His mother’s business affairs were a tangled mess. Matt felt guilty for letting them get that way. He pushed back from the desk that had belonged to his father, rubbed the back of his aching neck and noticed with some shock that it was after midnight.
If he could finish one more document tonight, then he could start tomorrow knowing that he’d made progress. The document he needed was in his mother’s desk in her bedroom. He’d kicked off his tuxedo shoes an hour ago, and if he was careful, maybe he could sneak in and get what he needed without disturbing her.
Shoeless, he hurried to the west wing, then tiptoed down the hall toward Lucy’s bedroom door. A thin line of light showed underneath. His mother had fallen asleep with the lamp on, poor dear.
“If the music and Chinese lanterns didn’t do the trick, I don’t know what will.”
Matt stopped, stunned. Aunt Kitty was in his mother’s bedroom. At this hour. She should know better.
He was all set to march in there and chastise her for keeping Lucy from her rest when he heard Aunt Dolly.
“You’re being too hasty, Kitty. Didn’t you see the way he was looking at her?”
Matt had a sneaking suspicion he knew who she was talking about. He couldn’t keep his eyes off Sandi all evening. If he’d stayed any longer, he’d have devoured her on the spot.
“What I want to know,” Lucy said, “is whether our plan is working.”
Plan? They’d planned this?
“Is my son falling in love with Sandi Wentworth?”
“Yes,” Dolly said.
“No,” Kitty said.
“You don’t know that, Kitty.”
“Neither do you, Dolly Wilder. I told you we should mind our own business.”
“Oh, please,” Lucy said. “This is not about meddling. All I want is to see my son happy.”
Matt’s first thought was to storm into his mother’s bedroom and confront her. But then he remembered her condition. She’d recently had a heart attack, she was fragile, and she was dying.
He hurried out of the west wing. The only good thing to come out of his unintentional eavesdropping was that now he had a legitimate reason to send Sandi Wentworth home.
He would tell her first thing in the morning. She’d be on her way by eight o’clock. Nine at the latest.
His stomach rumbled, reminding him of all that delicious food he’d left on the table, and he decided to make a quick detour to the kitchen. As he passed the library, he caught a glimpse of white.
Sandi, illuminated by lamp glow, sitting in his favorite chair. He moved closer. She was reading his favorite book—The Tao of Physics.
“Sandi.” She jumped as if he’d startled her. Clever girl. “You’re quite an actress, aren’t you?”
“What? What in the world are you talking about?”
“All that sentimental garbage about your bad childhood. It was merely a ploy to gain my sympathy, wasn’t it?”
Her face paled, and her shock looked genuine. Matt was almost sorry for her.
“That is probably the vilest, lowest thing anybody has ever said to me. I’m sorry I ever told you. And even sorrier I ever met you.”
She was magnificent in her rage. Matt applauded. “Bravo, Ms. Wentworth. A performance worthy of Bette Davis in Now, Voyager.”
He’d cornered her, and now she was on the run. Matt blocked her escape.
“Move out of my way,” she said.
“You don’t get off that easy.”
“If you don’t step aside I’m going to…to…” Sandi sagged, the fight suddenly gone out of her. She covered her face with her hands and made a sound that nearly broke his heart. The heart he’d tried so hard to keep deep-frozen and safe.
“Oh,” she gasped. “Oh…” She was crying in earnest and looked as if she might never stop.
“Sandi…Sandi…” Her shoulders shook, her whole body shook. “Look, I know I can be difficult sometimes. Heck, I’m difficult most of the time.” She looked as if she was about to break apart. Alarmed, Matt touched her arm, and that’s all it took.
Suddenly she was in his arms, her face pressed tightly against his chest, wetting the front of his tuxedo with her tears. He patted her shoulder, stroked her hair, smoothed her back.
Then magically everything changed. He was no longer comforting her, and she was no longer sobbing. They were touching and caressing, giving in, giving up, giving over to the powerful currents that arced between them.
Desire bloomed, fierce and urgent, as unwelcome as the sudden summer storms that sweep over O’Banyon Manor knocking out power lines and rendering the household helpless.
That’s how Matt felt. Helpless. Totally defenseless against the onslaught of passion.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and stepped back. Empty. Almost bereft.
She pushed back her golden curtain of hair and looked at him with still-wet eyes.
God, how many ways could this woman disarm him? “Let’s start over, shall we?”
“Okay. Do I need to sit down?”
“Yes. Over there.” If he touched her again, he was lost.
“This sounds serious.”
