A Pretend Proposal: The Fiancée Fiasco / Faking It to Making It / The Wedding Must Go On

Just as he had, Elizabeth bypassed the sugar bowl and selected a wedge of lemon, which she squeezed into her glass.

“I’m enjoying meeting you, too. Thomas has told me a lot about you.” Elizabeth smiled. “All of it good.”

“Tommy, what have I told you about fibbing?” Nana Jo scolded, albeit teasingly.

Elizabeth looked uncomfortable despite her smile, but he had to hand it to her. She was managing to be completely honest with his grandmother despite the big white elephant of a lie sharing space with them on the small balcony.

“Tommy tells me you like Alfred Hitchcock.”

“I do.”

“And she plays poker, Nana Jo. She and some friends get together regularly.” He sipped his tea. “No cigars but they sometimes talk sports.”

“Really?” Nana Jo’s eyes lit up. “I belong to a bridge club, but I always wanted to try my hand at five-card stud. Maybe you could teach me sometime?”

“Sure.”

“You have to watch her, Elizabeth. My nana is a cardsharp.”

They laughed and the conversation flowed freely until Nana Jo asked, “Why don’t you tell me a little bit about your family? I haven’t managed to get much out of Tommy on the subject. But then you know how men are. They’re stingy when it comes to offering details.”

“My family?” Elizabeth took her time sipping her tea. “There’s not much to tell, really. I, um, I had a pretty typical childhood.”

Interesting, Thomas got the feeling she was lying now. But after what she’d told him about tofu shish kebabs, he could see why she might want to shade the truth. Not that his grandmother would care one way or another what her parents’ diet preferences were. He certainly didn’t.

“You’re in Ann Arbor now, I know, but where did you grow up?”

“Oh, here and there in southeast Michigan.” The answer was as vague as the one she’d written on her “resume.”

“It sounds like your family moved around lot,” Nana Jo said. “Your father’s job?”

Elizabeth sipped her tea. “More or less.”

“And you have an older sister.”

“A younger brother,” Thomas and Elizabeth said at the same time.

“My goodness, I am getting old,” Nana Jo said. “Somehow I managed to get that completely backward.”

She sent Elizabeth a bemused smile that took a calculating turn when it reached Thomas. Uh-oh. He knew that look. Nana Jo sensed something was afloat.

“So, how old is your brother?” Nana Jo picked up the plate of cookies and held it out for Elizabeth.

She selected one. “Ross is twenty-six.”

“Is he married or engaged?”

“No. I … We don’t see one another often.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. You must miss him.”

“I do. Terribly.”

Nana Jo made a sympathetic noise and patted the back of Elizabeth’s hand. “Does he live out of state?”

“Yes. He … travels a lot. He hasn’t been back to Michigan in years.”

“Then your wedding will be a reunion as well. Will he be standing up?” Nana Jo asked. Nodding in Thomas’s direction, she complained, “That one there won’t tell me anything about the ceremony preparations. He won’t even give me the date.”

“Because we haven’t decided yet,” Thomas inserted hastily. “With our work schedules and such, it’s not as easy as throwing a dart at a calendar.”

“Well, surely you have some inkling of the number of groomsmen you’re planning.”

He glanced helplessly at Elizabeth. “I could ask Ross to be a groomsman.”

“No!” She looked stricken. “I’m sorry.”

“Or not.”

Elizabeth apologized a second time. Her face was flushed. Her expression miserable. “I haven’t mentioned this before, Thomas, but I don’t know where Ross is.” Her gaze shifted to his grandmother. “My brother left—ran away from home, actually—when I was in college. He quit school and just … left.”

“And you haven’t heard from him since then?” Thomas asked.

“Personally, no.”

“I’m sorry,” Nana Jo said softly.

Thomas was more than sorry. He felt culpable in forcing the admission. He reached for her hand and knitted their fingers together before bringing it to rest against his heart. “Elizabeth, I had no idea.”

She allowed the contact for a moment before pulling her hand free, ostensibly to push her breeze-blown hair back from her face. “I don’t talk about it often.”

“But I’m guessing you think about him and worry every day,” Nana Jo said sympathetically.

