you, I won’t abuse your hospitality.”
Linc nodded, his face granite hard. “I won’t let you. Trust me, I have no intention of being played for a sucker again. So, fair warning, whatever you think you can get out of me, it’s not going to happen. One night, Tate. That’s it. Tomorrow, you’re gone.”
Tate wanted to explain that she wasn’t like her sister, but quickly realized that Linc wasn’t interested in her explanations and, worse, didn’t care. She was the dust on the bottom of his shoes, and the sooner he could shake her off, the happier he’d be. “Tomorrow, I’m gone,” Tate agreed.
“See that you are. My mother got her way this time. She won’t again.” Linc lifted his wrist to look at his expensive watch. “I’ve got to get back to the office. I’ll arrange to have your luggage collected if you give me the address. Amy’s working on finding that lawyer, and I will ensure that whatever my mother wants purchased gets delivered.”
“Thank you. I do appreciate your help,” Tate said, her back still straight and her eyes still clashing with his.
Linc surprised her when he stepped up to her and gripped her chin in his large hand. An inch apart, she could feel the heat of his hard body, smell his sweet breath. She could see the faint scar in the corner of his mouth, count each individual bristle of his sexy stubble. Her pulse raced. She wanted that mouth on hers...wanted to wind her arms around his neck, to push her aching breasts into his wide chest.
She wanted to know what he tasted like, how he kissed.
“I fell for the machinations of one pretty Harper woman before. I won’t do it again.” Linc’s gaze darted to her mouth and back up to her eyes again. She saw desire smoldering under his layers of anger and frustration. “So don’t get any ideas, Tate.”
“One night, Linc.” It was all she could think of to say, the only words she could force through her lips. “I promise.”
Derision flashed across Linc’s face as he dropped his hand and stepped back. “Sorry, but Harper promises mean less than nothing to me.”
Fair enough, Tate thought as he strode away. If her fiancé had bailed on her and her child two weeks before their much-anticipated society wedding, she, too, would still be furious and not inclined to play nice with his relatives.
And she most definitely wouldn’t have been as calm as Linc had remained with her. Tate placed her hands on her hips and stared at her feet.
She’d been granted a reprieve, and she’d use that time wisely to rest and pick Jo’s brain on the basics of childcare. Tomorrow she’d move on.
Between now and then the one thing she would not do was fantasize about Linc Ballantyne. Yes, he was insanely hot, but if she were to have a type, he wasn’t it. Within ten minutes she’d pegged him as a traditional guy, someone absolutely committed to his son and his family, to his stable, conventional life.
He was everything she was not. And that was perfectly fine with her, because in the morning she would be moving on.
After all, moving on was what she did best.
In the space of an afternoon, Tate had fallen in love.
She absolutely adored her niece, was partly in love with Jo, was pretty much there with Shaw and utterly entranced with the brownstone the three of them called their home. It was after midnight, and Tate, barefoot and dressed in a pair of yoga pants and a T-shirt, padded down the imposing wooden staircase, her hand sliding down the banister. How many hands had repeated the same action since the house was built in the late 1800s? How many guests had snuck down these stairs to head for the kitchen for a late-night glass of milk or a glass of wine to aid sleep?
Clutching a baby monitor, Tate stepped off the last tread and turned into the enormous room on the ground floor. Jo had taken her on a tour of the five-story home earlier in the day, and every room was a delight. The huge entrance hall opened up to reception rooms and formal living rooms, a library and a smaller sunroom.
The second floor was Linc’s domain, comprising a master bedroom, a home office/library and Shaw’s bedroom and playroom.
She was on the third floor, in the middle bedroom, which was linked by an interleading door to Shaw’s old nursery.
Jo occupied the top floor but this ground-level floor was already Tate’s favorite. As a food lover, she was delighted by the state-of-the-art kitchen. She loved the way the kitchen flowed into an informal dining area and then into a relaxed living space filled with books and toys and...mess. Magazines and coloring books and handheld computer games. The mess reassured her that a family lived here.
Oh, she did love the house but... What was it about it that made her feel out of place? It wasn’t the luxury; she didn’t care about the expensive furnishings and the exclusive address. It was the permanence of The Den, Tate realized, that made her feel twitchy. Like Ballantyne’s store on Fifth Avenue, their flagship store, it was an institution. It screamed tradition, solidity...everything she, the ultimate rolling stone, was not.
She was a product of her tumultuous past, Tate decided as resentment twisted her stomach into knots. Her life had been perfect before Kari and her mom, Lauren, Tate’s mother’s twin, came to live with them for what was supposed to be a month or so, until the single mom found a job and her bearings. A month had turned into six, and her dad had moved out, threatening divorce unless their lives returned to a normal, Kari-and Lauren-free existence.
Her mom, Lane, chose her twin. Tate had lost her dad, her home and her mother, who seemed to prefer Kari to her, all in less than a year. They all had lost the financial security her father had brought to the table. Then when she was eight and Kari eleven, her aunt had been diagnosed with breast cancer and quickly passed away, leaving the three of them to muddle along, moving from one rental to another. Lane had managed to scrape enough money together to cover the legal fees for her to formally adopt Kari and to petition the courts to change Tate’s surname to Harper, with no objection from her father.
All her life Tate had felt like the third wheel and a stranger in her own house. Her teenage years with Kari had been pure hell. Kari had an uncontrollable temper, a sense of entitlement and was a master manipulator.
Tate had coped by dreaming of running away to places like Patagonia and Santorini, Istanbul and Ethiopia. Anywhere, she decided, was better than sharing a small house with a selfish, irresponsible drama queen and her enabler. When she left home to travel the world, she’d realized her teenage instincts were correct and that she was much happier having an ocean and a couple of continents between her and her mother and Kari. She liked being alone and free, not having to answer to anyone but herself. It wasn’t that she didn’t like people, she did, but her mom and Kari were emotional leeches. At a young age she’d learned to create little pockets of solitude around herself and tried to spend as much time there as possible.
When you didn’t rely on anybody for anything—companionship, love, company—they had no power to hurt you.
It was funny how two melded-together families, hers and Linc’s, could be so different. When Kari and Linc had become engaged, Tate made it her mission to study the family her sister was marrying into, and she’d been impressed by what she’d learned from press reports and interviews with various members of the famous family.
Their