“It is.” Matt told her what he’d overheard, watching her face to see if she already knew. She didn’t. There are certain ways you can tell if a person is lying, nervous mannerisms, shifting eyes, sweating. Sandi Wentworth passed his tests. All of them.
“You mean, Lucy and Kitty and Dolly brought me here so you and I would fall in love?”
“Yes.”
Sandi sat quietly for a while, not even bothering to wipe the smudge of mascara off her cheek, not even aware. Matt found that endearing. And disturbing in ways he didn’t want to acknowledge.
When she finally spoke, her voice was soft and tender. “How sweet.”
“Is that what you call meddling? Sweet?”
“Think about it, Matt. Your mother is dying and her last wish is for you to be happy. Don’t you find that endearing?”
“I find it exasperating. Look, Sandi. My mother brought you here under false pretenses. There’s no way her plan is going to work.”
“Oh, I completely agree.”
“You do?”
“Of course. You’re not my type.”
Matt didn’t want to be her type, did he? He was relieved, wasn’t he?
“I’m glad we’re in agreement,” he said. “First thing tomorrow I’ll help you get your bag and art supplies to the car, and you can go home. I’ll deal with Mother.”
“She’ll be so disappointed.”
“She has to learn that she can’t play around with the lives of other people. Life is not one of her romance novels.”
“But, Matt, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could grant her dying wish?”
“Fall in love?” He would as soon try to fly to the moon…without wings.
“We could pretend.”
“I’m no good at pretending.”
“Just think how happy we could make your mother. Oh, do say yes, Matt.”
“Maybe,” he said, meaning no. At her crestfallen look, he said, “I’ll think about it,” knowing he would think of nothing else. When she gave him a radiant smile that warmed him all the way to his toes, he added, “Tomorrow we’ll see,” meaning yes.
What could be so hard about pretending to fall in love with the kindest-hearted woman he’d ever met?
Matt stood in the middle of the library drunk on Sandi’s lingering fragrance and dumbfounded by his own stupidity. Of all the insane things he’d ever done, pretending to fall in love topped the list. For one thing, the very idea of love made him cringe. For another, he didn’t know the first thing about romancing a woman.
His ill-fated romance with the blessedly long-gone Nancy McMains Stayman proved that.
He glanced down at his feet. Things would have turned out differently if he’d been wearing shoes. A shoeless man is a defenseless man. A shoeless man can’t be responsible for his actions.
What he would do was wait till morning, then tell Sandi he’d changed his mind.
And she’d get that forsaken look on her face, that little-girl-lost look that made him want to scoop her up, ensconce her on satin cushions and keep harm at bay with a gold-hilted sword.
“Damn,” he muttered. He was losing his mind.
Come dawn, he would lose face as well. Matt hated being second-rate at anything. Even romance.
What he needed was a few lessons. What he needed was a crash course.
He’d just put his hand on the light switch, when he noticed his mother’s novels occupying two complete shelves. He’d never read them, never wanted to. Naturally he was proud of her, even bragged about her talent whenever he got a chance, but he’d never had the least inclination to know what was between the covers of her books.
His secretary, Janice, called them things like fantastic, amazingly romantic, steamy. Matt stalked to the shelves and selected a handful. Romantic he could use. Maybe even fantastic. He didn’t plan on letting his pretense advance to the steamy stage, but it never hurt to be prepared.
He hurried to the bedroom with his arsenal of seductive weapons, then locked the door. Picking up a book called Penelope’s Persuasion, he turned to Chapter One….
Armed with a dagger in her stocking and her father’s musket under her cloak, Penelope lifted the latch of the heavy wrought-iron gates that guarded Brentwood Manor and slipped into the darkness. Tonight Pierre Lafette would pay for what he’d stolen…the largest plantation in Louisiana and a maiden’s virginity. Her virginity.
“Good lord,” Matt said. He would hate to meet this Penelope creature in the dark. A man looking at the business end of a dagger and a musket could be persuaded of many things.
He tossed the book aside. Those were the wrong weapons for the kind of persuasion he had in mind.
Pawing through his pile of purloined romances, he selected another title. Matt opened the book called Tenderness, and began to read…
I’ll never forget the day Jim proposed. He was kneeling on my doorstep with the rain pelting his bare head and his arms full of oranges, never mind that we were at the height of a depression and oranges were more precious than gold. “Cynthia, will you marry me?” he said, and I told him yes on the spot. We went inside to the parlor and…
Matt gave a satisfied grunt. “Now, that’s more like it,” he said. Employing the speed-reading technique he used to plow through tomes of legal documents, he finished the book before sleep claimed him. Couldn’t put it down, as a matter of fact.
