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If you gave mothers like this an inch, they’d mow you down. “That’s between her and me.”
“Not exactly.” The deep voice came from Meg’s father, who’d appeared at his w
ife’s shoulder. “Let him in, Fleur.”
Ted nodded, stepped into a grand entrance hall, and followed them to a comfortable family room already occupied by two tall younger men with Meg’s chestnut brown hair. One sat on the fireplace hearth, ankle crossed over his knee, strumming a guitar. The other tapped away at a Mac. These could only be Meg’s twin brothers. The one with the laptop, Rolex, and Italian loafers had to be Dylan, the financial whiz, while Clay, the guitar-playing New York actor, had shaggier hair, ripped jeans, and bare feet. Both of them were exceptionally good-looking guys and dead ringers for an old movie idol, although he couldn’t immediately recall which one. Neither resembled Meg, who took after her father. And neither appeared to be any more welcoming than the senior Korandas. Either they knew Meg hadn’t shown up in San Francisco and blamed him, or he’d gotten it dead wrong from the start, and they weren’t the ones who’d entered the contest for her. Either way, he needed them.
Jake made perfunctory introductions. Both brothers uncoiled from their respective seats, not to shake his hand, he quickly discovered, but to meet him at eye level. “So this is the great Ted Beaudine,” Clay said with a drawl almost identical to the one his father used on-screen.
Dylan looked as though he’d sniffed out a hostile takeover. “No accounting for my sister’s taste.”
So much for hopes of cooperation. Although Ted didn’t have any practice dealing with animosity, he damned sure wasn’t going to back away from it, and he cut his gaze between the brothers. “I’m looking for Meg.”
“I take it she didn’t show up for your party in San Francisco,” Dylan said. “That must have been quite a blow to your ego.”
“My ego doesn’t have anything to do with it,” Ted countered. “I need to talk to her.”
Clay fingered the neck of his guitar. “Yeah, but here’s the thing, Beaudine . . . If our sister wanted to talk to you, she’d have done it by now.”
The atmosphere in the room crackled with an ill will he recognized as the same kind of antagonism Meg had confronted every day she was in Wynette. “That’s not necessarily true,” he said.
Mother Bear’s beautiful, blond fur bristled. “You had your chance, Ted, and from what I understand, you blew it.”
“Big-time,” Papa Bear said. “But if you give us a message, we’ll be sure to pass it on.”
Ted was damned if he’d spill his guts to any of them. “With all due respect, Mr. Koranda, what I have to say to Meg is between the two of us.”
Jake shrugged. “Good luck, then.”
Clay set down his guitar and stepped away from his brother. Some of his hostility seemed to have faded, and he regarded Ted with what seemed like sympathy. “No one else is going to tell you, so I will. She’s left the country. Meg is traveling again.”
Ted’s stomach twisted. This was exactly what he’d feared. “No problem,” he heard himself say. “I’m more than happy to get on a plane.”
Dylan didn’t share his brother’s sympathetic attitude. “For a guy who’s supposed to be some kind of genius, you’re a little slow on the uptake. We’re not telling you a damned thing.”
“We’re a family,” Papa Bear said. “You may not understand what that means, but all of us do.”
Ted understood exactly what it meant. It meant these tall, good-looking Korandas had circled their wagons against him just as his friends had done against Meg. Lack of sleep, frustration, and a self-disgust that was tinged with panic made him lash out. “I’m a little confused. Aren’t you the same family who cut her off four months ago?”
He had them. He could see the guilt in their eyes. Until this exact moment, he’d never suspected he had a spiteful nature, but a person learned something new about himself every day. “I’ll bet Meg never told you everything she went through.”
“We talked to Meg all the time.” Her mother’s stiff lips barely moved.
“Is that right? Then you know all about how she was living.” He didn’t give a damn that he was about to do something grossly unfair. “I’m sure you know she was forced to scrub toilets to buy food? And she must have told you she had to sleep in her car? Did she mention that she barely avoided going to jail on vagrancy charges?” He wasn’t telling them who’d nearly sent her there. “She ended up living in an abandoned building with no furniture. And do you have any idea how hot a Hill Country summer is? To cool off, she swam in a snake-infested creek.” He could see the guilt dripping from their pores, and he bore in. “She had no friends and a town full of enemies, so you’ll forgive me if I’m not impressed with your notions of how to protect her.”
Her parents had gone ashen-faced, her brothers wouldn’t look at him, and he told himself to back off even as the words kept coming. “If you don’t want to tell me where she is, then the hell with all of you. I’ll find her myself.”
He stormed out of the house, fueled by rage, an emotion so new to him he barely recognized it. By the time he reached his car, however, he regretted what he’d done. This was the family of the woman he loved, and even she believed they’d done the right thing by cutting her off. He’d accomplished nothing except venting his anger on the wrong people. How the hell was he supposed to find her now?
He spent the next few days fighting a grinding despair. An Internet search failed to yield any clues about Meg’s whereabouts, and the people most likely to have information refused to talk to him. She could be anywhere, and with the whole world to search, he had no idea where to start.
Once it was obvious the Korandas hadn’t been the high bidders in the contest, the identity of his matchmaker should have been immediately clear, but he still didn’t figure it out right away. When he finally put the pieces together, he stormed to his parents’ house and ran his mother to ground in her office.
“You made her life hell!” he exclaimed, barely able to contain himself.
She tried to wave him away with a flick of her fingers. “A dreadful exaggeration.”
It felt good to have a target for his anger. “You made her life hell, and then suddenly, without warning, you turn into her champion?”
