The Boss, The Beauty And The Bargain

“Darling, you look wonderful and this must be...” Marie stared past her at Conal.

“Mom, I’d like you to meet Conal Sutherland. He’s—”

“Darling!” Marie shrieked as she caught sight of the engagement ring Livvy was wearing. “You said yes!”

Livvy winced at the ecstatic note in her mother’s voice.

“I’m so pleased to meet you, Conal. You can call me Marie.” She dimpled happily at him. “That’s what my other son-in-law calls me.”

“Marie,” Conal obediently repeated.

A high-pitched shriek followed by a thud echoed down the stairwell from the second floor, and Marie glanced nervously at the ceiling as the chandelier swayed. “Oh, dear,” she murmured.

Livvy blinked as a second thud followed the first.

“It doesn’t sound as if they’re taking prisoners up there,” Conal offered.

Livvy jumped as yet a still-louder thump sounded. “Um, Mom, do you think we ought to see what happened?”

Marie vigorously shook her head. “I’m quite sure I don’t want to know. It’s your cousin Mark. Your uncle David sent him upstairs and told him to stay there until he decided to behave.”

“They won’t be here that long,” Livvy muttered. “I thought Uncle David said they couldn’t come?”

“He did!” Marie whispered confidentially. “They simply appeared an hour ago saying that they found they were able to make it after all. And I can’t find anyplace for them to stay. I’ve called every single one of our relatives, and they all said they haven’t got one spare bed.”

Livvy grimaced. “Do you blame them? Those kids of theirs are completely out of control. Why don’t you send them to a hotel?”

Marie looked shocked. “Darling, I can’t do that. They’re family. I love David and Sarah.”

“I love them, too, but I’ve found my feelings for them increase the farther I am from their kids.”

“Shh,” Marie muttered. “They’ll hear you. Come on.”

“Fascinating,” Conal murmured as they followed Marie into the living room. Livvy wondered whether he was referring to the continuing noise from upstairs or her mother. Either one was probably outside his experience.

“Welcome to the family!” Her uncle David cheerfully wrung Conal’s hand. “I don’t have to tell you you’re getting a girl in a million with Livvy.”

“We’re so glad to meet you, Conal,” Sarah gushed. “My daughters will be so excited. You will let them be your bridesmaids won’t you, Livvy?”

“Um, I haven’t gotten to the planning stage yet,” Livvy stalled.

“Take my advice, Conal, and elope,” David said.

“Livvy, darling,” Marie said, “would you help me a minute in the kitchen?”

“Come on, Conal,” Livvy said, unwilling to leave him alone with her relatives. David would probably launch into one of his incredibly boring fishing stories.

“Darling, I hate to ask this of you,” Marie said the minute the kitchen door was safely closed behind them, “but I can’t think of what else to do. Would you and Conal mind dreadfully spending the weekend at your sister’s? Fern flatly refused to take any of David’s kids. She said she still hasn’t gotten the grape-juice stains out of her carpet from the last time they were there.” Marie shook her head. “And Fern a teacher, too. You’d think she could know how to handle them.”

“With a whip and chair,” Livvy muttered, but her mother ignored her.

“But she said she’d love to have you and Conal,” Marie said.

“We would be happy to stay at Fern’s,” Conal promptly said, and Marie gave him a grateful smile.

“You’re so kind,” Marie said.

Kind? Livvy examined her mother’s description and found that it was true. Conal was kind. Not the cloying, patronizing variety of kind, but the bracing, practical type.

“You’ll just have time to get over to Fern’s and unpack before it’s time to go to Olivia’s for dinner. And for heaven’s sake don’t be late,” Marie warned. “Olivia is already mad that Mom and Dad won’t be there tonight. She seems to think that it’s my fault that Dad’s doctor said he had to rest tonight if he was going to have the whole family out to the farm tomorrow. And make sure you take the bagels with you. You did remember them, didn’t you?”

At Livvy’s nod, Marie stood on tiptoe and gave Conal a kiss on his cheek before she enveloped Livvy in a hug. “I can hardly wait to show off my soon-to-be son-in-law. I hope you aren’t going to have a long engagement, dear?”

