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“It’s no big deal. Just a small…”
She already had her hands on him, pushing him toward one of the two tall wooden stools that flanked the bar. “Let me see.”
A bit surprised by her vehemence, he sat and allowed her to bend over his foot. He couldn’t help inhaling rather sharply when she gingerly touched the sharp wedge of glass sticking out of the wound.
Her frown deepening, she pulled her hand back. “I have a small first-aid kit in my room. Sit still and I’ll get it.”
“I’m sure I can—”
Pointing a finger in his face, she said, “Do not move.”
He settled more comfortably on the stool. “Yes, ma’am.”
She wasn’t gone long. Returning with a small plastic box, she opened it and laid it on the bar. He could see that it held a thermometer, single dose packs of pain reliever, fever reducer and antibacterial cream, alcohol pads, tweezers, a small pair of scissors and adhesive bandages in assorted sizes. “You seem to be well equipped for emergencies.”
She had already taken his foot in her hands again. “I like to be prepared. This will probably sting when I remove the glass.”
“I can take it.” Braced for her touch this time, he didn’t even flinch when she eased the glass from his foot. He was somewhat surprised by the gentleness of her touch. Based on his past experiences with her, he might have expected her to be a bit rougher with him. Even when she cleaned the bleeding wound with an alcohol pad, she took such care that he hardly noticed the unavoidable burning. “You’re quite good at this.”
Reaching for the medicated cream and bandages, she sounded distracted when she answered. “I have some experience. My former fiancé was into rodeo. Fancied himself a cowboy. I was always patching him up after…”
She stopped in midsentence, as if she’d caught herself saying something inappropriate. When she spoke again, it was a brusque, “There. That should keep you from bleeding all over this pretty rug. The cut wasn’t very deep. I don’t think it will give you any problems.”
He waited until she had turned to close the first-aid kit before asking very casually, “Fiancé?”
“Ex-fiancé.” She closed the plastic box with a snap. “And, no, I don’t want to talk about him.”
“Fine.”
“Fine. Can you walk on that foot?”
He stood, paying little attention to the twinge of discomfort. His concentration was focused, instead, on Grace’s flustered expression. “No problem. You’ve patched me up quite nicely.”
“Yes, well, don’t expect me to make a habit of it. I just felt bad because I was the one who broke the glass.”
He nodded, amused by her gruffly self-conscious tone. Grace was cute when she was embarrassed, though he knew better than to say so aloud. A remark like that could earn him a few more injuries—intentional on her part next time. But it seemed he liked to live dangerously. “I don’t suppose you’d like to kiss and make it better?”
She lifted an eyebrow and gave him a cool once-over. “Did you just suggest that I kiss your foot?”
He chuckled. “Darling, you can kiss any part of me you’d like.”
Keeping her chin high, she seemed to make an effort to reply nonchalantly. “Save it for the tabloids, Falcon.”
He was grinning again when she closed her bedroom door behind her with suspicious speed.
Cute, he thought. Grace Pennington was definitely cute. Even if she was very likely to drop-kick him if he told her so.
“High profile” was definitely the term to describe the lunch Bryan treated Grace to just after noon on Saturday. He’d selected a trendy restaurant known for hosting celebrities who wanted to be seen while pretending to be incognito. The owner/chef hosted his own television program and was almost as famous as the majority of his patrons. The most successful gossip columnists had their own regular tables where they could eavesdrop in undisturbed silence.
Bryan played to his audience shamelessly, treating Grace to such solicitous attention that she wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d started spouting sonnets. He kept an arm around her as he escorted her to their cozy little table, sat very close to her, rarely looked away from her. She tried to play her part as convincingly, looking back at him with what she hoped would be perceived as an adoring gaze, but mostly she just felt self-conscious and silly.
“You’re doing fine,” Bryan murmured at one point during the meal, as if sensing her doubts. He covered her hand on the table with his own, giving a bracing squeeze. “I doubt that anyone here knows how much you would love to pour your ice water over my head.”
She couldn’t help smiling. “I must be a better actor than I thought.”
