Her Sister's Fiancé. Teresa Hill
else’s. She’d been spotted at the local OB/GYN’s office, taking a then-pregnant Shannon for a checkup. Everyone in town had assumed it was Kate who was pregnant, not Shannon, a girl Kate had met while volunteering with the Big Brothers Big Sisters organization.
So Kathie could understand why Joe was reluctant to be seen in the place, especially in another meeting destined to make the gossip rounds.
“We have to,” Kathie said. “And try to look happy when you see me. You’re supposed to be crazy about me, remember? Otherwise, you can’t be devastated when I break your heart in a month or so.”
Joe fought the urge to drum his fingers on his desk, a habit he’d given up two years ago as a New Year’s Eve resolution, because it wasn’t good for a man to show any outward sign of weakness. Or stress.
And drumming those fingers was something he did when he was stressed.
Right then, he could have drummed with baseball bats quite happily, and it wouldn’t have given him half the relief he needed considering what was about to happen.
Yeah, baseball bats.
And he had a quarter-inch-thick layer of glass lining the top of his desk to protect the wood from scratches. The bat would have made confetti out of it in seconds, but he wouldn’t have cared.
She was coming.
And he was supposed to look happy about it.
“Mr. Reed?” his secretary, Marta, said from the doorway to his office, an odd look on her face. “Is everything all right?”
Joe hadn’t known she was standing there, hadn’t had a clue, and she wasn’t a woman who moved with any kind of stealth. She was rather large, and besides that, she wore three charm bracelets with about fifty charms that jingled every time she so much as breathed. It drove him crazy, had for years, but it meant he always knew where she was.
Until today.
“I’m fine,” he lied. “Why?”
“You buzzed for me to come in,” she said.
He opened his mouth to say that he certainly hadn’t, but then looked down to find one of his non-drumming fingers perilously close to the button on the phone that he used to summon her.
Maybe he had buzzed her in, one little drum of the fingers before he forgot he’d given it up.
“Is there something I can get you?” she asked.
“No. I…uhhh…I’m going to lunch. In a few minutes.” He wouldn’t be able to choke down a bite, but he’d go and try to look happy about it and not like a man about to get his head chopped off or something.
He wondered if Kathie had briefed her brother, the cop, on the let’s-date-Joe-for-the-summer plan and how Jax might react, whether Joe would get hauled off into the woods yet again and threatened with bodily harm or more moving violations. If Joe was smart—and he’d always prided himself on being a very smart man—he’d park his car and walk to work for the next month. It was only a few miles, and the weather was fine so far.
Yeah, he should walk, just in case, at least until it got too hot.
Because a smart man knew how to pick his battles and avoid the ones he couldn’t win. He’d never win with Kathie’s brother over anything to do with him and Kathie Cassidy.
“Did I forget to write down an appointment, Mr. Reed?” Marta asked.
“No. Made it myself. Just now.”
“Oh. With whom?”
He frowned at her, not wanting to say, wanting to postpone just for a few more minutes that nice, sane, everything-is-getting-back-to-normal atmosphere he’d tried so hard to cultivate after…the unfortunate event, as he’d taken to thinking of it in his own mind.
The series of unfortunate events, he should say.
She’d ended up in his arms more than once, after all.
He could have pleaded temporary insanity if it had been only the one brief time the day her mother died. Granted it had felt like temporary insanity each time, but he really couldn’t claim a series of unfortunate lapses into temporary insanity. One didn’t have serial bouts of temporary insanity. One had to consider it was more than temporary insanity at that point. More of a long-term psychological disorder, which he certainly hoped he did not have.
There’d been the day her mother died. Grief could have easily accounted for him taking her in his arms that day. Not for the kissing part, but the holding at least.
But the second time, the did-that-really-happen, Oh-my-God-it-did time, as he tended to think of it. The no-denying-it-anymore-time, trouble-is-definitely-here, what-the-hellhad-he-done-time. After which, he’d wallowed in guilt and confusion and, if he was really honest with himself, an overwhelming sort of…desire.
For his fiancée’s little sister.
Rot in hell, Joe. You deserve it.
“Uhh hmmm.”
Standing in front of him, Marta cleared her throat pointedly, then frowned at him.
“Sorry,” he said. “Where were we?”
“Your lunch appointment? You were going to tell me who it’s with, so I know to send him in when he arrives.”
Joe tugged at his tie, which was getting tighter with every passing second. When had it gotten so hot in here? They’d turned on the air-conditioning last week, hadn’t they? It wouldn’t go off until sometime in September, at least.
He was starting to sweat when he realized something was going on in the bank. Or rather, that, oddly, nothing was going on in the bank.
A hush had come over the place. Through the glassed-in walls to his office, he could see that people had frozen in place and started to stare, mouths hanging open.
He leaned to the left, then the right, not able to see much of anything to either side of Marta. Her bracelet jingled, as she turned around, too, and started trying to figure out what was going on.
To the back of the lobby near the doors, he saw heads turning. More and more heads. She was halfway through the room now, judging by the stares.
Joe saw someone reach for a cell phone and hit speed-dial. Someone else looked like they were trying to ready their phone to take a photograph.
Great.
They could capture the moment for posterity and share it with the whole town.
When Joe met Kathie again, right there in the bank…
Marta gasped and jingled as her hand went, too late, to cover her mouth. “It’s her!”
His secretary was fiercely loyal to him. She was one of the few people in town who didn’t blame Joe for what happened. He noted with amazement that she had positioned herself between Joe and the door to his office, as if to shield him with her body from the walking disaster in the lobby, which had Joe fighting not to laugh.
The idea that Marta was so terrified of what might happen next to poor Joe that she’d physically stand between him and Kathie Cassidy was both sad and hilarious. Sad that she thought he needed protecting that much and hilarious at the idea that anything as insubstantial as a person standing between them would be enough to keep Kathie from doing whatever it was that she did to him.
Because he just wasn’t himself around her.
It was like she short-circuited something in his supremely logical, well-organized, methodical brain, and he became someone he didn’t even know, someone he couldn’t begin to understand.
And what was his role in this charade today?
To act smitten?
He fought down another laugh.
Smitten?
Had