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“Looks that way,” he said, glancing over at her every time they passed under a streetlight. “Retirement rumors have been circulating around the office for months now, though no one has a clue which partner is retiring or who will be invited to replace him. I think this dinner tonight is Avery’s way of saying he’s sticking around and wants me in management.”
“Why, that would be fantastic!” Lauren exclaimed, the next instant adding, “Wouldn’t it?” in a voice so uncertain Nick knew she must have picked up on his mood. It was oddly flat, considering partnership in the architectural firm had been a dream of his for years.
“Yeah, sure.” To change the subject, he said, “Would a kiss make that better?”
“Would a…? Oh. My foot.” She shook her head and slipped her shoe back on. “Doctor that I am, I can say with complete authority that it would not. A Band-Aid would do wonders, though.”
“I have a whole tin of them at my place. Fluorescent ones. Want to take a detour and stop by there?”
For a moment Lauren didn’t answer, then she turned slightly in the bucket seat as though to better see him, not easy since the streetlights had begun to thin. “Why do I get the feeling I’ve just been invited to your place to look at some etchings?”
“Because you have?”
Lauren sighed. “Nick, there’s something I have to tell you—”
“’No thanks’?” So the party was already over. Though disappointed, Nick wasn’t surprised. He’d known it wouldn’t take long for Beauty to tire of the Beast and honestly hadn’t planned beyond tonight. “I understand, Lauren. I know I’m not your type, and I had no business even suggesting that we…um…get to know each other again.”
“For your information, I don’t have a type. And what I was going to say is this—while there’s nothing I’d like better than to get to know you again, I’ve tried twice to evenly balance my personal life with my professional one, and I just can’t seem to do it.”
“That’s crazy. There must be thousands, maybe millions, of doctors who carry pagers and yet manage to balance their professional and personal lives.”
“I didn’t say it couldn’t be done, Nick. I said I couldn’t do it evenly…at least at this stage in my life. I’ve only been in private practice for two years. I have dues to pay. Therefore, much as I’d love to spend all my time getting to know you again, the most I can promise is leftovers.”
“I’d never ask for all your time, Lauren. In fact, I don’t recall asking for any of it. I just thought—heck, I don’t know what I thought.”
“That the kisses we shared tonight were incredible, maybe? That it felt really great to be held so tight?”
“That just about sums it up.” Nick turned onto Blue Moon Lane, then a couple of blocks later, into her drive. He braked the car and killed the engine, then sat without speaking, not sure what to say to break the awkward silence between them.
Fortunately Lauren didn’t have that problem. “Just so you know, I enjoyed our garden party, too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Nick shifted his position so he could see her better. “What would you say if I told you I want to kiss you again?”
Leaning to cover the distance between the bucket seats, she gave him a light peck on the mouth that instantly set him on fire for her. In a flash, Nick wrapped his arms around Lauren, holding her where she was—close, and in danger of being stabbed by the stick shift.
“Now what about our doing some serious making out? Would you go for that, too?”
“Not in this car, I won’t,” she answered, squirming to free herself. “And I guess you’d better define serious.”
“Serious is—jeez!” Nick slapped a hand to his pocket, only then remembering that pesky pager, vibrating in his pocket like an angry bumblebee. With an embarrassed laugh, he handed the pager to Lauren, then flipped on the dome light so she could better view the number she needed to call.
“Lisa Millcott. One of our receptionists. I’d better call her, and I’d better set this pager to beep again.” Lauren did so, then opened the car door and looked back at Nick, who had never moved. “You’re coming in, aren’t you?”
“You want me to?”
“How else will I ever discover what ‘serious making out’ is?” Laughing, she slipped from the car and ran across the dew-kissed lawn to her sidewalk. Nick battled his raging libido maybe half a second before he leapt from the car and loped after her. Together they climbed the porch steps. After digging into her bag, Lauren unlocked the front door and pushed it open. The ring of her telephone greeted them. Lauren dashed into her den, set her pager on an end table, then scooped up the telephone receiver.
“Hello?”