Bryan was even better. Toying with her fingers with the ease of someone intimately familiar with her body, he murmured, “Darling, I imagine you’re very good at anything you put your mind to.”
She hated herself for blushing at the unmistakable innuendo in his tone—and for the shivery little sensations that seemed to be running from her palm, where his thumb was making slow, lazy circles, all the way to the pit of her stomach.
He was entirely too good at this. If she wasn’t careful, she could start believing that he found her very attractive.
She tugged her hand from his, annoyed to realize that it wasn’t quite steady when she reached for her water glass. “I think it would be better if—”
“Mr. Falcon. What a nice surprise to run in to you today.”
The man who had stopped by their table, interrupting Grace’s words, was tall, slender and very fashionably dressed. His bleached, moussed and sprayed hair swept back from a face tanned in a salon, tucked in a plastic surgeon’s office, and accented with vivid-blue contact lenses and pearly white dental caps. It took Grace only a moment to put a name to that striking face; she had seen him a few times on the entertainment channel, where he regularly dished celebrity tidbits and dissed their choice of clothing.
Bryan flashed one of his famous smiles, and Grace couldn’t help noticing that he needed no artificial enhancements to make him gorgeous. Nature had taken care of that quite adequately, from his silky black hair to those naturally blue eyes in a face that had made many a red-blooded woman go weak in the knees. Grace’s own knees showed a distressing tendency to fail around him—and she didn’t even like him very much. Or so she regularly reminded herself.
After exchanging a few meaningless pleasantries with the other man, Bryan turned to Grace. “I don’t believe you two have met. Grace Pennington, this is Terence Bishop.”
“Yes, of course. I’ve seen you on television,” she said, extending a hand.
His fingers were cold, his grip a bit weak—or maybe that was only in comparison to Bryan’s warm, firm touch. He seemed pleased that she had recognized him. “It’s delightful to meet you, Ms. Pennington. Are you enjoying your visit to our city?”
“Yes, very much, thank you.”
She could see him cataloging her simple hairstyle and the conservative cut of her emerald-green blouse and oatmeal linen slacks. He’d also noted the rhythm of her Southern accent. “You’re from Arkansas, aren’t you?” he asked as if he found it hard to believe that anyone would actually choose to live in such a place.
“Little Rock,” she confirmed with a determinedly pleasant nod. “Have you been there?”
“Oh, goodness no.” He appeared to be amused by the very idea. “I seem to always be flying from one coast to the other, with very few stops in between.”
“Then you’ve missed a great many fascinating places,” Bryan inserted smoothly. “I grew up in Little Rock, you know, and I still maintain a home there, though I don’t get to spend as much time there as I would like now.”
Bishop’s gaze turned speculative as he looked from Bryan to Grace. “I understand you’ve been spending quite a lot of time there lately.”
Bryan sent Grace a warm smile. “As much as I can manage.”
“You led the press on quite a chase, you know.” Bishop shook a finger in a gesture of indulgent reprimand. “That was very tricky of you to keep everyone guessing which lovely twin you were actually dating.”
Bryan shrugged. “My personal life is my business, of course. Still, I noticed that most got it wrong. You were one of the ones who reported that I was all but engaged to Grace’s sister, weren’t you, Terence?”
A faint touch of red stained the other man’s throat, but he managed a credible chuckle. “I’m afraid so. And you did nothing to set us straight. You practically confirmed that you were seeing Zoe—”
“Chloe,” Grace corrected in a mutter.
“Ah, yes, of course. But you must admit it appeared as though your old friend swept in and wooed your fiancée away from you. It’s quite a coincidence that you and Mr. Chance fell for sisters, don’t you think?”
Bryan’s grin deepened. “The dreaded love triangle—another bit of gossip fabricated through sloppy reporting. At least you’ve managed to avoid that one—haven’t you, Terence?”
“Certainly. I finally remembered how much you enjoy toying with the media. That wicked sense of humor just might lead you into trouble someday, Mr. Falcon.”
