His Brother's Fiancée

by Jasmine Cresswell

  "Thanks. Everything looks great." Jordan signed the bill, adding a generous tip.

  The waiter left just as Emily came back into the sitting room, tying the belt on a terry-cloth robe. Her hair was wet, she was barefoot, and she'd washed off all her makeup. She looked so damn beautiful that Jordan had to hold on to the edge of his chair to prevent himself leaping up and grabbing her.

  She had obviously decided to put their previous conversation behind them, as if it had never happened. Oh yes, Jordan thought. Let's add a bit more evasion to our relationship. The pair of us are major league champions at not talking about topics that are important.

  She sat opposite him, smiling with determined cheerfulness. In any other woman, he would have assumed that the tantalizing glimpses of naked flesh revealed by the robe were a deliberate ploy to arouse and torment him. With Emily, he was confident she had absolutely no idea that the lapels of the robe weren't staying closed, even less idea what she was doing to him. He could have stopped the torture in an instant simply by telling her that the robe wasn't properly closed. Naturally, he was crazy enough to prefer the torment.

  "Everything looks wonderful," she said as her gaze skimmed over the champagne and a bowl of raspberries, before coming to rest on the platter of bite-size sandwiches. "I'm totally and completely starving. I think the last time I ate a proper meal was at breakfast yesterday morning."

  Jordan kept his gaze focused on the food, as opposed to the enticing length of Emily's bare legs, almost touching his beneath the table. "I ordered a variety of sandwiches. That way I figured there'd be something you like."

  "Where food is concerned, I'm very easy to please." She smiled, gradually relaxing as she became more confident that he wasn't going to insist on taking up their conversation where it had left off. "Tonight, you could probably even convince me to eat anchovies."

  He grinned. "You don't have to sink that low. I recommend the smoked turkey breast and the cream cheese with walnuts. I tried them both, and they're good."

  While she ate, Jordan poured two glasses of champagne and handed one to her. "Here's to us," he said, raising his glass.

  "To us." She drank quickly, as if even that casual toast was too intimate for comfort. Then she gave a tiny laugh. "This is weird, isn't it? I mean, here we are, a regular married couple as far as the world's concerned, and yet we don't know the most basic things about each other's likes and dislikes. I don't even know where you live or where you work. I don't know who your friends are, what your dreams are for the future…"

  Jordan held her gaze. "That's what a honeymoon is for," he said. "Getting to know each other. I'm looking forward to it."

  Emily returned his gaze, her eyes darkening with surprise. "You know, so am I."

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Emily was relieved that the wedding ceremony had gone off without mishap and that the first night of her honeymoon was turning out to be less of a problem than she could reasonably have expected. Despite this relief, and her state of near exhaustion, she slept very little. Perched on the bed, her body rigid with the knowledge that Jordan lay less than six feet away, she drew in steady breaths and willed herself to relax. But her muscles remained as stiff and unyielding as a Victorian corset, and sleep proved an elusive luxury.

  Like anesthesia wearing off after a tooth extraction, the numbness that had kept her functional for the past twenty-four hours finally dissipated, leaving Emily to confront the painful reality that she was married to a man she barely knew. A man, moreover, whose mere presence was enough to make her skin prickle with tension.

  Despite his dubious moral code, Emily had to admit Jordan had saved her from major humiliation when he stepped into the breach on behalf of his brother. Michael was supposed to be the Chambers brother who'd been blessed with most of the charm and all the social graces, but the past couple of days had revealed that Jordan possessed his own good qualities, including a sensitivity to her needs and feelings that was all the more attractive when contrasted with his brother's ruthless rejection.

  Unfortunately, acknowledging that Jordan had a flair for making a woman feel appreciated brought Emily no com-fort. Instead, she reflected gloomily that her husband had probably acquired his expertise during the long, sensual afternoons he'd spent seducing other men's wives. It couldn't be easy, after all, to persuade dozens of rich society matrons to commit adultery, and ferreting out his partner's emotional needs so that he could make himself agreeable would be an important part of any seducer's stock in trade.

