One Bride Too Many: One Bride Too Many / One Groom To Go. Jennifer Drew

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СКАЧАТЬ door to her inner office was slightly ajar, and Cole stepped into the cool interior. Somehow his mother had managed to make an efficient working office seem warm and inviting. She loved aqua, and the deep pile of the carpeting was a vibrant, dark shade of her favorite color. The tinted windows of the corner office were flanked by lighter aqua drapes. White walls and sleekly modern white metal furnishings left no doubt that this was a place of business, but one side of the room had a low round conference table surrounded by comfortable chairs with seats upholstered in a geometric pattern of black, white and aqua.

      “I’ve got a date with a nice girl Friday night,” he said without preamble.

      His mother always looked happy in her work environment, but when she looked up at him she was positively glowing. He and Zack were doing the right thing—or rather, he was. His twin’s turn would come soon enough. Their mom had been rocked by the death of Nick, Senior, her husband, a good man who gave his stepsons as much attention as his own son, Nick. She put all her energy into running the business to forget her sorrow, and it helped her immensely. After two years of widowhood, she was like her old self again, Cole thought. But if she lost control of the plant because of her father’s high-handed manipulations, she’d be devastated.

      “That’s wonderful, Cole!” She gave him a hug and walked to a table where a big pitcher, damp with condensation, was on a tray with two tall glasses. “Would you like some iced tea?”

      It wasn’t his favorite beverage, but he was thirsty enough to drink Detroit River water.

      “What’s this thing?”

      Cole examined a gizmo on her desk while she poured tea for both of them. He wasn’t sure whether it was supposed to entertain babies or make them want to crawl back into the womb. He played with the weird spiral-shaped labyrinth wondering if maybe he’d accidentally hit on the truth when he told Tess his mom wanted grandchildren. Maybe part of her enthusiasm for her job came from loving babies. She had a lot to offer as a grandmother, so long as she kept the more bizarre Bailey toys away from them.

      “It’s a toy. It must be a winner because you’re playing with it,” she teased.

      He dropped it like a hot rivet. She’d gotten him on that one, and he grinned sheepishly.

      “Tell me about your date.” She handed him the iced tea and daintily sipped hers.

      “She’s a friend of an old acquaintance. Remember Tess Morgan?”

      “Isn’t she the sweet girl who tutored you in British lit?”

      “That’s her. She owns Baby Mart in the Rockstone Mall. She’s doing me a favor by introducing me to friends of hers. I promised her a sneak peek at the new product line.”

      He walked around the office, noting without enthusiasm that she still had tons of pictures of him, Zack and Nicky on the walls. The cutesy photos used in early catalog ads embarrassed him. Poses of curly-haired twins with Bailey toys made him remember how bored he’d been as a child model—bored but successful. To her credit, his mother had refused to let them work for any of the agencies that besieged them with lucrative offers. She even stood up to Marsh in limiting how much work they did for the annual Bailey catalogs. It was one of the rare disputes his mother had actually won when it came to showdowns with Marsh. She did much better these days, but as chairman of the board, he was still a tyrant.

      “I guess there’s no problem at this late date,” Sue said thoughtfully. “The new catalog will be ready next month for wholesale Christmas orders. A leak now wouldn’t be serious.”

      “Tess isn’t an industrial spy,” he said dryly.

      “Of course not. Actually, this is a good time to give her a preview. We have a display set up in one of the design labs for some potential investors.”

      “Investors? Is Marsh going to go back on his word and agree to a buyout before he retires? Does he want to go public?”

      “He’s always playing around with the possibility. It’s his way of keeping everyone on edge.”

      His mother didn’t sound concerned. Cole was. It wasn’t his employees Marsh wanted to unnerve. Cole’s grandfather was holding the threat of a sellout over his head and Zack’s. He’d better find Ms. Right soon and insure that his mother wouldn’t lose control of the business.

      “Why don’t you and Tess join your grandfather and the investors tomorrow? Their tour is scheduled for 9 a.m.”

      He’d rather eat nails!

      “I had in mind a private sneak preview. You know, give her a chance to look it over without the pressure of having Marsh there.”

      “A private showing with Tess. I see.”

      His mother smiled—slyly, he thought.

      “She’s only a friend. I owe her. Tess and me? No, no way. Not my type at all, and she remembers me less than fondly from high school.”

      “If you say so. Why did you persuade her to help you get dates?”

      When his mother put it that way, it did sound ludicrous. When had he ever needed help meeting women? The only blind date he’d ever had was Zack’s fault. Some girl wouldn’t go out with him unless he found a date for her friend.

      “She’s not getting me dates, Mom.” Maybe he sounded juvenile, but he wanted his mother to be perfectly clear on this. “She’s only putting me in the loop with some nice women. I don’t meet any when I spend all my time on the job.”

      “She’s doing this just so she can see our new line?” She sounded skeptical.

      “No, I’m showing it just to be nice.”

      “Then why?”

      He hadn’t been grilled like this since he drove without a license when he was fifteen.

      “She lost a bet.”

      He was getting The Look. His mother was a head shorter than he was, and slender to the point of being too thin, but when she raked him with her smoky gray eyes, he still squirmed.

      “Two out of three games of pool.”

      “This was a fair contest?” she asked, accusing him.

      “Tess plays in a pool league. I nearly lost to her. Anyway, I can’t leave the site of the condos we’re building during the workday. I was thinking of bringing her around nine in the evening.”

      “Okay. The after-hours codes have changed, so I’d better write them down for you.”

      She took a legal pad and wrote a neat series of numbers and letters.

      “Your grandfather has been tinkering with the new security system again. He’s obsessed with catching industrial spies.”

      “He’s not happy unless he can meddle,” Cole said with undisguised bitterness. He wished Marsh would be content fiddling with mechanical things and leave people—especially his family—alone.

      “The important part is punching in these numbers at exactly twenty-minute intervals. There’s a panel in the lab as well as СКАЧАТЬ