“I’ll keep your warning in mind. Yet, while the media was busy trying to figure out the players, Grace and I had a chance to get to know each other in relative private, didn’t we, darling?”
She only smiled when he took her hand again.
“So—” Looking searchingly from Bryan to Grace again, Bishop asked bluntly, “Can we expect another wedding announcement in the family soon?”
“One wedding at a time is plenty for my family, Mr. Bishop,” Grace replied. “Bryan and I are quite happy as we are for now. Isn’t that right, darling?”
He lifted her hand to his lips. “Deliriously.”
Their gazes met and held over her hand. Grace found herself momentarily unable to look away, captured by the gleam in his eyes and the brush of his mouth against her palm. Her fingers curled inward almost instinctively, as if to prevent the kiss from escaping.
Bishop cleared his throat. “Well. I’ll leave you lovebirds to finish your meal. Perhaps we’ll see each other again soon.”
Bryan looked away, breaking that disconcerting moment of connection with Grace. “I’m sure we will.”
“And you will let me know if there are any announcements in the future, won’t you?”
“You’ll be the first to know,” Bryan replied with such cheerful insincerity that Bishop was almost sulking when he strolled away.
Bryan turned back to Grace. “I think that went well, don’t you?”
His sudden transformation from devoted suitor to smug co-conspirator made Grace blink. Pulling herself together quickly, she snarled, “You licked my hand, you degenerate.”
He laughed softly. “And you taste delectable—as I suspected you would.”
She scooted nearer to him, gazing up at him through her lashes and keeping her voice a low, husky croon. “Bryan?”
His gaze fell to her moistened lips. “Mmm?”
Some evil impulse made her lean even closer, well aware that the neckline of her blouse gaped when she did so. In typical male fashion, his gaze dropped lower. “When this is all over—”
“Yes?” he prodded without raising his eyes.
She straightened away from him. “I’m going to have you killed.”
He laughed and reached for his water glass. “It’s always nice to have something to look forward to.”
Chloe and Donovan were waiting at the airport when Grace and Bryan arrived in Little Rock early that evening. Chloe rushed forward to greet them, Donovan following a bit more slowly at her heels.
It still startled Grace at times to see the short, fashionably choppy hairstyle her twin had sported for the past few months. They’d always worn similar styles in the past—and Grace had traditionally been the one to break rank and try something new. They’d stopped dressing alike in elementary school, and had maintained separate apartments for years, but their lives had still been tightly intertwined, both personally and professionally. Grace was aware that many things would be changing between them once Chloe and Donovan married and formed their own family.
Chloe hugged her, then stepped back to look at her as though it had been longer than a couple of days since they’d seen each other. “Did you have a good time in New York?”
“It was very nice,” Grace answered without a blink.
Glancing quickly around them, Chloe lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Do you think you accomplished your goal? Keeping the gossips confused about us, I mean.”
Grace smiled with a patience she reserved only for Chloe. “I know what our goal was. And, yes, I think we made some progress on that front.”
Bryan and Donovan had greeted each other with slaps on the shoulders—a ritual Grace had always considered the male version of a hug. Bryan then turned to Chloe, taking her hand in both of his and bending to brush a kiss across her cheek, murmuring a complimentary greeting as he did so.
Tucking a lock of hair behind her ear, Grace watched the interplay between Bryan and her sister, trying to read his expression. Only a few short months ago he had asked Chloe to marry him. Though he’d seemed to accept Chloe’s relationship with Donovan graciously enough, Grace couldn’t help wondering how he really felt about Chloe now. Surely he’d had some sort of strong feelings for her if he’d actually considered spending the rest of his life with her, raising children with her. Frankly Grace couldn’t imagine anyone not loving Chloe.
But Bryan had managed to move on from several previous relationships without ever looking back—at least according to those gossip columnists who’d been making their lives so stressful lately.
