Won't You Be My Husband?

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“She’s probably telling your mother about the engagement,” Nick teased with a wicked grin.

“She’d better not be!” Lauren exclaimed, turning on him. Her eyes flashed and two spots of crimson stained her cheeks.

“Just joking, just joking,” Nick hurriedly exclaimed, trying to soothe the waters he’d just troubled. “Try her again.”

“I will in a minute,” Lauren murmured, drawing out the sentence as if her mind were somewhere far away.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded.

“Nothing really.” She gave him a reassuring smile that did everything but reassure him. “What you said just served as a painful reminder of how many times Diana has irritated the holy heck out of me through the years.”

Nick didn’t like the sound of that. “For example?”

“For example…the time our Aunt Susan sent us a box of chocolates to split for Valentine’s Day. Diana, who’d gotten the mail out of the box that day, hid it in her closet and didn’t share for two weeks and only then because she’d eaten all the pieces with nuts in them.”

Nick frowned, hoping he couldn’t guess where this was headed.

“And then there was the time she borrowed and broke my favorite necklace.” Lauren, sitting with her legs crossed at the knee, bobbed her foot up and down in righteous indignation. “She let me look for that thing for at least two weeks before she confessed.”

Nick took note of the storm clouds gathering in Lauren’s expressive eyes. Was her sense of honor about to get swept away in a gale of childhood memories? It sure looked like it to him. “Why don’t you try calling her again? She’s probably off by now.”

Lauren never moved a muscle.

“Lauren…?”

“I’m thinking maybe I’ll let her stew awhile.”

“You can’t do that,” Nick replied.

“Why not? Heaven knows she deserves a little grief back for all she gave me when we were kids.”

“Kids being the key word, here. You’re not a kid now, you’re a grown-up. Grown-ups don’t lie to their sisters.”

Lauren said nothing for a moment, then gave him a guileless smile. “You know, Nick, Diana has been matchmaking like crazy ever since Lee Jacobs and I broke up about a year and a half ago.”

Lee Jacobs? Who the hell was Lee Jacobs? “Er…sisters are like that, I guess.”

“Yeah, well, she’s worst than most. Always faxing me the names of eligible bachelors she knows, sending me off on blind dates whenever I visit her in Houston, lecturing me about my biological clock. She acts as if I don’t have enough sense to pick out a good man by myself.”

Nick’s sympathy for Diana began to wane. “I’m sure that the news of our engagement didn’t exactly reassure her.”

“No,” Lauren admitted, in the next breath qualifying that with “but only because you were such a rebel the last time she saw you.”

“Right,” he murmured somewhat dryly, now half-sorry he’d tried to make Lauren feel guilty for fooling dear ol’ meddling Diana.

Lauren gave him a sidelong glance, almost as though measuring the state of his feelings—sure indication she played him like a piano. “She was awful to you when you guys were an item, wasn’t she?”

“Not so bad,” Nick murmured, to discourage her from reopening teenage wounds.

“Oh get real, Nick. She cheated on you from day one, stood you up if someone better called and wore Brent McEntyre’s class ring for two weeks before she broke off with you.”

“Two weeks? She had that damn ring that long?”

Lauren, eyes twinkling, nodded.

“Well, hell.”

They sat in silence for a moment, each lost in thought.

“Guess I should try to call her again,” Lauren finally ventured.

“What’s the rush?” he retorted.

Their gazes locked. “Or I could teach her a lesson.”

“Meaning?”

“We could play up our engagement for all it’s worth, gain her blessing—and she will give us that, once she gets to know you again—then tell her the truth. That would surely prove once and for all that I do have a brain in my head and can find myself a wonderful man—”

“That she passed over years ago.”

Lauren’s smile lit up the room. “So you agree we should do it?”

Nick battled his conscience. “Diana is nobody’s fool, Lauren. I’m thinking it won’t be so easy to pull the wool over your sister’s eyes as Sabrina’s.”

“True…” She thought for a moment, then flashed another brilliant smile. “Diana’s not coming until the twenty-eighth…sixteen whole days—”

And nights.

“Surely if we get together a few times—”

Hmm. Impulse took rein in Nick’s mind. “A few times? If we’re going to fool big sis, we’d better do more than that. Now I’m going to be out of town several days the weeks she’s coming in, but should be available before that.” He watched Lauren’s face, searching for a sign that she might go for the crazy idea now filling his head. “I suggest we spend as much time together as possible, to talk.”

“Okay.”

“And I think we should practice being more affectionate, too.”

Lauren frowned slightly at him as if trying to read his thoughts. Nick kept his mind blank, certain his X-rated plans might be a bit much for her.

“I agree with the first part,” Lauren replied, frowning slightly. “But not the practice thing. I personally think we have ‘affection’ nailed already, or if not that exactly, then a definite facsimile. Anyone watching us in the Averys’ garden earlier tonight would think we’ve been engaged, or maybe even married, for years.”

“Get real, Lauren. Anyone watching us would know we were kissing for the first time and had a long, long way to go before wedding bells rang.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Technique. There’s a world of difference between the kisses of a couple such as we, who really barely know one another, and a couple who plan to marry. Please bear in mind that I’m referring to a man and woman who don’t share a roof…unless, of course, you told Diana we live together. In that case, I’ll have to alter our strategy.”