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“Nothing that concerns you.”
“It does if I’m going to be putting your ring on my finger,” she returned. “Since I assume, to go along with your other antiquated notions, that you’ll be wanting me to wear one.”
“You think it’s old-fashioned for a couple to exchange rings along with their vows?”
She wanted to stomp her foot. Because she didn’t think it was old-fashioned. She thought it was right and it was true and it was what people in love did. People who were committing themselves to each other for the rest of their lives.
Like Sara Beth and Ted had done. Like Paul and Ramona were going to be doing.
Certainly not for Rourke and her.
The very idea of it struck her as blasphemous.
“There is just one more detail,” he added.
Her nerves tightened until they vibrated at a screaming pitch. “What?”
“The terms of our arrangement are to be kept private. As far as the rest of the world will know—including your family and your friends as well as mine—this will be a traditional marriage. Entered into for all of the traditional reasons.”
She let out a disbelieving laugh. “Like what? Love? Who’s going to believe that we’re in love?”
His gaze suddenly focused on her mouth. His voice dropped. “I think we can be convincing enough.”
She felt scorched and wanted badly to blame it on her temper. On the impossible position he was forcing her into.
But she was fresh out of strength to even maintain that simple of a lie to herself.
“What if I have a problem carrying the baby?” She tossed out the possibility with a hint of desperation. The fertilization itself wouldn’t be a problem. Obviously. In vitro fertilization—IVF—was just one of the specialties at the institute.
But carrying the baby to term once it was implanted?
Her sister, Olivia, was proof that not every pregnancy made it to term. Who was she to say that she might not have Olivia’s tendency toward miscarriage?
But even as she thought it, her common sense rejected it. Physically, Olivia was as delicate as an orchid. Her sister’s body simply wasn’t built to bear children. Lisa was about as delicate as an oak tree.
“You’re in excellent health,” he said. “There’s no reason to believe you would have difficulty.”
“How do you know I’m in excellent health?” Her jaw tightened. “Maybe I…maybe I have an STD!”
He laughed softly. “How long has it been since you’ve been with a man?”
She flushed. There was no earthly way that Rourke could know that she hadn’t been involved with anyone—that way—since she’d been in college. Years. Followed by more years. “None of your business.”
“It is when you’re going to be carrying my baby inside of you.”
Her knees felt weak. She moved around him—uncaring that he seemed to find amusement in the distance she kept between them—and sat down on one of the carved benches.
“It’s academic, anyway,” he commented. He plucked a leaf from the hedge nearest him and twirled it between his fingers.
A distant part of her brain envied him that ability to look so calm when everything was going to hell in a handbasket.
“It doesn’t matter how many lovers you’ve had,” he went on. “Or haven’t had. You had your annual physical last month just like you’ve done for years. You’re as healthy as a horse. You don’t even have a prescription for birth control pills.”
Her jaw dropped. “How do you know that?”
He just continued watching her. Leaving her with mad scenarios of stolen medical files running rampant through her head. But that would have taken forethought, wouldn’t it?
She eyed him, not certain of anything anymore. “You’ve thought of everything, I guess.”
“And now it’s time for you to do your thinking.”
But she just shook her head and looked away from him. “There is no choice.” And he knew it.
“You’ll do what it takes to save the institute?”
He let go of the leaf. Her eyes watched it swirl around in circles until it landed on the gravel between them.
“Yes.” She looked up at him. “You’ve got a deal.”
Chapter Four
Rourke watched the limousine bearing Lisa in the rear seat drive away from the house.
A part of him was elated.
An equal part of him was disgusted.
Not with Lisa. She’d done exactly what he’d expected her to do. His personal dealings with her might have been counted on one hand, but he knew she was singularly dedicated in her goals where the institute was concerned. Agreeing to his terms had been her only option.
He wished that the elation could edge out the disgust if only for a moment or two.
“Where’d Lisa go?”
He looked over at Tricia, who’d walked around to the front of the house. “She has to catch a flight back to Boston.”
After she’d agreed, she’d asked him about the rest of his plans.
And even though he had more than a few, he hadn’t been able to heap them on top of her slightly bowed shoulders. So he’d lied. He’d told her that he would contact her later and they could iron out the details.
Her lips had twisted. But when she’d pushed off the bench, she’d stood tall and slender in front of him when she’d told him that she would use his limo then, after all.
Because she had work to get back to.
He knew there was no doubting that.
Even with him throwing money at the institute, it was going to take some real work to recover from the mess that Derek Armstrong had left behind.
He shoved his hands in his pockets, willfully pushing all thoughts of the man out of his head. He looked at Tricia. “What did you think of her?”
His sister—only two years his junior—looked up at him. “What do you think I thought? She looks like Taylor.”
He turned to look back at the curving drive, though the limousine had already passed from sight. That had been his first thought, too, when he’d seen Lisa in Shots. That she looked like his faithless ex-wife. But the next time he’d seen her—when Ted and Sara Beth had eloped—he’d realized how superficial that first, startling resemblance had been. Oh, Lisa was still slender and leggy. A blonde with brown eyes and a face that was arrestingly sculptured with a reserved demeanor that just begged to be smashed.
“She’s not Taylor,” he told his sister. She might be an ice princess, but Lisa had a brain. And dedication, which she’d proved just that afternoon.
The only dedication his ex had was to herself.
“Well, obviously, I know that,” Tricia said, rolling her eyes. “Just make sure you remember it.”
“What else did you think of her?”
She eyed him more closely. With all the suspicion of a sister who’d endured plenty from him throughout their childhood. “She seems nice enough. A little cool, but I think that’s probably because she’s shy.”
“Shy?” He shook his head, dismissing the notion. Lisa had confidence to spare. There was no room for shyness there. “Not a chance.”