When he finally did, he sat in his rumpled tuxedo amazed. “Who would have thought Mother knew all that?”
Sandi nearly tripped on the oranges outside her bedroom door. There were twelve of them piled into a pewter bowl.
“What in the world?” Who would put oranges at her door?
She picked up the bowl. There was no note, no clue as to how the fruit came to be there. Maybe the housekeeper had been on her way to the library with them and had been interrupted. But that didn’t make sense. Both the kitchen and the library were on the first floor.
Mystified, Sandi picked up the bowl and carried it along with her art supplies to the west wing. She would take an orange to Lucy, then carry the rest down to the kitchen. Maybe somebody there could unravel the mystery.
Matt was with his mother. “Good morning,” he said. “I see you got my oranges.”
“You left these outside my door?”
“Yes.”
Sandi nearly burst out laughing, but the expression on his face stopped her. It was expectation mixed with a kind of awful hope that melted her all the way to her toes.
“Why, that’s absolutely lovely,” she said.
“You like oranges, then?”
“Yes, I do.” Sandi had never known how a smile could tug heartstrings.
“Well, good, then. I’m glad you do.”
“As a matter of fact, oranges are my favorite fruit.”
That smile again. Lord, why didn’t he smile more often? It transformed him.
“There’s so much you can do with oranges,” she added, and when he said, “I agree,” she was as pleased as if he’d proposed something romantic and slightly naughty.
“I used oranges in a book of mine once,” Lucy said, and Matt got a funny look on his face. “I used them in the proposal scene.”
“This is hardly a proposal,” Matt said.
“I should hope not. You haven’t even courted her properly yet,” Lucy said, and Sandi giggled.
Matt gave them both an aggrieved look. “If you two will excuse me, I have work to do.”
Sandi couldn’t bear to see him leave thinking he’d failed at romance.
“Matt, wait.” She put her oranges on the table and touched his arm. “Thank you. The oranges are a beautiful gift.”
“The bowl belongs in the library,” he said. “I borrowed it.”
Sandi squelched a smile. “All right. I’ll put it back.”
“No, no. Just keep the oranges in it till you’re finished.”
Good grief. Matt Coltrane was actually flushed. What in the world was going on?
“Well, thank you again.”
She’d already started back toward her art supplies, when he said, “I’ll bet you haven’t seen the rose garden.”
“Only from my window and from the courtyard in the dark.”
“I’ll show it to you.”
“That will be lovely.”
“All right, then. Come on.”
She glanced at her art supplies, and Lucy made shooing motions with her hand. “Have fun,” she said, and Sandi took the arm Matt offered.
He was rather proud of himself. His foray into romance had cheered his mother, and if the smile on Sandi’s face was any indication, he hadn’t done too badly with her, either. Not that he wanted to impress her, but he certainly didn’t want her thinking he was a man of less than sterling talents anywhere he chose to apply them.
For the time being, that would be in the foreign arena of romance.
“I decided you were right,” he told Sandi. “About granting Mother her last wish.”
“So that’s what the oranges were all about.”
“Yes.” Remembering his recent success, he smiled. “The tour of roses, too. Mother can see the garden from her window, and if my guess is right, she’ll be all eyes while I romance you in the garden.”
“She did seem perkier today.”
“If thinking we’re falling in love will make her last days happier, then I’ll do my part.”
Actually, he was glad for a chance to make his mother happy. Now that he thought about it, he’d focused on his work for so long he hadn’t paid much attention to anything else.
“And I’ll do mine.”
“Thank you. You’re a generous woman.”
“Don’t pin any medals on me. Maybe I have ulterior motives.”
“You don’t.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m a lawyer,” was all he said. Never reveal your hand to your opponent. It was a credo he lived by. The fact was, he’d truly wanted to believe the worst of Sandi Wentworth, but in spite of his best intentions to prove her evil, she’d turned out to be a decent woman.
That should make this faux courtship easier. Or harder. Depending on the viewpoint.
Matt wasn’t fixing to explore the latter viewpoint. He’d put on an act to make his mother happy, and when it was all over, he would go about his business as usual.
The rose garden lay just ahead. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a shadow at his mother’s window.
“She’s watching,” he said.
“Good.”
“The first rose you see is an old French bourbon, cultivated in l828. Its perfume is musky and not at all subtle, as you might expect of the French.”
“It’s magnificent,” Sandi replied.
“The yellow rose on the left is sunsprite. Aunt Kitty planted it near the courtyard because of its cinnamon-like fragrance.”
