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When he didn’t answer at once, she felt panic creeping over her. “Bryan? What is it?”
“It’s my grandparents. They’re holding a dinner tonight at their house on Long Island. It’s a command performance. We have to be there.”
“Oh.” Word had apparently gotten out about Bryan’s new girlfriend, and she was being summoned for inspection.
“The good news is,” he continued, “my cousins and aunts and uncles will be there, and they’re all at each other’s throats these days, so there’ll be lots of drama to keep everyone distracted. The focus won’t be solely on you—though you’ll receive your share. Are you up to it?”
“Sure. As long as no one asks me how I got from Kansas to New York with no clothes.”
Bryan waited nervously in the living room while Lucy got ready for dinner at The Tides, the home where he’d spent a lot of his growing-up years. She’d been very nervous about what to wear when he’d told her the Elliotts dressed for dinner.
His grandparents could be a bit pretentious, no two ways about it. And controlling? They gave new meaning to the word. The competition Patrick Elliott had set up among his children and grandchildren was a perfect example. He liked to make them jump through hoops.
Still, they were good people, and they wanted what they thought was best for their loved ones.
When Bryan heard Lucy’s bedroom door open and shut, his gaze went immediately to the corner around which he knew she would soon appear, and he caught himself holding his breath. Having seen some of the clothing Scarlet had picked out for his “girlfriend,” he couldn’t wait to see how Lucy had tricked herself out tonight.
He wasn’t disappointed. When she came around the corner, she wore a clingy halter dress in a muted, burnt-orange color. It came almost to her knees, the hem ending in a flirty little ruffle, but that didn’t make it conservative. It showed every delicious curve of her body. She’d draped a silk fringed shawl over her bare shoulders, the color ranging from pale peach to a dark orange. A bold silver necklace called attention to her long neck and the enticing curve of her breasts.
“Too slutty?” she asked. “I don’t want your family to think I’m easy, although if I’ve moved in with you after knowing you only a couple of weeks, I guess I must be.”
“You look terrific, not slutty at all.” He wanted to touch her. He wanted to untie the little bow at the back of her neck and peel that dress right down to her waist. He wanted to kiss the shiny gloss off her lips and tease her breasts until her nipples were hard against his palms—
“Bryan?”
“What?”
“Shouldn’t we go? I don’t want to be late.”
Bryan forced himself to think about the time he’d crash-landed a plane in a Greenland blizzard and had survived for two days on four granola bars. Cold, very, very cold. He’d gotten frostbite and had almost lost his little toe.
Better. “Yes, let’s go.” He offered her his arm in a courtly gesture, and she took it, smiling uncertainly. “You look like a goddess, you know.”
“Oh, stop.”
“You do. And it’s not just the designer clothes and trendy hair. Since your makeover, you carry yourself differently.”
“It’s my inner Lindsay,” she quipped, though he could tell she was pleased with the compliment.
On the drive out to Long Island, Lucy worked at memorizing their story. They’d met at a Paris café where Bryan was swapping recipes with a chef. She’d gone there thinking she would write a novel but had found out she couldn’t write. Now she was trying to find herself. She’d inherited a bit of money and so was in no hurry to get a job.
They invented fake names for her parents and a fake Kansas town as her home.
“You can say you worked at a bank, since you know that world, but make it somewhere besides D.C.”
“What about my education? I have a finance degree.”
“Keep it, but say you went to … I don’t know. Loyola. None of my family has ever been near Chicago.”
“I’ll just try to steer conversation away from me. I’ll ask questions about you instead. That worked pretty well with Scarlet.”
“Oh, really? And what did Scarlet say about me?”
Lucy put on her most innocent face. “She said when you were a kid you liked to pull the wings off flies and burn things.”
“What?” The look on his face was priceless.
“I’m kidding. She said you were the only one who didn’t go into the magazine business. Why is that?”
“I’d planned to. I actually studied finance, with some vague idea of working in the EPH home office. But the government recruited me before I graduated. I knew I couldn’t tell my family I was training to be a spy—they’d have gone through the roof. So I bought a restaurant instead.”
“Why a restaurant?”
“I met Stash when I was still in school. It was his dream, and I knew I liked food. So I bought the café and hired him to run it. I had no idea I would enjoy it so much. I’d planned on being more of a silent owner, but it hasn’t worked out that way.”
“Tell me more about your family. Who will be there tonight, besides your grandparents?”
“No telling. Most of the family comes when Granddad calls, unless they’re testifying before the Supreme Court or vacationing in Sri Lanka. But with everyone so tense these days, I’m not sure.”
“Will either of your parents be there?”
“Not Mom. She doesn’t set foot at The Tides. Dad will probably be there, though.”
“Your parents don’t get along, then?” Lucy was saddened at the thought of Bryan and his brother growing up with two feuding parents. Scarlet had let it slip that Bryan’s parents had split when he was about twelve.
