shoulder muscles seemed a small price to pay for the spectacular adventure of shooting rapids through a narrow river canyon, while the sun blazed overhead and swirling freshwater spray cooled her hot skin.

  Pulling on shorts and a matching cotton top scattered with poppies—an outfit originally intended to wow folks on the beaches of Tahiti—Emily tugged a brush through her hair and went downstairs, eager for the day ahead. Shivering a little as the cold tile of the kitchen floor struck her bare feet, she poured herself a mug of coffee and carried it out onto the deck where Jordan was sitting, a book resting on his knees. The air was cool, but the sun had already heated the deck and the cedar planks felt warm beneath her toes.

  Jordan looked up as she crossed to her favorite chair, sending her a lazy smile. "Morning, Em. You look rested. Sleep well?"

  "Wonderfully, thanks. How about you?"

  He yawned. "Mmm…pretty well. But I guess I need another cup of coffee before I feel really awake."

  He stood up and headed inside. There was something innately purposeful about Jordan, Emily reflected, even when he was doing nothing more important than ambling toward the kitchen in search of coffee. She didn't realize she was staring at him until he turned to give her another smile.

  Her body responded with a flash of inner heat that stunned her. She sat down quickly and took a gulp of coffee hot enough to scald her tongue. Even so, it required a good few seconds before she could talk herself back into a rational frame of mind.

  Okay, so she was physically attracted to Jordan. But the fact that she was drawn to him said nothing at all about the wisdom of acting on that attraction. Despite the wonderful few days they'd spent together, the fundamentals of their relationship hadn't changed. Their marriage was still a sham, destined to end as soon as Michael's campaign for governor was well under way. More to the point, she still needed security in her relationships more than any other quality, and Jordan was the last man on earth to offer her that.

  These perfect lazy days alone with him had allowed her to get acquainted with the man she'd married, and she liked the real Jordan Chambers a whole lot better than the caricature of him that she'd carried around during her engagement to Michael. But she couldn't allow his low-key, offbeat charm to disguise the fact that they weren't well suited as a couple.

  She was the ultimate conservative, cautious to a fault. Jordan, on the other hand, saw what he wanted from life, took it and then moved on. To hell with the risks. To hell with the possibility of failure. To hell with regrets for the road not taken. That what he wanted from life was something much more admirable than Emily had once imagined didn't alter the fact that he was about as far removed as any man could be from the solid, reliable, risk-averse husband she had always planned to marry.

  Enjoy the moment. That had been Emily's motto for the past week. An unusual one for her, given her obsession with caution and long-range planning. Still, her makeshift motto had worked out pretty well, so far. Once she and Jordan were back in San Antonio, the problems of real life would crowd in, demanding resolution. But for now, she had one more day of freedom, one more day during which she could allow herself to live in the moment, enjoying whatever the day brought, without worrying about the future.

  Equilibrium restored, Emily put her mug down on a small side table, then sat cross-legged on the lounger, with her toes tucked under her. Jordan came back out onto the deck, but he didn't speak and neither did she. His silence gave her a few more welcome minutes to pull herself together. Closing her eyes, she breathed in crisp mountain air, letting the sun soak into her skin. She heard the whirr of a hummingbird's wings and opened her eyes just in time to see the passing flash of iridescent green plumage.

  "I can't believe we're going back to San Antonio tomorrow," she murmured, beguiled by the bird into forgetting to guard her tongue. The prospect of leaving the cocoon of Jordan's mountain home brought a feeling of regret that would have seemed impossible a week earlier.

  "The week's gone fast," Jordan agreed.

  "Mmm." She sighed. "I could stay here for another hundred years or so, no problem."

  "Or at least until the first major blizzard hits." His voice was warm with laughter.

  She pushed her hair out of her eyes and sat up in order to direct a mock glare at him. "You underestimate me, Jordan. As long as you're the designated driver for hauling in supplies, I would cope superbly with a blizzard or two. Besides, now that I have white-water rafting down pat, I'm all set to learn the skiing thing. Raring to go, in fact."

  "I wouldn't exactly say that you've conquered the finer techniques of white-water navigation, Em. The idea is to stay out of the water and inside the raft."

  "I didn't drown, did I?"

  "No, but that's only because I was there to rescue you."

  "What an arrogant beast you are," Emily said mildly. "I'd throw a cushion at you or something, if I had a drop of energy to spare."

  "Lucky for you that you don't. I'm planning to take you to The Brasserie in Elk Run for our farewell dinner tonight. It's a very special place, and if you're a smart woman, you'll keep on my good side until you've tasted their chocolate torte. It's called Divinity for a reason."

  She quashed a little tremor of regret at the words farewell dinner. "It's that terrific, huh?"

  "It's definitely that terrific, a legend in the county. If it weren't for the fact that the owners want one of my cabinets for their main dining room, I'd never have gotten a reservation at such short notice. You need to be very, very nice to me today."

  She gave a mock sigh. "For chocolate torte, I guess a girl can make sacrifices."

  "A smart decision, Em." Jordan came and stood behind her, pressing his thumbs against the aching muscles in the vicinity of her collarbone. "Let me do that. Yesterday's rafting looks as if it got to you." His fingers rotated outward in a probing sweep, massaging away the pain.

