Linda Varner - Won't You Be My Husband?

“Now what about our doing some serious making out? Would you go for that, too?”

“Not in this car, I won’t,” she answered, squirming to free herself. “And I guess you’d better define serious. ”

“Serious is— jeez! ” Nick slapped a hand to his pocket, only then remembering that pesky pager, vibrating in his pocket like an angry bumblebee. With an embarrassed laugh, he handed the pager to Lauren, then flipped on the dome light so she could better view the number she needed to call.

“Lisa Millcott. One of our receptionists. I’d better call her, and I’d better set this pager to beep again.” Lauren did so, then opened the car door and looked back at Nick, who had never moved. “You’re coming in, aren’t you?”

“You want me to?”

“How else will I ever discover what ‘serious making out’ is?” Laughing, she slipped from the car and ran across the dew-kissed lawn to her sidewalk. Nick battled his raging libido maybe half a second before he leapt from the car and loped after her. Together they climbed the porch steps. After digging into her bag, Lauren unlocked the front door and pushed it open. The ring of her telephone greeted them. Lauren dashed into her den, set her pager on an end table, then scooped up the telephone receiver.

“Hello?”

Nick, who’d followed Lauren into the room, saw her face light up. “Why, hi there.” She covered the mouthpiece with one hand and whispered, “It’s Diana,” then motioned for him to have a seat on the blue chintz couch, which he did. She sank down on a matching chair, slipped out of her shoes and tucked one leg up under the other. “Is everyone okay? I mean, you’re usually snoring by now.” Lauren winked at Nick as though she knew that remark would bug the heck out of big sis.

Nick grinned, imagining Diana’s rejoinder. He expected Lauren to laugh, but to his surprise he saw her jaw drop and her cheeks flame crimson.

“Di…please…let me explain—”

Lauren’s gaze met Nick’s across the room. She drew her forefinger across her neck, the age-old sign of disaster and certain doom.

“Yes, Frank was talking about the Nick Gatewood you once dated—”

Uh-oh.

“—but he didn’t have his facts exactly straight.” She shook her head, clearly agitated by whatever Diana had to say to that. “No, I’m not saying he lied. What I’m saying is…is…” Once again Lauren put her hand over the mouthpiece and gave Nick her attention. “What am I saying?”

“Depends on what she’s saying,” Nick retorted.

“Di’s upset, and I mean really upset, because I told Frank about the engagement before I told her.”

Great. “Then you’d better tell her the truth.”

“Schoolgirl crush!” Lauren loudly exclaimed, apparently in response to something Diana said. Nick doubted she’d heard his suggestion at all. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I never had any schoolgirl crush on Nick Gatewood.” She positively glared at Nick as if he, and not her sister, were the accuser. “As for his suitability as a mate, I’ll have you know that Nick is an architect. Yes, I said architect. He works at a very prestigious firm here in Dallas and is going to be offered a partnership very soon.”

Nick groaned at that exaggeration, a sound that earned him another glare from Lauren.

“You’re what? Oh, Di, I wish you wouldn’t.” Lauren flashed Nick a look of pure panic, but said nothing, clearly on the receiving end of a sisterly diatribe. “But of course I’d love to see you, it’s just that I’m always on call and—okay, okay. Come ahead, but I’m telling you now that you’re going to feel really silly…”

Lauren heaved a sigh, met Nick’s steady gaze and shook her head.

“Maybe you’re right. A face-to-face chat is in order. I’ll do my best to meet your plane…what? Okay, then, take a taxi. You still have a house key? Good. Well, I’ll see you when I see you, I guess. And, Diana…will you please not mention the engagement to Mother? I, um, want to tell her myself.”

The moment Lauren hung up the phone she buried her face in her hands.

“You okay?” Nick asked, getting up and walking over to her chair. He dropped down on one knee in front of her.

Lauren raised her head. “Diana’s flying up in two weeks to find out what’s going on.”

“I gathered that.”

“I’m going to love looking her dead in the eye and telling her she’s interfered for nothing, that this whole thing is a lie.”

“You mean you’re actually going to wait that long before you spill the truth about us?” He couldn’t believe it.

As if already formulating just how she’d advise Diana to mind her own business, Lauren actually nodded in reply before his question really registered. Then she froze, winced and met his gaze. “Oh God. That would be awfully mean, wouldn’t it?”

“I’d say so, yeah. She’s your favorite sister, after all.”

“Diana is my only sister.”

“All the more reason not to keep her in the dark too long.”

“I suppose.” Lauren pulled the diamond ring off her finger. “Here, take it. There’s no way out of this mess now but to tell everyone the truth, and pronto.”

“Not so fast,” Nick retorted, backpedaling. “While it’s only right that you should tell Diana everything now, there’s no way I can do the same to Phillip Avery.”

Lauren arched an eyebrow in censure. “Well, if that isn’t a double standard!”

“No double standard. Our situations aren’t remotely similar, and there’s no way I can justify this faked engagement to Avery. I mean, what am I supposed to tell the man…that I lied so his wife would get her tongue out of my ear?” He shook his head and handed back the ring. “I don’t think so.”

Lauren hesitated, then took it. “I hate to admit it, but you have a point.” She slipped the ring back on her finger. “So we’re agreed that we won’t tell Avery, but do we tell Diana?”

“Absolutely.”

Sucking in a deep breath as if to bolster her courage, Lauren reached for the phone and punched out a number. Almost instantly she grimaced and dropped the receiver into the cradle. “Line’s busy.”

“She’s probably telling your mother about the engagement,” Nick teased with a wicked grin.

“She’d better not be!” Lauren exclaimed, turning on him. Her eyes flashed and two spots of crimson stained her cheeks.

“Just joking, just joking,” Nick hurriedly exclaimed, trying to soothe the waters he’d just troubled. “Try her again.”

“I will in a minute,” Lauren murmured, drawing out the sentence as if her mind were somewhere far away.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded.

“Nothing really.” She gave him a reassuring smile that did everything but reassure him. “What you said just served as a painful reminder of how many times Diana has irritated the holy heck out of me through the years.”

Nick didn’t like the sound of that. “For example?”

“For example…the time our Aunt Susan sent us a box of chocolates to split for Valentine’s Day. Diana, who’d gotten the mail out of the box that day, hid it in her closet and didn’t share for two weeks and only then because she’d eaten all the pieces with nuts in them.”

Nick frowned, hoping he couldn’t guess where this was headed.

“And then there was the time she borrowed and broke my favorite necklace.” Lauren, sitting with her legs crossed at the knee, bobbed her foot up and down in righteous indignation. “She let me look for that thing for at least two weeks before she confessed.”

Nick took note of the storm clouds gathering in Lauren’s expressive eyes. Was her sense of honor about to get swept away in a gale of childhood memories? It sure looked like it to him. “Why don’t you try calling her again? She’s probably off by now.”