Susan Fox: A Wedding in the Family

“How do you expect to break up the lovers?” “How do you expect to break up the lovers?” “Does this mean you approve of their plans to marry?” Lilly countered. “No, I do not approve,” he growled. Rye’s voice was intimately low, and his blatant masculinity overpowering. “But if you so much as hint that to either of them, I’ll swear you’re a liar. It’s better for my brother to figure out for himself that your sister is nothing more than trash with money!” The statement gave Lilly’s heart a viscious squeeze. She longed to fly home that instant, but knew she couldn’t until she could bring her sister with her. Her single, unengaged sister... Susan Fox writes deeply emotional romances that will move and enthrall you—till the very last page!About the Author Susan Fox lives with her youngest son, Patrick, in Des Moines, Iowa. A lifelong fan of Westerns and cowboys, she tends to think of romantic heroes in terms of Stetsons and boots! In what spare time she has, Susan is an unabashed couch potato and movie fan. She particularly enjoys romantic movies and also reads a variety of romance novels—with guaranteed happy endings—and plans to write many more of her own. Susan Fox loves to hear from readers! You can write to her at: P.O. Box 35681, Des Moines, Iowa 50315, USA.Title Page A Wedding In The Family Susan Fox www.millsandboon.co.uk CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN EPILOGUE Copyright

“How do you expect to break up the lovers?”

“Does this mean you approve of their plans to marry?” Lilly countered.

“No, I do not approve,” he growled. Rye’s voice was intimately low, and his blatant masculinity overpowering. “But if you so much as hint that to either of them, I’ll swear you’re a liar. It’s better for my brother to figure out for himself that your sister is nothing more than trash with money!”

The statement gave Lilly’s heart a viscious squeeze. She longed to fly home that instant, but knew she couldn’t until she could bring her sister with her. Her single, unengaged sister...

Susan Fox writes deeply emotional romances that will move and enthrall you—till the very last page!

Susan Fox lives with her youngest son, Patrick, in Des Moines, Iowa. A lifelong fan of Westerns and cowboys, she tends to think of romantic heroes in terms of Stetsons and boots! In what spare time she has, Susan is an unabashed couch potato and movie fan. She particularly enjoys romantic movies and also reads a variety of romance novels—with guaranteed happy endings—and plans to write many more of her own.

Susan Fox loves to hear from readers! You can write to her at: P.O. Box 35681, Des Moines, Iowa 50315, USA.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

RYE PARRISH hated socialites.

His mother had been one of those. Rich, spoiled, obsessed with her looks, her clothes and her rancher husband’s bank account. She’d hated the grand Texas house Rand Parrish had built for her. She’d endured his attentions and tolerated his companionship from time to time—as long as she could spend his money like water and live most of the year in the city.

But two sons later, she decided motherhood was too high a price to pay in exchange for the Parrish fortune. She’d abandoned her husband and sons. Walked away without a backward glance before her youngest was out of diapers and her eldest was eight years old.

Rye’s younger brother, Chad, had few memories of their beautiful mother. Rye remembered everything about the glamorous woman who’d never had the capacity to show affection to her rambunctious offspring. Rena Parrish had been appalled by the dirty face and dirty clothes he’d worn after a day of play. She’d been too squeamish about his scraped knees and normal childhood illnesses to tend them. She’d never offered comfort and seldom paid either of her sons any attention. Except to criticize.

Even so, her final desertion had deeply wounded him. Her abandonment had been so absolute that he’d eventually come to hate her. But for the rest of his thirty-three- years, he’d measured every female he’d ever met against her. Whatever a woman’s faults or shortcomings, he’d rarely come across one whose failings were as abysmal as Rena’s, rarely met another who deserved so little respect.

But the elegant blonde who walked through the small air terminal in his direction might be the rare one who came close.

Rye watched her, his eyes narrowing cynically as he noted that her collar-length blond hair had been trimmed to fall into a precise pageboy curve. Her aristocratic face was fine-boned, her features delicate, her skin a glamor-perfect peaches and cream. Her pink silk blouse and khaki bush pants were designer labels, the leather sandals on her small feet made for her by the same Italian designer who’d crafted the matching handbag. The baggage handler who carried four pieces of her monogrammed luggage followed closely, but her very erect, regal posture gave every signal that she’d dismissed his presence behind her as completely as if he’d been in charge of someone else’s luggage.

Rye Parrish liked most women, but his first glimpse of this woman roused little more than contempt. Even if he hadn’t guessed the little snob had come all the way from New York to Texas to express her snooty family’s disapproval of her sister’s engagement to his younger brother, he wouldn’t have liked her. His disdain for females of her ilk ensured that.

Lillian Renard walked down the concourse, so badly disrupted by this trip to the wilds of Texas that her stomach was in knots. She’d been watching dismally out the window when the commuter aircraft began to reduce altitude, more appalled by the second at the vast emptiness of the land she’d been about to descend upon. The sparse scattering of buildings—not one more than six stories high, she’d noted—emphasized the notion that she was hundreds of miles from civilization.

Lillian didn’t handle stress well. She was, in fact, a coward. Traveling to an area which she regarded as little more than a Wild West frontier was terrifying for a young woman who’d grown up in the city and had never traveled anywhere in the world that wasn’t metropolitan. Why her imperious grandmother had insisted that she be the one to travel to Texas to issue the ultimatum to her rebellious younger sister, Rachel, was impossible to discern.

Except that Rachel was Grandmama’s favorite. Lillian had lived most of her life scrambling to attain even a smidgen of their grandmother’s approval. But Rachel, no matter how eccentric, no matter what her latest escapade or public blunder, had managed to capture the lion’s share of the old woman’s affection.

Until she’d run off with a cowboy from Texas. Though Rachel was barely twenty-two, Chad Parrish was her fifth love affair. But because he was a cowboy—a glorified farmer who herded cattle from horseback—their grandmother had taken exception to him. Once she’d learned he’d inherited only half of a Texas fortune, which she’d calculated to be far below her staunch requirements for her favorite granddaughter, Grandmama was apoplectic. If Rachel didn’t give up her cowboy lover and return to. New York, she would be promptly and irrevocably disowned.

And though the old harridan hadn’t expressly decreed it, Lillian might well find herself disowned if she failed to succeed in her assignment.

Her heart trembled at the thought of being so horribly shamed. After growing up among the elites of New York, she couldn’t bear to imagine the terror of being cast adrift, without a penny to her name. The scandal and humiliation of it was unthinkable. Carefully cosseted and repressibly overprotected from those her grandmother deemed unworthy, every friend she’d ever had had been ruthlessly investigated and monitored by the old lady who downright dominated everyone she came in contact with. She’d restricted the education of her granddaughters to boarding schools and colleges which catered exclusively to young ladies of impeccable breeding. A real education in something useful—in anything that might have afforded either of them a moneymaking career apart from their inheritance—had been discouraged.