His sister huffed. “Why’d you ask if you’re going to ignore what I think, anyway? Trust me. The woman has a shy streak a half mile wide. You just don’t see it ‘cause you’re a guy. All you see are those long legs of hers and those big brown eyes.”
He saw a lot more than that. He saw the means to his future. One that, for a long while, he’d given up on ever having.
He never thought he’d be in the position of hearing his own biological clock ticking, but that was where he was. There was a helluva lot of macabre irony that the situation caused by Derek Armstrong was now providing Rourke with the means to succeed in the one thing he’d ever failed at.
Or maybe, it was simply poetic justice.
Elation edged ahead at last, and Rourke dropped his arm over his sister’s shoulder. “How fast do you think you can put together a wedding?”
Lisa stood on the front porch of her parents’ home and took a deep breath. She’d barely landed in Boston when her cell phone started ringing with messages, but it was the one from her mother that had brought Lisa here this evening.
Nobody ignored Emily when she summoned you to a family dinner.
Not even when one had, just that day, been coerced into agreeing to marry a devil.
Blowing out a breath, she pushed open the door, entering the foyer where the scent of furniture polish and fresh flowers greeted her. Knowing that her mother wouldn’t appreciate her arriving with briefcase in hand—tangible evidence that she was a businesswoman and not a society wife—she left it on the floor next to an antique console table that held the cut-crystal vase filled with flowers and walked through the house that she’d grown up in.
She found everyone already in the drawing room. Her mother was sitting on the settee, her typical glass of sherry in her hand. Surprisingly, Gerald was out of bed and sat in his wheelchair next to the settee, sipping amber liquid from a squat glass of his own. Paul and his fiancée, Ramona, were standing close together near the bay window that overlooked the back of the estate. Her blond head was tilted close to his dark one and they seemed lost in their own world.
Derek was notably absent, for which Lisa was painfully grateful.
She was pretty certain that in her present mood, she would have lost her control altogether if she’d had to see him just then.
It was going to be difficult enough trying to sell the idea of her sudden “romance” with Rourke Devlin as it was.
She went to her father first, bending over him to kiss his cheek. “Daddy. It’s good to see you up. You’re looking well.” And he did. His shoulders weren’t as broad and strong as they’d been before he’d become confined to his wheelchair and his face wasn’t as fiercely handsome as it had once been, but he was still an impressive, dauntingly intelligent man.
And right now, that intelligence was peering out at her from her father’s eyes. “You don’t,” he said bluntly. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing!” She straightened and managed a laugh. “Just too much to do and not enough hours in the day. That’s what you always used to say,” she reminded.
He lifted his glass, watching her over the rim. He didn’t look convinced, but she turned quickly for her customary air-kiss with her mother.
“You’re late,” was the only observation her mother had for her.
“I’m sorry.” She looked over the back of the settee to find her brother watching her, his eyebrows lifted a little.
She could well imagine he was curious about the results of her New York trip. She shook her head ever so slightly, glancing back at her mother. “You know I was in New York for most of the day. I had to stop at the institute when I got back.”
Emily’s lips pursed. “I suppose that’s why you didn’t have time to dress more appropriately for dinner.”
She was long used to her mother’s disapproval and ignored it in favor of going to the gleaming wooden bar on the far side of the room. “I thought Olivia and her clan would be here, too,” she said to no one in particular.
“She and Jamison had another function tonight.”
And of course those functions would be important enough not to earn Emily’s trademarked sniff of displeasure. “Too bad,” Lisa said. “I was looking forward to seeing Kevin and Danny again.” Since they’d joined the family, Lisa had been unfailingly charmed by the two sweet little boys her sister and brother-in-law had adopted. And right now, the three-and seven-year-olds would have provided a welcome distraction. “How long until dinner?”
She could hear her mother’s sigh from across the room. “Long enough for you to have an aperitif.”
As if to not have a pre-dinner drink was the height of crassness.
Paul appeared beside her and pulled a wineglass from beneath the bar. “White?”
She stifled her own sigh and nodded.
He poured her a glass. “I’m sorry I was tied up with patients this afternoon and missed you when you got back.” His voice was low. “How’d it go?”
Her fingers tightened nervously around the delicate crystal stemware. Her mother had switched her attention to fussing over Gerald, though Ramona was watching them. Lisa pulled her lips into a smile for her brother and his fiancée, lifting her glass a little as if in a toast. “We…um…we’re not going to have to worry about that…small problem anymore. It’s completely taken care of.” Or it would be soon enough.
She took a hasty gulp, drowning her anxiety in wine.
“He went for it, then?”
He, of course, meant Rourke. “Mmm-hmm.”
Her brother smiled. “I knew you could pull it off, Lis.”
“There is one thing I need to tell you—” She broke off when they heard the chimes ringing from the front doorbell. Her first thought was that Derek was showing up, after all, but she quickly dismissed it. This was his childhood home, too. He wouldn’t have stood on ceremony any more than she had. He’d have walked right on in.
“Go see who it is, Lisa,” her mother ordered. “Anna is off today.” Anna was her parents’ housekeeper.
She didn’t mind. It gave her an escape for at least a few minutes. She left her wineglass sitting on the bar and walked through the house back to the front door, pulling it open without so much as a glance through the heavily leaded sidelights.
Rourke stood on the porch. He was wearing a dark overcoat that made his shoulders look even wider than usual, and the golden light from the sconces positioned beside the massive door made his black hair glint.
She resolutely ignored the way her heart practically stood still and pulled the door shut a little behind her, lest anyone else’s curiosity led them to the foyer. “What are you doing here?”
“Is that any way to greet your fiancé?”
The term jarred her. “What would you like me to do? Throw myself into your arms?”
“That’d be more natural, wouldn’t it?”
