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“About as furious as I anticipated when I told you I was going over there this morning to try to head off an explosion.”
“Did you figure out who leaked the story?”
“He’s convinced it was Destiny.”
“His own aunt?” Becky said incredulously.
Melanie nodded. “It gets worse. He’s also convinced she won’t be happy until he and I really are involved, so he’s decided we need to pretend that we are.”
Becky blinked hard, then her expression slowly changed to comprehension. “That explains the dress.”
“Yep. We’re having dinner with Destiny tonight.”
“You actually went along with this?” Becky asked, sounding incredulous. “You’re going to lie to a woman who befriended you?”
“A woman who befriended me with ulterior motives,” Melanie corrected. “It’s a fine point, but an important one.”
“Oh, brother.”
Melanie met Becky’s gaze. “Am I crazy?”
“Probably.”
“Is there any way this can not go horribly wrong?”
“Not that I can see,” Becky said, sounding surprisingly cheerful.
“Why are you suddenly finding this so amusing?” Melanie demanded.
“Because you are both so obviously delusional.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Richard thinks he’s doing this to get even with his aunt, am I right?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re doing it out of some misguided sense of guilt, correct?”
Melanie nodded.
“Ha!”
Melanie frowned at her. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“You’re both doing it because you want it to be true. He wants to be involved with you. You want to be involved with him. Neither of you is willing to be honest about it.” Becky took a little bow. “You’re welcome.”
Melanie gave her a sour look. “I didn’t thank you.”
“You should have,” Becky told her. “It’s the most honest thing that’s been said at this table since we sat down.”
Melanie opened her mouth to deny it, then snapped her mouth shut again. There had been enough lies and half-truths and deceptions floating around today.
“This really is going to be a disaster, isn’t it?” she said eventually.
Becky nodded without hesitation. “That would be my assessment, yes.” She gave Melanie a sympathetic look. “You could still fix it.”
“How?”
“Make it real.”
“No. Neither of us wants that.”
Becky rolled her eyes.
“Okay, Richard doesn’t want that and I’m almost certain I don’t, either. We hardly know each other, but I do know he’s a man who’s not in touch with his feelings, he’s still a potential client and he’s stodgy. Those are all things that make him bad for me.”
“You’re hopeless,” Becky said. “At least I’m in touch with my feelings.” She grinned. “Jason is groveling, by the way. It’s lovely.”
“Good for Jason.” She gave Becky a defeated look. “How am I going to fix this?”
“You’re obviously not, at least not the mature, intelligent way, since you won’t acknowledge the truth. That means you have to go with the flow.”
“I’m lousy at going with the flow,” Melanie reminded her.
Becky grinned. “I know. That’s what’s going to make this so much fun to watch.”
Chapter Eight
Richard rarely questioned his decisions once he’d made them. Having second thoughts was the mark of a man who didn’t know his own mind, and he prided himself on his clarity of thought. Or he had until today.
Now that the dust had settled over that ridiculous rumor in the morning paper, he realized that talk would have died down in a day or two with no real harm done. That was how he should have handled it, simply let it go away of its own accord. Instead, he’d turned it into this big charade that was going to turn his life inside out for weeks, maybe even months to come.
He’d gotten caught up in the heat of the moment. He’d wanted to pay Destiny back for her meddling. He’d wanted to go on spending time with Melanie without having her underfoot professionally. That was both unfair and insulting. He was surprised she’d gone along with it. She should have told him to take a hike. He couldn’t help wondering why she hadn’t. Maybe she was suffering from the same momentary lunacy that was affecting him.
Now he’d gone and compounded his mistake by deciding to drag a perfectly nice woman into his aunt’s web of intrigue, when he should have been doing everything in his power to keep the two of them as far apart as humanly possible. His head pounded just thinking about what dinner was going to be like.
Hoping for backup, he picked up the phone and called his brother Mack.
“Well, well, if it isn’t the newly proclaimed Romeo of the family,” Mack taunted when he heard Richard’s voice.
“Go to hell.”
Mack laughed. Mack was used to having his name bandied all over town, linked with a different socialite each time. Richard was not.
“As soon as you’re through enjoying this, I have a favor to ask,” Richard announced grimly.
“Anything,” Mack said, instantly sober. “You know that. Should I go over to the paper and put the fear of God into Pete Forsythe? I’ve been dying to have a legitimate excuse for a long time now. Unfortunately, most of what he reports about me is true. The man’s a menace to the privacy of all bachelors.”
“Not worth getting your knuckles roughed up,” Richard said.
“I wasn’t planning to resort to brute force, despite my reputation from the football field,” Mack said, sounding wounded that Richard thought so little of him. “I can be intimidating in other ways.”
Richard chuckled despite his lousy mood. “Believe me, I am aware of that. Actually, though, I was hoping you’d back me up at Destiny’s tonight. Intimidate her a little.”
“Oh, no,” Mack said. “She is obviously on one of her matchmaking tears. When she gets this way, I prefer flying under her radar.”
“Believe me, she’s going to be too busy focusing on me tonight to worry about you,” Richard told him. “I’m taking Melanie Hart to dinner.”
Mack whistled. “Oh, brother, you are living dangerously, aren’t you? Or is something really going on between you and this woman?”
“There is nothing going on,” Richard assured him. “But I want Destiny to think otherwise.”
“Why the hell would you want that?”
“I’m hoping Destiny will back off if she’s convinced I’m doing exactly what she wanted,” Richard explained. “And if you tell another living, breathing soul I said that, I’ll make sure that Destiny tries to hook you up with the most avaricious, impossible female in this entire region. Believe me, I know some of the worst. I’ll give her a list of candidates guaranteed to make your life miserable.”
