LITMIR.BIZ

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her sister. “I am not getting involved in this ridiculous plan of yours.”

      “But, Katie.” Bianca whined behind her, like the little sister she was twenty years ago instead of the grown woman she was today. “It’s a good cause. Think about it—it’s romantic. Don’t you have at least a little tiny bit of romance in your soul?”

      Kate turned her chair around to face her sister. Now this was a question she could answer easily. “No. Not even a little tiny bit.” No way. Romance was a gamble, and she was fed up with gambling in life.

      “Kate!” Bianca was aghast. “You don’t mean that.”

      “Oh, yes, I do.” Kate smiled and turned back to the ledgers she was trying to balance for Gregory Farms, her family’s Texas business, arguably the finest racehorse breeders in the west.

      It was the perfect metaphor for Bianca’s question, actually. For the past forty years, the Gregory family had lived through feast or famine, depending on horses’ bloodlines, track conditions, weather, jockeys’ health and drinking habits, voodoo and a host of other variables that couldn’t be controlled.

      She was looking forward to leaving. Already she’d saved a considerable amount of money, and once she hit her goal, she was moving to Dallas—close enough to be here for her father and sister if they needed her, but far enough to be out of the business—to start a new career. Probably as an elementary school teacher. Early childhood education, people in Avon Lake might be surprised to know, was what she’d gotten her college bachelor’s degree in.

      Some people might have said the racing life was an exciting life, but not Kate. Though she loved the animals, she could still remember some difficult early years when her family had subsisted on rice and beans and lived under constant threat of losing their home. Mother crying, father impatient, children ignored…it had been a very stressful life.

      Bianca had been young then, and was lucky enough to have forgotten the worst of it. Bianca believed she had lived a life of nothing but happy prosperity.

      Frankly it made her act like a bit of a spoiled brat sometimes.

      Like now.

      “Katie.” Bianca whirled Kate’s office chair around to face her. “Please.”

      “No.”

      “Do it for me.”

      Kate shook her head, unable to fully comprehend her sister’s selfishness. “No, Bianca. I am not getting married for you.” It was incredible that she actually had to say it at all, much less over and over again.

      “You don’t have to really get married,” Bianca hastened to correct her. “Just tell Daddy you are. As long as he believes you’re getting married, I can go ahead and plan my wedding.”

      Kate dropped her hands in her lap and looked at her sister coolly. “Tell Daddy I’m getting married.”

      Bianca nodded eagerly. “That’s right.”

      “Invent a fiancé, plan a fake wedding, move into an imaginary home, and churn out and raise pretend children, presumably for the next thirty or forty years, until I retire with my nonexistent husband to bounce grandchildren I never had on my knee.”

      “Well…” It looked as though the light was finally dawning on Bianca. “I guess you’re right.”

      Kate threw her hands in the air. “Hallelujah. She has finally seen the light.”

      Bianca nodded. And for a moment it seemed she had really seen the idiocy of her plan. But then she said, “We’ll have to find a real guy.” She tapped her chin thoughtfully.

      “What?”

      “Or maybe hire an actor.”

      Kate’s jaw dropped. She gave Bianca a full ten, fifteen seconds to laugh and say she was kidding, but Bianca’s face remained completely serious. “Do you hear what you’re saying?” Kate asked at last. “Now you want to hire an actor? And have me pretend to marry him?”

      “Well…”

      “All this so you can mollify Dad’s old-fashioned, narrow-minded, Old World chauvinism? No way.”

      Henry Gregory was adamant that his younger daughter couldn’t marry until his oldest had. But she knew it had come from the same place so many of his ideas about men and women came from: the old country and his own strict upbringing.

      Before Kate’s mother had died, her father had left the business of the children to her. He’d been the parent who played with the girls, the soft touch who’d always had a smile and a wink for them even when they were in trouble.

      But once Kate’s mother, Helen, had passed away, Henry had been like a lost animal, pacing the floors and trying to figure out the ways of the girls who, up to then, had just been playthings. Once he had the sole responsibility of raising Kate and Bianca, he had taken the job very seriously, even at the expense of losing his softer side with them.

      “What else can I do?”

      “You and Victor should just get married. Just do it. Elope. Dad will get over it.”

      “What if he doesn’t? What if I do that and he disowns me and fires Victor?” Victor Blume was Bianca’s fiancé and her father’s top trainer.

      “There’s no way he’s going to fire Victor,” Kate said, “he’s too valuable. And as for disowning you, that’s just silly.”

      “How can you be so sure?”

      “Because he loves you, Bianca, and he wants you to be happy. Even if it means going against his crazy outdated sixteenth-century notions of propriety.”

      “What if you’re wrong?”

      “I’m not.” Kate looked at her sister and shook her head firmly. “Look, I promise he’s just being an old blowhard.”

      Bianca looked unconvinced. “Well, if you think about it, he’s really only looking after you. He doesn’t want you to be a lonely old spinster. You could give him real peace of mind if you convinced him you were happily engaged to someone.”

      Kate gave her sister a long hard look before turning back to the desk and picking up a pen. It wasn’t worth responding to such an idiotic contention. “This conversation is finished, Bianca. Close the door on your way out, would you?” She looked back at the ledger and found the thing she was looking for. An item marked “Fire Essence” with a deposit amount of four hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.

      As their supply of frozen semen from the great racehorse Fireflight dwindled, the price was going up. This was a great opportunity to convince her father to invest in something solid so he’d have a nice nest egg no matter what happened with the races.

      She was going to talk to him about it right away, before he got the idea to reinvest the money into something risky. He thrived on risk—it was a real worry for her.

      She picked up the phone and dialed her father’s extension, but was stopped when Bianca stepped forward and took the receiver from Kate, pushing the off button.

      “What about this…” Bianca began, using her persuasive voice again. “How about if you just give dating a try. Go out with a couple of guys, see where it leads. Maybe this whole problem would solve itself, naturally and honestly.”

      Kate laughed. “How altruistic of you.”

      “Believe it or not, Katie, I do care about you. It would probably do you some good to date a little bit instead of just working all the time.”

      Kate scoffed. “I’ve dated every eligible guy in town—all four of them—and, with all due respect, thanks but no thanks.”

      “Not every guy,” Bianca persisted. “For example, Ben Devere’s back. You never went out with him, even though,” her voice became conspiratorial, “honestly, I think he’s always had a thing for you.”

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