by Diana Seere
“We can’t help that.”
“I suppose not.” Sighing, Marilyn shoved the rest of the pastry in her mouth. “At least you’re trying.”
Appearing with two wine glasses, Derry handed them each one. “There is no try, only do.” When Marilyn took the glass, he kissed her on the cheek, and she flushed.
Jess smiled into her glass.
“So, Derry,” Marilyn began, a fake smile on her face. “What is it you do, actually? For a living?”
His eyes darted to Jess for a split second. She could see the moment he turned into the charming but stupid playboy, as if flipping a switch. “Me?” He pointed a thick finger at his heart.
“Yes, you,” Marilyn said. “I suppose you don’t need the money, but you must do something to keep busy.”
Choking down nervous laughter, Jess looked down at her feet, searching for holes in the floorboards to crawl through.
“I’ve devoted my energies to areas where I excel best,” he said. “Enjoying myself and sharing that enjoyment with others.”
“Aren’t you getting a bit old to party all the time?” Marilyn asked.
Jess’s head snapped up. “Mom, please. Enough with the inquisition. This isn’t the time or the place.”
“Then when?” her mother asked.
Jess glared. “Nev—”
“Whenever you’d like,” Derry said. “Although perhaps it would be best to defer it until after the current celebration.”
“You’d come over for dinner?” Marilyn asked. “My house isn’t anything fancy.”
Fearing her mother was going to annoy Derry with her assumptions about the future, Jess grabbed her arm and tried to pull her away. “Oh look. Everyone’s starting to sit down for dinner.”
But Derry took one long step and blocked their way. “It would be an honor to be welcome in your home,” he said with a bow.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you Stanton men sure have a way about you,” Marilyn said.
They sure did. Jess plastered a smile on her face. “Let’s sit. Lilah told me your seat is near Asher.” With fake enthusiasm, she propelled her mother across the room to a chair at the far end of the table. She parked her there and fled to her own seat, blissfully several chairs away and out of sight.
“What cruelty is this?” Derry’s voice rumbled in her ear, tickling the fine hairs at her temple. “To be sitting so close to such a forbidden fruit?” Plucking the card with his name in fancy script off the plate next to hers, he pulled out the chair and sat, his knee brushing hers before jerking away.
She lowered her voice. “What kind of fruit?”
Fixing his gaze on his wine glass, his lips twitched. “Plum, I think. You’re too spicy to be a peach.”
“You know what my favorite fruit is?”
“Ah, good. Such simple, harmless conversation. Tell me, what is your favorite fruit?”
“Don’t you want to guess?”
“Certainly, if you like,” he said. “Apple, perhaps?”
“Nope.”
He swirled the wine in his glass. “Grapes?”
“Come on, you’re not even trying.”
“My apologies. Perhaps the delicious pear?”
She shook her head. “Banana,” she said, licking a droplet of wine off the rim of her glass.
Scowling, he ran a hand through his hair. “You torture me. You insist I behave, and then you torture me.”
She giggled into her napkin. He looked so uncomfortable. Just wait until she started playing footsies under the table—
Oh no. She was doing it again.
No, no, no. She’d promised Lilah. She’d promised.
“I’m sorry,” she said, inhaling deeply, trying to regain her composure. Sitting up taller, she exchanged hellos with Edward, who was sitting across from her, before draining her water glass.
Derry leaned forward and gave his little brother a dark look. “No plaid tonight?”
In a perfectly tailored dark suit with his full beard neatly trimmed, Edward looked like a rich lumberjack. Not a bad look at all, Jess thought.
Offering a sarcastic smile, Edward glanced at Molly to his left, who was pink-cheeked as she gazed across the table at Derry. “Hello again.”
Molly turned. “Evan! Hi!”
Above his beard, Edward’s own cheeks turned red.
Derry’s mirth tumbled out of him in low, throaty laughter. Not wanting Molly to be embarrassed further, Jess kicked him under the table.
He shot her a smoldering look. Perhaps even violence to his shins was too seductive.
