His Brother's Fiancee. Jasmine Cresswell
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have children, I’d prefer them not to be crazy.”
Instead of appearing insulted, Jordan grinned. “You might have had girls,” he said. “I’ve heard rumors that the Chambers women usually escape the family affliction.”
“You mean insanity really does run in your—“ Emily broke off, pressing her hands to her forehead. “No, of course it doesn’t. You’re not going to do this to me today, Jordan.”
“Do what?”
“Distract me. Confuse me.” She hadn’t intended to admit that he had the power to discompose her, and she hurried on. “We’re going to have a brief, rational conversation and then I’m going back to talk with my parents. Why have you dragged me in here, Jordan?”
“I thought it might be a good idea if we got married tomorrow.” Jordan made the suggestion with a casualness that would have been entirely appropriate if he’d been suggesting that she might like to try out a new restaurant for brunch on Sunday.
Emily clutched the back of the nearest chair. Jordan had asked her to marry him. She was quite sure she’d heard him do that. Unless she was hallucinating. Was she? She felt her mouth start to drop open again, and she hurriedly closed it.
This library was not a good place to be alone with a Chambers male, she decided. First Michael had called off their wedding for no reason at all. Now Jordan was suggesting something even more totally crazy. So crazy, in fact, that Emily felt a spurt of genuine alarm. She hadn’t been serious in suggesting Jordan and Michael were suffering from the onset of insanity. Maybe she should have been.
“I don’t think marriage would work out too well for us,” she said, trying to keep her voice soft and nonthreatening. She even managed a small, reassuring smile. When dealing with lunatics, it was best to be gentle. “Thanks for asking, Jordan, but if you remember, we don’t like each other. I have this quaint, old-fashioned dislike of men who sleep with other men’s wives.”
Damn! If he was mentally unstable, maybe she shouldn’t have mentioned the fact that they disliked each other. Much less reminded him of their disastrous second meeting, a couple of days after their formal introduction, when she had discovered Jordan romping under satin sheets with Mary Christine, the twenty-three-year-old wife of Emily’s sixty-year-old client, Ted Bernauer.
All things considered, escape from the study seemed like a truly excellent plan. Either Jordan was nuts or she was. Why hang around to find out who? She was closer to the door than Jordan, so keeping her smile fixed in place, she tried to back up toward it without drawing attention to her movements.
Jordan might have lost his mind, but his vision remained acute, and his physical coordination excellent. In three quick strides, he crossed the room and pulled her away from the door, spread-eagling his body between her and her escape route.
“Sorry,” he said, sounding sincerely apologetic as he pocketed the key. “But I really need you to listen to my proposal.”
“I already had one of those from Michael,” she replied tightly. “I believe I’m a little burned out on proposals from the Chambers men.”
His gaze narrowed. “Proposition might be a better word in my case. I’m offering you a face-saving deal, Emily. You owe it to yourself to listen. Marry me tomorrow, and the joint business venture between my father and yours can go on as planned. Marry me tomorrow, and the ceremony will probably be over before half the guests even notice that you’re exchanging rings with the wrong brother.”
“Thanks again for the generous offer, Jordan, but before we get carried away, let’s remember there’s one teensy-tiny problem with your scheme.”
“What’s that?”
“Half the guests might not notice that I’d married the wrong brother, but I would.” Emily spoke more harshly than she’d intended, mostly because for a few insane seconds, she’d actually found herself considering his proposition. Surely she was hitting a new low to even contemplate accepting Jordan’s proposal just because it would provide a groom for tomorrow’s ceremony.
Jordan shrugged. “It wouldn’t be a lifetime sentence,” he said. “We can have the big, splashy wedding our parents planned, and then, in a few months, we can get a quiet, civilized divorce.”
“Divorce is never civilized,” Emily said. “It’s a heartbreaking betrayal of promises.”
“There would be no heartbreak in our case. You can’t betray promises that were never made. We’re not promising each other anything except to go through a ceremony and live in the same house just long enough for the media to lose interest in the Chambers family. These days, I’d figure that’s about a week.”
“You’re forgetting Michael’s campaign for governor.”
“Hmm…true. In view of my brother’s prominent position, the media interest might have a lingering half life. I guess we’d better agree up front that we’ll stick it out until the start of the new year. Michael’s campaign should be firmly established by then.”
“That’s more than four months from now!”
Jordan shrugged. “Four months is hardly a life sentence. We don’t have to live in each other’s pockets the whole time. In fact, we should probably give the marriage a year. That would allow the Chambers-Sutton land development deal ample time to get off the ground.”
“Oh,” she said, suddenly understanding Jordan’s motives in making the offer to marry her. She quashed an entirely irrational twinge of disappointment. “So that’s what this proposal is really about—money. You’re worried that my father’s money is going to vanish from the Chambers bank accounts if I don’t marry your brother.”
Jordan didn’t contradict her. “Your father and mine have put together a complicated business deal that requires a lot of trust on both sides. My family is giving up land that we’ve owned for generations. Your father is supplying development capital and design ideas. A feud between the two parties isn’t going to make for a successful development. If this project isn’t a success, both parties could end up losing their shirts.”
She was surprised that Jordan had been paying sufficient attention to know some of the details of the proposed Laurel Acres partnership deal. He was notorious for his lack of involvement in his family’s investment and banking business. To his parents’ dismay, he had dropped out of college in his junior year and struck out on his own, claiming that he wanted to become a carpenter. The Chamberses considered any profession that involved sweat and hammers beneath them, so they were seriously unhappy about his choice of career. Their complaints got louder and more frequent as Jordan’s circle of blue-collar friends expanded and his visits to the family mansion became less and less frequent. Even Michael was annoyed by his brother’s refusal to participate in the complicated network of social events that bound together the rarefied world of Texas high society.
Jordan remained unmoved by his family’s reproaches. He never argued with them—he simply refused to change his career or drop his friends in order to suit their sense of what was socially acceptable. Ignoring bribes and threats from his parents, he designed a line of inexpensive kitchen cabinets, found financial backing, set up a manufacturing plant out in the boonies, and seemed to make enough money to live comfortably. He often disappeared for weeks at a stretch, leaving no clue as to where he had gone or what he was doing. His parents and brother, whose business, social and political ambitions were tightly interwoven, found his elusiveness absolutely infuriating.
Unlike the Chamberses, Emily had no problem with Jordan’s choice of career, and she admired his ability to make a success, however modest, without turning to his father for startup capital. She even understood his need for independence, since she’d struggled with similar issues with her own parents. It was his moral code she couldn’t tolerate, especially the fact that his romp with Mary Christine was rumored to be only one in a long series of affairs with married women.
“Why the sudden interest in the Laurel Acres project?” she asked him.