Her Bachelor Challenge. Cathy Gillen Thacker

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СКАЧАТЬ you and Maggie had managed to marry and live happily ever after, you would have been the first Deveraux to do so in three generations.”

      Chase scowled. “Our failed betrothal has nothing to do with the curse put on our great-aunt Eleanor.”

      “Tell that to everyone who’s had their love life wrecked for no reason in the past sixty years,” Amy countered. “And then tell me the curse hasn’t carried over to the next Deveraux generation!”

      Gabe glared at Chase, even as he addressed his remarks to his two calmer siblings. He downed the rest of his club soda in a single gulp. “I still say I had nothing to do with the breakup. If Chase and Maggie had been meant to marry, they would have. Curse or no curse. And nothing I said or did or didn’t say or do would have stopped them from tying the knot.”

      “You just keep telling yourself that,” Chase said sarcastically. He’d had some miserable days in his life, but he’d never been more hurt and humiliated than he was the day Maggie had walked out on him and their wedding. For he’d known then that it wasn’t just his divorced parents or brother Mitch—who was also divorced—who were unable to find and keep wedded bliss. People just didn’t stay together in this day and age. They didn’t find happiness in the act of permanently joining their life with another’s. Hell, nowadays they were lucky if they could even make it to the altar and say “I do.” And learning that lesson the hard way had made him stop trying to find the “happily ever after.” Instead, it made him look to the immediate present for his happiness, and no further.

      “Moreover,” Amy continued passionately as she stuck her hands in the front pockets of her pastel coveralls, which were embroidered with the name of her decorating business, “Chase needs to get over the way Maggie walked out on him and be glad she came to her senses before they entered into a marriage that most likely would have ended in divorce, anyway. And most important of all, he needs to stop trying to seek revenge for Maggie’s actions on the whole female population!”

      “And how am I doing that?” Chase demanded furiously, incensed to find Amy—who could usually be counted on to soothe the wounded egos of all three of her brothers—scolding him, too. It wasn’t as if he promised women anything but what he could give them, which was today!

      Amy gave him a droll look as she explained, “You do that by turning women into objects in your magazine and trying to nail every female in Charleston.”

      Chase shook his head in exasperation, knowing that the very well-paid models for Modern Man never complained about how beautiful they looked in the pages of his magazine. “Actually, that’s old news. I’ve moved on—” Chase quipped, knowing even as he spoke it wasn’t entirely false “—to the entire East Coast.”

      “That’s not funny, Chase.” Amy scowled.

      “It’s not supposed to be,” Chase retorted bluntly, using this—and every other opportunity that came his way—to shamelessly plug the premise of the notoriously lighthearted and controversy-inspiring magazine he had created just for guys. “Women are here on this earth for one reason and one reason only. To make guys happy.” And as far as he was concerned, guys were only there to make women happy. It was pretending otherwise, in his opinion, that made people so darn miserable.

      “And that tally includes dear old Maggie,” Chase continued, deliberately ignoring the warning glare Gabe gave him. “Which is undoubtedly the reason Gabe rushed out to the beach house.” Chase turned to his brother and proceeded to hit Gabe where he knew it would hurt the most—Gabe’s legendary sense of duty. “Maggie was lonely. She was desperate.” And like the rest of us mortals, in urgent need of some happiness to call her own. “So she dialed the emotional equivalent of 911, and Gabe here, ever the good Samaritan, rushed right out to administer the much-needed and -wanted, obligatory mercy—”

      Chase never had the chance to finish his sentence. But then, he thought, with a certain grim satisfaction as Gabe’s fist came flying up to meet him, he’d known for certain he never would.

      BRIDGETT OWENS parked her Mercedes convertible at the rear of the Deveraux mansion and headed in the servants’ entrance. She paused just long enough to kiss her mother’s flushed cheek and ask, “What’s the emergency?”

      Theresa Owens grabbed a floral-print apron from the drawer and slipped it on over her uniform—a plain navy-blue dress with a white collar. Tying her apron behind her as she moved, Theresa headed swiftly for the ancient subzero refrigerator in the corner. Quickly she pulled out a package of fresh crabmeat and another of cream cheese. “Grace is coming home.” Theresa checked her recipe and collected milk and horseradish from the fridge and an onion from the mesh basket on the counter. “Tom went to the airport to get her. All the children are here. And I’m short-staffed.”

      “Where is everyone else?” Bridgett asked. Tom Deveraux had a chauffeur and a gardener, in addition to her mother, his full-time cook and housekeeper.

      Theresa brushed auburn tendrils off her face with the back of her hand. “It’s their day off.”

      “Mom, you should have a day off,” Bridgett said, wishing her mother would listen to her and give up working as a domestic. Especially now that it was no longer necessary. Theresa could retire and live with Bridgett and never have to worry about money or putting a roof over their heads again.

      Theresa frowned as she measured ingredients into the casserole dish and stirred them together briskly. “Then who would cook for Tom?”

      “Maybe he could order takeout?” Bridgett suggested as her mother slid the crabmeat dip into the oven to bake. “Or eat at a restaurant.”

      Theresa wiped her hands, then restored order to the bun on the top of her head. “I have all the time off I need whenever I need it.”

      Bridgett sighed, knowing she was about as likely to talk her mother into taking early retirement at fifty as she was to get her to change her hairstyle or stop wearing the “uniform” that Tom and Grace Deveraux had both told her years ago she did not have to wear. “Except you never take any time off,” Bridgett reminded her mother gently.

      “Honey, I don’t have time to argue with you.” Theresa went back to the refrigerator for salad fixings. “I’m trying to put together a dinner party for six on thirty minutes’ notice. And Tom said it was crucial that everything be very nice.”

      Bridgett zeroed in on the concern in her mother’s voice, even as she did what she had done for years, as the daughter of a Deveraux domestic—pitched in to lend a hand. “Did something happen?” Bridgett asked as she rolled up her sleeves and helped her mother make a dinner salad on the fly.

      “I’m not sure.” Her expression increasingly worried, Theresa got out the food processor and set it on the counter. “But he said Grace might be upset when she gets here and he wanted all the children to be in attendance so they could talk to them together.”

      A feeling of foreboding came over Bridgett as she watched her mother fit the slicing disk into the machine. Bridgett hadn’t seen much of Grace Deveraux since Grace had gone to New York City to host the Rise and Shine, America! morning news program fifteen years ago, but she cared about her nonetheless. She cared about all the Deveraux, just as her mother did. “Grace isn’t ill, is she?”

      Theresa shrugged. “I’m not sure Tom knows what this is all about, either. But you know how it’s been between the two of them since they divorced.”

      “They can hardly stand to be in the same room with each other.”

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