Belonging to Taylor (7 page)

"Did the sheik give up?"

"Not immediately. Daddy kept pointing out, very gravely, the differences in religion and lifestyle, and the sheik kept promising to change whatever was wrong. Every time Daddy seemed to be cornered, he found a new objection. Finally, he told the sheik that he really didn't want to lose his firstborn just yet."

"And?"

Taylor grinned up at him. "And then Jamie walked into the room. My fickle sheik instantly fell in love with her and offered Daddy the earth if he'd only consent to their marriage. He was horribly disappointed when he found out how old she was, but he staved for dinner anyway, and when he left he promised he'd be back to court Jamie in a few years."

Passing by them just then, Jamie said softly, "I hope he does come to court me. He was a beautiful man, Taylor, and
such
nice manners. And I'd like to ride a camel. And at least he didn't yell like that Frenchman." With a gliding walk eerily like her mother's, Jamie moved on toward the house.

Trevor folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the tree at his back, staring down at Taylor. "Frenchman?" he queried with terribly polite patience.

She was gazing meditatively at nothing at all. "Hmm? Oh, him. He was just someone I met in Paris."

"He followed you back to the States?"

"Uh-huh."

"And asked for your hand?" Trevor's voice was growing more and more polite.

"Well, yes."

"And?"

Taylor sent him a sudden, glinting smile. "Judging by your tone, I think you would have loved Daddy's answer."

"Only," Trevor said grimly, "if he decked the man."

"He did."

"He did?"

She giggled. "Well, I'm afraid he took Daddy's amiability for weakness, and he became very demanding and—uh— abusive. And when he began shouting and frightening Dory, Daddy knocked him down. I must say it worked, too, because he begged pardon very meekly once he'd picked himself up off the floor, and he left without a murmur."

Trevor was clearly pleased by his mental image of that event, but he held on to his stern expression. "Do you make it a habit of bringing strange men home with you?" he asked severely.

"You should know," she told him blandly.

Without an instant's hesitation he said, "But you knew I was the man you were going to marry. What excuse did you have for the others?"

She choked on a giggle. "You make it sound like I've had men trampling a beaten path to my door!"

"I'm beginning to think that was exactly the case! I thought you waited for me!" he accused, aggrieved.

"A girl has to do
something
while she waits," Taylor explained gently.

"You shameless hussy, how many other men have you brought home?"

"Not many."

"Not many?"

She looked up at him soulfully. "And you're the only one who
mattered,
after all."

"Oh, sure!"

"I promise. It's just that I like making friends, you see."

Trevor made a rude noise. "Friends who propose?"

"Well, only three proposed—" She broke off abruptly with a comical look of guilty dismay.

"Three ?
And just who was the third?"

Taylor sighed. "Well, he was a man I met in—"

"Let me guess," Trevor interrupted in a voice of foreboding. "Just a man you met in London?"

She nodded, half laughing and half guilty. "But I was a schoolgirl, after all, so it didn't really count."

"You," he told her firmly, "should be barred from world travel! It's obvious you make a habit of ensnaring strange foreign men. I shudder to think of what you'd bring home from Australia."

Meditatively, she said, "I was planning on Italy after Australia."

Trevor fought with himself for a silent moment, then said calmly, "You'll probably catch a doge or a count over there.
Much
better than a stodgy American lawyer."

She started to laugh. "Damn! I hoped you'd take the bait!"

He lifted a superior brow at her. "And find myself engaged because I'd gone all primitive and possessive and ordered you not to go anywhere?"

"It was just a thought," she explained wistfully.

Manfully ignoring her pensive smile and mournful eyes, he said sternly, "Well, it won't work!"

"You'd let me go off to Australia with that other lawyer?"

"It's none of my business where you go," he said.

"You wouldn't lift a finger to stop me?"

"Not a finger."

"You wouldn't even
ask
me not to go?"

"It's none of my business," he repeated stoutly.

She stared at him for a moment, sad. Then, before his startled and horrified gaze, large tears pooled in the vivid blue eyes and rolled silently down her cheeks.

'Taylor!" Shaken, he took her hands in his and was just about to apologize fervently for making her cry. Then he remembered how easily she claimed to cry, and suspicion narrowed his eyes.

Slowly, she began to smile, amusement gleaming behind the tears. "You remembered. I wondered if you would."

"You—witch!" He released her hands and pulled out his handkerchief. "Here. Wipe those crocodile tears," he ordered.

She did so, still smiling as she handed the cloth back to him. "Well, it was worth a try," she confessed cheerfully.

"Can you always
make
yourself cry?"

"Oh, yes—except when I'm really upset. For instance, if you really did let me go off to Australia, I wouldn't cry at all. I wouldn't be able to," she said simply.

Trevor fought a desire to promise he wouldn't let her leave the country, ruefully aware of what would most likely happen if she
did
leave. "I'd probably chase after you anyway," he muttered.

"Would you?" She seemed entranced by the idea.

He stared at her for a moment, then reached out and hugged her. Hard. "Damn you," he said a bit thickly.

Taylor smiled up at him when his embrace loosened enough to allow her to do so. "I'm going to go on chasing you, you know," she said confidingly. "I know a good thing when I find one. And I have a slight advantage over most women."

"Which is?" he asked wryly.

"An unconventional upbringing. And a psychic certainty that we'll be married someday. So with me, it's no holds barred."

"I believe I've said it before," he murmured, "but a sane man would run like hell."

"I don't see you taking to your heels," she observed.

