He ordered breakfast from room service to fortify himself.
He considered staying in his room for the day, but he very quickly found that he was too anxious over Serena’s safety. He checked her room, and, since it was empty, he sighed and went in search of her and the Terrible Two.
Brian didn’t quite know how to greet Serena. Their good nights had been constrained, and now he was feeling very guarded and uncertain. He still wasn’t quite sure why he had forgiven her scheming and why he was willing—eager, even—to allow their relationship to progress.
And, since he was not a man who was often uncertain about anything, the feeling disturbed him.
Walls. She had said he had walls, yet she hadn’t defined those barriers; he had a strong feeling she could have, though.
And that bothered him too. How, he wondered, could she define what he couldn’t define himself? He had told her he didn’t want to get involved, she’d said. He honestly couldn’t remember telling her that.
And if he had told her—what were his reasons? Why then, when he had expected only to escort Stuart’s daughter home? Why, for that matter, tell her at all?
“Oh, the hell with it,” Brian muttered, then flushed as he suddenly became aware of the startled look from the elderly lady sharing the elevator. He added a hasty, “Pardon me,” and was very glad when the doors opened seconds later to reveal the lobby.
His relief was momentary, however, and very soon supplanted by annoyance.
Serena looked up from her comfortable position on a love seat to see Brian striding toward her and carrying little Mark Bishop under one arm like an unwanted feed sack. The man’s handsome face spoke volumes for the fact that he was unhappy with his towheaded appendage; Mark, on the other hand, was clearly delighted by his mode of transportation.
“This little monster,” Brian announced without preamble and in a tone of careful precision, “had a snare set by the elevators.” Still dangling the giggling Mark, Brian produced a coiled length of twine from his pocket and held it out like an indictment. “Stretched across to trip the unwary—of which I was nearly one,” he elaborated coldly.
With a wink directed at Mark’s freckled, grinning face, Serena said mildly, “Well, that was clever of him, don’t you think? I didn’t know how to set a snare at his age.”
“I should hope not!” Brian snapped. The arm curled around Mark shifted, so that the boy was dangled in front of Brian as though he were an offering for sacrifice. “He could have badly injured someone!”
Still mild, Serena said, “Oh, I don’t think he would have let that happen. You wouldn’t have, would you, Mark?”
“’Course not,” Mark chirped up, clearly undismayed by his present position. “I would’ve taken prisoners. It was a ambush,” he explained loftily.
“You’re standin’ on my puzzle!” scolded a voice from Brian’s feet.
He stepped aside hastily and dropped Mark on the love seat beside Serena as he looked down to find Lisa Bishop’s angelic china-blue eyes glaring up at him. “It shouldn’t be on the floor,” he told her firmly.
“Well, it is,” she announced, her tone daring him to dispute the fact of the matter.
Brian, who had had little experience with children before encountering Serena, looked to her rather helplessly.
Serena smiled. “Lisa is very intelligent. She’s putting together a thousand-piece puzzle. Could you do that at her age?”
Brian, estimating Lisa’s age to be around six, said that he couldn’t have. That he hadn’t wanted to.
“Help me,” Lisa demanded imperiously.
“No.” Brian sat down in a chair flanking the love seat and tried to ignore what had mysteriously become a heartrending appeal from china-blue eyes. Serena, who had an excellent idea of just how long he’d be able to withstand that appeal, snagged the twine from his fingers and began explaining the construction of a cat’s cradle for Mark’s enjoyment.
Moments later, her peripheral vision having recorded Brian’s capitulation, she muttered, “The bigger they are, the easier they fall.”
“Bite your tongue,” Brian told her absently as he frowned over a baffling puzzle piece.
During the next few hours he had to bite his own tongue more than once to keep from swearing out loud. Mark was the cause, for the most part, although it soon became apparent that Lisa’s innocent eyes hid the soul of a gremlin.
