her mind, she stepped inside the warmth of his house and opened her mouth to issue a lawyer joke in response to his male cynicism. The flow of words stopped when she saw another woman standing just inside the entryway, shrugging into a coat with a fur-lined collar.
The pretty and petite woman smiled. “Hi, Jessica, I’m Ryan’s sister, Natalie,” she introduced herself. “And I believe that wisecrack of my brother’s comes from his scarred childhood and having to wait on his three sisters for the better part of his life.”
Ryan sent a mock scowl Natalie’s way, but there was affection in his gaze. “You have no idea what it’s like to have to get up at four in the morning in order to take a shower for school before the three of you woke up and commandeered the bathroom. I was done in ten minutes, then had to sit around for three hours for the bus to arrive while the three of you fought for mirror space.” He turned back to Jessica, and continued his argument. “And no matter how much time they all had to get ready, they were never on time for anything. Lindsay and Courtney were even late to their own weddings.”
Deeming it her duty to stick up for her gender, Jessica added, “Obviously, their husbands think they were worth waiting for.”
Her reply earned her a brilliant smile from Ryan’s sister. “Oh, I do like you.”
Ryan groaned. “Weren’t you just leaving, Nat?”
“I’m gone.” Natalie pressed a quick kiss to his cheek, then grasped Jessica’s hand in hers. “It was nice meeting you. I hope we have the chance to get to know one another better.”
Jessica didn’t bother to correct the woman’s assumption that she was Ryan’s girlfriend. “It was nice meeting you, too.”
Ryan blew out a breath once he closed the door behind his sister. “Ya gotta love her,” he said with amusement, and helped her out of her jacket. “Especially since my parents keep insisting that she wasn’t adopted.”
Despite his joke, it was obvious that he loved his entire family very much. It wasn’t what she’d expected. A part of her had assumed that his career choice had been based on his own personal family history being less than stable. Now, she wasn’t so sure, which made her wonder what had inspired his choice of career.
She swallowed the personal question and retrieved her notepad from her bag. “I brought the invitations, and I thought I could draw out a diagram of the bottom level of your house so that I…I mean, we can figure out what we need to accommodate the guests.”
“Let’s get started,” he said, too eagerly, too helpfully. “You can make notes while I give you the grand tour.”
The “grand tour” left Jessica breathless. His house was huge in her estimation, when all she’d known was the one small home her family had lived in before her parents divorced, then the cramped space of apartments. Being self-employed and making a decent living as a medical transcriber, she’d upgraded to a nice complex in a middle-class neighborhood which she’d shared with Brooke until recently, but it didn’t come close to the luxury in which Ryan lived.
Obviously decorated by a professional, in masculine colors of royal blue, hunter green, and chocolate brown, the lower level was spacious and spread out, affording them enough room to set up rental chairs for the party. The formal table in the dining room would hold the buffet she had in mind, and if they rearranged the furniture in the living room and family room they could add more seats there, too. The kitchen was a caterer’s dream, with a huge wooden center island for them to use to prepare the appetizers.
As she gazed up the spiral staircase to the upper level, she imagined entwining evergreen and twinkling lights along the handrail and throughout the house to make it more enchanting. Cinnamon-scented candles would add to the ambiance. Flipping the page of her pad of paper, she made a notation under “florist” for poinsettias, holly and greenery, along with a few table arrangements.
“Did you want to see upstairs, too?” he asked once they’d covered the first level of the house.
She lifted her gaze from her notes and quirked her brow at him, feeling a tad suspicious. Up until this moment, he’d been very well behaved. “Is there anything up there I need to see?”
“The master bedroom?”
She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from grinning at the hopeful note in his voice, the inviting light in his gaze. “You plan on letting your guests mingle in there?”
A warm, private smile brushed across his mouth. “I’m only extending the invitation to you.”
“It would be incredibly rude of us to leave our guests downstairs while we mingle upstairs,” she said, deliberately misconstruing his meaning.
He followed her through the living room to the kitchen. “I’m sure our guests wouldn’t miss us for an hour.”
A delicious pressure tightened in her belly at his insinuation. An hour of pure ecstasy compared to the ten minutes of groping and fumbling she’d experienced three years ago.
Oh, wow.
Trying not to allow his sexy overture to entice her, she sat at the small kitchen table and withdrew the invitations, address labels and stamps. It was time to execute her scheme to discourage his interest in the party planning.
He didn’t complain when she gave him the unpleasant job of licking the envelopes, and assigned him the monotonous task of affixing the return labels and stamps. Too cheerfully, he did as she instructed, not once shifting anxiously in his chair, or issuing an exasperated sigh.
Her ploy wasn’t working. The man was impossible to dissuade. Not to mention that he had her completely distracted and unable to concentrate.
He was sitting so close, his leg occasionally grazed hers, the friction of denim against denim nearly electric. She could feel his eyes on her as he waited patiently for her to address the last two invitations.
And then he reached out and tucked the strands of hair behind her ear that had fallen against her cheek, exposing her neck to his gaze in the process. His fingers lingered for a few fretful heartbeats, then skimmed her jaw as his hand fell away.
A shiver coursed through her, and she calmly handed him the invitation and reached for the last one. “Am I boring you?”
“Not in the least.” Without acknowledging that he’d touched her, he dampened a stamp and pressed it onto the corner of the envelope. “And why do I get the impression that you’re disappointed about that fact?”
“More like amazed that you’re actually enjoying this.” Finished with the last invitation, she passed it to him to finalize the job. “Well, that’s done.” And now she could leave. “I’ll drop them in the mail on my way home.”
“All right.” He gathered the other items for her to put into her tote bag, then stood, left the kitchen, and returned with her jacket, and a worn, masculine leather one.
Considering his sudden eagerness to help her clean up, and the fact that he was shrugging into his own jacket, she wondered if maybe she had waylaid his interest in party planning. Obviously, he had more exciting plans on his agenda, and was just politely going through the motions.
“Have you eaten anything?” he asked.
She grabbed her purse and tote