Nick, who’d followed Lauren into the room, saw her face light up. “Why, hi there.” She covered the mouthpiece with one hand and whispered, “It’s Diana,” then motioned for him to have a seat on the blue chintz couch, which he did. She sank down on a matching chair, slipped out of her shoes and tucked one leg up under the other. “Is everyone okay? I mean, you’re usually snoring by now.” Lauren winked at Nick as though she knew that remark would bug the heck out of big sis.
Nick grinned, imagining Diana’s rejoinder. He expected Lauren to laugh, but to his surprise he saw her jaw drop and her cheeks flame crimson.
“Di…please…let me explain—”
Lauren’s gaze met Nick’s across the room. She drew her forefinger across her neck, the age-old sign of disaster and certain doom.
“Yes, Frank was talking about the Nick Gatewood you once dated—”
Uh-oh.
“—but he didn’t have his facts exactly straight.” She shook her head, clearly agitated by whatever Diana had to say to that. “No, I’m not saying he lied. What I’m saying is…is…” Once again Lauren put her hand over the mouthpiece and gave Nick her attention. “What am I saying?”
“Depends on what she’s saying,” Nick retorted.
“Di’s upset, and I mean really upset, because I told Frank about the engagement before I told her.”
Great. “Then you’d better tell her the truth.”
“Schoolgirl crush!” Lauren loudly exclaimed, apparently in response to something Diana said. Nick doubted she’d heard his suggestion at all. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I never had any schoolgirl crush on Nick Gatewood.” She positively glared at Nick as if he, and not her sister, were the accuser. “As for his suitability as a mate, I’ll have you know that Nick is an architect. Yes, I said architect. He works at a very prestigious firm here in Dallas and is going to be offered a partnership very soon.”
Nick groaned at that exaggeration, a sound that earned him another glare from Lauren.
“You’re what? Oh, Di, I wish you wouldn’t.” Lauren flashed Nick a look of pure panic, but said nothing, clearly on the receiving end of a sisterly diatribe. “But of course I’d love to see you, it’s just that I’m always on call and—okay, okay. Come ahead, but I’m telling you now that you’re going to feel really silly…”
Lauren heaved a sigh, met Nick’s steady gaze and shook her head.
“Maybe you’re right. A face-to-face chat is in order. I’ll do my best to meet your plane…what? Okay, then, take a taxi. You still have a house key? Good. Well, I’ll see you when I see you, I guess. And, Diana…will you please not mention the engagement to Mother? I, um, want to tell her myself.”
The moment Lauren hung up the phone she buried her face in her hands.
“You okay?” Nick asked, getting up and walking over to her chair. He dropped down on one knee in front of her.
Lauren raised her head. “Diana’s flying up in two weeks to find out what’s going on.”
“I gathered that.”
“I’m going to love looking her dead in the eye and telling her she’s interfered for nothing, that this whole thing is a lie.”
“You mean you’re actually going to wait that long before you spill the truth about us?” He couldn’t believe it.
As if already formulating just how she’d advise Diana to mind her own business, Lauren actually nodded in reply before his question really registered. Then she froze, winced and met his gaze. “Oh God. That would be awfully mean, wouldn’t it?”
“I’d say so, yeah. She’s your favorite sister, after all.”
“Diana is my only sister.”
“All the more reason not to keep her in the dark too long.”
“I suppose.” Lauren pulled the diamond ring off her finger. “Here, take it. There’s no way out of this mess now but to tell everyone the truth, and pronto.”
“Not so fast,” Nick retorted, backpedaling. “While it’s only right that you should tell Diana everything now, there’s no way I can do the same to Phillip Avery.”
Lauren arched an eyebrow in censure. “Well, if that isn’t a double standard!”
“No double standard. Our situations aren’t remotely similar, and there’s no way I can justify this faked engagement to Avery. I mean, what am I supposed to tell the man…that I lied so his wife would get her tongue out of my ear?” He shook his head and handed back the ring. “I don’t think so.”
Lauren hesitated, then took it. “I hate to admit it, but you have a point.” She slipped the ring back on her finger. “So we’re agreed that we won’t tell Avery, but do we tell Diana?”
“Absolutely.”
Sucking in a deep breath as if to bolster her courage, Lauren reached for the phone and punched out a number. Almost instantly she grimaced and dropped the receiver into the cradle. “Line’s busy.”
“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.”
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