Tall, Dark & Gorgeous: To Marry McKenzie

‘But no doubt you’ve given them yours’,’ he guessed. ‘And—don’t tell me—you’re going to be a bridesmaid!’ he scorned.

Darcy drew in a quick breath. ‘Logan, has no one ever told you that bitterness is simply a form of selfdestruction? That—’

‘I believe I have already made my views on your amateur psychology more than plain,’ he cut in coldly.

‘Oh, yes, Logan, you can be assured you’ve made your views on several subjects more than plain!’ She was becoming angry herself now. ‘But it just so happens you aren’t a primary player in this particular situation. As I’m not.’ Something she had learnt all too painfully over the last couple of days! ‘So, like mine, your opinion is not of particular importance to either your mother or my father.’

‘In other words, our parents are going to marry each other, with or without our blessing,’ Logan acknowledged hardly.

Darcy nodded. ‘But they would obviously rather it was with.’ She looked at Logan expectantly.

He remained impassive. ‘You might feel prepared to play happy families, Darcy,’ he told her. ‘But I am not.’

She looked across at him with narrowed eyes, her frustration with this situation rapidly rising. ‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning they will have to get married without my blessing. In fact, as I have no intention of attending the wedding, they will have to get married without my being present at all!’

He was so obstinate, so stubborn, so uncompromising! What was it really going to cost him to be present at his own mother’s wedding? Nothing as far as she could see. Unless he considered his own personal pride more important than wishing the older couple well?

Nevertheless, she tried one last time to reach him. ‘Logan, you’re being unreasonable—’

The loud slamming down of his empty mug interrupted her, Logan’s own expression one of fury now. ‘I don’t see what’s in the least unreasonable about it. I certainly wasn’t present at my mother’s first wedding—’

‘You weren’t even born!’ At least, she presumed he wasn’t…?

‘Correct,’ he confirmed icily. ‘But I was very much alive when her second marriage took place, and, as she and Malcolm sneaked off to be married and told the family about it afterwards, I didn’t attend that one either. I see absolutely no reason to break the habit of a lifetime!’

Darcy stood up, two spots of angry colour in her otherwise pale cheeks. ‘You’re not twelve years old now, Logan.’

He remained in his seat. ‘No matter how old I was, my answer would still be the same.’

Darcy breathed hard in her frustrated anger towards this man. ‘Logan, Meg and my father have asked me to be one of their witnesses at the wedding—’

‘How nice for you!’

‘They would like it very much if you would agree to be the other one!’ she burst out.

‘In their dreams!’ Logan remained unmoved.

‘I—you—’

Logan leant back in his chair, a half-smile curving his lips. ‘So now you can report back to both of them that their little ploy in getting you to be the one to ask me didn’t work,’ he told her contemptuously.

Darcy saw red at that. Neither her father nor Margaret Fraser had so much as suggested she should do that—she had done it because she’d thought Logan might have been less insulting in his answer to her than he would either of them. She had been wrong!

‘You are the most unforgiving, pigheaded man I have ever had the misfortune to meet!’ Her voice shook with rage, her hands clenched into fists at her sides.

Again, Logan looked unmoved by her outburst. ‘And you, my dear Darcy, are the most naively gullible young lady I have ever met,’ he returned with insulting coolness.

She didn’t think, didn’t reason, reacted purely on instinct, which told her to pick up the bowl of recently whisked egg-whites—and put it over the top of Logan’s head!

Then, as he slowly removed the bowl and placed it carefully back on the table-top, the fluffy egg-whites slowly congealing on his hair and face, Logan’s expression through the gooey mess one of stunned surprise, Darcy could only stare at him in horror for what she had just done.

She had done some terrible things to him in the short time she had known him, but Logan was never going to forgive her for this one.

Never!

CHAPTER TEN

‘WILL you just get a grip, Fergus? It wasn’t in the least bit funny!’ Logan glared across the restaurant table—not Chef Simon!—at his cousin, as the other man seemed incapable of stopping his laughter.

‘I’m sorry!’ Fergus finally gasped. ‘I can’t help it! I just—my goodness, I bet you looked a sight with all that uncooked egg-white all over you!’ Fergus went off into paroxysms of laughter once again.

Logan continued to scowl at the other man. Maybe one day he might be able to see the funny side of this himself—although he wouldn’t count on it! But at this particular moment, only an hour or so after it had happened, he still didn’t find it in the least funny.

He had stared up at Darcy in complete disbelief at the time, sure he’d been in the middle of one of those unbelievable nightmares one sometimes had. But the slow descent of the gooey white mess down his face had given instant lie to that hope; there was no way he could ever have imagined the cold stickiness of those egg-whites against his skin and hair!

Darcy had looked stunned herself at what she had done, staring down at him in horror. As well she might have done!

Logan wasn’t a hundred per cent certain what his immediate intention had been—probably he had been about to wring her pretty little neck! But before he’d been able to do that, he’d heard the kitchen door swing open behind them.

‘I thought I heard raised voices—good grief!’ Daniel Simon gasped as he took in the scene, his gaze disbelieving on Logan’s dishevelled appearance. ‘What on earth happened?’ He looked appalled as he moved further into the room.