  Emily discovered that she didn't like the idea of being just one more in a long line of women her husband—that crazy word again!—chose to pamper and cosset into submission. If Jordan expected her to be an easy victim, he was going to be disappointed. Other women might fall for his sexual charisma with all the mindless enthusiasm of lemmings leaping off a cliff, but she was made of sterner stuff.

  That point satisfactorily settled, Emily determined not to think about Jordan anymore. Unfortunately, her decision proved easier to make than to keep. Insomnia was a major pain in the butt, she decided, twisting onto her stomach in a vain attempt to find a comfortable position. This was the second night in a row that sleep had eluded her, and she needed to get some rest instead of chewing over facts that couldn't be changed however much she obsessed about them.

  She'd counted 183 fat sheep clambering through hedges before she gave up and accepted that make-believe livestock were no competition for all-too-real visions of her husband in bed with Mary Christine. She'd tried to bury her memories of that afternoon so deeply that they couldn't resurface, but despite her best efforts, the scene in the Bernauers' master bedroom remained stubbornly vivid.

  Emily flopped onto her back and scowled at the ceiling, pressing her fingertips to her eyes in an effort to induce sleep. But what she saw was a sated and tousled Mary Christine lying in the crook of Jordan's arm, her languid smile oozing sexual satisfaction.

  Even now, Emily could summon a precise image of how Jordan's hand had curved possessively around Mary Christine's shoulders, and how his hair, rumpled and slightly too long, had fallen over his eyes. Eyes that were warm, laughing and relaxed as he gazed down at the woman lying next to him. Eyes that turned blank and agate hard when he turned to look at Emily, who'd come to a dead halt in the bedroom doorway, her arms full of fabric samples and strips of wallpaper.

  For an endless moment she and Jordan had simply stared at each other in a silence so encompassing it was almost tangible. Then Emily had dropped her bundle of samples, and the freeze-frame had shattered. She'd knelt to pick up the spilled fabric swatches and Jordan had reacted quickly. Muscles rippling beneath tanned, taut skin, he leaned down and grabbed a cover from the floor, throwing it over Mary Christine.

  Oh yes, Jordan had moved real fast, Emily thought with uncharacteristic sarcasm. He had behaved like a perfect gentleman—provided you ignored the fact that the woman whose modesty he'd been so anxious to protect happened to be another man's wife.

  Emily wished that she didn't remember how Jordan had looked on that rainy afternoon, but she did. She wished that she didn't feel a hollow ache in the pit of her stomach when the memories resurfaced, but she did. She wished that her body wouldn't grow hot with tension, but it did.

  The insidious heat washed over her again, leaving her more awake than ever. The upheavals of the past few days seemed to have imbued her with an unfamiliar restlessness and she found herself questioning assumptions she had previously considered basic to her personality. Until this moment, Emily had told herself that she'd experienced nothing but disgust on finding Jordan and Mary Christine in bed together. Now she felt the need to confront the whole truth, which was something more complex than straightforward disgust.

  Okay, spell it out, she told herself grimly. You were genuinely shocked by the scene that greeted you in Ted Bernauer's bedroom, but shock wasn't all you felt. You were also aroused. You were appalled by Mary Christine's betrayal of her husband, and Jordan's willingness to co
mmit adultery, but there was a little thread of envy wound into your disapproval. You wished that you could be as uninhibited as Mary Christine. You wished that you could shed your hangups and lie naked in a man's arms in broad daylight, reveling in the knowledge that you'd brought him total sexual satisfaction.

  Since she seemed to be in the mood for honesty, however unpleasant, Emily decided she might as well confess the rest, at least in the privacy of her own thoughts. The truth she'd been twisting and squirming to avoid for the past three months was this: she found Jordan Chambers sexually attractive. There, she'd said it. While she scrabbled on the floor for missing pieces of fabric, she had fantasized about what it would be like to be kissed by him, and how his hands would feel as they roamed over her body. Knowing that Jordan was her fiancé's brother, she still hadn't been able to halt her fantasies. She had wondered how it would feel to make love to him, and then lie beside him, drowsy but content.