“It’s Edward, actually,” the poor man said apologetically.
“Oh my God, I did it again.” Molly flung her head back and sighed. “This is why they keep me hidden away in the dressing room.”
“I can’t imagine why anyone would ever want you to hide,” Edward said. His voice had dropped in pitch, almost softening to a purr.
Derry’s laughter turned into a chuckle. “Good one, little brother.”
Edward turned to Molly. “Ignore him. Tell me about yourself.” He seemed awkward, as if the words had been rehearsed. Large social events were clearly not his thing.
While Molly launched into a summary of her job dressing the staff and assisting the members with their own personal style, Jess and Derry fell silent. Edward, eyes fixed on Molly, seemed transfixed and said little. Lilah herself came by with salads for everyone, laughing about Gavin getting tomato sauce on his jacket in the kitchen because he’d bumped into the chef carrying the lasagna.
Then Molly asked Jess about applying to med school, her ambitions to be a doctor or a researcher, and Jess found herself blushing under Derry’s steady stare as she talked. They hadn’t talked much about themselves, had they? It had all gone too fast, been too hot for conversation.
When Edward abruptly asked Molly about her boots—he didn’t understand the point of them since high heels were so impractical—Jess softly asked Derry, “Do you have any hobbies?”
“You know what my hobbies are,” he said.
“Seriously. That’s it?”
“You wound me,” he said, placing a hand over his heart. “Have I ever pretended to be anything other than what you see?”
“No. Which is why I’m suspicious. Maybe you’ve got something to hide.”
He lowered his voice. “You know I do.”
“Other than that.”
“What are you imagining, my dear?” he asked. “I assure you I am not married. Nor have I fathered any offspring. My adventures with women are well publicized—”
“I’m not talking about anything like that,” she said. “Never mind. Forget it.”
They finished their salads in silence. When the plates were taken away, Jess talked to Carl, seated at her right, about how nice it was to be waited on for a change.
After a few minutes, Derry’s elbow nudged hers.
“I was just trying to make conversation,” she said.
Instead of replying, he took his phone out of his pocket.
“You want to text?” she asked. “That’s easier for you?”
“Calm down, tigress,” he said softly. “I’m giving you what you want. As I am wont to do.” He held out the phone, tilting the screen toward her.
It was a picture of a naked woman. A photo of a painting, she realized. The woman was dark-haired and voluptuous, reclining on a white sofa.
Derry swiped the screen and revealed a second photo, this time of a different painting, a different woman. Then a third.
When she reached up to take the phone and see more for herself, he pulled it away and shoved it back into his pocket.
Making sure nobody was watching, she asked, “Did you do those?”
“Define ‘do,’” he said.
“Paint,” she said, torn between tears and laughter.
“Would you be bothered if I had?”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Why would I be?”
“Some women would be uncomfortable.”
“Posing might be,” she said. “Especially if the room was too drafty.”
“I keep it quite warm in my studio for that reason.”
“You have a studio?”
Nodding, he drained his glass and signaled for the waiter. When his glass was refilled, he drained it again. “It’s part of my loft.”
“It’s hard for you to talk about, isn’t it?” she asked softly. They were careening into deep, personal territory. Jess loved it.
“Please don’t… share… this with anyone. I’d be eternally grateful. Desperately grateful, in fact.”
“Your family doesn’t know?”
Shooting a glance at Edward, who was still talking to Molly, he shook his head. The tension in his expression made her realize how hard it had been to share his secret with her.
“They’re really good,” she said softly. “You’re an artist.”
The look he gave her was so grateful, so searching, she wanted to climb into his lap and hold him forever.
Derry had detected a change in Jess as soon as she’d walked into Gavin’s cabin, where the rehearsal participants had all convened, ready to be wined and dined and to make small chat that would grate at him, each second of it time he could not spend talking with Jess.