  She hadn't realized that she'd been rubbing her left shoulder until Jordan took over the job. The touch of his hands on her bare skin was simultaneously electrifying and soothing, and for a few moments she surrendered to the sensations he was creating, not allowing herself to question her reaction.

  Then years of self-discipline kicked in. She might be sexually inexperienced, but she wasn't a fool. Since the day they'd arrived here—ever since they'd exchanged those troublesome kisses—she'd been aware that her physical attraction to Jordan was building inexorably. There was a constant sexual charge to their dealings that had been entirely absent from her relationship with Michael, and Emily didn't like that charge one bit. Sexual desire tempted women into making foolish decisions that weren't in their long-term best interests. The sensations Jordan was arousing in her right now could rapidly become the sort of dangerous prelude that she'd spent the past six years avoiding.

  Emily ordered herself to stand up, collect their coffee mugs and make some cheerful, offhand remark about their plans for the day. Somehow, though, she couldn't quite bring herself to walk away from the shivery pleasure of Jordan's touch. She compromised by holding herself rigidly upright, resisting the temptation to
lean back against him while his hands worked their magic. To relax, she knew, would be tempting fate.

  If Jordan had spoken, if he'd said anything at all, the spell would have been broken and she would have walked away. But he didn't speak, and the silence pressed in on her, magnifying the thrill—and the surprising comfort— brought by his touch. Tilting her face up to the sun, she closed her eyes and pretended that she didn't notice the moment when he finally coaxed her rigid spine to relax.

  Inevitably, her back connected with Jordan's chest. The steady rhythm of his massage faltered for an instant, then continued as before.

  Still neither of them spoke. Gradually Jordan's fingers ranged more widely, the stroking motion becoming blatantly caressing. Despite Emily's best efforts at self-deception, when his hands moved downward to cup her breasts, she could no longer keep up the pretense that what he was doing had any connection to massaging overtaxed muscles. Jordan was attempting, with significant skill and patience, to seduce her.

  More alarming than his attempt was the fact that he was succeeding. Dramatically succeeding. What she felt right at this moment was skin-tingling, stomach-clenching, pulse-pounding sexual desire. Liberally seasoned with panic and a heady sense of anticipation.

  The moment Emily acknowledged how far she'd already walked down the forbidden path, she froze. She wasn't allowed to feel desire. If the circumstances of her birth weren't warning enough of the havoc wreaked by uncontrolled passion, she'd had the lesson rammed home when she was in college. Shawn Dooley, her one and only lover, had taught her a lesson she'd sworn never to forget.

  Emily stumbled to her feet, backing away from Jordan until she bumped into the railing that surrounded the deck. "I have—I have to go upstairs," she muttered, although her blood was still humming and her feet seemed to have forgotten how to move.

  "Not yet." Jordan's voice held a dangerously rough edge, a note she'd never heard before. Her panic increased, but so did the delicious, tempting sense of anticipation.

  He crossed to stand in front of her. "We aren't finished yet."

  Before Emily could protest, Jordan tipped her head back and kissed her long and slow and deep. Her body, already seriously aroused, simply melted against his. She seemed to dissolve into the kiss, into the erotic warmth and intimacy of it. She could feel tenderness buried beneath his all-too-evident expertise, and that tenderness captivated her in a way nothing else could have. In Jordan's arms, with his mouth on hers, she found herself dreaming dreams that would never have survived her coolheaded scrutiny otherwise.

  Her fantasies became more and more vivid, and much too tempting. Emily realized that she had to break off their kiss now, or she wouldn't have the strength of will to prevent what would follow. A mere ten days ago, Jordan had been nothing more than her fiancé's brother, a man she held in contempt. A week ago, he'd become her husband, a man to whom she owed a debt of gratitude but nothing else. Over the past few days, as they began to know each other, he'd become something close to a friend.

  She'd welcomed that final change, even though she'd found it unsettling. But the sort of kisses they were exchanging right now had nothing remotely to do with friendship. They had to do exclusively with passion and lust and torrid sex. They had to do with eager hands reaching out, and overheated bodies writhing in a darkened room until they finally joined in climactic union.

  Emily shuddered, tearing herself out of Jordan's embrace. She wasn't repelled—no, she wanted that hot, sweaty, earthy coming-together. She wanted it badly. For the first time in years, she longed to let down her guard and open herself to a man. She wanted to lie naked in Jordan's arms while he made love to her, slowly inciting her to climax. She wanted to be taken with passion, and in return she wanted to rouse Jordan to a level of passion he had never before experienced. She wanted to exercise power over him: the power to make him crave possession of her body.

  And that was precisely the problem. Jordan made her feel everything that was forbidden. This week with him had shown her that far from being sexually indifferent, she was all too capable of feeling intense, consuming lust. Ever since her inglorious affair with Shawn, she'd been afraid that she'd inherited the genes that would make her vulnerable to sexual need, and here was the proof that she'd dreaded. A few days in Jordan's company, a few casual caresses, a couple of impassioned kisses, and she teetered right on the brink of begging him to take her to bed.

