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Nobody raised the subject of what in hell they were all doing here when there’d been no plans for any of them to be here in the middle of March.
Instead, everybody bubbled.
There was no other way to describe it.
“Lissa!” her sisters and sisters-in-law would say when she walked into the room, their voices and faces filled with bright and totally artificial delight.
“Liss,” her brothers would say, beaming happily whenever they saw her, “you look great this morning!” Or this afternoon or this evening, because they were always there, being cheerful, being upbeat, and Marco and Zach treated her the same way because even if they didn’t carry the Wilde DNA, they were the same kind of men, caring, concerned, thoughtful and loving.
Amazing, that Nick had seemed to be like that, too.
Caring. Concerned. Thoughtful. Loving—but no, not loving. He had never mentioned love, and if she’d realized one thing these past few days, it was that falling in love with him had been her doing, not his.
And the truth was, she hadn’t fallen in love with him. She’d fallen in love with lust. With needing and being needed.
Nick had come into her life, or rather she’d come into his, when she’d been at a low point. No job. No future. No money. No anything to look forward to, except more worries.
And then, overnight, everything changed. She had a job. A purpose. A bunch of people to care about.
And a man.
A man who was funny and smart and sexy, who cared about her—because he had, he had cared about her, and whose fault was it if she’d confused that with love?
Plus, Nick had needed her. What woman didn’t want to be needed?
Add it all up and she had nothing to complain about. She’d had two weeks of incredible sex with an incredible guy who’d made her feel like the most important person in his life, and now it was over.
“Over,” she said briskly. The mare whinnied and tossed her head. Lissa smiled. “Exactly. I’m glad we agree.”
But he could have handled the ending a little better. She understood that their two weeks hadn’t been destined to have a happy-ever-after-ending because this was not a movie, but he could have shown some tact. A phone call, even an e-mail…
Really? A phone call? An e-mail? To say what?
Lissa, I wanted to thank you for everything, but I’ve gone back to my real life now and…
And, Lissa thought grimly, the simple truth was that if she ever had the misfortune to see Nick Gentry again, she’d tell him that she’d been right all along. He was a selfish, egotistical jerk, and if he’d ever been foolish enough to think that he’d truly meant anything to her, it was just proof of exactly how much of a jerk he was.
All she had to do now was decide where to place him on the Lissa List. Between Carlos Antonioni and Jack Rutledge? After Rutledge but before Raoul? Or maybe after Raoul. Maybe Gentry belonged in a class all his own.
Or maybe it was her.
She’d let a series of selfish men use her.
“—kind and generous at a time when kindness and generosity were what I needed.”
Her eyes narrowed.
He made her sound like the Red Cross.
“To hell with you, Nicholas Gentry,” Lissa said, and turned the roan toward home.
* * *
They were all waiting for her in the big kitchen at El Sueño, brothers, sisters, sisters-in-law, a brother-in-law and a brother-in-law-to-be, babies, the entire enormous Wilde clan.
They all looked up when she came through the back door. She could see the worry in their faces, worry that changed to artificial expressions meant to assure her that they hadn’t been worried at all.
“Having a family powwow?” she said pleasantly, slipping off her jacket, hanging it on the coatrack beside the door, smiling at babies as she headed for the coffeepot on the stove.