In spite of having two pairs of adult eyes to watch them, the children had obviously perfected the art of slipping off their respective leashes in order to get into mischief. And the ability to get into mischief seemed an inborn talent.
Lost for ten minutes, Mark was discovered building a jungle from the potted palms near the elevators, where he launched unprovoked attacks on passersby. Listening interestedly to Brian’s stern reprimand, his explanation—Mark never excused himself—was that he had been experimenting in the art of guerrilla warfare.
Brian blinked.
“Intelligent, isn’t he?” Serena said.
Deciding that the boy was obviously the greater troublemaker, Brian took pains to interest him in something safe, and ended up immersed in the construction of a model plane purchased in the hotel gift shop. That there were pitfalls in even that innocent pastime was proven when Mark playfully glued three ashtrays to their respective tables before Brian could catch him.
“Nail-polish remover,” Serena murmured, “will dissolve the glue.”
“I always knew I approved of planned parenthood” was Brian’s only remark. “Now I know why.”
Having a lively sense of self-preservation, Mark clearly deduced from Brian’s expression that a moderation of behavior was called for, and so behaved like an angel. For a while.
Brian suspected that the whole thing was planned, for while Mark was an angel, Lisa became a gremlin.
She disappeared into the garden, where she spent the few moments before discovery trying to catch goldfish in the ornamental pool. Then she vanished into the gift shop, where she was found to be critically modeling a scanty lace teddy over her T-shirt and blue jeans. Then she somehow slipped behind the front desk and pressed what turned out to be the panic button on the main computer, sending the entire system into chaos.
Brian found himself soothing a number of upset people, spreading largess here, bribes there, and holding on to his own temper with both hands.
He then very calmly picked up a child with each arm and disappeared with them to his room after telling Serena to wait for them in the lobby. When the three returned some time later, both Mark and Lisa were subdued and cast glances of mingled respect and resentment at Brian.
And they behaved for the remainder of the day.
Collected by their parents—who appeared to have shed ten years in a single day minus their offspring—Mark and Lisa solemnly and without prompting thanked Serena and Brian, and both hugged Serena affectionately.
Mark then offered a manly handshake to Brian, and Lisa hugged him, somewhat to his surprise. He was even more surprised to discover himself returning the hug with an abrupt surge of affection.
“You,” Serena told him thoughtfully when the Bishops had departed, “would make a very good father.” Then she flushed suddenly and avoided his eyes.
“I’ve never thought much about it,” he said gently.
“I know.”
He looked at her. “How do you know?”
After a moment she sighed and returned his gaze. “I know,” she said, “because it makes sense. I’ll bet you knew when you were in high school that you wanted to build your own company. Right?” She waited for his nod. “And since that time, you’ve worked toward that end. You started the firm, built it up, made it a success. Brian, you haven’t had time for thinking of anything but the company in years. Except,” she added dryly, “for an occasional ‘relationship.’ And since you were in a rut, you probably didn’t think about the relationships.”
“What do you mean by rut?” he asked, astonished.
&nb
sp; “Slip of the tongue.”
“The hell it was. It was deliberate. Now explain it.”
Serena was smiling, an elusive emotion that might have been humor dancing in her eyes. “All right,” she said, continuing with firm deliberation. “You, Brian, are in a rut. The chains of habit bind you. I’ll bet you haven’t taken an unplanned step since high school—and possibly not since elementary school.”
Brian knew intellectually that she had glibly translated a disciplined nature into what sounded uncomfortably like a boring one; he reacted emotionally. “That’s—nonsense,” he said, having obviously changed his mind and substituted “nonsense” for a less polite word.
“Is it?” Serena rose from the edge of the ornamental pool where they’d been sitting since the Bishops had reclaimed their offspring, and looked down at him, still smiling. In a tone that could not quite be called sympathetic, she said, “According to all the statistics, a single man in his mid-thirties is generally single out of sheer habit. Usually because he concentrated on building a career in his twenties. So he gets in a rut. Begins to believe he has this strong reason for staying single—when all the time it’s just a habit. And habits are terribly hard to break, you know.”
