The Heiress Takes a Husband by Cara Colter

Author:Cara Colter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

“Thanks for the warn—er, for calling, Laurie Rose. Oh, sure. I can’t wait.” This was a lie, but Mitch had a sudden dignity-saving brainstorm that might give him the upper hand for once. He shared it with Laurie Rose. “You like it? You want to run it by Brittany? Tell you what. I’ll do that myself.”

Whistling, he hung up the phone, put on his jacket and headed down the hall.

“Dad, are you coming for coffee?”

“Not this morning, son. I’m—” Was his dad blushing? “—meeting Angela this morning.”

Mitch bit back his normal comment about her being meddlesome and looked at Jordan. He’d been widowed just after Mitch graduated from law school, Helen succumbing to a long battle with breast cancer.

Even today, when Mitch thought of his adoptive mother he felt the same lump of emotion in his throat. Helen had been a class act. Childless, she had welcomed Mitch and his siblings into her life as if the four young ruffians and a baby were just what she had waited for all her life. Her china broke and her priceless rugs got mud on them, and she never stopped acting like having a ready-made family dumped on her in her later years was a miracle beyond measure.

Sometimes, she’d almost succeeded in making him believe it. Almost.

Now, looking at Jordan, Mitch realized his intense loyalty to Helen made him feel prickly about Jordan’s new relationship. And he realized that would be the last thing Helen would have wanted.

Jordan looked happy. Wasn’t that what mattered when you loved someone? Not controlling their lives for them, making their choices for them, but wishing them every happiness.

He sighed. “Have fun, Dad. Give Angela my best.”

Jordan looked up at him with surprise, and then looked deeper at Mitch. He smiled. “Where are you going for coffee?”

“Where we always go,” Mitch said, daring Jordan with his eyes to make that a big deal, but Jordan didn’t. His secretive little smile was even worse.

The day was warm and sunny, a perfect day in early May, the air sea-scented, the flowers beginning to bloom in breathtaking abundance.

Mitch realized he had never been good at stopping to smell the roses, and he wondered at himself that he seemed to be seeing the world with brand-new eyes today. With freshness and eagerness and hope. He didn’t even find it necessary to analyze what he hoped for.

He slipped into the bakery, only letting the door open halfway so that the bell above it would not jangle. A table or two had not been cleared, but other than that it looked like a place of relative calm this morning—if one could ever feel calm in the midst of so much nerve-jangling pink.

Brit’s back was to him, and he considered his deep appreciation of her from this particular angle. He decided, self-protectively, his appreciation of her was part of his fledgling stop-and-smell-the-roses personality. He went up to the counter, and he noticed she was wrestling with a filter on a coffee machine. It gave way suddenly, and he saw her staring down at the front of her apron with dismay.

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