As she’d made her way across the room, there had been an edge to her, her scent tinged with fear and a hunger for acceptance that had made him ache. Fear. Why fear? It had been no normal scent. His nose discerned layers in every person’s emotional states, like the microexpressions muscles created in giving visual cues to a person’s inner mood. Derry could find the finely tuned nuance of emotion in a person’s odor.
Jess’s had just migrated from a typical nervousness to a deeper, more complex fear that had put him on alert. It had nothing to do with basic nervousness or even her mother’s obligatory questioning.
Some other issue was troubling her.
And he’d vowed to make it go away.
His worry had turned to unadulterated joy as he’d watched her, animatedly speaking with Molly and Edward, her hair coated in the scent of sunshine and foliage, her skin radiating fresh desire that intensified when her eyes met his.
And then he’d revealed his secret. His painting—his lifeblood. And now he, too, was nervous.
You’re an artist.
My God, this woman. This perfect, ripe goddess.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t walk here in the moonlight together. I missed you,” he murmured, struggling to remain courtly and restrained, wanting only to paint her nude, gorgeous form for the rest of his life.
With his tongue.
“We were apart for fifteen minutes.”
“An eternity.”
“You’re recycling your own pickup lines,” she joked, tossing her long, honeyed waves behind one shoulder, making him sigh in carefully layered hitches lest he groan.
“No, my dear. I miss you so much that I feel the need to say it twice.” He reached under the tablecloth for her knee.
He received her hand instead, fingers entwining with his, a sweet domestic gesture that quelled him.
“Is something wrong?” he whispered. “You don’t seem yourself.” Perhaps his paintings bothered her. A tremor of vulnerability rippled through him, incongruous and foreign. Did she dislike what she saw? Was she being polite in calling him an artist? Had he misjudged her reaction?
Jess opened her mouth to explain just as he felt it. Felt her fear, the skin on his back prickling with the cool heat of animal instinct.
Before he looked up, he knew exactly what he would see.
Asher. Watching them from the head of the table.
He knows.
Jess’s voiceless words slammed through his head like a lightning bolt, so swift and hard he flinched, crushing the small bones of her hand with his squeeze. She gasped. He let go.
I’m so sorry, he said silently.
But it wasn’t her hand that hurt, for she rubbed her own brow as well.
“How can I hear your thoughts?” she asked, her voice trembling, her words spilling off her tongue.
Just then, he noticed Lilah standing behind them, tapping on Jess’s back, her eyes widening as it became all too clear that she’d heard Jess’s question.
Lilah paled. “You can hear him? In your mind?” Lilah’s voice was so low Derry could feel it in his bones. But his future sister-in-law’s eyes weren’t on Jess.
They were on him.
Flustered, Jess stood abruptly, the glass of Chardonnay that rested between her and Derry’s table settings upending, pouring a cool six ounces of white wine right into his lap. He felt the liquid but did not react, for Lilah’s piercing gaze could not be escaped.
And then he felt Jess’s hand on his cock.
“I’m such a klutz!” Jess said, patting at his crotch with a napkin twisted in the shape of a swan. “I am so sorry!”
Lilah gaped at the sight of her sister’s hand pumping up and down in his lap. Derry snapped up Jess’s wrist in his grasp. He could’ve easily held both her wrists in one hand and still have room in his palm.
The image made him woozy.
And hard.
“Oh my God!” Jess gasped, realizing what she was doing. “I-I’m so sorry! I can’t do anything right, can I?” Biting her lower lip, she dropped the napkin, her face aflame. She looked up, behind Derry, and froze. He didn’t have to turn to see why.
He felt him.
Asher. Still watching from his seat.
“May I have a word with you?” Lilah asked, her voice tight, blonde waves framing a very angry face.
“Of course!” Jess murmured, wiggling around the chair, breathing hard with anxiety. Derry’s limbs filled with blood, ready to jump up and help, to intervene, to rescue her.
“Not you. Him.” Lilah’s words squeezed between tightly gritted teeth as she pulled Derry’s arm, her fingers bunching his suit jacket, the effort useless if she truly thought she could move him by force.