  Emily usually avoided digging into the darker layers of her subconscious, but she didn't have to dig very deep to understand that the reason she was wide-awake at two-thirty in the morning was because her overactive imagination kept presenting enticing visions of what might happen if she left her bed and climbed in next to Jordan.

  With more speed than finesse, Emily slammed the door closed on that train of thought. Oh, no, she definitely wasn't going there. The events of the past couple of days might have destroyed her lifelong struggle to always behave with impeccable correctness, but she wasn't about to throw all her values out the window. Her birth provided living proof of what could happen when two people allowed their passion to outrun their judgment, and she had no intention of falling into the trap of allowing purely physical curiosity to lead to an unwanted pregnancy. Sex for her could never be casual, so starting an affair with Jordan was out of the question. The fact that they were married was an irrelevant technicality, and one that she couldn't use as an excuse.

  Hot and irritable, Emily rolled onto her side, tucking her hand under her cheek. Too late, she realized that she had turned to face Jordan, a direction she'd so far managed to avoid despite all her tossing and turning. He was lying on his stomach, spread-eagled across the mattress, his face angled toward her. His hair fell forward, just as it had on that memorable afternoon with Mary Christine, but tonight his eyes were closed and he appeared lost in peaceful slumber.

  So much for his claim to be a restless sleeper, Emily thought grumpily. He had strolled out of the bathroom two hours ago, dropped onto the bed, fluffed his pillow, and instantly fallen asleep. He'd barely moved since then, which suggested that he was untroubled by bad dreams. He evidently didn't seem to be suffering from the tension that had her securely in its thrall.

  She found Jordan's tranquility infuriating. Unlike her nagging subconscious, which remained in permanent lurk mode, ready to pounce the moment she relaxed, his conscience seemed easily lulled. To all appearances, the wretched man didn't have a worry in the world. The fact that he was married to a woman he scarcely knew was obviously no big deal as far as he was concerned. The fact that he was stuck with his brother's discarded fiancée for the next several months hadn't given him a case of raging insomnia. That lousy wedding gift was apparently hers alone.

  As for her fear that Jordan might resent her no-sex rule and attempt to make love to her…hah! She sure needn't have worried. Judging from his state of tranquil slumber, having sex with her evoked about as much longing as having last year's tax return audited by the IRS.

  Emily wondered if he found her too mousy and unattractive to be worth seducing, or if his level of desire was low because his affair with Mary Christine still continued. That prospect produced a flash of outrage so intense she jerked upright in the bed.

  Good grief, was it possible that Jordan and Mary Christine were still carrying on their affair? Had she been naive to believe Mary Christine's sobbing promise that she would never again betray her husband if Emily would only keep silent about what she'd seen? Belatedly, she realized that even if Jordan was no longer involved with Mary Christine, that offered no guarantee he wasn't involved with some other woman.

  Now, there was a subject that ought to have been included in one of their nonexistent prewedding chats, Emily thought with bleak irony, forcing herself to slide down the bed into a prone position before Jordan noticed she was awake. Was it too late to strike a deal that while they were married, Jordan couldn't have affairs with other women? Was it even fair to make that rule if she was refusing to have sex with him herself?

  Smothering a hysterical desire to laugh, she wondered what Miss Manners might have to say about the etiquette of that knotty little problem. What were the twenty-first century rules for sexual fidelity when two people were united in a nineteenth-century-style marriage of convenience?

  Except that nothing about this marriage was even remotely convenient, Emily reflected despairingly. The more she thought about the ramifications of her daily life with Jordan, the less she could understand why she had agreed to marry him. Realistically, how in the world were they going to organize their lives? She'd had a grand total of two private conversations with Jordan before the wedding, neither of them lasting longer than five minutes. During one of those conversations she'd stipulated that their bank accounts would remain separate. In another, she'd asked him for his home address, which he'd given her, but they'd been interrupted before she had time to ask if the address was for a house, condo, or rental apartment.

