Fill-In Fiancee. DeAnna Talcott
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Brett Hamilton told his brother. He cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder, and pushed back from his desk. He’d been so happy to hear from his brother, yet this bit of news surprised him. Another girl? Again? “At least you know the baby’s healthy,” he said. “It’s the luck of the draw whether it’s a boy or a girl.”
“It’s Mother and Father that are the problem. They dote on the girls, truly. But they want a grandson, Brett. An heir. They figure I haven’t been doing my job, and they’re looking to you now.”
Brett said nothing—he’d heard it often enough in the past few months. His entire family kept reminding him it was time to get married, to produce an heir, to strengthen family alliances. It was all a bunch of rubbish as far as he was concerned. Producing heirs to keep their titles and traditions was a thing of the past.
“By the way,” Phillip added, “they’ve struck up with Lady Harriet again, and Mother said she’s asking about you.”
“Phillip, must you ruin a perfectly good day, bringing that up again?”
“Well, it’s true. Anyway, you’re both getting to the place where you should think about settling down.”
“Perhaps. But not together.”
“Our families do complement each other,” Phillip reminded him.
“What you’re really suggesting, Phillip, is one of the greatest financial mergers England has seen in decades. Between their family business and ours we’d have a corner on the market.”
“And is there anything wrong with that?”
“A merger and a marriage are two different things.”
“And what about getting an heir in the process? Mother and Father would be ecstatic. I tell you, with the doctor promising us another girl, me and my swarm of females don’t offer the family lineage a lot of hope.”
“Four daughters and a wife do not create a swarm. Unless,” Brett chuckled, thinking of the chaos he’d witnessed last summer, “you are on an outing to the park. And as for the family lineage, I think we are in dire straits if the only concern is to produce a male heir. I’d like to think we’ve moved beyond that.”
“Huh.” His brother sighed audibly. “Not to hear Father. The first thing he asked when we told him the news was if it was a boy. And Mother? She went into a veritable depression for a week when she found out the doctor said we should start adding more pink to the wardrobe. Carolyn says this is absolutely the last baby…so, little brother, even though I have tried my best, truly, you are now responsible for the family title—or at least an heir for it.” He paused for emphasis. “What with their upcoming visit, I’d imagine Mother and Father will take the opportunity to remind you of your duties and obligations.”
Brett squeezed his eyes closed, grateful his brother couldn’t witness his exasperation. His parents had been nagging him for years to settle down and get married. “So you’re warning me?”
“No. I’m telling you what to expect.”
Brett said nothing, but the burden of it all hung like a dark cloud over his head. He’d been told since childhood to embrace his title, and he’d been well schooled in his responsibilities. It had been an unspoken understanding that he would marry and marry well. But for him, London had been a place of spectator events, charity balls and social finagling. He’d grown up as Lord Breton Hamilton, but inside he simply felt like “Brett.”
When the opportunity to move to America to work in Wintersoft’s Boston office as vice president of overseas sales came up, he’d jumped at it. In the past six months he’d led a useful, fulfilling life, and he loved the challenge—and the anonymity—of it. Perhaps the software company didn’t have the tradition of his father’s shipbuilding empire, but Brett was quite content to build his own dream, to create his own niche.
“Well?” Phillip prodded. “What about your love life? You’ve been suspiciously quiet about all of it since you moved to the other side of the ocean. It’s made Mother think that maybe you’ve had regrets, and with Lady Harriet, perhaps that absence has made the heart grow fonder. She even mentioned that Lady Harriet might consider joining them on their visit to Boston. She hinted to Mother that she’s never been there.”
The suggestion pulled Brett out of his reverie and caused him to sit erect in the leather desk chair. “What?” A second slipped away as he tried to assimilate what his brother was telling him. “No. Absolutely not.”
“Why not?”
“Well, for one thing, I’ll not be forced into a marriage, and for another, we’re simply not compatible. We established that two years ago.”
“You grow to like your mate, Brett.”
Mate? Damn, he loathed the functional term. The woman he’d spend the rest of his life with would meet his expectations on every level, including the emotional and the spiritual. The last thing he needed was Lady Harriet tagging along on his parents’ visit. “But I’ve grown to like my girlfriend,” he said coyly, thinking that if he said he already had a woman in his life, they’d drop the whole thing. “Here. In Boston.”
“Say again?” Brett heard two sharp raps, most likely against the receiver. “I do say, there must be something wrong with the connection. You? Have a girlfriend?”
“More than that,” Brett continued boldly. “We’re engaged.”
A moment of dead silence followed his declaration.
“I beg your pardon, man? And you’ve been keeping it quiet? What a cagey old bloke you are!”
“I’m not trying to be cagey.” But Brett’s enthusiasm for the broad picture he’d painted grew. If his brother believed the tale, maybe Brett could get off the hook with his parents, as well. He’d had quite enough of their hints—and their ultimatums. “And there’s more,” he claimed, baiting his brother with one last delectable tidbit that had soared through his imagination. “We’re living together.”
“What? And you’ve stayed mum about all this?”
“I wasn’t quite prepared to tell everyone. Not yet.”
“You realize you have just poked a hole in our parents’ carefully laid plans?”
“Mmm. Maybe. But you can see that if Lady Harriet chose to surprise me with a visit—well, it would be most…uncomfortable.”
“For who? Mother and Father? Or you?”
“You will let them on to this delicate—or indelicate—situation, won’t you?” Brett suggested shrewdly. That was always the fun of it, getting Phillip to do his bidding and soften up his parents. Phillip, four years older, had always delighted in his baby brother’s teasing ploys and had spent a lifetime covering for him.
This time, however, Brett would admit the truth to his brother after his parents were safely back home and Lady Harriet had moved on to happier hunting grounds. He hated to deceive Phillip, but there really was no help for it.
As he was ruminating his way around this particularly tricky scenario, Sunny Robbins rapped on the frame of his open door. Seeing he was on the phone, she politely held up a file folder of contracts he’d requested an hour ago. He motioned for her to come in.
Sunny, who had the most mesmerizing gait of any woman who walked through Wintersoft’s legal department, crossed the threshold and entered his domain. She was wearing that same short skirt again. The one he’d noticed her in in the employees’ lounge last week. Huh. Short enough to play with a man’s imagination, long enough to be respectable.
She had coltish legs, and they matched her demeanor—a little unconventional and very unencumbered. He’d always wondered about her, and had recently struck up several conversations with her that stopped just short of him asking her out. She was the paralegal who worked for Grant Lawson, general counsel for the company.
“I’ve