“Oh, I love yellow. It’s so cheerful, don’t you think?”
“Cheerful?”
“Yes, like the sun.”
“I suppose.”
“Have you ever noticed that you can be blue, and all of a sudden the sun will come out and you start feeling better for no other reason?”
“No. I never noticed. I don’t believe in mood swings…. The pink rose is a grandiflora called Tournament of Roses. Its blooms are larger than…”
“Matt…”
“Yes?”
“All this history of the rose garden is really interesting…”
“Good. I’m glad you like it.” Matt congratulated himself on his second romantic success of the day.
“I do. But I think your mother is going to be looking for something more.”
“It’s too early in the make-believe courtship for clenches in the garden.”
“Yes, but don’t you think we should at least hold hands?”
He could handle that. No problem at all. Matt reached for her hand and felt gut-punched. Good God, it was a conspiracy. A bunch of female angels must have ganged up on the Almighty and said, “Look, you’ve got to make women’s hands soft and fragile feeling so men will lose their minds.”
Well, he wasn’t fixing to lose his mind. He would just run his thumb around her palm to check out the size and give her tender knuckles a caress or two in case Lucy was looking, and then he would…
Lose his mind.
And that just from holding her hand. What would happen when he kissed her?
No sense losing sleep over it.
He cupped her face and tipped it up to the sun, and every sane thought flew out of his head. All because of her eyes. And the dewy softness of her skin. And the way her lips parted, pink and damp and delicious-looking.
He leaned over and took a taste. Then another. And another.
Something wonderful and awful and glorious and terrible happened. She was in his arms and he was holding her so close he could feel her heart beating next to his and he didn’t want to quit kissing her. Not ever.
To make matters worse, she was making satisfied little cat’s-in-the-cream sounds. Spurred like a stallion in the Kentucky Derby, he deepened the kiss, plunged his tongue inside her mouth and nearly crossed the finish line.
Alarmed, Matt broke the kiss and stepped back. Sandi glowed. That’s the only way he could describe the way she looked. It was terrible and awful and absolutely the most amazing thing that had ever happened to Matthew Coltrane. Nobody had ever glowed because of him.
He silently congratulated himself on having the foresight to read one of his mother’s books. Tonight he might read another.
“Ohhh,” Sandi said. “That was perfect.”
“Yes.”
Suspended, they stared at each other and merely breathed. Air had never tasted so sweet.
“It was absolutely the most wonderful kiss—”
“Yes.”
She blushed. “For your mother’s sake, I mean.”
“Of course. Naturally, it was all for her benefit.”
“Well, obviously.”
“You were right. We have to make our romance look authentic.”
“Oh, I agree. Absolutely.”
He lifted her fragile hand to his lips and planted a soft kiss there. For his mother’s sake.
Sandi sighed in a delightful “ohhhhing” kind of way that warmed Matt in places he hadn’t even known were cold.
“I think we should do it again,” he said, “in case she wasn’t looking the first time.”
“Ohhh, yesss!”
She tilted her face to his, and he discovered that kissing her was something he didn’t have to train for by reading a book. It came naturally.
The force of his desire shocked him, and he stepped back from her immediately.
There was no need to take their playacting further. No spying eyes would follow them into the bedroom. Separate bedrooms. With the connecting door locked.
Matt planned to keep it that way, and so he launched into the rose tour with feverish intent.
“The next rose is in a class called—”
“I have to be going,” she said.
“Going?”
“Back inside.”
“Oh, back inside.” Relief made him weak-kneed.
“Yes. To…to do some sketching. Of your mother. Before…”
“Yes, yes. I understand. We’ve done enough for today.”
“Have we?”
“Well, maybe not for the entire day. Perhaps tonight…”
“Tonight?”
He suddenly had visions of Sandi spread upon his bed. He was speechless. She touched her lips. The extremely soft, infinitely desirable, utterly irresistible lips he’d so recently kissed.
“I see.” She smiled. “See you tonight.”
He stood with his feet taking root in the garden soil until Sandi was out of sight. Then he sat down in the nearby gazebo and dreamed of tonight.
For the sake of his mother, of course.
In the safety of her bedroom, Sandi leaned against the wall with her hand pressed over her runaway heart. “What have I done?”
The wall was the only thing holding her up. This simply couldn’t be happening. Not again. She had to stop thinking that man plus kiss plus rapidly beating heart equals love.
“It was all make-believe,” she said.
And with that, she held a cool cloth to her flushed face, combed her hair and went to find Lucy.
Lucy sat in a chaise beside the window looking youthful and healthy.