He stood, obeying her request, following Lilah’s tiny, quick steps made in beautiful turquoise high heels that showcased legs that reminded him of her sister. These Murphy women were damned enchanting. What special magic did they possess that made them so irresistible to Stanton men?
Deep in his thoughts, he didn’t realize Lilah had stopped suddenly and turned to face him. Too late to stop his momentum, Derry bowled into her full-on, knocking her backward, making her shoes clatter on the marbled floor. Quick thinking allowed him to break her fall, hands on her waist, one snaking up behind her back as his palm opened against the space between her shoulder blades.
“Are you all right?” he whispered into her hair, their bodies smashed together as he released her, unharmed and still upright. Self-conscious and worried, he flooded with relief at the fact that Lilah hadn’t been hurt.
“You can hear each other’s thoughts?” Lilah gasped, her face going a ghastly white.
“Lilah, what’s wrong?” Gavin asked, then glared at Derry as if he’d made her unhappy.
Gavin and Lilah’s words felt like bullets peppering his body, each causing more damage than the last. “I didn’t—I don’t know what’s going on!” he protested.
“Can you hear my sister?” Lilah demanded. “In your mind?”
He reeled back. “How did you know?”
Derry watched in abject horror as she slumped against his brother in a dead faint.
Before he could react, Gavin had Lilah on the ground and Jess was bending over her, ripping her dark sweater over her head and bunching it under Lilah’s feet, barking orders to Gavin involving water, air, and a pillow.
“What the hell happened?” Jess snapped, her focus on Lilah.
“Nothing!” Derry assured her as Gavin dashed out of the room to get the items Jess ordered.
Derry watched Jess reach for the soft skin under Lilah’s jaw and feel for a pulse as she closed her eyes and appeared to count. Clad only in a light chemise and her skirt, Jess’s skin broke out in gooseflesh
from the cold.
Ignoring him, Jess continued to minister to Lilah, moving with a precision and professionalism that made Derry stand back and observe with a deep respect. Jess was a premed student, he knew.
Now he could see it in her.
Lilah’s eyelids fluttered as Jess stroked her cheek. Unfocused but gaining consciousness, Lilah sat up, then promptly fell back. Jess caught her before she slammed her head into the marbled floor.
“Jess,” Lilah gasped. “Jess, you can’t. You can’t change.”
Derry went numb.
Jess chuckled, the sound carrying the tone of someone who is humoring another person. “I’ll always be here for you. I’ll never change.”
“No, no,” Lilah murmured. “I mean—” Her words faded off as she took a deep breath, clearly centering herself.
Derry knew exactly what she meant even if Jess didn’t.
The murmur of voices behind them made him turn. A crowd, led by Eva, came toward them. Derry looked at Jess, dressed only in her thin piece of silk lingerie, and shrugged out of his suit jacket, slipping it about her shoulders. She gave him a surprised look.
He leaned forward, speaking through lips that weren’t quite his. “While your state of undress is absolutely enchanting to me, there’s no need to share that much beauty with the public right now, my dear.”
She gave him a grateful look and returned her attention to Lilah, who now had Gavin next to her, stroking her hand. Jess offered Lilah some water and took her pulse.
“I’m fine. Fine!” Lilah insisted, waving off the attention. “I just think I went too long without eating and then drank wine on an empty stomach.”
Gavin frowned but recovered quickly, glaring at Derry, who looked away. Lilah stood, legs shaky but gaining strength as the crowd made polite sounds of relief and Jess and Gavin helped her back to the large party table, leaving Derry alone.
Numb. Derry was numb. Lilah didn’t want Jess to experience The Change.
Which meant Lilah didn’t want him to be with her sister at all.
Chapter 21
After dinner, Jess refused to go back to the main house until Lilah agreed to talk to her privately. Something had happened—Lilah had never fainted before in her life—and Jess was determined to understand what. Since the fainting, Derry had withdrawn into himself, plastering that fake playboy shtick of his on the outside, charming everyone with compliments and a steady stream of bawdy jokes.