“Oh, no, actually they get along fine. It’s Patrick my mom can’t stand.”
“Your grandfather?”
He nodded. “I don’t think she’s spoken to him since I was a kid. She’s kept in touch with my aunt Karen, but no one else in the family.”
“Why the feud?” Lucy wanted to know.
Bryan shrugged. “She never said, but I think she blames Granddad for the divorce somehow. Like I said, he is controlling. And when I was—Well, you don’t want to hear all that.”
“I do, really. Unless you’d rather not.”
He continued only reluctantly. “When I was a kid, I had to have an operation—the kind our insurance wouldn’t pay for because it was considered experimental. Granddad paid for it—and I’ll be forever grateful to him, because it saved my life, literally. But I think he felt my parents owed him after that, and he used that debt to keep them under his thumb. Ultimately, I think that’s what caused the divorce.”
Bryan looked so sad, almost shattered, that Lucy reached over and laid her hand on his arm. “Surely you don’t blame yourself. You were just a little boy. You had no control over a health problem.”
“I know. But the fact remains, if I hadn’t gotten sick, our lives would have been a lot different.”
“And maybe you wouldn’t have pushed yourself to become a super athlete, and you wouldn’t have been recruited by the CIA, and you wouldn’t have been assigned to my case, and whoever was watching me would have killed me. You can’t play the what-if game. It’s silly.”
He looked over at her and smiled. “You’re an amazing woman, Lucy Miller.” He took her hand and squeezed it, then didn’t let it go.
“Lindsay Morgan.” She felt the warmth of his touch all the way to her heart. If it felt this fantastic when he touched her hand, what would it be like if he touched her other places?
Don’t go there.
He only released her hand when he had to shift gears, downshifting as he reached their destination.
The Elliott home was in the Hamptons, where else? Lucy had been to the Hamptons a few times for some wild parties, so she thought she knew what to expect. But The Tides, as it was called, shocked her nonetheless. The turn-of-the-century mansion—no other word for it—was perched on a cliff above the shore. To get to it, Bryan turned his Jaguar down a private drive, where a guard waved him through.
“A gated community,” Lucy said. “Nice.”
“Not a community. Just one house.”
“You mean that security guard sits there all the time to guard just one house?”
“That’s right.”
Lucy thought she’d seen wealth and opulence, but she was afraid her preconceived notions hadn’t prepared her for the Elliott estate. As the perfectly manicured grounds passed by outside the car window, she wondered how she would measure up. Designer clothes and a chic haircut didn’t change the fact she was a farm girl from Kansas.
The house up close was even more impressive than from a distance. The rusty sandstone monolith came into view as they rounded the last corner and drove onto the circular drive, and it literally took Lucy’s breath away. The high, peaked roof was gray slate, and there were so many gables and turrets and cupolas and multipaned windows that Lucy’s head spun.
“Wow.”
Bryan laughed. “I loved this place growing up. Always so full of activity, laughing, fighting. Granddad has talked about downsizing now that it’s just the two of them most of the time, but I doubt they’ll ever do it. Gram loves this place too much. She says the grounds remind her of Ireland.”
Other cars had already arrived. Bryan parked and came around to open Lucy’s door, but she was already out of the car by the time he arrived. Again he offered her his arm. “Remember, we’re smitten.”
As if she had to struggle too hard. They walked up the brick stairs to the porch. Not standing on ceremony, Bryan opened the door and ushered her inside a marble foyer with a crystal chandelier twenty people could have swung from. Straight ahead was a formal living room; to the right, Lucy glimpsed a dining room with a massive table already set with linens, china, crystal.
Despite the luxury, the house exuded a welcoming warmth. Elegant and understated, the decor didn’t scream professional decorator. Instead Lucy was willing to bet the lady of the house had decorated it herself. There were family photos and knickknacks everywhere, arranged in attractive groupings. The furniture, while upholstered in stylish colors, appeared to have been chosen for comfort and sturdiness.
A group was already seated in the living room, and the murmured conversation stopped the moment Bryan and Lucy entered. They all looked expectantly at the newcomers.
“Bryan.” A handsome man in his forties bounded up and approached Bryan with a hearty handshake. He looked too young to be Bryan’s father, but with the physical likeness between the two men, they couldn’t be anything but father and son.
He focused on Lucy. “And you must be Lindsay. I’m Daniel Elliott, Bryan’s father.”
They shook hands. “I guessed as much.”
“Everyone,” Bryan said, “this is Lindsay Morgan. I would appreciate it if you didn’t scare her to death. Remember, the Elliotts en masse can be a trifle intimidating.”
Lucy was introduced to each Elliott in turn. His brother, Cullen, was easy to remember, because he looked enough like Bryan to be a twin. Cullen’s wife, Misty, was also memorable, mostly because she was close to six feet tall, pregnant and amazingly gorgeous.
