The Best Man's Plan

“You know I’m not concerned about the car.”

“I’ll be careful,” she repeated.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then. We need to talk soon.”

At that moment, she didn’t even want to know what he thought they should talk about. Right then, she just wanted to escape.

She needed to have a long, stern talk with herself.

&nbs

p; Something had changed. Bryan wasn’t sure when it had happened, but suddenly he found himself thinking of Grace Pennington in an all-new way. He’d already been aware of his physical attraction to her, but he had tried to convince himself it was a passing fancy.

The attraction wasn’t passing. Just the opposite, in fact.

After he and Chloe had parted ways, he had decided to reevaluate his plan to marry and start a family within the next year. He’d convinced himself that if it hadn’t worked out with Chloe—the ideal candidate, according to his list of qualifications—then it probably wasn’t meant to be at all. Maybe he just wasn’t cut out to be a family man. He should be content with his success in business.

It wasn’t as if he didn’t have female companionship when he wanted it. He just couldn’t see himself spending the rest of his life with any of the women he had dated in the past—not even the one he had proposed to before Chloe. The lovely starlet had seemed so crazy about him—until he’d pulled out the prenuptial agreement his lawyers had prepared. She’d certainly shown her true colors then, making it very clear that she had been more intent on winning his fortune than his heart.

Hadn’t he humiliated himself enough when it came to his awkward attempts at serious courtship?

When he’d first met Grace, he would have said he couldn’t imagine spending the rest of his life with her, either. Now…

Now he needed to do a great deal of thinking about what he really wanted with Grace Pennington.

Grace drove her own car to work on Wednesday. In a funny sort of way, Bryan’s car had begun to represent the man, himself. Sexy, powerful, expensive, flashy. And addictive. It wasn’t easy going back to her ordinary, functional economy car after driving Bryan’s Corvette for a few days. And it wasn’t hard to extend that analogy to her collaboration with Bryan, himself.

She was getting much too accustomed to having him in her life. To seeing him frequently, hearing his voice on the telephone. Having him touch her. Kiss her. It wouldn’t be easy to go back to her former life without him in it. A life that had been frequently stifling and vaguely unsatisfying before. She didn’t even want to think what it would be like to return to those predictable routines now.

She had been at work for only an hour or so when her mother called. Chloe had made a bank run, so Grace left Justin in charge of the shop while she took the call in her office. “Hi, Mom.”

“Good morning, honey,” Evelyn Pennington, a native of Birmingham, Alabama, replied in her slow, soft drawl. “How’s the business going?”

“Great. We’re putting Bob on full-time starting next week, and we’re hiring another part-time clerk.”

“That sounds good. Maybe with more help, you and Chloe can have a little more free time.”

“Maybe. Chloe’s going to want to spend time with Donovan, of course, and she’ll need the freedom to travel with him when he has to go out of town. Justin and Bob and I will be able to run things when she’s gone, especially if we hire someone else for a few hours a week. We interviewed a woman yesterday who’s looking for ten to twenty hours work a week, just to give her something to do while her kids are in school. Chloe and I both liked her, so we’ll probably give her a call later today and offer her the job.”

“Be sure you manage some free time for yourself,” her mother warned. “Chloe doesn’t expect you to take on too much responsibility just because she’ll be a newlywed. You have a life of your own to live.”

Really, Mom? And what life is that? The cynical question flashed through Grace’s mind, but she kept it to herself, merely replying, “I know. I won’t overdo it.”

“See that you don’t.”

Grace smoothly changed the subject. “How’s everything there?”

Grace’s parents lived in Searcy, a medium-sized town an hour north of Little Rock. “Your daddy’s arthritis is acting up some, but everything else is fine here. Everyone’s getting ready for the big party.”

Secure in the privacy of her office, Grace made a face. Since Chloe and Donovan had decided to be married at the church Chloe attended in Little Rock, some of her mother’s long-time friends had decided to hold a prewedding party in Searcy this weekend. It would be a big event, to be held at the country club their golf-obsessed father had joined years ago. It would be much more casual than the events Bryan attended so often, but Grace wasn’t looking forward to this gala any more than she had the others.

She would know most of the people at this event, unlike the ones she had attended with Bryan, at which nearly all the other guests were strangers to her. That wasn’t necessarily a good thing. People who had known her since she was in diapers showed no hesitation to comment on her personal life. She expected to field a lot of nosy questions about her relationship and her future with Bryan—who, of course, would be accompanying her.

She predicted that several would point out that her thirtieth birthday was only a few months away, and that she didn’t want to wait too long to start a family. She would hear plenty of broad hints that she and Bryan should quickly follow Chloe and Donovan’s matrimonial example.

She hadn’t minded so much deceiving the press or the other society gossips. But she was not looking forward to lying to the people she’d grown up among, talking about a future that wasn’t going to happen. She wasn’t sure her acting skills were good enough to convince her old friends that she and Bryan were in love, and had been involved for some time.

Her parents knew the truth, of course. Donovan had insisted on telling them everything when he and Chloe announced their engagement. Chloe had been very closemouthed about her discussions with Bryan before she met Donovan, and her parents weren’t pleased to hear that she’d been considering a marriage that would have been little more than a convenient, businesslike arrangement.