  Jordan moved toward her again, and Emily scrambled to put her defenses in order. She held out her hands, gesturing him away, her mind made up. "No, we have to stop… I don't want to do this, Jordan. It would be a bad mistake."

  "From where I'm standing, it sure doesn't feel like a mistake. For either of us."

  She gained a fleeting impression that she'd hurt his feelings, and although that didn't seem possible, Emily decided that there was no way to handle this situation other than with a healthy dose of honesty. She owed Jordan at least that much. "It's not that I don't enjoy kissing you—"

  "Because you do."

  "Yes," she admitted. "When you kiss me, I get very aroused, very fast. But that's irrelevant."

  Jordan sent her a look that was frankly incredulous. "On the contrary, I would have said it was all that mattered."

  "Not to me," Emily said. She tried to find words that would make him understand. "Our marriage is a mistake, and getting too intimate will only compound the mistake. I know your motives were kind when you offered to marry me, but I should never have accepted—"

  His gaze narrowed. "Has the past week been that horrible?"

  "It's been wonderful." She was afraid that breathless comment sounded far too heartfelt, and so she rushed on. "But that doesn't alter the fact that my reasons for getting married were totally ridiculous. I think I must have been in shock after Michael broke off our engagement, if I can use that as an excuse for behaving so stupidly."

  "You're too hard on yourself," Jordan said, leaning against the deck railing. "Under the circumstances, it's not surprising if you felt overwhelmed. And emotionally battered, too."

  "Maybe. But in retrospect, I've no idea why I was so obsessed with the need to avoid offending 350 wedding guests. It was absurd to get so worked up about something so relatively trivial in the grand scheme of things. I mean, who cares if the wedding guests turned up and there was no wedding? If I'd been thinking with even half a brain, I would have told my parents the truth, then taken off with Carolyn St. Clair for a quick vacation and left Michael to explain to everyone why he didn't want to marry me anymore."

  "If you wanted to destroy his campaign for governor, that's what you could have done. But you're much too honorable to leave Michael in the lurch like that, however badly he'd behaved."

  Emily shook her head. "I wish I deserved the compliment, Jordan, but you're giving me way too much credit. When Michael told me he wanted out of our engagement, I thought a lot about my parents, and how upset they'd be, but your brother's campaign for governor didn't figure in my calculations at all." After a moment's pause, she added, "However, now that I know you better, I'm sure it figured in yours."

  "What do you mean?" Jordan asked.

  "I've been trying to work out why you offered to marry me," Emily explained. "I realized a couple of days ago that you most likely proposed as a way to help save your brother's election campaign."

  "You're wrong. Michael's desire to be governor of Texas played even less of a role for me than it did for you."

  She smiled wryly, shaking her head. "Nice try, Jordan. A week ago I might have believed you. Now I know better."

  "Trust me. I'm not the noble person you're trying to invent. Not at all."

  "Okay, if you insist, I'll agree you're a sleazeball who married me for… Fill in the blank, Jordan." She sent him a challenging look. "Now that I know you better, I don't believe you give a damn about the money at stake in the Laurel Acres project, so why did you marry me if not to help out your brother?"

  "I do care about Laurel Acres," he said. "My fa
mily and yours both have a lot of money tied up in the success of that project. It's really important to both of them that this deal should succeed."

  "And you cared enough about that money—that deal— to ask me to marry you?"

  He hesitated. "No," he said finally.

  "Then if not because of Michael or the Laurel Acres project, why did you propose to me, Jordan?"

  He directed a look toward her that Emily couldn't interpret. "It seemed like the smart thing to do at the time," he said.

  Emily was neither surprised nor offended by his evasive answer. Jordan didn't want to admit that he'd stepped into the breach in order to save his brother, but she knew her husband well enough by now to realize that he routinely demonstrated a great deal more loyalty toward his family than they showed to him. The fact that he consistently downplayed his efforts to help out was one of his more endearing characteristics.

  "You can protest all you want, Jordan. I still suspect you proposed to me because you were trying to pick up the pieces after Michael smashed them."

  He gave her a wry smile. "Ten days ago you weren't willing to believe I had any redeeming value at all. Now you have me ready for sainthood. Maybe in another few days you'll be ready to think about me as a regular human being."

  "Okay, it's a deal. Let's admit that we're both human, and prone to making mistakes even when we mean well. Which is probably why we have a major screwup on our hands right now."

  "I don't see the screwup."

  "Our marriage is the screwup," she said softly. "The point is that I'm determined not to compound our mutual mistakes. We're married now, and since the deed is done, we might as well stick it out for the next few months. But let's not muddle the situation even more by introducing sex into a mixture that's already volatile. When Michael's campaign is safely off the ground, I want us to be able to walk away from each other good friends. I really want that—"

  "I've never found that friendship and sex are mutually exclusive," Jordan said tersely. "On the contrary."

  His words touched an exposed nerve in Emily. She had always cherished the dream that one day she might find a man who would be not only her lover, but also her best friend. Her engagement to Michael had been a tacit admission that in the entire twenty-seven years of her life, nobody had come close to filling that role, not even Shawn Dooley, her one and only lover.