Sudden Engagement by Miller Julie

Author:Miller, Julie [Miller, Julie]
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Suspense
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2001-06-24T05:00:00+00:00

“THEY’LL EXPECT to see us together.”

Ginny glared daggers up at Brett. “When you said to meet you here, I thought the service was over and we were going to pick up Zeke and Charlie from the shelter.”

She rolled her eyes in frustration and turned away, hugging her arms around her middle, trying to rid herself of the goose bumps that pricked her skin. Pacing to the secluded corner of the elegantly appointed lobby wasn’t nearly far enough to escape the suffocating air of the Stegmeier Mortuary.

It wasn’t far enough to escape Brett’s persistent arguments, either. She felt him at her right shoulder before he spoke. “It’s just a memorial service. Sophie had Alvin cremated, so there’s no coffin. It’ll last twenty minutes, tops.”

The piped-in organ music whispered at the fringes of her subconscious mind like tiny voices telling her to run away as fast as she could. She tried to ignore the impulse, find a more dignified way to make her escape. “But I don’t do funerals.”

“What does that mean?”

She spun around, thinking that facing him would help drive her point home. “I don’t like them. I never have. I’ve been to too many of them.” With a gesture of her hands, she swept the air clear between them. “I am not staying for this one.”

His hands closed around her arms, right above each elbow, preventing her from leaving. He dipped his head closer to her level and looked her in the eye. “I’m concerned about maintaining your cover.”

“You’re kidding, right?” How the hell would sitting through twenty minutes of torturous flashbacks to her family’s deaths help maintain her cover?

“I don’t know how you handle tragedies in your family. But the Taylors stick together. Anyone who knows us would expect the people we care about to show up and support us, too.”

“But…”

“Now I know you don’t really care about me. But others believe that you do. Sophie. Mitch. Frank Rascone. Pearl Jenkins.” The ruthless set of his features seemed out of place on his laugh-lined face. “If they don’t see us together, they’ll question how serious our relationship is. If they question it, they’ll question you. You’ll become enemy number one on Market Street again, and your investigation will be over.”

A joking, flirtatious Brett she could argue with. When she’d first brainstormed this outrageous charade, she thought she could order his actions to fit her predictable, regimented life. But what she had mistaken for a lack of committment to any serious cause was merely a front for a man who did what he thought was right in a kinder, friendlier way than most.

Brett Taylor was a man with a long memory and a huge heart, instinctively smart, fiercely loyal to anyone or any cause he cared about. Just because he concentrated on the joys in life didn’t mean he didn’t feel its sorrows, too.

It was this harder, hurting man beneath the surface that she couldn’t argue with.

She twisted within his grasp, pleading for her freedom, ignoring the gathering stream of mourners waiting to sign the guest registry before going into the chapel.

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