The Inconvenient Bride - By Anne McAllister Page 0,32

other a few times. At your shower. And then at the hospital after Steve and Lizzie were born. We were just sort of…aware. But nothing happened—until your wedding. We had a little too much champagne at the wedding. And we were on our own after the reception. We had to go back to Kansas City to catch a flight out in the morning and—”

“I get the picture,” Mariah said. There was a pause. Then she said, “Why didn’t you say anything? If you’ve been seeing him—”

“I haven’t been! It was, like, a one-night-get-it-out-of-our-system event. But it didn’t,” Sierra said. “I hadn’t seen him since.”

“Until Tuesday,” Mariah said dryly.

“Until Tuesday,” Sierra agreed. “And he showed up at Finn’s studio and asked me to marry him.”

“Why?” Then, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry.” Mariah backed off at once. “I didn’t mean that. But—wait a minute. Maybe I did. Three months? Sierra, are you—?”

“No! I am damned well not! You’re the one who got pregnant, ‘Riah,” Sierra said sharply. “Not me.”

“Right,” Mariah said. “Right.” This last was a sigh. “You love him.”

Sierra wet her lips and took a breath. “Yes.”

Mariah didn’t say anything for a moment. She was clearly trying to rethink everything she knew about her conservative, businesslike brother-in-law—and her purple-haired impulsive sister.

“Does he love you?” she asked finally, apparently having decided that given everything else she had misjudged, that might be possible, too.

“No,” Sierra admitted. “He doesn’t. He married me because we’re dynamite in bed together. And because—” she sucked in a breath and plunged on, making a full breast of it, “because Douglas kept shoving suitable women down his throat.”

“Oh, surely not!” Mariah protested at once.

“He was,” Sierra insisted. “Every few weeks he’d have another candidate for Dominic to look over. All marvelous, eminently suitable women. Not like me.”

“But that can’t be why he married you,” Mariah countered. “He couldn’t be so dumb.”

“Thank you very much!”

“I don’t mean that you’re unsuitable, but that he wouldn’t marry just to spike Douglas’s guns!”

“Yes,” Sierra said. “He would. He did.”

“But—”

“And now we have to make something of it. Something that will work. That will last. I want it to last, ‘Riah,” Sierra said urgently.

“What does Dominic want?”

“I think he wants it to last, too. He booked me out today. I went to Finn’s and I’d been replaced.”

“What?” Mariah was somewhere between outrage and astonishment.

“I was furious at first, too,” Sierra said, “but then I talked to Bruce. Dominic had called yesterday and booked me out—so we could go on a honeymoon!”

Her sister was silent for a moment. Regrouping. Sorting things out. Thinking. That was Mariah, all over. Steady. Dependable. Insightful.

“So he must want it to work, too,” Sierra went on. “Don’t you think?”

She didn’t realize how badly she wanted Mariah to agree until she asked. It was, she realized, why she’d called her sister in the first place. The recipes had been the excuse, the catalyst that would allow her to tell her sister news she should have told her as soon as it had happened.

But she’d been afraid to then.

She’d been afraid that Mariah would tell her she was an idiot, that there was no way on earth Dominic and she could ever make a successful marriage, that impulsive trips to the city hall, based on no more than lust and a desire to annoy someone else, were destined for divorce court before the month was out.

And she’d had no reason to believe that Mariah would have been wrong.

But now they were going on a honeymoon.

Now it was more than lust and irritation at his father. He was taking time for her. He wanted to be with her, to get to know her. Perhaps to learn to love her.

“Don’t you think?” she repeated.

“It’s a start,” Mariah said. “Yeah, it’s a start.”

She gave Sierra a couple of good family recipes that she said any idiot could manage. “Do the lasagne,” she said. “Rhys loves lasagne. Dominic will, too. Fix a salad. Make garlic bread. Easy. The least of your worries,” she said with considerable accuracy. Then she wished Sierra luck.

“Thanks.”

“If you need anything—ever—you let me know,” Mariah said, her protective big sister determination showing its face. “Rhys will kick his butt for you anytime you want.”

Sierra forbore saying that she thought Dominic was a match for his youngest brother.

Even though Rhys was a fireman and worked hard at a physical job much of the time, Sierra had seen enough of Dominic recently to know he had muscles. Plenty of muscles.

And she didn’t think he would