"You'll just have to limit your matchmaking to your sisters. No woman's going to want to find herself married to me."
"Now you're going to hide again behind all those poor troubled kids you work with," Summer muttered with an audible sigh of disgust.
"It's the truth, Summer," Clay protested, more seriously than before. "You know those kids take all my time."
"Hey, don't I work with the same kids? I give many hours to Halloran House, and I'm planning to work at it full-time when I finish my degree, but that doesn't mean I have to sacrifice time with my husband or the family he and I plan to have. Face it, Clay, your work is a very convenient excuse to keep you from committing yourself. You could make some adjustments if you tried. You just haven't found a woman yet who made you want to compromise."
"Summer!" a woman's voice called out from the doorway. "Oh, hi, Clay. Is Spring here yet? We can't wait to meet her."
"No, not yet. She and Derek should be here any minute," Summer answered, rising to greet the couple who'd just entered her den. Derek's sister, Connie, with her bright, improbably red hair and brilliantly toned trendy clothing, made an interesting contrast to the conservatively dressed man at her side, but one had only to look at them to know that Connie Anderson and Joel Tanner were very much in love. The hefty diamond engagement ring on Connie's left hand was further evidence of their commitment.
Clay watched Summer and Connie with a fond smile. He'd known Summer since she'd moved to San Francisco from Arkansas over two years earlier. He'd met Connie when she and Summer had shared an apartment in San Francisco while both of the attractive young women were unattached and dedicated to serious partying when they weren't working at their mutual place of employment. Clay loved them both but had never considered himself in love with either. He wondered why.
Even as he joined the conversation around him, he found himself thinking about what Summer had said just before Connie and Joel had entered the room. She'd accused him of using his work with troubled teenagers as an excuse to avoid commitment. He wondered for a moment if she was right, then hastily denied the suggestion to himself. There was no question in his mind that his dedication to the kids was genuine and demanding. He wasn't using that as an excuse...was he?
Of course, Summer had been right about one thing. He had never found a woman who made him want to try to change the way his life was now. And it wasn't for lack of trying. At thirty-four, almost thirty-five, Clay experienced the usual healthy desires for a wife and family. He loved children, would like to have one or two of his own. Could he make time in his life for a family if he found the right woman?
"So, Clay, how's it going?"
Shaking off his atypical self-scrutiny. Clay grinned at Joel and threw an arm across the other man's shoulders. "Joel, my friend, have I mentioned that we're having a fund-raising drive at Halloran House this week?"
Joel and Clay were almost exactly the same height and age and made a striking picture for the woman who stood in the doorway, looking around in bewilderment. Spring Reed blinked through the glasses perched on her nose at the number of people in the room where she'd expected to find only her sister. Then she stared in feminine appreciation at the two men directly across from her. Both of them were extraordinarily handsome. One was dark-haired, blue-eyed, with a gleam of white teeth beneath a silky dark mustache. But it was the other who made Spring's pulse do an odd little skip and jump.
He was gorgeous. She could think of no other word for him. Thick, slightly shaggy golden-blond hair, classic features and a smile that could easily grace the cover of a popular magazine—GQ and Esquire came immediately to her mind. The slim but well-developed build of an athlete—baseball, she thought, or perhaps tennis. Then she noted his clothing, her disapproving gaze lingering on his mismatched shoelaces. One of Summer's oddball friends, she thought, almost smiling as she tried to picture her ex-boyfriend Roger in such strange attire. Of course, to Roger, leaving off one's tie was ultracasual.
California, she thought wryly, acknowledging a faint twinge of culture shock as she looked away from the colorfully dressed man to find her sister talking to a beautiful woman with copper-red hair and a beaming expression. Her brother-in-law, Derek, placed a hand lightly in the middle of Spring's back, as if sensing her sudden attack of shyness, and she gave him a grateful smile.
