asked her a few questions, then offered to send her the names of some colleagues.
Rhiannon hadn’t been nearly as interesting. But as she kept on chattering. Nick contrived to look interested. At least she didn’t have marriage on her mind. He was sure of that.
There had been an edge of fragile desperation to her frenzied chatter, and the way her gaze roamed the room, he thought she was desperate for someone to see her with him.
He didn’t mind who saw them together. Nothing was happening.
Nothing was going to happen. And her presence kept the Savas matchmakers at bay.
Finally she paused and focused on him. “What do you do?” she asked.
And so he told her—at length—about architectural renovation and restoration. Served her right, he thought, for pawing him. It was clear that she didn’t care a whit. She had other things on her mind.
So he droned on about beams and joists, about weight-bearing walls, about matching the plaster using original techniques. He talked about dry rot and rising damp and wormy floorboards—which in the interest of her further education, he offered to show her as he was currently engaged in pulling up some in the palace’s east tower. He’d even gone so far as to say he’d taken a bedroom there so he could continue to work on the wormy floorboards at all hours.
He’d figured he might bore her enough that she’d go find someone more inclined to take her up on what she seemed to have in mind. Or maybe the suggestion would scare her off.
In fact, that was when she’d run her hand down his lapel, looked dreamily up into his eyes and told him how much she’d “simply adore” coming to his bedroom to see the renovations.
Nick began to think it might be a better idea to dance with her—and step on her toes.
But it hadn’t come to that.
He’d been saved. By Edie Daley.
A less likely savior would have been hard to imagine. A less likely sister to the ethereally beautiful Rhiannon was hard to imagine, too.
They looked nothing alike. Though Nick supposed he could detect the Mona Tremayne cheekbones in both her daughters’ faces. But the similarity ended there. Where Rhiannon determinedly emphasized those bones with makeup, Edie did nothing to highlight them at all.
The little makeup she wore seemed more designed to coverup than accentuate. Though he suspected that what she was covering up were freckles.
He thought he would prefer the freckles.
He certainly preferred her flashing gray-green eyes and tart tongue to her sister’s blue eyes and breathless babbling. Edie didn’t charm, she didn’t flatter. She didn’t paw, either. She kept her distance.
And she got right to the business at hand, which was clearly making sure that her sister had nothing to do with him. Used to having women thrown at his head, Nick found Edie’s portrayal of a determined mother hen, intent on extracting her chick from danger, oddly appealing. Her words to her sister, though, revealed that she understood that Nick was not the entire source of the danger. Clearly she realized that her sister was capable of disaster with very little help at all.
Nick didn’t envy whoever Rhiannon’s fiancé was. The poor guy would have his hands full with her—which made Edie’s ability to direct her back onto the straight and narrow all the more impressive. Obviously she was a woman to be reckoned with.
She had presence. And character.
While she may not have had the perfect ageless features of her mother or the ethereal beauty of her younger sister, Edie had the kind of bone structure a camera would love, as well as the liveliest eyes he’d ever seen.
Nick liked lively eyes. He liked her take-charge, no-nonsense personality. He liked the fact that she was intent on backing away from him.
It made him want to get closer.
And once her sister had disappeared, Nick stopped trying to think of ways to escape the reception and instead tried to find ways to keep Edie Daley talking.
For the first time he