“Speaking of intimidation,” Mack said quietly, “you’re not bad at it yourself.”
“Thank you. Will you be there?”
“How could I possibly refuse such a gracious invitation to dine with my family?” Mack said with a sarcastic bite to his voice. “Are you calling Ben?”
“No, I think you’ll do for now.”
“But baby brother might enjoy this,” Mack objected. “He’s never seen you on the ropes before. We’ve always thought you were invincible, afraid of nothing.”
“Very amusing. Besides, Ben doesn’t enjoy anything that means he has to leave his farm in Middle-burg and stop brooding for an entire evening. On top of that, he’s too honest for conspiracies.”
“And I’m not?” Mack inquired with a touch of indignation.
“Not even close. You thrive on them. That’s why you’re so good at using sneaky, clever tactics to lure the best, most unavailable football talent to your team,” Richard said. “Seven-thirty, okay?”
“Despite the number of times you’ve insulted me in this conversation, I’ll be there,” Mack promised. “Hope I can keep a straight face.”
“Consider the alternative,” Richard told him grimly.
After he’d hung up, he kept staring at the phone. He loved his brother. He knew Mack would go to the mat for him or for Ben, but an actor? No way. It was entirely possible he’d just made his second-worst mistake of the day. Apparently he was on a real roll.
Melanie had anticipated a barrage of last-minute instructions from Richard on the drive to his aunt’s. Instead, beyond an approving once-over and a friendly-enough greeting when he’d picked her up, he’d remained stoically silent. It was getting on her nerves.
“Don’t you think maybe we should go over our plan?” she asked finally.
He glanced at her then, the line of his jaw hard. “You think I actually have a plan?”
“I was hoping for one, yes. You have a reputation for being very organized, for leaving nothing to chance.”
His laugh sounded forced. “So I do. Apparently it’s my day for doing the unexpected.”
“So there really is no plan,” she surmised, feeling suddenly queasy. She could wing it with a mob of reporters, but this? This was definitely not a situation in which she should be flying by the seat of her pants. Surely, Richard should understand that. She cleared her throat. “Um, don’t you think maybe we should stop for a second and get a few things straight?”
This time when he glanced her way, his gaze lingered. “You really are nervous, aren’t you?”
“Well, duh! What do you think? I am about to face a woman I like and respect and pretend that I’m falling for her favorite nephew. I anticipate a lot of questions. Don’t you?”
“I’m not her favorite. Destiny doesn’t have favorites. She’s always been very clear about that.” He grinned. “Mack and I both know it’s Ben. He has her artistic talent, if not her quixotic nature. Mack loves sports, which she doesn’t get at all, and she thinks I’m stuffy.”
“Okay, whatever,” Melanie retorted, not sounding remotely sympathetic. “The point is that we’re lying to her and we don’t have our stories straight.”
“Mack will be there. He’ll be a good buffer. He’s quite a talker. We may not have to say much.”
She stared at him in shock. “Oh, goody. I get to lie to your brother, too.”
“No, he gets that this is a sham.”
Her stomach dropped. “And that’s better? You expect him to lie, too?”
“No, I expect him to take some of the heat off of us. Mack has a way of stirring Destiny up. You’ll see. It’s actually rather fascinating to watch.”
“Why on earth would your brother agree to be a party to this?” When Richard didn’t answer, she reached her own conclusion. “You bribed him, didn’t you? Or threatened him?”
He frowned at that. “Only in a brotherly kind of way,” he insisted as if that made it so much better. “I told him if he didn’t help, I could see to it that Destiny turned her misguided attentions on him.”
“And?” She knew there was more. There had to be.
“I might have hinted that I could influence the choice she made and that the woman might not be to Mack’s liking.”
Melanie regarded him with dismay. “Do you hate your brother that much?”
“Of course not,” he said, staring at her as if she were crazy.
“Then why would you even suggest such a thing, given how thrilled you are to be in this particular mess?”
“Misery loves company,” he suggested glibly.
Melanie merely buried her face in her hands and prayed for a quick end to the entire evening.
Melanie didn’t seem happy, which made two of them, Richard concluded as he pulled into the three-car garage at what had once been his home. The brick town house in Old Town Alexandria combined two old homes into one gracious enough for entertaining and big enough for the large family his parents had anticipated. It had black shutters and brass trim and an occasional tendril of ivy that had escaped the gardener’s attention climbing up the pink brick.
In recent years Destiny had remained there as first he, then Mack and then Ben had moved into homes of their own. For the first time he considered that maybe his aunt was doing all this matchmaking craziness because she was lonely. Too bad he couldn’t fix her up. Maybe that would end this madness.
Unfortunately, even the thought of trying to turn the tables and hook Destiny up with some man made him smile. His aunt would not be amused. Her personal life was not a topic he or his brothers approached without serious trepidation. She always cut them off before they could complete their first query. He would have thought that a woman so tight-lipped about her own intimate secrets would be more careful about sticking her nose into his.
As he got out of the car, he took a second look at the flashy red convertible she’d bought recently and shook his head. It was entirely possible she was going through some sort of midlife crisis, though come to think of it the convertible suited her personality a whole lot better than the minivans she’d driven when they were boys.
“Your aunt loves that car,” Melanie noted. “I was with her when she bought it.”
He regarded her with surprise. “You were?” Then he recalled the rest of the story. “You were the woman who ran into her car that day and totaled it? That’s how the two of you met?”
