fine. I keep waiting to throw up, but I don’t.”
“Poor girl,” Naomi said soothingly as she held her hand against her daughter’s forehead.
“I’m twenty-six, Mom. Not really girl material.”
Her mother smiled. “You’ll always be my little girl.”
Julie laughed. Right now the fussing was kind of nice.
“Let me get you something carbonated,” her mother said as she headed for the door. “It might settle your stomach.”
Julie watched her go. All three sisters had inherited their mother’s blond hair and blue eyes. They were variations on a theme, ranging from Willow’s pale blond to Julie’s medium, to Marina’s dark gold hair. Julie and Marina had inherited their father’s height, while Willow was petite.
In her high-school science class, Julie had been fascinated by how two people could have produced three daughters who were so similar in some ways and different in others.
“Here you go.” Her mother returned with an iced drink in a cartoon-character paper cup. “Dr. Greenberg will be right in.”
Just then the older man stepped into the room. “Julie, you never come see me anymore. What’s up with that? Now that you’re a fancy lawyer, you don’t have any time for a mere doctor?”
“I do move in very special circles,” she said with a grin.
Her mother waved and ducked out of the room. Dr. Greenberg took Julie’s hand and leaned forward to kiss her on her cheek.
“So you’re not feeling too good?” he asked.
“I don’t know. It’s weird. I can’t tell if it’s food poisoning or the flu. I thought maybe you could tell me and then give me a prescription.”
He scowled at her, an expression she remembered from when she’d been little and had been scratching her rampant case of poison ivy.
“Not everything can be solved with a pill, young lady.”
She fingered the long sleeve of her silk blouse. “Does this make me look too young? First Mom and now you. Do I look sixteen?”
“I’m lecturing you,” he said. “You could listen and pretend to be intimidated.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
He shook his head and settled on the stool. “You girls.”
She smiled.
Dr. Greenberg had been a part of their lives for as long as Julie could remember. He was a warm, caring widower. When she’d finally figured out her father would always show up only to leave again, she’d started hoping her mother would divorce him and marry Dr. Greenberg.
“All right.” He flipped through her chart. “You’re basically healthy. Good blood pressure. You getting enough sleep?”
She thought about the Ryan dreams. “Too much.”
“Like I believe that. You work too hard, but you can slow down a little. The firm will survive.”
“Slow down? Why? What’s wrong with me? Is it more serious than the flu?”
He set down her chart and looked at her. “You’re going to have to be the one to decide that. You’re not sick, Julie. You’re pregnant.”
Five
“They have a unique take on the market,” Todd said from his seat across the conference table. “This would be a new area for us. We’ve talked about expanding and—”
Todd broke off and tossed down the folder. “Am I boring you?”
Ryan glanced at his cousin, then at the paperwork in front of him. “It sounds like a great opportunity.”
Todd glowered at him. “You could at least pretend to care about the damn business. What’s wrong with you? It’s not that Nelson woman again? It can’t be. It’s been too long.”
Not for him, Ryan thought, feeling both angry with himself and resigned to the situation. His attempts to contact Julie had gotten him nowhere. He’d blown it and he had to accept that. The thing was, he didn’t want to.
Todd leaned toward him. “Dammit, Ryan, what’s the big deal? Women have been after us since we were fifteen years old. The money is just too hard to resist. We’re both sick of being the catch of the day. So why now? Why this woman?”
“An excellent question,” Ryan admitted. “I don’t have an answer except to say she was amazing and I destroyed any chance I had with her.”
“So you pretended to be me,” Todd said. “What’s the big deal? If she’s all that, then why can’t she see the humor in the situation?”
Ryan didn’t answer. He’d given Todd a very abbreviated version of his date with Julie, leaving out the fact that he’d spent the night.
“I swear, Aunt Ruth can be a pain,” Todd muttered. “When she suggested I marry one of her granddaughters, I wanted to choke her.”
“I wanted to help,” Ryan said, knowing he’d gone into the situation willingly. The idea of exacting a little revenge had been too appealing to ignore.
He’d let his pride take charge, always a dangerous decision.
“Julie didn’t do anything wrong,” he said, more to himself than Todd, “and I hurt her.”
“She was willing to go out with a man for money,” Todd pointed out. “That’s something.”
Despite feeling like roadkill, Ryan smiled. “The date was free. I told her she should have held out for at least fifty thousand. After all, there had to be something significantly wrong with you for your own aunt to have to pay someone to marry you.”
Predictably, Todd bristled. “She’s my aunt by marriage and there’s nothing wrong with me.”
He and Todd were enough alike that Ryan had to agree. Despite only being cousins, they were so similar in appearance that they had often been asked if they were twins. But for once, he and Todd were going to part company. On the issue of Julie Nelson, Ryan could only have regrets.
“You’re going to have to forget her,” Todd said.
“I will.” In time. The question was, how long would it take?
“Look at the bright side. If this went as badly as you said, I don’t have to worry about the other Nelson sisters wanting to marry me. So you’ve derailed Aunt Ruth.”
“She’ll come up with another plan. You know she wants to see us both married. You got picked first because you’re a whole couple of months older, but my time is coming.”
He had the sudden thought that if he had been picked first, then his date with Julie would have been real. He would have gone, expecting nothing, determined