They all pretended not to notice the attention they received from others in the airport terminal, though all four were aware they’d been recognized by at least a few. When Bryan draped an arm casually around Grace’s shoulders, drawing her closer to him as they headed for the exit behind Chloe and Donovan, she knew he was making sure they were seen as a couple. She saw Chloe slant them a sideways glance, but she didn’t return the look. If she was going to bluff her way through this, she couldn’t meet Chloe’s eyes.
They went out to dinner, choosing a restaurant that was popular enough to keep them in the public eye, yet quiet enough to allow them to talk comfortably. Though they chatted about Grace and Bryan’s trip to New York, they were careful not to even obliquely refer to the purpose for that excursion. They were always aware of the possibility of being overheard.
Grace wondered how Bryan could stand living such a fishbowl existence. The average wealthy businessman could live in relative privacy, but Bryan, with his extraordinary looks and influential, highly visible circle of friends and associates, was hardly average. Something about him had drawn the interest of the media from the time he’d broken away from his prominent family’s long-successful business holdings to strike out on his own, finding success at a very early age, even in the era of twenty-something multi-millionaires. His predilection for beautiful and famous women had placed him solidly in the gossip columns, even though he’d once told Chloe that he’d long since moved beyond that fascination.
Still, a man with his looks, his money and his access to the most exclusive social circles was bound to stir the imaginations of a celebrity-obsessed society, and Bryan hadn’t been able to take himself out of the public eye once he’d moved into it. Rather than running from the attention and becoming a privacy-obsessed hermit, he had learned, instead, to manipulate it—as he was doing now with Grace. There were still drawbacks to the fame, of course—the constant awareness of security among the worst, in her opinion, but he seemed to be comfortable enough with his life as far as Grace could determine.
She wondered if he’d given up on finding a suitable mate to share that life with, or if he was only waiting until after Chloe and Donovan’s wedding to resume his carefully calculated search.
Not that she was particularly interested in Bryan Falcon’s future private life, she assured herself, even as he asked for the benefit of a hovering waiter, “Would you like dessert, darling? The strawberry cheesecake is excellent here.”
The one thing she looked forward to when this farce was over was shoving his “darlings” right back in his pretty face. Grace made sure no hint of that rather ferocious fantasy was evident when she smiled and murmured sweetly, “No, I’m fine, thank you.”
She could tell from the gleam in his eyes that he’d guessed at least the essence of her thoughts. They’d been spending entirely too much time together if they were starting to read each other’s thoughts, she promptly decided.
Chloe was watching them again, and for some reason that made Grace uncomfortable. Though they’d never had that eerie psychic bond some identical twins claimed, there were times Grace had to make a real effort to keep Chloe from reading her too closely. There were aspects of Grace that even Chloe didn’t know, and Grace kept it that way deliberately. She had always disliked feeling stifled. As much as she loved her sister, there were times when she felt smothered by being half of an identical pair. She had her ways of rebelling, of breaking loose at times, but she kept that part of her life completely separate.
“Don’t forget about your fitting tomorrow afternoon,” Chloe reminded her as the two couples prepared to part after the meal.
Grace wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know why I need to be measured and pinned and fussed over. Just try my dress on while you’re being fitted for yours. If it fits you, we know it will fit me.”
Chloe sighed. “I know you hate fittings, but it won’t take long. You really do need to try the dress on yourself—just in case. Besides, you haven’t even seen it. What if you don’t like it?”
“It doesn’t matter if I like it. It’s your wedding. That gives you the right to choose the maid of honor’s dress.”
“You see how difficult she is?” Chloe complained to the men.
Grace watched as Bryan and Donovan exchanged a quizzical look. “Difficult?” Bryan asked tentatively. “She’s letting you make all the decisions. That sounds pretty cooperative to me.”
“Now you’re being difficult,” Chloe accused him with a shake of her head.
Bryan turned a questioning glance at Grace, who shrugged and mouthed, “Bridal jitters.”
He seemed satisfied by that explanation.
Chapter Three
T he long, busy day had left Grace tired, so that she was very quiet when Bryan took her home. He drove her in a car that had somehow become available to him at the restaurant. She no longer questioned how everything he needed seemed to simply materialize at his fingertips.