Brian rose slowly to his feet and stared at her. “I think I’m getting the hang of this,” he said, as though to a third person. Then, to Serena, he said pleasantly, “You’re trying to provoke me.”
Serena glanced idly toward the setting sun, then back at him. “Am I? Why, Brian, I’m just making an observation.”
“You’re trying to provoke me,” he repeated firmly. He was, at that moment, very sure that he was right. “You think I’m going to—It’s reverse psychology. You tell me I’m in a rut, so I immediately ‘break out’ of that rut by deciding to do something … reckless.”
“That makes me sound very cunning,” she commented, thoughtful.
“You are,” he told her. “And it won’t work.”
Serena smiled. “What’re we going to do about dinner?”
He blinked. “What do you want to do?”
“Eat.”
From his momentary position of certainty, Brian felt himself again falling into bewilderment. He had so completely accepted the reality of Serena’s plotting that he had found himself searching for motives behind every utterance. But was there motive behind every word she spoke? Could she possibly be that devious? Or was he imagining things?
“And then?” he asked guardedly.
“We could play poker,” she suggested gently, then turned and headed for the hotel.
SIX
DURING THE NEXT two days Brian couldn’t decide if Serena had indeed abandoned her plotting or if she was playing a wonderful game of poker.
She never again referred to his “rut” or to the habits of bachelors. Nor did she refer to her earlier decision to get him to the altar. But she did continue to go to dinner wearing evening gowns that turned heads and stopped conversations in mid-sentence.
There was, however, a change in her behavior.
From their first meeting, Serena had proven herself to be a woman who liked to touch. It was, he had thought then, part of her charm. She would slide her hand beneath his arm as they walked or touch his hand when they talked. Her gestures had seemed innocent, confiding.
He would have been suspicious of such gestures now, had they been made. But they were not. Without being obvious about it, Serena refrained from touching him.
And she had stopped flirting. No more provocative questions or remarks. No more slow Mona Lisa smiles. No more enigmatic glances from smoky gray eyes. She was casual and friendly, but not intimate. She made him laugh with comical stories of some of her past plots; she talked quietly, after a bald question from him, about her foster children. They played cards, alone and with Josh, who seemed secretly amused about something. They shared every meal, walked in the garden, played tennis and golf, went horseback riding, and talked.
Brian found himself watching her warily at first, then with increasing intentness. He made a few provocative remarks of his own, and Serena either ignored them, missed them—impossible, he knew—or else smoothly changed the subject.
He wondered if Serena was too conscious of her previous scheme’s failure to be able to let their relationship progress naturally. He wondered if this was a new plot. If so, he was wryly amused to realize that it was working.
Thinking about it, he wasn’t surprised. Serena had first been a responsibility in his eyes. Amusing, troublesome, yet still a responsibility. Later, almost in the blink of an eye, she had shown herself to be a fascinating, desirable woman, igniting his senses and confusing all rational thought. Then she had confessed her plotting with childlike simplicity and no excuses.
From child to woman to child—and now back to woman. A friendly, cheerful woman who needed to give no sultry glances or enigmatic smiles to remind a man she was all female. A lady who wore stunning evening gowns with the same simple grace with which she wore jeans or slacks, who now offered no confiding touches or provocative words, and yet somehow made a man stingingly aware of her every casual gesture.
She was damnably intriguing.
Brian found that he could actually feel his heart beating in her presence, a strong and uneven rhythm. He missed her casual touches, finding excuses himself to make contact with her. He felt a growing tension that was as emotional as it was physical, disturbing his sleep and making him uncharacteristically restless.
On the third night after her confession, he demanded of Josh, “What in hell is she up to?” He didn’t have to elaborate.