Scarlet she knew, of course, but now she met her fiancé, John Harlan, an ad exec. And Scarlet’s twin sister, Summer, who was a carbon copy, if a tad less flamboyant. Summer’s fiancé, Zeke Woodlow, made a definite impression. Who could forget him? He was a rock star, and a golden god of a man even when he wasn’t assuming his stage persona. He and Summer were on a break from touring, Summer explained, while she and her twin planned their double wedding.
But after a while, the names and faces began to blur. Trying to remember her cover story and commit names to memory proved too much for Lucy’s little brain. It wouldn’t matter in the long run, she told herself. In a matter of weeks she would be gone, hardly a blip on the collective memory of the Elliott clan.
But it did matter. She wanted the Elliotts to like her. She wanted to be a positive reflection on Bryan.
Finally Bryan’s grandparents appeared. Lucy had never met a more intimidating man than Patrick Elliott. Though well into his seventies, he was still strong and vital, and it was clear his word was law around here.
“So you’re the new girlfriend,” he said, giving her a once-over as if she were a horse he’d bought at auction.
Bryan made polite introductions, but Patrick didn’t do anything so modern as shake Lucy’s hand. He nodded brusquely.
“Don’t mind him,” said Maeve, Bryan’s grandmother. She was a petite woman and still a beauty. Her mostly white hair, piled up on her head in an elegant upsweep, carried traces of auburn, and her nose bore a sprinkling of pale freckles. Her green eyes were sharp as a bird’s and missed nothing. “He’s a gruff old goat, but deep down he’s a charmer. Welcome to The Tides, Lindsay.”
Maeve grasped both Lucy’s hands and squeezed them, and Lucy instantly fell in love with the woman. She was just adorable.
Though Lucy quickly ceased to be the center of attention, she could sense the Elliotts watching her at various times. When others arrived—Bryan’s uncle Shane and his cousin Teagan and Teagan’s fiancée, Renee—conversations broke into small groups, and the talk focused on the magazines. Which was only natural, since almost all of them worked for EPH.
Even an outsider could see the tensions. Those who worked for the same magazine flocked together, sometimes with heads bent low. Sometimes voices were raised, then boisterous laughter would break out, a spontaneous hug here and there.
Lucy wasn’t used to any family showing their feelings so freely. In the home where she’d grown up, she’d been taught to keep emotions in check. Voices were never raised, laughter seldom heard. And hugging? Forget it.
No wonder Lucy had rebelled so far in the other direction, allowing her life to get about as messy as one could get.
“Let me refill that wine, Lindsay,” Daniel said. “Which one were you drinking?”
“Uh, red?”
“Burgundy? Or was it the pinot noir?”
Lucy felt sure she should know the difference, but she didn’t. Her parents hadn’t allowed alcohol in their house, and In Tight had leaned toward beer and the hard stuff.
At her clueless expression, Daniel took her elbow and led her to the bar, where several bottles were lined up. “This is the burgundy,” he said, “a particularly nice one from Australia. The pinot noir is a Chilean variety. Dry, but with a hint of floral and oak.” He smiled at her. “Pretend you’re interested in my boring dissertation on wine, okay? Make me look good.”
Lucy laughed. “I am interested. I just don’t know much about wine. I think I drank from the bottle with the green label.”
He picked up the bottle and refilled her glass. “Actually, I have an ulterior motive in cutting you out from the herd. I wanted to have a private word with you.”
Uh-oh, here it comes, Lucy thought, tamping down her panic. Bryan’s father had picked up on something out of kilter. She’d blown it.
“I’m very worried about Bryan. He’s been traveling so much lately. And when he showed up for his brother’s wedding here in May, he had a split lip and a limp. He claimed he was in a car accident, but his car didn’t have a scratch on it.”
This was all news to Lucy. She looked up at him blankly.
“You mean, you don’t know?”
“We haven’t been dating for long,” she said, her voice shaking with nerves. “It’s been a real whirlwind. I still have so much to learn about Bryan. He hasn’t mentioned any car accident.” All of which was true.
“I feel like he’s hiding something. And I’m not just being a paranoid dad. His mother is worried, too. And Cullen. We all feel like he’s not being honest with us. Maybe trying to protect us.”
Oh, dear. How was she supposed to respond to that?
She wanted to tell Daniel not to worry, but in good conscience, she couldn’t. Bryan was in danger almost all the time. She wanted to reassure Daniel that Bryan wasn’t involved in something nefarious, that he wasn’t embroiled in trouble. She couldn’t do that, either.
“Bryan is a very private person,” she finally said.
“But what was he doing in France? Surely it couldn’t take weeks and weeks to swap recipes.”
Bryan had told her to stick to the truth as much as possible. But she knew nothing about what he did in France. She shrugged helplessly. “He was meeting with all kinds of people.”
