Treasured Read Free

those occasions. Her one slipup had been not reminding him this morning that today was the day company was coming.
    “Give me ten minutes,” he told her now. “I’ll clean up.”
    “Too late for that. Melanie is pregnant and starving. She’ll eat the flower arrangement if we don’t offer an alternative soon. Besides, the company is beginning to wonder if we’ve just taken over some stranger’s house. They need to meet you. You’ll make up in charm what you lack in sartorial splendor.”
    “I have paint on my clothes,” he protested, then gave her a hard look as what she’d said finally sank in. “Company? You mean besides Richard and Mack and their wives? Did you say anything about company when you badgered me into having Thanksgiving here?”
    “I’m sure I did,” she said blithely.
    She hadn’t, and they both knew it, which meant she was scheming about something more than relieving his solitude. When they reached the house, Ben immediately understood what she was up to.
    “And, darling, this is Kathleen Dugan,” Destiny said, after introducing several other strangers who were part of the rag-tag group of people Destiny had collected because she knew they had no place else to spend the holiday. There was little question, judging from her tone, that this Kathleen was the pièce de résistance.
    He gave his aunt a sharp look. Kathleen was young, beautiful and here alone, which suggested she was available. He’d known for some time now—since Mack’s recent wedding, in fact—that Destiny had targeted him for her next matchmaking scheme. Here was his proof—a woman with a fringe of black hair in a pixie cut that emphasized her cheekbones and her amazing violet eyes. There wasn’t an artist on earth who wouldn’t want to capture that interesting, angular face on canvas. Not that Ben ever did portraits, but even he was tempted to break his hard-and-fast rule. She was stunning in a red silk tunic that skimmed over a slender figure. She wore it over black pants and accented it with a necklace of chunky beads in gold and red. The look was elegant and just a touch avant-garde.
    “Lovely to meet you,” Kathleen said with a soft smile that showed no hint of the awkwardness Ben was feeling. Clearly she hadn’t caught on to the scheme yet.
    Ben nodded. He politely shook her hand, felt a startling jolt of awareness, then took another look into her eyes to see if she’d felt the same little zing . She showed no evidence of it, thank heavens.
    “If you’ll excuse my totally inappropriate attire,” Ben said, quickly turning away from her and addressing the others, “I gather dinner is ready to be served.”
    “We’ve time for another drink,” Destiny insisted, apparently no longer worried about the delayed meal. “Richard, bring your brother something. He can spend at least a few minutes socializing before we sit down to eat.”
    Ben frowned at her. “I thought we were in a rush.”
    “Only to drag you in here,” his very pregnant sister-in-law said as she came and linked an arm through his, drawing him out of the spotlight, even as she whispered conspiratorially, “Don’t you know that you’re the main attraction?”
    He gave Melanie a sharp look. They’d formed a bond back when Richard had been fighting his attraction to her. Ben trusted her instincts. He wanted to hear her take on this gathering. “Oh?”
    “You never come out of this lair of yours,” Melanie explained. “When Destiny invited us here, we figured something was up.”
    “Oh?” he said again, waiting to see if she’d drawn the same conclusion about Kathleen’s presence here that he had. “Such as?”
    Melanie studied him intently. “You really don’t know what Destiny is up to? You’re as much in the dark as the rest of us?”
    Ben glanced toward Kathleen, then. “Not as much as you might think,” he said with a faint scowl.
    Melanie gave the newcomer a knowing look. “Ah, so that’s it. I wondered when Kathleen