A Week Till the Wedding Read Free Page B

trying to punish him, she had ended up punishing herself. It was absolute torture to have him so close. And he didn’t seem to be tortured at all .
    The house was just as she remembered it, majestic and welcoming, perfectly positioned on a vast expanse of land that was lushly green. A portion of the land was flat and had once been farmed, but to the west there were gentle hills and ancient trees. She and Jacob had taken many a long walk in those hills...
    He offered his arm at the porch steps, and she took it. She would not allow him to see how she was affected by his closeness. He couldn’t know, not ever, that he made her squirm.
    “Do you sleep in a suit?” she asked coolly as they walked up the steps, neither of them in a hurry. He looked good in the dark suit and crisp white shirt, she’d admit, especially since everything he had on fit him as if it had been made for his body, but the outfit seemed wrong here at Tasker House, especially given the season. Even late in the day, the summer heat remained. And the humidity...you could not dismiss the humidity! Besides, the stupid suit reminded her that he’d dumped her for his precious career. She didn’t want or need his success rubbed in her face.
    “Not usually,” he said.
    She shouldn’t have asked that question. As she recalled, he usually slept in nothing at all. At least, he had when she’d been around. So had she, come to think of it. They hadn’t lived together, though that step had been coming, but she’d spent the night at his place and he’d spent the night at hers—when roommates were away. It was a vivid memory she could do without, given the circumstances. She tried to think of other things, to push the memory of a naked Jacob out of her mind, but nothing else would stick.
    Before she could wipe the image of a naked Jacob from her brain, Susan Tasker met them at the door. The screen door squealed as she opened it, and she smiled. Or tried. It was the most pathetic attempt at a smile Daisy had ever seen. Focusing on Jacob’s mother helped; it was difficult to fantasize about the man naked while the woman Daisy had once believed would one day be her mother-in-law looked on.
    Susan Tasker had married into the prominent and wealthy Tasker family, but she’d soon become one of its leaders. Her husband, Jim, Miss Eunice’s only living child, was a quiet man who seemed to be happy to share the handling of the family business matters and properties with his wife. She had given him four sons and taken on an active role in the multiple Tasker concerns—there were a number of businesses across the South that were at least partially owned by the family corporation—as if she’d been born to it.
    And now she cared for his mother, as well.
    “Daisy,” she said softly as she backed up to allow her and Jacob to enter the house.
    “Mrs. Tasker.”
    The older woman—she had to be approaching sixty—turned around, waving a hand dismissively. “Oh, call me Susan. You’re not a child any longer.”
    Susan had put on a few pounds in the years since Daisy had seen her, and whoever was styling her hair had done a terrible job. The color was flat and lifeless, and the cut was too severe for the shape of her face. She needed layering, and some highlights to soften the color.
    Which was, Daisy reminded herself as they followed Susan Tasker toward the parlor, not her problem.
    From first glance, it was clear to her that the house hadn’t changed. Not a stick of furniture from the entryway had been moved, and she would swear that even the fresh flowers on the round table near the foot of the staircase were exactly the same as they’d been last time she was here. The ceilings were high, the furnishings antique, the pictures unexciting landscapes and old family portraits framed in gold. This place was a constant, never changing.
    She loved this old house, even though Taskers lived in it.
    Jim Tasker was in the parlor, enjoying a predinner drink. Jacob’s