[Kate's Boys 04] - Travis's Appeal Read online

  She almost bought it, but then saw the glimmer of a smile on his lips. He was teasing her. Or maybe having as much trouble admitting their attraction as she was.

  “If that was the case, why isn’t my father sitting next to you instead of me?” she asked, then reminded him, “He was the one who tendered the invitation, I didn’t.”

  Caught, Travis laughed. It was a date all right. He might as well call a spade a spade. “You ever think of becoming a lawyer?”

  She shook her head. “Too much memorization. I’d have never passed the bar.”

  “Then you did think about it.”

  “For about two minutes,” she conceded. “The things I was drawn to weren’t practical.”

  As she said that, she couldn’t help thinking of Kevin. Would Travis fall into that category, too? No, she told herself the next moment. Travis wouldn’t fall into that category because, as cute as he was, she had no intentions of falling for him.

  Fun, that was all this was about. Just fun, nothing more. She deserved a little fun in her life. Fun without consequences.

  “Such as?” he asked.

  “Art,” she told him. “I love to paint, to draw.” She couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t held a sketch pad and pencil in her hand. Her father had the drawings to prove it. She’d only recently discovered that he had saved every single scribble, every single picture she’d ever put a pencil or brush to. How could she not be devoted to a man like that? “It’s not exactly a way to make a living,” she admitted. Even though her father would have been willing to underwrite her efforts no matter how long it took for her to succeed.

  Luckily for both of them, she was content to keep her artistic leanings within the limits of a hobby and work at the restaurant.

  “Do you do much of that?” Travis queried. “Paint?” he added when she didn’t answer him right away.

  Shana debated telling him. Somehow, it sounded as if she was bragging. But he had asked. So she told him with a careless shrug. “The paintings that hang in the restaurant are all mine.”

  Her father had not only encouraged her to paint, he’d also insisted on paying her for the paintings. He refused to take any of them as a gift and said just having her around was gift enough.

  How could Kevin have expected her to turn her back on someone who loved her so unconditionally? Especially when Kevin was placing conditions on his love for her. Or what he perceived as love, she thought. She sincerely regretted that she had ever wasted her time with someone like Kevin.

  She slanted a look at Travis. And what are you like? Under that neatly pressed suit and that warm smile. What are you really like?

  Travis vaguely remembered noticing several paintings adorning the restaurant walls. For the life of him, he couldn’t recall a single one of them. He was aware of liking them, but he’d been too focused on Shana to pay attention to anything else.

  “I’ll have to take a closer look the next time I come by,” he told her.

  A throwaway line if she’d ever heard one, she thought. Out loud, she said, “You do that” thinking that, in all likelihood, he never would.

  The front door to his parents’ house was unlocked. Travis knew it would be. Whenever Kate had the family over, she didn’t bother locking the door. “Who would want to tangle with the Marlowe men?” she’d ask with a laugh.

  “Or Marlowe women,” Kelsey always threw in.

  Opening the door now, Travis gestured for Shana to walk in ahead of him.

  The moment she did, she found herself enfolded in an embrace that exude warmth and the scent of lavender and vanilla.

  “Hello, I’m Kate Marlowe,” the slender blonde on the other end of the embrace told her half a second before she released her and took a step back.

  Caught off guard, it took Shana a moment to recover. The blonde smiled and waited.

  “Shana O’Reilly,” she finally said. Familiar with the older woman’s name, thanks to having grilled Travis, Shana could only stare. She’d grown up thinking all parents were supposed to look weathered rather than youthful. The woman standing before her, making her feel welcomed, seemed more like Travis’s sister than his mother. “You’re his mother?” she couldn’t help asking with no attempt to mask her surprise.

  “Still as fantastic looking as the first day I met her,” Bryan said as he joined the group by the front door. He slipped his arm around the woman who’d made his life worth living again. “She wears well,” he added with a laugh, then put out his hand to her. “Hi, I’m Travis’s father, Bryan. You must be Shana.”

  “I must be,” she answered, her smile belying her nervousness.

  Travis didn’t remember telling Mike her name. Which meant that someone had taken it upon themselves to do a little snooping before he got here. Probably Kelsey, he decided. Threading his fingers through Shana’s, he gave her hand a squeeze and then said, “Okay, let’s take this hurdle now.”

  She had no idea what he was referring to.

  The next moment, Travis was raising his voice in order to make an announcement. “Everyone, this is Shana O’Reilly. Shana, this is—” Starting with the closest ones to them, he ran through the list of names until he’d named everyone in his family, including his brothers’ wives.

  The names swarmed around her brain like bees circling their hive. How was she supposed to keep everyone straight?

  As if reading her mind, Kate slipped behind her and whispered, “Don’t worry, there won’t be a quiz at the end of the evening. After a while, you’ll get the hang of who’s who.”

  She doubted it, Shana thought. She looked over toward two of the men Travis had identified with his rapid-fire delivery. Granted, they were dressed differently from one another—and Travis—but they were still almost eerily identical.

  Travis had introduced them to her as the “other two triplets,” Trent and Trevor. She’d stared at them, then looked back at him, searching for something to make him stand apart, other than his clothing. She came up with nothing.