  In retrospect, finances and the address of her new home seemed way down on the list of things she should have discussed. Instead, she should have asked him how they were going to prevent their lives from getting hopelessly intertwined. Would they have separate phone lines, with separate answering machines so that they wouldn't have to take each other's messages? Were they going to tell each other where they went each time they left the house? Or was their marriage going to be such a sham that she would never know whether Jordan's absence meant he was at his factory building kitchen cabinets, or frolicking in another woman's bedroom, making passionate love to his latest conquest?

  Hell and damnation, Emily thought, punching her pillow with all the force of her pent-up frustration. How in the world had she gotten herself into this insane situation?

  Jordan finally stirred, and she hastily closed her eyes, afraid that he might wake up and find her staring at him. She didn't want to create the wrong impression. She didn't want him to get the idea that she was looking at him be-cause she was interested in him as a man, much less as a potential lover. Because, of course, nothing could be further from the truth. The fact that she found him attractive was confusing, but irrelevant. Emily didn't like messy emotions, and messy was the perfect word to describe her feelings toward Jordan Chambers.

  She seized on that last thought because she'd finally found something that brought a measure of comfort. This whole marriage situation was messy and that was why she was such a mental and emotional wreck. She could cope with full-scale disasters that would destroy other people, but she couldn't tolerate mess, confusion and indecision. Obviously, the cure for her strange restlessness was to lay down some clear guidelines for this crazy marriage. To hell with etiquette and what was reasonable—she needed a comfort zone of agreed behavior. Some rules for their married life. Starting with the sex issue.

  Tomorrow she would let Jordan know she expected him to remain celibate for the few months that their marriage would last. She would point out that they'd already caused more than enough scandal to last a lifetime, and she wasn't willing to return to face San Antonio's gossips, wondering all the time if rumors of his latest affair were already circulating.

  Jordan wouldn't like the idea of celibacy one bit, but he could just suck it up, Emily decided. There was even a grim sort of satisfaction to be gained from the idea of imposing celibacy on Jordan Chambers, San Antonio's most notorious stud. He was the one who'd proposed this marriage, and he could live with the consequences.

  Celibacy, Emily told herse
lf firmly. That was definitely the way to go. She would inform Jordan of her decision before bedtime tomorrow.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Visualizing Jordan condemned to a life of monklike abstinence was the only satisfaction Emily found during a long and weary night. After several more hours of staring alternately at the ceiling, the wall and Jordan's closed eyes, it was a relief when the alarm went off, warning them that they only had an hour before they needed to leave for the airport.

  Jordan, fortunately, didn't seem to be any more of a morning person than she was. He wasn't grouchy, but he didn't feel any need to be chatty, and they consumed black coffee and English muffins in a silence that felt almost companionable. Their unexpected rapport at the breakfast table might be one of the weirder consequences to emerge from the past two days of almost unrelenting weirdness, Emily reflected.

  Their flight left San Antonio on time and arrived a few minutes early at the Denver airport. Exhausted after two sleepless nights, Emily dozed for most of the flight, only waking up as they came in to land.

  Jordan had arranged to pick up a Jeep Cherokee at the airport and they drove west out of the city for more than two hours before he turned off the interstate onto a county road that wound along the banks of the White Rocks River. Twenty minutes later he made another turn onto a single-lane gravel road that curved steeply out of the valley and up the side of Tall Chimney Mountain.

  Emily felt herself unwind as the Jeep climbed steadily upward. The worries of her sleepless night seemed far away as they drove along the deserted road, edged by banks of wildflowers. The solitude and the quiet felt heavenly after two days of unrelenting socializing.

  The countryside looked so inviting that she opened the car window to its fullest extent, leaning out to get a better view. Breathing in pine-scented air that was dry enough to sting her nostrils, she watched a hawk sail across the horizon, its wings silhouetted against a sky that was brilliant, cloudless blue.