“Maybe so, but that doesn’t make his master a good guy.” Alice frowned, her distain for Brandon obvious. “If he falls for you, I wonder if he’ll post pictures of you on his Instagram. Or maybe selfies of you and him and the dog.”
Mary didn’t want to think that far ahead. Yet she couldn’t help but recall how intensely both Brandon and Cline had stared at her. “In person their eyes are almost the same color.”
Alice squinted. “It’s too bad you’re not going to seduce him all the way. Sex would make the revenge that much sweeter.”
“Not for me.” She feared that sleeping with him would be dangerous to her soul. Not just because of the way he made her feel, but because of her charade, too. “That would be carrying it too far.”
“Okay, so you’ve got your morals. But it’s not as if you’re a virgin or anything.”
“That’s not the point.” Her sex life wasn’t the issue. Or her lack thereof, she thought. She’d slept with only one guy: the boyfriend who’d barely mattered. “Brandon isn’t my type, anyway.”
“I didn’t know you had a type.”
“Well, if I did, it wouldn’t be with a lawyer who might dominate me.”
Her sister looked stunned. “Oh, my God. Did he say something kinky to you?”
“What? No. I didn’t mean it like that.” She tried to explain, without admitting how deeply he aroused her. “He just seems as if he’d be as powerful in the bedroom as he is in the courtroom, or wherever he does his best work.”
“That’s quite an observation.” Alice leaned back on their floral-printed sofa—the one they’d bought during her boho phase—and lifted her booted feet onto the coffee table. “And seriously, who are you trying to kid? You totally want to shag him.”
“Can we change the subject, please?” Mary couldn’t bear to sit here and listen to this.
“Well, I’m all for it. As long as you make him suffer once it’s over.”
What part of changing the subject didn’t her sister understand? “I don’t want to keep talking about this.”
Alice readjusted her position, lowering her feet to the floor. “You brought up the domination stuff, not me.”
“And you’re making a bigger deal out of it than it is.”
“All right, but no matter how attracted to him you are, just remember that we’re doing this for Mama. So whatever you do, don’t fall for him for real.”
“I would never do that.” Mary knew better than to develop feelings for a man she didn’t even know if she could trust.
On Friday night, Brandon rode in the back of a limo with his date by his side, wondering how many black-tie events he’d attended over the course of his life. Hundreds? Thousands? At the moment, it seemed like millions.
He was bored already, and they hadn’t even arrived at the hotel. He served on the committee that was hosting the party. He cared deeply about his charity work, but how many luxurious dinners and big, sweeping dances could he stand?
The real problem, he decided, was that he couldn’t get the redhead he’d met at the park out of his mind. Mary McKenzie. So wholesome, so cute, so all-American and average. He doubted that she’d ever worn a glittering gown or been to a fancy ball.
“Are you all right?” Doreen asked. She was one of his occasional lovers—a long, leggy brunette and twice-divorced heiress who relied on a carb-free diet to maintain her figure and Botox to keep her frown lines at bay. Tonight she was wearing a set of spidery lashes. Brandon had gotten used to seeing her in them, but he’d never quite grasped the point. He couldn’t imagine gluing something onto his eyelids.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“You seem distracted to me.”
“I’m just sitting here.” And thinking about seeing Mary again—a fresh-faced twenty-five-year-old who worked at a bakery. She was so damned different from his norm. He frowned at Doreen. “Do you ever get tired of the same ol’?”
She gave him a pointed look. “See, I knew something was going on with you.”
“Maybe I’m just going through a midlife crisis and wanting things I shouldn’t have.” That might account for him obsessing about a woman he barely knew.
She turned on the light above their heads. “Did you meet someone who’s got your boxers in a bunch?”
He flinched as if he’d been kicked. “What?”
She raised her delicately arched eyebrows. “You did, didn’t you?”
His stomach clenched. He’d just gotten called out by a savvy socialite. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, believe me, I do. A woman knows when a man has another female on his mind.”
“There’s no one.” He wasn’t about to admit that he couldn’t wait to return to the park on Sunday and reunite with a stranger who made his skin hot. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone made him feel that way. He’d been on autopilot for so long, he hadn’t noticed until now.
Doreen sighed. “It doesn’t matter to me if you want someone else. Because I do, too.”
He turned suspicious. Was she making up stories to try to con the truth out of him? “If you’re mooning over another man, then why are you here with me?”
She removed a gilded compact from her clutch. “You and I made these plans a long time ago. And since we haven’t been together for months, I figured we were just here as friends.”
That was a fair assumption, he supposed. It wasn’t just her that he hadn’t been with in a while. He hadn’t slept with anyone in what seemed like forever. And he didn’t want to, either, until Mary had come along.
Doreen opened the mirror and checked her appearance. “The man I’m hoping to nab is going to be at this party, so I thought—”
“You’d use me to get his attention?” If Brandon gave a crap, he would be mad. But he didn’t care if she was after another guy. It didn’t matter. “Who is he?”
“David Norton.”
“The retail billionaire?” He should have known she would aim high. “Wasn’t he just named as one of the richest people in the States? He came in at number twelve, as I recall.”
She made a duck face, posing as if the compact was a camera. “He was number nine, actually, but who’s counting?”
“You are, obviously.”
She closed the mirror and tucked it back into her clutch. “I don’t need his money.