“I do.”

“That’s the way Tommy is about his father.”

He blinked in surprise. He hadn’t seen the switch in subjects coming. Caught off guard. he retorted sharply, “I don’t give a damn where he is or what he’s doing as long as he isn’t on my doorstep looking for more money so he can pay off his bar tab.”

“Thomas Jonathon Waverly!”

The use of his full name pulled him up short, just as it always had when he was a child.

“I’m sorry.” He expelled a breath and turned to Elizabeth and repeated his apology.

“It’s forgotten,” she said.

“Nothing is forgotten.”

Their gazes held until a gust of wind sent paper napkins flying off the table. He and Elizabeth both rose to fetch them before they could be carried over the rail.

“I should have brought a headband,” she remarked, shoving her wayward hair back from her face and settling into her seat once more.

“I’m glad you didn’t.” Reminding himself it was expected for him to touch her, he gave in to temptation and brushed a stray tendril off of her forehead. “I like it loose like this and a little disheveled.”

“Why?” She glanced at his grandmother before laughing uncomfortably. “I mean, I look a mess.”

“Hardly, my dear,” Nana Jo said. “You’re too pretty to look anything of the sort.”

Recalling how Elizabeth had disagreed with him the one time he’d called her pretty, Thomas half expected her to do so now. He told himself he only was forestalling her argument when he leaned over and, in a voice barely above a whisper, said, “I like it this way because it reminds me of how it looked after I had my hands in it the other night.”

He was close enough to hear her breath hitch. He was smug enough to like it. He decided to press his advantage—for Nana Jo’s benefit, of course—and kissed the corner of Elizabeth’s mouth. Both women sighed afterward.

Nana Jo, however, had a bone to pick.

“I would remind you that it’s rude not to speak loud enough so that everyone at the table can hear you, Tommy.”

“Sorry.” But he flashed a cocky grin that had her pursing her lips.

Still, Nana Jo accepted the apology with a nod. Then she was grinning as well. “Based on Beth’s very becoming blush, I gather that whatever you whispered in her ear wasn’t fit for mine anyway.”

Elizabeth laughed weakly. “Still, he is being rude.”

She tried to tame her hair again, even though the breeze had other plans for it. The blush staining her cheeks was, as his grandmother said, becoming. Pretty? No. At that very moment, he thought her beautiful. Inside of him, something shifted with all the subtlety of an earthquake. It was a good thing he was seated or he might have wound up losing his balance.

Especially when Nana Jo added, “Yes, but that’s what happens when a man’s in love. He forgets everything including his manners.”

This made twice his grandmother had used the L-word. His breath caught in his throat. Hell, he could hardly drag enough of it into his lungs, until he reminded himself that he wanted his grandmother to think he was in love. The fact that she did simply meant he was playing his role superbly.

Kudos to me, he decided sourly. If his business ever folded maybe there was a career waiting for him in Hollywood.

“Are you all right?” Elizabeth asked, looking concerned as she laid a hand on his arm.

“Allergies.” He coughed for effect. “Must be a lot of tree pollen in the air around here or something.”

Something being the operative word.

Nana Jo frowned. “Tommy, you don’t have—” She broke off abruptly then. “Goodness, Beth, where’s your engagement ring?”

Thomas would have appreciated his reprieve more if his freedom from the frying pan hadn’t landed him in the fire. He knew where the ring was. It was exactly where he’d left it, in the pocket of the herringbone jacket that was still in Elizabeth’s possession. He cursed himself for the oversight. Meanwhile, Elizabeth looked stricken.

“I … I …” She sent him a panicked look.

“It’s being sized.” He reached for her left hand and caressed its knuckles with the pad of his thumb. Her fingers were so small and delicate that the lie was believable. His mother’s ring never would have fit without a jeweler’s adjustment.

“I see.”

Nana Jo’s gaze made him nervous. When he was a kid, Nana Jo always seemed to be one step ahead of him. But surely she didn’t suspect.

She kept him guessing with her next question.

“I’ll have to settle for a description, then. What does it look like, Beth?”

Elizabeth appeared to be the one suffering a bout of something now. The blush of a moment ago was gone along with most of her color.

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