For once Ellie had to agree with him. “I’m surprised he didn’t refuse her request, then.”
“He couldn’t. Mom threatened to screw up some business deal he was working on. Uncle Garek was pretty hot under the collar about it.”
Appalled, Ellie stared at Karen. “How do you know all this?”
“They were arguing about it on Christmas Eve. They argue a lot. Uncle Garek hates my mom.”
“I doubt that’s true,” Ellie said automatically, then paused. “I think he’s just very angry at her for trying to hurt his business,” she said more slowly.
Karen shrugged. “Same difference. He hardly ever comes over to our house anymore.”
“Did he use to?”
“Yeah, when I was a little kid. He took me to the park and baseball games and stuff like that. Once he took me to the symphony.”
“The symphony?”
“Yeah. For my birthday. I was thirteen years old and he bought me a white lace dress with a blue satin bow.” Once more, the cynical expression slipped, revealing pure, naked emotion. For a moment, the girl’s face was full of such wistfulness, such yearning, that Ellie’s breath caught. Then the mask descended once more and Karen sneered. “It was a little kid’s dress. I didn’t want to wear it, but Mom insisted. I hated it and I hated the stupid symphony. All that lame classical music. Uncle Garek stopped coming by after that. He said he had to work.”
Ellie said gently, “That was probably true.”
Karen shrugged again. “Yeah, right. At least he buys good presents. He got me a computer for Christmas, and he bought my mom an emerald and ruby necklace. Actually, I thought the necklace was kind of ugly, but Mom didn’t care. She always returns everything he gives her for the cash.”
Ellie remembered the gaudy necklace with shock. She’d imagined his sister treasuring the ugly jewelry as a sign of his affection—instead, it appeared the woman only cared about the monetary value. Did Garek know? Probably. His anger at his sister obviously went back a long way. But oddly enough, in spite of all the anger and bitterness, she sensed that he really did care about Doreen—
“So what’s the deal here?” Karen asked, bending over to look more closely at a fishbone hung in a frame. “Are you my aunt now, or what?”
Ellie froze. “What are you talking about?”
“You and Uncle Garek are married, right? He told Mom last night. She’s absolutely livid.”
Karen’s warning should have prepared Ellie for the phone call she’d received shortly after the girl left—but it hadn’t. Remembering the unpleasant conversation, she glared at the South American rodent in the enclosure in front of her, then turned her gaze to its North American counterpart standing next to her. “Did you have to tell your sister?” she asked.
Garek slanted a glance at her. “She gave you a hard time, I take it.”
“Did she ever!” Indignation rose in Ellie at the memory. Karen had given her a blatantly skeptical look when Ellie denied the marriage and had left the gallery a few minutes later; Doreen hadn’t been nearly so restrained. “The names she called me! And when I finally got her calmed down enough to explain that the ceremony was invalid, that we weren’t really married, she called me a liar!”
“Sorry about that,” he murmured.
She looked at him suspiciously. “But why did you tell her?”
“It just slipped out.”
Ellie gripped the iron railing. “You’ve never struck me as the type to let things slip.”
“Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think.”
“I know as much as I want to know.”
“Are you so sure, Ellie? Why won’t you give me a second chance?”
“Why should I?”
“I don’t know.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “I just know that I don’t want you to disappear from my life until we’ve had a chance to explore this attraction between us.”
She glared at him. “Is that what this is all about? Are you still hoping to get me into bed? Well, you won’t. I wouldn’t go to bed with you if the world was about to end. I wouldn’t go to bed with you if the survival of the human species depended on it. I wouldn’t go to bed with you if—”
“Okay, okay,” he said. “I get the idea.”