Her Sister's Fiancé

“Joe?” Stacy gasped once more.

“Yes. He drove up and helped me move.” Not entirely untrue. He’d carried her suitcases to her car, after all.

“You’ve been seeing Joe? All this time?”

No way to answer that without lying, which Kathie really didn’t like to do.

“Stacy, I’m sorry. I’m kind of in a rush. I want to catch Joe before he makes lunch plans. Could you put me through?”

“Oh. Okay. Sure. I’ll get him for you.”

Kathie breathed a bit easier after escaping from the you’ve-been-seeing-Joe question. Relief was still rushing through her when Joe came on the phone.

“Kathie?” He sounded like a man approaching a rabid dog.

God, help me, please. I won’t ever go after my sister’s fiancé again. I swear. I won’t fall for any man I’m not allowed to have.

“We need to have lunch together,” she said in a rush, not giving herself time to think about it.

Just do it.

Follow the plan.

The Joe-is-not-the-bad-guy plan.

“Okay,” he said, still sounding like she might bite his head off or something.

“I mean, if we’re going to do this, we just have to do it. Which means, people have to see us together.”

“Okay,” Joe said. “I’ll pick you up in a half hour?”

“No, I’ll meet you at the bank. It’s always crowded at noon. Might as well start there, letting people see us, and then we’ll go to the Corner Café.”

Joe groaned. “You mean the diner?”

“Yes.”

“Darlene remodeled and changed the name. It’s actually called the Corner Diner now and it’s bigger.”

His chance meeting with Kate at the Corner Diner last fall was still probably the talk of the town, the best gossip to come out of the place in years. They’d run into each other in the midst of breaking up, and Kate had informed Joe very loudly that no, despite gossip to the contrary, she was not pregnant with his child or anyone else’s. She’d been spotted at the local OB/GYN’s office, taking a then-pregnant Shannon for a checkup. Everyone in town had assumed it was Kate who was pregnant, not Shannon, a girl Kate had met while volunteering with the Big Brothers Big Sisters organization.

So Kathie could understand why Joe was reluctant to be seen in the place, especially in another meeting destined to make the gossip rounds.

“We have to,” Kathie said. “And try to look happy when you see me. You’re supposed to be crazy about me, remember? Otherwise, you can’t be devastated when I break your heart in a month or so.”

Joe fought the urge to drum his fingers on his desk, a habit he’d given up two years ago as a New Year’s Eve resolution, because it wasn’t good for a man to show any outward sign of weakness. Or stress.

And drumming those fingers was something he did when he was stressed.

Right then, he could have drummed with baseball bats quite happily, and it wouldn’t have given him half the relief he needed considering what was about to happen.

Yeah, baseball bats.

And he had a quarter-inch-thick layer of glass lining the top of his desk to protect the wood from scratches. The bat would have made confetti out of it in seconds, but he wouldn’t have cared.

She was coming.

And he was supposed to look happy about it.

“Mr. Reed?” his secretary, Marta, said from the doorway to his office, an odd look on her face. “Is everything all right?”

Joe hadn’t known she was standing there, hadn’t had a clue, and she wasn’t a woman who moved with any kind of stealth. She was rather large, and besides that, she wore three charm bracelets with about fifty charms that jingled every time she so much as breathed. It drove him crazy, had for years, but it meant he always knew where she was.

Until today.

“I’m fine,” he lied. “Why?”

“You buzzed for me to come in,” she said.

He opened his mouth to say that he certainly hadn’t, but then looked down to find one of his non-drumming fingers perilously close to the button on the phone that he used to summon her.

Maybe he had buzzed her in, one little drum of the fingers before he forgot he’d given it up.

“Is there something I can get you?” she asked.

“No. I…uhhh…I’m going to lunch. In a few minutes.” He wouldn’t be able to choke down a bite, but he’d go and try to look happy about it and not like a man about to get his head chopped off or something.

He wondered if Kathie had briefed her brother, the cop, on the let’s-date-Joe-for-the-summer plan and how Jax might react, whether Joe would get hauled off into the woods yet again and threatened with bodily harm or more moving violations. If Joe was smart—and he’d always prided himself on being a very smart man—he’d park his car and walk to work for the next month. It was only a few miles, and the weather was fine so far.

Yeah, he should walk, just in case, at least until it got too hot.

Because a smart man knew how to pick his battles and avoid the ones he couldn’t win. He’d never win with Kathie’s brother over anything to do with him and Kathie Cassidy.

“Did I forget to write down an appointment, Mr. Reed?” Marta asked.

“No. Made it myself. Just now.”

“Oh. With whom?”

He frowned at her, not wanting to say, wanting to postpone just for a few more minutes that nice, sane, everything-is-getting-back-to-normal atmosphere he’d tried so hard to cultivate after…the unfortunate event, as he’d taken to thinking of it in his own mind.

The series of unfortunate events, he should say.

She’d ended up in his arms more than once, after all.

He could have pleaded temporary insanity if it had been only the one brief time the day her mother died. Granted it had felt like temporary insanity each time, but he really couldn’t claim a series of unfortunate lapses into temporary insanity. One didn’t have serial bouts of temporary insanity. One had to consider it was more than temporary insanity at that point. More of a long-term psychological disorder, which he certainly hoped he did not have.

There’d been the day her mother died. Grief could have easily accounted for him taking her in his arms that day. Not for the kissing part, but the holding at least.