LITMIR.BIZ

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So sorry. If it wasn’t urgent...

      “Hey, Erik, what’s up?”

      “I need you to come to Lake George this weekend. And all of next week. And maybe the week after that.”

      Jonas gave a brief laugh. His brother shouldn’t be able to surprise him anymore, but he still managed. “Yeah? What for?”

      “Allie McDonald.”

      “What about her?” He’d met Allie last December. He’d joined her and Erik for dinner when he’d been in New York on business. She’d been different from the artificial blondes Erik usually went after—Allie had seemed more genuine. She had the same sophistication, intelligence and beauty of Erik’s girlfriends, but it hadn’t seemed as if she’d been trying to impress anyone. Jonas remembered that night as a landmark: it was when he’d really begun to believe that he’d survive Missy’s betrayal. “You’re still dating her?”

      “Still trying to.”

      “Still trying over six months later? Is this a record?” It was beyond him how his brother scored with as many women as he did. Jonas’s theory was that he wore them down by being so persistently charming that they eventually gave in, hoping he’d leave them alone. But this was a new level of chase.

      “Allie’s different.”

      “Uh-huh.” Behind him, the meeting door opened. Jonas strode down the hall toward his office so his team wouldn’t realize his important call had to do with whether or not his brother could get laid. “Different because she’s turned you down longer than anyone else?”

      “This trip to Lake George is my best chance yet. I think she’s weakening.”

      “Really.” Jonas pushed open the door of his office. Ten years with the company and he finally had a door, which at times he was very happy to be able to close. “Then why do you want me there?”

      “I promised you’d be around. To chaperone.”

      “That’s your best chance? With a woman who doesn’t want to be alone with you?”

      “She agreed to spend the week with me, didn’t she?”

      “Uh, yeah.” Jonas pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. He was developing a headache named Erik. His brother’s life was a restless and relentless quest for a type of fulfillment Jonas was convinced Erik hadn’t yet identified, which obviously didn’t stop him from trying to achieve it. Erik changed styles, cars, apartments, jobs and women as if nothing held his attention for longer than a season. He drove their steady, regimented German father completely up a wall. Sometimes Jonas thought Mom and Dad had moved to Munich not only to care for Dad’s parents, but so they wouldn’t have to watch their younger son play hummingbird through his life.

      “I’m doing us both a favor. She got laid off.”

      “Tough break.” He went to his window—with a view of the building next door—and pictured Allie sitting across from him at the restaurant, cheeks pink from the wine, hazel eyes bright under girlish wheat-colored bangs, talking about her design-career hopes and ambitions with every ounce of the passion he no longer had for his. Being laid off would have hit her hard. That depth of excitement had been one of the sexiest things about her.

      What he hadn’t seen in Allie was even the slightest trace of sexual interest in his brother. Unless Jonas’s radar had misfired, he’d say he had more chemistry with her than Erik did, though a lot could’ve changed in seven months. Was she really “weakening”—Erik’s typically charming choice of words? It was disappointing to think she might fall like the rest of them.

      “She’s incredibly talented. You should see the costume designs she did in school. I told her about Grandma Bridget and Great-Grandma Josephine’s clothes and how Mom wants to get rid of them. She was practically drooling.”

      Aha. So Allie could be more interested in the clothes than his brother. Jonas relaxed his shoulders, unaware of how tightly he’d been holding them.

      “So you’ll come?”

      “Erik, I can’t just take a week off work.”

      “Sure you can. You just don’t think you should.”

      Jonas suppressed a jolt of irritation and tapped a pencil on his desk. His brother always made him out to be a somber slave to duty like their father. Maybe compared with Erik’s hedonistic lifestyle he was the more responsible one, but nothing extreme, and typical for an oldest child.

      He could go up for the weekend. It had been a while since he’d been to Lake George. Two years, since the last time the family got together there before his parents’ move.

      “A long weekend, then,” Erik said.

      “Quite a drive for a weekend.”

      “C’mon, help me out, brother.”

      Jonas rolled his eyes. He usually did give in to his brother, sometimes against his own instinct. But Erik was family, and that seemed to win out. Jonas rarely asked for anything in return—but there was one thing he did want from his brother now. “Tell you what. I’ll go up for a long weekend if you drop your objections to selling the house.”

      There was a long silence. Jonas had expected an immediate refusal. Either Erik had been considering changing his mind anyway, or he wanted this time with Allie more than Jonas thought. “For that, you’d owe me a whole week.”

      Jonas peered at his BlackBerry, checking the next week’s schedule. He could move his Monday trip to Wednesday afternoon and take Monday and Tuesday off.

      “Half a week. I’d have to leave Wednesday morning.”

      “Deal.”

      Jonas lowered his brows suspiciously. His brother had been persistently vocal in his objections to selling Morningside. “Just like that?”

      “Look, you, Mom and Dad all want to sell. I’m outnumbered, I get that. This is sooner than I’d planned to cave, but I’ll do it for Allie.”

      “Okay.” The victory left Jonas less triumphant than he’d expected. With their parents abroad, the house had been sitting empty except for Erik’s brief, infrequent visits. Upkeep was expensive. With money from the sale of the house, Jonas would rather buy a retreat of his own, closer to Boston, maybe in Cape Cod. A place he could use year-round.

      “Bring Sandra.”

      “Jeez, Erik.”

      “I told Allie—”

      “Well, un-tell her. I’m not involving Sandra in your schemes.”

      “This isn’t a scheme. I think Allie could be the one.”

      Jonas turned from the window. He’d never heard Erik talk like that. Size of boobs, lushness of ass, depth of sexual depravity, sure, but marriage? “You’re kidding.”

      “I’m not kidding. I’m crazy about her. She’s everything I want.”

      “Since when do you want to get married?”

      “I’m almost thirty. It’s time. And I want kids.”

      Jonas took the phone and stared at it before replacing it to his ear. “Who are you, and what have you done with my brother?”

      “Just call Sandra.”

      “She’ll have shows this weekend.”

      “So have her come next week.”

      Jonas scowled, tempted in spite of himself. Sandra was a long-ago lover and good friend. She’d been a rock during the ugly breakup with Missy. “You’re a piece of work.”

      “I owe you one, bro.”

      Jonas hung up the phone, shaking his head. He could stand up to the highest-level executives in the company. But around his brother he became as indulgent as their

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