  “I’m not too sure about that,” she told the older woman.

  Kate smiled at her, unfazed. She knew exactly what had to be going through the young woman’s mind. Utter confusion. If Shana was to be part of the family, Kate thought confidently, she’d learn quickly enough how to tell the three men apart. In her own case, it had taken her less than a day when she’d first arrived here.

  “Don’t force it,” she advised kindly. “It’ll come. You’ll see.”

  “Or, you can always try tagging them, like I did,” Kelsey told her, joining the small, all-female circle.

  “Tagging them?” Shana asked, curious. “You mean like they do on the Discovery Channel?”

  Kelsey nodded. “Something like that. I’d give one of them a bruised arm, punch another in the eye. Helped to keep them straight,” she deadpanned.

  “She’s not kidding.” Kate laughed at the stunned expression on Shana’s face. “I thought the boys were a handful—until Kelsey came along.”

  “Sugar and spice and everything nice was definitely not a line created to describe Kelsey,” Travis told her, returning with two glasses of punch. He handed Shana one before taking a sip from his own.

  “Careful, Mister,” Kelsey warned, “or I’ll tell Shana all your secrets.”

  Shana grinned. “Tell me anyway.”

  Kelsey nodded her approval at Shana’s response. “I like her, Travis,” she told her brother, smiling broadly. “I really do like her.”

  Shana looked a little embarrassed. Travis laughed shortly, shifting the focus to himself rather than Shana. “Well, I guess I can die happy now.”

  “No dying,” Kate chided. “At least, not before Mike and Miranda make their big announcement.”

  She slipped one arm through Shana’s and the other through Travis’s, urging them toward the inner circle that was forming.

  In her head, Kelsey was already writing out the announcements. For Travis and the woman he’d brought with him.

  Chapter 9r />
  S hana could remember when she’d been a little girl and silently suffered from the latest snub she’d received from Susan. She’d fantasized about what it would be like to be part of a large family. A large, jovial family where everyone cared for each other.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t love, or wasn’t grateful to, her mother and father. She did, and was. As far as she was concerned, they were wonderful people. But growing up, they also seemed so old to her. Positively ancient in comparison to the parents of the other children in her class. Because they were so much older than she was, her parents couldn’t create that young, vital atmosphere she wanted so desperately.

  That was where her imaginary family came in. That family was stuffed to the gills with brothers and sisters who always had time for her and always listened to what she had to say. And her imaginary parents were never too tired, never too busy to do whatever it was that she wanted to do.

  That imaginary family, Shana now thought, was very much like the one she had met this evening. Travis’s family.

  Despite the fact that they were all in their twenties, Travis’s brothers and sister all teased one another and, once or twice during the course of the evening, he and his brothers ganged up on Kelsey.

  But his sister, Shana noted with delight, gave as good as she got, refusing to back down even though she found herself exceedingly outnumbered. It was all in fun, all with love.

  That would have been her, Shana thought fondly, if she had been born into this family instead of the one she actually had.

  Mike and Miranda had made their announcement shortly after she and Travis had arrived at the gathering. Miranda was pregnant. And, to Shana’s bewilderment, after doing her very best to look properly surprised and awed, everyone else in the room hooted and laughed as if all this was already old news to them.

  Tugging on Travis’s arm, she drew him aside when she’d gotten his attention and whispered in his ear. “I thought we were supposed to be surprised.”

  The feel of her warm breath along his skin generated a shiver that slid up and down his spine. Travis paused half a second to savor the sensation before he banked it down and pretended to be unaffected.

  “Right now, you’re still the outsider. You weren’t supposed to have a clue. I forgot to tell you about the one-upmanship that runs rampant through my family.” He laughed, shaking his head. “Even if they hadn’t expected her pregnancy to be what the big announcement was all about, this crew would have acted like they had.”

  “And you?” Shana challenged. “Did you actually know, or did you just guess?”

  “Well,” he hedged, “I guessed. But then, I’m usually right when I guess,” he added quickly. “Besides, Mike knew I guessed so there really wasn’t all that much sense to pretend otherwise.”

  Shana thought about having the thunder of an exciting announcement like a pregnancy stolen away from her. For a second, she felt sorry for Miranda. “Not even for Miranda’s sake?” she pressed.

  “Miranda understands,” he told her. “She’s one of us now,” he said, as if that explained everything.

  There was a warmth in his voice when he spoke of his sister-in-law. Shana caught herself being envious of Miranda.

  All traces of envy vanished in under an hour because, within that space of time, Shana found herself being effortlessly absorbed into the Marlowe family network. She almost didn’t realize what was happening, but suddenly, there was no “them” and “her,” there was just one large homogenous group that incorporated all of them. She loved it.

  She was comfortable with them almost from the moment she crossed the threshold. And the favor was returned.

  The Marlowes were a family that her father would have easily fit into. He was the one with the knack of making people feel at ease and at home.

  It would be nice to have him on the receiving end for a change.

  To her everlasting sorrow, the party started breaking up. When she glanced at her wristwatch she saw that somehow, magically, the evening had slipped away and it was now a few minutes after ten. Everyone there had work the next day, or, in Kelsey’s case, school. It was time to get going.