Abruptly, Luke stuck his head out the back door and waved a ladle at them. "If you want dinner," he called to them, harassed, "you'll come get your mother out of the kitchen, Taylor! She's got a birdcage. Why does she have a birdcage when we don't have any birds? And Jamie's sitting on the counter reading out loud, and I've lost a lobster—" The door banged shut on his last comment as Luke disappeared back inside.

Trevor rose to his feet, pulling her up with him. "Did I say a sane man would run? Well, it's obvious why I'm not running. Only an
insane
man would get involved with this ridiculous family," he said whimsically.

It was late before Trevor got home that night, mainly
because Luke had instigated a poker game after the lobster had been consumed. They'd played for fantastic sums, and after losing every hand to one or another of the family, Trevor declared that he'd never again play cards with psychics.

But he thoroughly enjoyed the evening.

Sometime during the wee hours of the morning, alone and sleepless in his bed, it occurred to Trevor that if he wanted to preserve his unattached status, he'd better stay as far as possible from Taylor and her nutty but curiously attractive family. Instead of counting sheep, he kept repeating that to himself over and over, until sleep finally claimed him.

The end result was that Trevor kept himself fiercely occupied for the next three days. He played tennis and, if that didn't tire him physically, swam endless laps in the pool and even jogged every morning. He defeated his brother soundly at handball, all the while turning a deaf ear to Jason's innocent, persistent questions about Taylor. And at night, he buried himself in every literary potboiler he could lay his hands on until his tortured mind demanded sleep.

Jason said little about his brother's deliberately hectic vacation until the third night, when he came over to Trevor's apartment for pizza and a televised baseball game. The game was in the second inning when Trevor called to order the pizza, and when he hung up the phone, he saw that his brother was thumbing bemusedly through the latest potboiler.

Deadpan, Jason gazed at the lurid cover, then lifted shocked eyes to Trevor's face. "Your taste in literature's gone downhill these last few days," he remarked critically.

Ignoring this, Trevor said, "You start your vacation next week, don't you?" Jason worked as an electrical engineer with a large construction company.

"Yep. And, unlike you, I don't plan to fritter away my days off by exercising Until I can't move or reading lousy books until I can't think. I'm flying to Wyoming, where I plan to spend a leisurely week hiking and fishing."

Jason's tone had been perfectly bland, but it caused Trevor to feel suddenly sheepish. "Is that what I've been doing?" he murmured.

"Yes," his brother told him cordially.

Trevor shifted a bit uncomfortably on the couch. "Look, it's
my
vacation," he said defensively.

"Of course it is. And who am I to say you're driving yourself into an early grave? I'm only your little brother. You're older, after all. Presumably wiser. Presumably, you know what you're
doing. Now, if you
were
to ask my opinion, I'd just have to wonder why it is that you seem to be working so damned hard to get through your vacation. It's almost as if you want to be too tired to think. As if you're afraid to let yourself think—"

"All right! I get the point."

But Jason wasn't finished. Coolly, he said, "It isn't like you, brother. You've never been one to avoid facing whatever's bothering you. Or whoever." He hesitated, then added bluntly, "You faced up to the fact that you and Kara should never have gotten engaged."

Trevor said nothing, only frowned at the television.

Jason sent a searching glance at his brother's closed face. "But maybe that was different," he ventured quietly. "Maybe it didn't bother you then because you didn't care enough. Maybe it bothers you now because you care too much. She's gotten under your skin, hasn't she?"

"Where'd you get your degree in psychology?" Trevor countered with taut sarcasm.

Even more quietly, Jason said, "I got it from watching the brother who raised me while he was putting himself through college and law school."

Trevor's frown vanished. After a moment, he glanced at Jason and said gruffly, "Sorry, Jase."

Jason grinned a little in response. "Well, it isn't really any of my business. But I can't help thinking that since I loused up your last serious relationship—"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

It was Jason's turn to be uncomfortable, but he met Trevor's suddenly grim eyes squarely. "Kara didn't make any secret of it at the time. She didn't want a sixteen-year-old kid living with her. And who could blame her?"

Trevor turned on the couch until he was facing his brother, no longer making any pretense of watching the ball game. "Jase, we didn't break up because of you."

"I was a part of the reason, though," Jason said steadily.

Because they'd always been honest with each other, Trevor hesitated only a second. "In a way. Because I wasn't about to let my brother go live with some distant relative. But that isn't why we broke up, Jase. It just made me realize I could never be happy living with Kara."

Jason nodded but said, "I—used to worry about that. Blame myself."

Reaching out to grip his shoulder, Trevor said firmly, "Don't."

"Well, actually, I talked myself out of that pretty quickly," Jason admitted ruefully. "I never liked Kara."

Trevor laughed and shook his brother's shoulder briefly before releasing him. With the atmosphere eased, Jason instantly took advantage of it.

"And since we're discussing the women in your life, I'll go on being nosy. Are you going to come clean with me about Taylor?"

Trevor grimaced faintly. He stared at nothing in particular for a moment, then sighed. "What can I say about a woman who tells me—scant minutes after we meet—that she's the woman I'm going to marry?"

Jason blinked. "What? Straight-out like that?"

"Straight-out like that." Reflectively, he added, 'Taylor doesn't pull her punches. She's quite possibly the most honest woman I've ever met in my life."

"Oh. Well, uh—what's wrong with that?"

Trevor stared at him. "She can read my mind any time she damn well feels like it."

Jason hid a grin behind the hand thoughtfully rubbing his face. "That... could be a drawback in a relationship," he admitted.