“You look flushed, my dear,” she said.
Sandi automatically said, “The sun,” then flushed even deeper.
“Ah, yes, the sun.” Lucy patted the chaise. “Come, dear, sit by me and tell me if my son’s any good at kissing.”
“What?”
“I saw you from the window.”
Of course she had. Wasn’t that the whole point? Sandi realized she could tell Lucy exactly how she felt and get the benefit of advice from a wise woman who was an expert at romance, while at the same time granting Lucy’s fondest wish.
“I know my son’s a stick-in-the-mud, but it did look to me as if the two of you were lost in each other.”
“We were. I was.”
“Matt, in love at last. You don’t know how happy that makes me.”
“I can’t speak for Matt, and I’m confused about my own feelings. I’ve never felt anything like that. Ever. But I’ve been in love so many times, I’m just not sure anymore.”
“Those teenage crushes never amount to much.”
“I’ve been engaged several times, and each time one of them left I thought I’d be brokenhearted. But I wasn’t. Not once. Just miffed and a little ego-bruised.”
“I never would have dreamed…”
Sandi blushed. “Please don’t think I’m loose. Phoebe taught me never to give myself unless I was certain the man would treasure the gift.”
“Ah, yes. Beautiful Phoebe. Everybody loved her.”
“So did I. She was like a mother to me.”
“She was right, you know. And so you thought these men treasured you?”
“No. Not really. Everything always happened so fast…. Oh, but I’m tiring you out with my problems.”
“Nonsense, dear. I’m healthy as a horse… I mean, I was healthy as a horse before the heart attack.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“You’re one of the good things that has come from this misfortune.”
“I feel the same way about you. I really love you and this fabulous old house—”
“And Matt.”
“I don’t know, and I don’t know how to tell.”
Lucy got a dreaming look on her face. “I was in love once,” she said. “But I made a terrible mistake. He wanted to wait and I wanted instant gratification and so when Henry Coltrane came along and promised me the moon, I said yes.”
Lucy gave Sandi a piercing look. “Don’t ever make that mistake, dear. Always follow your heart.”
“I’m not sure I know how. I used to believe I was following my heart, but now that I look back, I’m not so sure.”
“The heart whispers in our ear, but we often don’t hear because the ego is screaming so loudly we mistake the cacophony for wisdom and common sense and rational thinking. Don’t ignore your heart whispers, my dear.”
“I’ll try not to. Are you up to my sketching a bit?”
“Absolutely.” Lucy struck a pose, and Sandi squelched her laughter.
“Just be yourself. I’ll do a series of sketches, then we’ll discuss which one you want me to paint on canvas.”
“I want to look young.”
“You do.”
“And beautiful.”
“You are.”
“And sexy.”
Sandi started laughing and Lucy joined her. That’s the way it went all afternoon, sketching and talking and laughing until finally Kitty joined them with a platter of cookies.
“If we’re going to have a party, we need food.” She winked at Lucy. “Low fat, on account of your heart.”
Dolly came in trailing an ostrich-plume boa and Kitty said, “Good grief, Dolly, you look like you’re molting.”
“I probably am. Birds deprived of sex start losing their feathers.”
“I never heard that,” Kitty said, and Lucy told her, “That’s because she made it up.”
“Don’t pay them any mind,” Dolly told Sandi. “There’re just a couple of old fuddy-duddies.”
Lucy said, “If I weren’t dying—” and the three women all started laughing again.
Sandi had never seen anything as brave. She’d heard laughter through tears was cathartic, but this was her first time to witness it. She wished she didn’t ever have to leave this house and the company of these women…and Matt.
He appeared as suddenly as if she’d thought him up.
“What’s going on in here?” Spying cookies, he whisked the platter off the table. “Mother, you know you’re not supposed to eat these.”
Lucy looked chagrined, and Dolly said, “Party pooper.”
“That’s right. Party’s over. Mother, you should be resting.” He turned a fierce look on Kitty and Dolly. “And you two should be ashamed.”
“We’re not,” Dolly said.
“As for you, young lady…” Matt turned his intense scrutiny on Sandi, and she wondered if she should bow, raise her right hand and swear to tell the truth or giggle. “I’m taking you out of here before these three think up any more mischief.”
She felt a blooming in her spirit. “Where?” she asked, not that it really mattered. Anywhere would be great as long as it was with him.
“To the lake. We’ll go sailing so you can see the sunset.”
“That’s very romantic, Matt,” Lucy said. “I think I wrote a scene like that once in—”
“This is not a scene in one of your books, Mother. We’re just going sailing.”