LITMIR.BIZ

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north from New York on the busiest Friday of the year, with his brother and his latest flame in the car with him, then survive three days with his family.

       Easy.

      ‘You guys ready to go?’ Lucas jangled the keys in his hand in the hope they’d get the hint. Getting out of Manhattan on the Friday before Christmas would be a nightmare as it was. If they waited much longer they were bound to catch the worst of the traffic.

      ‘Yeah. Yeah, sure,’ Tyler said, but he slid back behind his desk as he spoke. ‘I just need to…’ he trailed off as his gaze caught on the paperwork again.

      Lucas gave Dory a meaningful glance. Surely this was girlfriend territory if ever he’d seen it.

      She looked confused for a moment, but then she sighed. Stepping towards the desk on those ridiculous heels, she leant over, giving Lucas a stunning view of her ass. Blinding her boyfriend with cleavage to get her way, he supposed. He sighed. Aren’t you bored of that kind of girl yet, Tyler?

      But then Dory grabbed the file in front of Tyler and, straightening up, flicked through it, then closed it. ‘This can wait until we get back. Mr Jenkins is away until the New Year now, anyway.’ She grabbed the next file in the stack. ‘This became irrelevant after yesterday’s late meeting, and this one I dealt with last week.’ Picking up the last two files on the desk she gave them a cursory glance and said, ‘If you’re very good, I might let you take these two with you. But you’re only allowed to work first thing in the morning, before any of your family gets up. Deal?’

      Okay, maybe this was a different sort of girl.

      ‘But Dory,’ Tyler whined, but she cut him off.

      ‘No arguing. That’s the deal, okay? If I’m with your family, you’re with your family.’ She handed the permitted files across the desk to him. ‘Now let’s get going before we hit the traffic. Since we have such a considerate ride to your parents’ house.’

      She turned back and beamed at Lucas then, but he didn’t smile back. He’d finally put his finger on what had been bothering him about Dory since he walked in. The accent. How had he not placed it before? After all, he’d heard it just a few days earlier.

      ‘You’re his assistant,’ he said. And there it was. The scandal that Tyler was hiding from their family-first, believer-in-good-old-fashioned-morals father.

      Dory’s smile faltered, but only for a moment. Then she glared at Tyler. ‘Told you someone would notice.’

      ‘Lucas can keep a secret. Can’t you, bro?’ Tyler said.

      Three days of keeping secrets from his parents. Just what he’d wanted from his brother for Christmas. ‘That’s why you were hiding her. Why the photos were such a big deal. Why you didn’t want to…’

      ‘Didn’t want to bring me home to meet the family,’ Dory finished for him when he trailed off awkwardly. ‘It’s okay. I know I’m not exactly the sort of girlfriend Tyler usually brings home. There’s the accent, apart from anything else.’

      ‘On the plus side, you seem much better at telling him what to do,’ Lucas offered, making her grin. She had a nice smile, he realised. Wide and bright and friendly. Which wouldn’t get her anywhere with Patrick and Felicia Alexander.

      Then she scowled at Tyler. ‘I am. So get in the car, Alexander!’

      Grabbing her own case, Dory headed for the lift again, but Lucas stopped her. ‘I’ll take that for you.’

      He held out a hand and, after a moment’s pause, Dory let go of the handle and pushed the case towards him. ‘Nice to know one of you Alexander boys is a gentleman,’ she said, in a terrible impression of a Southern-belle drawl.

      Tyler’s laugh was louder than Lucas thought it really needed to be. ‘Oh trust me,’ he said, ‘Lucas opted out of gentleman status two years ago. Besides, I’ve got my own case to carry.’ He held it up, as if to prove the point.

      But Dory wasn’t looking at her boyfriend. She was looking at Lucas, and the curiosity on her face made him nervous.

      ‘And why was that, exactly?’ she asked. ‘Tyler never really talks about his family. Well, not as people, anyway.’

      ‘Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?’ Tyler asked, as Lucas headed for the lift, case in hand.

      He knew what Dory meant, even if Tyler didn’t. To Tyler, the family was the Alexander Family and all the restaurants, charity and money that went with it, not the individuals who were born into it. It was sort of inevitable, he supposed. The reputation of the family, their success, had always been the measuring stick of their parents’ happiness and pride.

      It had been Lucas’s, too, until two weeks in a hospital one fall taught him different.

      Dory didn’t answer Tyler’s question, which he figured gave him permission not to answer hers, either. But he had a feeling it was going to be a long car journey.

      ***

      Dory stared at the mud-smeared wheels and side of the four-wheel drive, looking utterly out of place parked in front of the Alexander Building offices.

      ‘I’m guessing you don’t live in the city, then?’ she said, as she followed Lucas and her suitcase around to the boot of the car. No, not boot. Trunk. One day, she’d get that right and someone would appear and announce her a true American, once and for all.

      Tyler laughed. ‘City life is one of the many things Lucas has scorned over the last couple of years.’ Leaving his case by the back of the car, he went to climb into the passenger seat. Dory pulled a face. Great. Two hours in the back of the car would do nothing for the butterflies in her stomach. Chances were, she’d arrive at Midfield House and immediately vomit all over a poor, defenceless servant. Or worse, Felicia Alexander herself.

      ‘Hey, Tyler? In the back.’ Dory looked over at Lucas as he spoke, but he slammed the boot and climbed into the driver’s seat. Weirdly, it seemed like her fake boyfriend’s brother was on her side.

      ‘I’ve got longer legs,’ Tyler argued. ‘I need the room.’

      ‘I get car sick,’ Dory told him, yanking open the passenger-side door. ‘Trust me, we’re all going to be happier with me in the front.’

      ‘Fine.’ Looking sulkier than a billionaire businessman and heir to one of the most profitable family businesses in the country had any right to, Tyler clambered back out of the front seat and into the back.

      ‘Thank you, darling,’ Dory said, as sweetly as she could. Lucas smirked as she clipped on her seatbelt, waiting until she was settled before he started the engine.

      Music blared out of the stereo, but Lucas made no move to turn down the volume. Dory ducked her head to hide her smile as Freddie Mercury belted out ‘Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy.’

      But Lucas obviously saw it anyway. ‘You’re a Queen fan?’

      ‘My father is. He sings this song to my mother when he’s doing the ironing on a Sunday.’

      ‘Your father irons?’ Tyler asked, sticking his head between the front seats.

      ‘Your parents are still in Britain?’ Lucas asked at the same time.

      Dory decided to answer the more sensible question. ‘Liverpool, yeah. I’m going back to see them over New Year.’ She couldn’t help the small glance back at Tyler as she spoke. He’d promised her the ticket as a present on Christmas morning at Midfield House. Until she had it in her hand, it still seemed impossible.

      ‘Liverpool,’ Lucas repeated. ‘The Beatles, yeah?’

      ‘Amongst other things.’

      ‘Like?’

      Dory looked up at him. ‘Sorry?’

      ‘Like what other things?’ Lucas’s gaze flicked away from

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