An unexpected illness had prevented her from attending her sister's wedding five months earlier, so Spring hadn't met Derek until he'd picked her up at San Francisco International Airport less than an hour before. He had proven to be a little different than what she had expected. The photographs she'd seen had faithfully recorded his almost militarily short tobacco-brown hair, pewter-gray eyes that peered so intensely through dark-rimmed glasses, hard, rugged good looks. But film hadn't been able to capture the almost palpable strength that radiated from Derek Anderson's firm, lean body, nor the hint of the predator beneath the veneer of a civilized businessman.
Spring had been startled to learn that her free-spirited, nonconformist, twenty-five-year-old sister had married a respectable, seemingly average, thirty-seven-year-old management consultant. Now she suspected that there was more to Derek Anderson than met the eye—something that her perceptive sister must have noticed from the beginning. With Derek close behind her Spring moved to greet her sister, whom she hadn't seen in almost eighteen months.
Clay felt Spring's eyes on him from the moment she appeared in the doorway. He looked up and froze, forgetting Joel, forgetting his own name. It wasn't that she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, though she was striking. Pretty, he thought. The word fit her perfectly. Silvery-blond hair, fine as swan's down, pinned into a loose knot on the top of her head with soft little tendrils escaping all around. Light-framed glasses perched on a short, straight nose. Through the glasses he could see her eyes—slightly almond shaped, appearing almost purple from where he stood. Her face was delicately rounded, her mouth seductively painted with a color that fell somewhere between pink and coral. A heather-pink suit clung lovingly to her beautiful body.
Spring, he thought. Yes, the name suited.
He watched her eyes widen as they met his, pleased to sense an answering attraction there. Then he saw her gaze drop to his clothes. He narrowed his eyes, wondering if he'd imagined a slight curl to her lips.
Oh, great, Clay thought ruefully, watching Derek leading her across the room to be warmly welcomed by her sister. The most fascinating woman I've seen in ages and she turns out to be a snob. Summer had told him that her sister was rather conservative, but he'd assumed she'd exaggerated. How could free-spirited, warmly accepting Summer be related to a woman who seemed so opposite? He wondered how long it would be until he had the opportunity to confirm his first impression, and found himself hoping he was wrong about Spring.
Spring extricated herself from her sister's enthusiastic hug and smiled into Summer's eyes. "You look so happy!" she remarked with pleasure. She couldn't remember ever seeing such a look of contentment on Summer's face, though Summer had always been one to relish life. Even before the accident over five years earlier that had left her with a permanent limp from a shattered kneecap, Summer had never looked happier to Spring than she did now. "Marriage definitely agrees with you."
"Yes, it does," Summer agreed. "Are you surprised?"
Spring only smiled.
Summer turned to the attractive redhead standing just beh
ind her. "Spring, I want you to meet Connie."
Before Spring could do more than exchange greetings with Summer's best friend and former roommate, the gorgeous blond male she'd noticed a few moments earlier stepped close to her side. Too close, she thought, wondering why she was suddenly having trouble with her breathing. She moistened her lower lip as she smiled tentatively at him.
"So you're Summer's sister," he began in a silky voice, his blue-green eyes glinting with an expression she couldn't begin to read. He offered her his hand and gave her a smile that made her toes curl. "That's a very nice suit you're wearing, but how do you keep from choking with your blouse buttoned up to your throat that way?"
Summer groaned audibly.
"I'm Clay McEntire," the man went on, clinging to Spring's hand and ignoring Summer. "Affectionately known to our little circle of friends as 'Crazy Clay.' I can't imagine where they came up with such a nickname, but you know how those things tend to stay with you. Do you have any nicknames?"
Spring cleared her throat and tugged lightly at her hand, wondering what the man was doing. Why did she have the feeling that he was testing her in some way? What sort of reaction was he hoping to evoke from her? She thought longingly of Little Rock, where people just said "Hello" or "Nice to meet you." She'd just known she'd be out of place in proudly unpredictable California!