“I don’t know,” Josh told him, obviously amused. They were all three playing cards in the quiet lounge off the lobby, with drinks and snacks nearby, and Serena had excused herself briefly. “I suppose,” Josh said judiciously, “she’s plotting. But I’m damned if I’m sure. Even after knowing her all her life, I have an uncomfortable feeling Rena could surprise me once a day if she wanted to. You have to admit that she isn’t dull.”
The only answer to that vast understatement seemed to be a drink, so Brian took a gulp of his. It didn’t help. He hadn’t really expected it to.
Serena came back into the room just as her half brother looked at his watch and stacked his cards neatly. “Deal me out,” he told them as he stood up. “I have a date.”
“The pianist?” Serena murmured.
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
In an idle tone, Serena said, “You know, it’s common practice for women to change their hair color. And when they do, it’s usually from brunette to blond. But I don’t suppose that matters, does it, Josh?”
Her half brother stared down at her for a moment, then said in a peculiar tone to Brian, “I told you she could still surprise me.” Without another word he left the room.
“I wonder if he’ll break the date,” Serena mused.
Brian stared at her. “What was that all about?”
“His fixation.”
“Come again?”
Shuffling cards expertly, Serena laughed softly. “Hadn’t you noticed? It isn’t blondes Josh is obsessed with, it’s brunettes. And he thought I didn’t know.” She shook her head in a gentle reproof of her absent kin.
“Know what?” Brian asked, still confused.
“Well, Josh is one of those rare people who has always known himself. I mean, he always understands why he likes or dislikes something. He doesn’t have to ponder it; he just knows. I think in some ways he’s a bit psychic, about himself, anyway. And being a healthy, self-preserving male, he wants complete control of his life.” She reflected, almost in surprise, “We’re alike in that way.”
“The point being?”
“The point being that he knows when he falls in love, it’ll be with a brunette, and he’ll fall hard,” she added with certainty.
“How could he possibly know he’ll fall in love with a brunette?” Brian asked in bewilderment.
“He just does. He’s never dated a brunette in his li
fe, and a few truly gorgeous ones have tried to get his attention, I can tell you. But Josh—like you—avoids lengthy relationships. You pointed out once yourself that he’s—um—uncomfortably close to being a rake. I don’t think it’s habit with him; it’s the need to keep control of his life.”
“Ever thought of hanging out a shingle?”
Serena smiled. “Oh, I’m no armchair psychologist. But I know Josh. His fear is based on the certainty that a brunette will be his downfall. And I only hope I’m around to see it, because it’ll be something to watch. Josh doesn’t rattle easily, but I’ll bet some dark-haired beauty will knock him flat on his back.”
After a long moment, Brian said slowly, “You don’t like to lose control either. That night in the garden you said, ‘I won’t lose control of this.’” He hadn’t known quite how to phrase the question, and thought she would probably change the subject anyway. But Serena fooled him.
She met his gaze squarely. “But I’d already lost control,” she confessed. “I found out what Josh will find out one day. You can’t control love. It isn’t made that way. It just happens, like an act of nature.”
He felt he had to say something, but didn’t know what it was.
Shaking her head, she said softly, “I thought I could control you and me, thought I could make you love me. I was wrong. You were right; there’s too much between us. Or not enough.”
Brian stared at her, his throat aching. Clearing it strongly, he said, “Nobility, Serena?”
Unoffended, she thought about that. “No, I don’t think so. Odd as it sounds, I’m a realist. If something doesn’t work, then it doesn’t work. For whatever reasons, you don’t want a commitment. I do.”
“You agreed we should let our relationship progress,” he reminded her, conscious of the tightness in his voice.
She nodded. “I know. But it hasn’t.”
“And you don’t think it will? You’re very calm about it.” He wondered how she could be, if indeed she believed herself to be in love with him. She looked away from his stare, but not before he caught a glimpse of sudden pain in her eyes. What bothered him the most was that she had looked away; for the first time she was hiding her vulnerability from him.