  She never felt so reluctant to leave in her life. Especially after each person in Travis’s family hugged her goodbye. It made her feel as if she’d known them all forever.

  “Thank you for having me,” Shana told Kate sincerely as she and Travis finally made their way to the front door.

  “Thank you for coming,” Kate countered, brushing a quick kiss against her cheek. And then she took both of Shana’s hands in her own. “Maybe next time, you’ll bring your father along.”

  Caught off guard, Shana looked at Kate in surprise, then slanted a glance in Travis’s direction. She didn’t recall mentioning her father during the evening.

  “I told her about your dad and his restaurant,” Travis explained.

  “He and Trevor can put their heads together and compare recipes,” Kate told her with a soft laugh. “Might be good for both of them.”

  “Among her other wonderful attributes, my wife is a frustrated social director,” Bryan told Shana as he joined them at the front door. He slipped his arm around Kate’s waist and gave her an affectionate squeeze.

  “And where would you all be if I wasn’t?” Kate asked, a hint of the Irish lilt she’d toned down over the years making a brief appearance.

  “Lost, my love,” Bryan freely admitted with sincerity, pressing a kiss to her temple. “Utterly lost. No question about it.”

  “Hey, you two, get a room,” Kelsey called out from the foot of the stairs.

  “They did,” Trevor shot back. “And you’re the unfortunate result.”

  He ducked as his sister sent a coaster flying in his direction.

  “Okay,” Travis announced, “Now it’s really time to go.” Kissing Kate goodbye, he threaded his fingers through Shana’s and crossed the threshold, leading her down the driveway.

  Shana turned and waved at the couple in the doorway before quickly falling into step beside Travis, who still held her hand captive.

  “They look cute together,” she told him. “Your parents,” she added when she realized that everyone in the room had been paired off except for Kelsey. “You can just see how much they love each other.”

  It was something he’d come to take for granted over the years and he stopped now to reflect on Shana’s comment. “Yeah, you can,” he agreed.

  Reaching his car, Travis took out his keys and pressed the security release. It beeped at him in response. Leaning over, he opened the door on the passenger side for Shana and held it for her as she got in.

  In this age of independence, Shana wasn’t accustomed to acts of polite chivalry. But she certainly could get used to it. Suppressing a grin, she got into the car.

  After depositing her purse on the floor, she reached for her seat belt and fastened it in place.

  “You know, they’re the kind of parents I used to fantasize I had. Young, loving.” She saw the quizzical look enter his eyes. “Oh, don’t get me wrong,” she was quick to tell him, “my parents were great and I loved them dearly. Nobody had a better pair. It’s just that, when I was in elementary school, whenever anyone saw either one of them at school events, or coming to the school yard to pick me up, they always thought they were my grandparents until I corrected them.”

  “And that embarrassed you,” he guessed.

  “And that embarrassed me,” she repeated. Shana flushed slightly as he pulled away from the curb. “I really didn’t have much backbone when I was that age,” she confessed.

  He saw it slightly differently. “Kids that age just want to fit in,” he told her kindly. “Anything that might make them stand out feels awkward. You just wanted to have parents that blended in with everyone else’s.”

  The soft laugh was self-deprecating. “That’s pretty intuitive of you.”

  “When your stepmother and one of your brothers are both child psychologists, you tend to pick a few things up he
re and there,” he said casually.

  She liked that. Travis didn’t put on airs, didn’t act as if he felt that he was something special, even if he was. And that made him even more special in her eyes.

  “What else did you pick up from your stepmother and Trent?” she asked.

  He thought for a moment as he made a right turn at the end of the block. “That raising kids is hard. But then, I knew that firsthand.” He made his way to the left turn lane at the next light. The streets were relatively empty. “There were times I was pretty sure my father was going to have a nervous breakdown. My brothers and I kept wiping out nannies and he didn’t have the time to handle us himself. Nor do I think he could have done it emotionally, at least, not at the time. He was dealing with his own sorrow over losing my mother,” he explained. Travis slowed down as amber turned to red at the cross section. “It’s to his credit that he didn’t just farm us out to some unsuspecting relative on the eastern side of the continent.”

  “Did that cure you of wanting kids?” It was an exceedingly personal question, one she wouldn’t have ordinarily asked, but she found herself wanting to know more about him. To know a host of things about a man she professed no attachments to.

  “Of wanting them?” he asked, then shook his head. “No. But of having them? Well, first I’d have to find someone who was willing to go in on the deal with me.” And someone he’d be willing to share more than just his roof with, he added silently. “That’s the hard part.”

  “You make it sound like a brokerage deal instead of a marriage.”

  He thought of the couples he knew outside his family. And he’d discovered years after his mother had died, that even his parents seemed to be on their way to a divorce. That was why his mother had been on that plane without them, going on a solo vacation to rethink what she actually wanted—and didn’t want—from life.

  “These days,” he told Shana, “it winds up being that more often than not.”

  She looked at him for a long moment, not altogether certain which side of the fence she wanted him on. “Don’t believe in marriage?”