Harlan turned back and glared at the lot of them. “If you all don’t behave tonight, I’m disowning every one of you.”

“I win!” Cody said with a whoop.

Harlan scowled at his youngest. “Win what?”

“We placed bets on how long it would take you to threaten to disown us. I figured less than ten minutes. Luke and Jordan thought you’d hold your temper longer.”

“I was counting on Janet being here to keep him in line,” Luke explained.

“Out of the will, every one of you,” Harlan declared as he walked off and left them laughing.

Only after he was out of their eyesight did he allow himself to smile.

Harlan must have invited everyone within a hundred-mile radius, Janet decided as she stared at the throng of people filling their plates at the heavily laden buffet tables.

As if he sensed that she might be overwhelmed, he had stuck close to her side ever since her arrival, silencing gossip with a frown, introducing her to people who could bring her their legal business, shielding her from his sons’ excessive teasing.

He’d left her just a moment before to greet the governor, promising to bring him back to meet her. The governor, for heaven’s sake! At what Harlan referred to as a little backyard barbecue. Obviously he took such illustrious guests in stride.

To her, the sheer size of the event was daunting without even taking into account the importance of some of the guests. Her ex-husband would have had whiplash from looking this way and that to be sure he didn’t miss anybody. The fancy New York parties they’d attended had been nothing compared to this assembly of Texas’s rich and powerful.

“A little daunting, isn’t it?” Jessie inquired, magically appearing by her side just when Janet was beginning to feel exactly that way.

“It’s second nature to him, isn’t it?” she replied, watching the ease with which Harlan escorted the governor from cluster to cluster. As many parties as she’d been to, she’d never been entirely comfortable with the small talk required.

“You wouldn’t have thought that, if you’d seen him earlier,” Jessie revealed. “He was like a kid throwing his first party and terrified nobody would come. Of course, in his case, I think you’re the only guest he’s been really worried about.”

Janet couldn’t get over the idea that Harlan might have suffered a bad case of stage fright. “He was nervous?” she asked incredulously.

Jessie nodded. “Because of you. He really wanted tonight to be special for you.” She studied Janet intently. “Are you two involved? I mean, happily-ever-after involved.”

Janet evaded a direct answer by asking a question of her own, “What does he say?”