“I’ve got some things to go over before the meeting.”

All those white teeth. He showed her his own, and then retreated, contemplating the mysteries of genetics and the one thing that might keep him from actually marrying Caroline Rose. Tall, elegant, quiet Caroline Rose, a medievalist of international standing, was related to Patty-Cake Walker by blood.

John closed the door firmly behind himself.

“You look like Saint George after his first run at the dragon.”

John let out an undignified yelp. His brother was sitting behind the desk, leaning back with his hands behind his head.

He said, “Shit, you scared me. I locked that door, I know I did.”

“Shhhhh. Patty-Cake will hear you.” Rob held up the key to the private entrance between two fingers. “A good executive assistant knows where all the keys are hidden.”

“A good executive assistant doesn’t hide from the office staff,” John said.

Rob began to sort through a pile of mail. “And yet, here I sit, shaking in my boots.”

John flopped down on the ratty green velvet couch. It was his favorite piece of furniture in the office: as big as a boat and lumpy in all the right places. He sorted through the pillows, rejected one painted with the likeness of Robert E. Lee and another with Elvis embroidered in beads. He finally found what he was looking for, a pillow that made no aesthetic or political or historical statements, and pulled it over his face.

Rob said, “She’s been grilling me about you, has our Patty-Cake. And so has everybody else I’ve come across, from the janitor to the gardeners.”

“You knew that would happen. I’m an outsider.”

Rob snorted at that. “You’re Lucy Ogilvie’s firstborn son, that’s what makes you so interesting.”

John couldn’t argue that point. Their mother had been born an Ogilvie, a great-great-great-granddaughter of one of the two brothers who had founded the town and the university itself. Lucy Ogilvie might have married a Yankee with the unfortunate last name of Grant, but she had brought her boys home to spend every summer right here. Then Rob had done the right thing and settled in Ogilvie, although he had found a way to do it that confounded every reasonable expectation. Now that John had followed that good example and turned his back on the North, there was real hope for the Grant boys.

“What Patty-Cake wanted to know,” Rob went on, “is if y’all have decided on whether or not to settle down at Old Roses once you get married, because then you’ll need a decorator, and Patty-Cake—”

“Christ,” John said, burrowing deeper into the couch. “The woman is relentless.”

Rob came over to drop a pile of folders on his chest.

“I told her you were the big, strong silent type who left all those little details to the bride and her four capable sisters.”