“It couldn’t be too short as far as I’m concerned,” Conal said, and Livvy winced at the laughter she could hear coloring his voice. As usual her mother was oblivious to nuances.

“Wonderful!” Marie clapped her hands together in pleasure. “I’ve always loved Christmas weddings.”

“Or Thanksgiving,” Conal added.

Livvy gave him a quelling glare as she dragged him toward the back door. Playing a part was one thing, hamming it up quite another.

Three

“There, that’s Fern’s place.” Livvy pointed to a small yellow cottage with blue shutters wedged in between two much bigger houses. “Her new color combination looks nice,” she added.

Conal pulled up in front of Fern’s house, cut the engine and took a good look at it. It didn’t look nice, he mentally corrected Liwy’s assessment. It looked fantastic. Like the stuff dreams were made of. His to be precise. As a child he’d dreamed about living in a house very much like Fern’s. One with shutters on the windows, dormers on the second floor and a wide porch across the front with a swing on it. Most of the other kids in the home had fantasized about suddenly discovering that they belonged to parents who were sports heros or movie stars who took them away to live in a mansion. But he never had. His dreams had been much more prosaic. He’d just wanted a father and a mother and a small house where he could sit on the porch on rainy summer afternoons and play.

Conal’s eyes drifted to Livvy. Livvy would fit right into a house like that. In the master bedroom. He felt anticipation spiral through him, nibbling at his composure. A master bedroom with a king-size bed, and he would spend his long, rainy afternoons playing in it with Livvy. He would take her in his arms and smother her lovely face with kisses and then he would work his way downward, over her elegant neck to the enticing hollow at the base of her throat. The skin on his body prickled as he anticipated the pleasure of slowly, leisurely undressing her to reveal her delectable body.

He grabbed his imagination by the throat and throttled it, when he realized that his fingers were trembling with the force of his desire. Think of this as an ad campaign, he encouraged himself. You’re trying to sell a product, yourself. You have to convince Livvy that you would make the most perfect lover she could ever hope to find.

He stifled a sigh. The problem with that was that he didn’t know what characteristics she wanted in a lover. And he wasn’t sure how to find out without asking, and that was far too dangerous. Once he’d verbalized his desire for her, the words could never be recalled. They would hang between them. They could well poison their present relationship, which, while emotionally frustrating at times, was a whole lot better than nothing. And that was what he would have if she were to leave. As talented as she was, she could get a job at any one of a dozen advertising agencies tomorrow.

Uncertainly Livvy studied Conal’s set expression out of the corner of her eye, wondering what he was thinking about. Certainly not the effectiveness of her sister’s color scheme. Was he trying to figure out how to escape back to New York? Had her mother’s embarrassing eagerness to welcome him to the family scared him off? Probably not. She relaxed ever so slightly as she studied the determined jut of his chin. It would take far more than her mother to scare Conal Sutherland.

Besides, even if Conal was having second thoughts, they had a deal, she reminded herself. Conal would honor it. And he would get fair value for his impersonation. She was going to do his soup campaign. She shivered as her eyes strayed to his firm lips, like a magnet that was perpetually drawn to true north. She longed to feel them against hers again. She wanted...

Livvy blinked as his face came closer, filling her line of vision. It was as if her intense longing had actually pulled him to her. Nervously she licked her lower lip, afraid to say anything for fear of disturbing whatever he intended to do. Her breath caught in her throat as he came closer. Close enough to brush his lips gently over hers. A tingling sensation shot through her.

Conal felt so good, and he tasted even better, she thought dreamily. She wanted more, much more. She wanted to grab his head and hold him still while she pressed her tongue against his lips. She wanted to run her fingers through his hair and find out if it was as silky as it looked.

She was jolted back to reality with a thump when Conal raised his head and whispered, “There, that should be enough to convince anyone watching that we’re an engaged couple.”

No, it wasn’t, Livvy wanted to say. It takes much more than that. She sighed longingly.