* * *
IVY CHAPMAN STARED at the man who had the gall to make such an outlandish statement. Of course he’d been sending her flowers. His name had been signed on every card. She’d got one bouquet after another over the past three months. And the card always said the same thing. Ivy, I would love to meet you. Call me so it can be arranged. Here is my number...
“What do you mean you didn’t send me any flowers?”
Dark eyes filled with agitation bored into her. “Just what I said. I haven’t sent you any flowers.”
“Are you or are you not Nolan Madaris?” She asked the question, although she knew the answer. Over the past year his face had appeared often in the Houston newspapers as one of the city’s most eligible bachelors.
“Yes, I’m Nolan Madaris. At least one of them. I’m the third. My father is the second and my grandfather is the first. However, I can say with a degree of certainty that they didn’t send you any flowers either.”
Ivy frowned. “Look at the card. If it didn’t come from you, then who did it come from?”
The man had the nerve to scowl at her before snatching the envelope off the flowers and opening it. A frown spread across his lips before he glanced back at her. “Regardless of my name being on this card, I didn’t send these flowers or any others you might have received, Miss Chapman. However, I might know who did, and it’s probably the same person who’s been sending me little notes from you.”
Surprise lit her eyes. “What little notes? I haven’t been sending you any notes.”
“You haven’t?” he asked, retrieving a small envelope from his desk and handing it to her. “Is this not from you?”
She took the envelope, opened it and pulled out the note card inside and read it. Moments later, she shifted her gaze back to him. “Certainly not.”
He nodded. “I believe you. And just so you know, I’ve received several personal note cards over the past three months, supposedly from you. Just like you received those flowers, supposedly from me.”
Ivy paused to collect herself. It was crystal clear they’d been played. “Who on earth would...” She stopped midsentence, when a person immediately came to mind. “My grandmother.”
“And my great-grandmother,” he said.
“Ms. Laverne?” she asked as her gaze moved to the wall on the other side of his desk where a huge portrait of the woman she knew to be Felicia Laverne Madaris hung.
“You know my great-grandmother?”
“Yes,” Ivy said, returning her gaze to his. “She and my grandmother have been good friends for years. I’m told their friendship began when Nana got her first teaching job out of college.”
He nodded. “You are aware they want to matchmake us?” he asked her.
Yes, she’d been aware of it but had chosen to ignore it. “Yes, but I never thought they would go this far.”
“Well, obviously, they did,” he said, throwing the card he’d been holding down on his desk. “I don’t know about you, Miss Chapman, but I won’t put up with this,” he said in a tone filled with anger. “I refuse to be manipulated and will be dealing with my great-grandmother for her part in this.”
Ivy felt so embarrassed by how she’d stormed into his office ready to give him hell. She should have known better. Men who looked like him didn’t pursue women who looked like her. She was definitely not his type, if the tabloid pictures of him with his many, many women were anything to judge by. That fact should be obvious to his great-grandmother and her grandmother.
“I intend to deal with my grandmother as well. I just don’t understand. Of all people, my grandmother knows the last thing I’d want is to be involved with a man like you.”
His gaze narrowed. “And what exactly is ‘a man like me’?”
Did he really want her to spell it out for him? In that case, she had no problem doing so. “Mr. Madaris, you have quite a reputation around town. There obviously isn’t a commitment bone in your body. No woman in her right mind who’s looking for a serious relationship would look your way.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. A very broad, very firm, very fine-looking chest, she couldn’t help but notice. “And are you looking for a serious relationship, Miss Chapman?”
“No, and of all people my grandmother should know that. Good day, Mr. Madaris. I apologize for bothering you.”
She turned to leave with as much dignity as she could muster after such an embarrassing encounter. The reality of the situation was that they’d been played by two crafty old women. “Hey, wait a minute. And just what am I supposed to do with these flowers?”
Ivy turned back around, met his gaze and lifted her chin. She tried ignoring that dark penetrating gaze that seemed to see to the heart of her. “The same thing you can do with those cards that I didn’t send. Trash them.”
She paused and looked at the flowers. “On second thought, they are way too pretty to be trashed.”
And they were. A huge assortment of white lilies, blue delphiniums, alstroemerias and yellow roses in a beautiful ceramic vase. “I suggest you drop them off at a hospital or nursing home. That’s what I did with all the others. Or you can give them to your great-grandmother.”
And with that, Ivy turned and walked out of his office.
IVY CHAPMAN HAD insulted him, and very few women did that. In fact, Nolan couldn’t name one who ever had. He should feel delighted, downright overjoyed that his strategy had worked and she’d thought he was a two-bit womanizer. However, something was keeping him from being filled with over-the-top excitement. Probably the realization that he’d been conned by his great-grandmother.
He’d told Corbin over a year ago that he refused to come up with some elaborate plan to counteract his great-grandmother’s shenanigans. There was no plan that could outsmart Felicia Laverne Madaris. Rather, he was simply going to enjoy life—and women—to the fullest. A strategy aimed at deterring the woman his great-grandmother had selected as his bride.
He figured sooner or later Miss Chapman would get wind of his womanizing ways and come to the conclusion that he was a man incapable of ever committing to any one woman. The most logical thing for her to do would be to put up as much resistance to a Madaris-Chapman match as he would be doing. That’s why those notes had annoyed the hell out of him. It seemed no matter how many women he became involved with, she was determined not to go anywhere. Now he knew that hadn’t been the case at all and his strategized efforts had worked.
So why was it bothering him that she was thinking the very thing he’d wanted her to think about him? Maybe his agitation was due to the mere fact that he found Miss Chapman attractive. She had nice features, including a gorgeous pair of eyes and nice-shaped lips. Both her eyes and lips could definitely captivate a man. His only question was why was she dressed so conservatively? And why would his great-grandmother assume, given his taste in
