“No matter,” I said to myself in the darkness of my office as I pressed the pulsating power button on my computer to bring it to life. “This is for the best, after all.”
Even I had a hard time believing that.
With trembling hands I brought up the database of my female clients, all of their personality traits indexed and coded so that I could simply type in my stepbrother’s preferences into the required fields and before I could even blink there was a list of gorgeous women almost a hundred strong. Surely, one of them would be an appropriate match for Tristan. One of them might just be my future sister-in-law if this crazy plan of his actually worked.
Despite my forced professionalism, I couldn’t shake the feeling of my stomach having dropped somewhere close to my feet. The thought of Tristan with someone else, some woman that he barely knew brought a sickening taste to my mouth. Deep down a part of me wanted to close down the database and simply tell him that there had been no matches, that no woman I had in my considerable list was what he wanted. I think I wanted more than anything for him to realize that it was me that had always wanted him—me that was his perfect idea of a woman. Did he even know that the kind of woman that he wanted had been sitting in front of him all this time?
He’s your stepbrother, I thought, chiding myself on my incestuous desires. To even think of the things that I wanted to do to Tristan would have been enough to cause a scandal the likes of which the aristocracy hadn’t seen in a decade. Sure the two of us were not technically related, but the bonds of marriage mean a lot to the rest of the world, and scandal is something that I know that my mother would not at all appreciate.
That doesn’t make me want him any less, I answered my own chiding. I knew that if I set Tristan up—got him married to some member of the aristocracy—then he’d be lost to me forever, and I’d lose any chance that I had at making him mine like I’d always wanted. But he was my stepbrother, fruit of the forbidden tree, and I knew that just one taste would be enough to have me smote low and ejected from the garden of my family’s favor.
I knew that my feelings for Tristan would never come to fruition, never give me the satisfaction of having him in my arms, inside of me the way I’d dreamed about since I’d become an adult. But maybe that was for the best.
If I could get Tristan tied off to someone that spent most of their time away from London, and away from me, then I could protect myself against the thoughts that I knew would betray me sooner or later. In a way having Tristan matched was my only hope of protecting myself from the effect that he head on me.
I began to work my way through the list, clicking through the collected entries Tina and I had spent our professional lives cultivating. Blondes, brunettes, and even a few exotic redheads crossed over my screen, though I felt utterly unsatisfied with all of them. None of them felt right for Tristan. I’d met countless times with each of them, and no matter how well they seemed to match on paper I felt as though Tristan would never have them for his wife. Something didn’t seem right.
It’s because you want him for yourself, I thought, my stomach tying itself into knots. I hated myself for thinking it, for telling me the harsh and unwanted truth and I could only have wished for a comforting lie. I wished I was only protective of him, wished that I was simply playing the role of the dutiful sister in charge of her brother’s romantic interest—that I merely wanted him to have a more suitable chance at love. All of this was true, but with the condition that I was the one that he fell for.
I rested my head in my hands in frustration. I couldn’t just disregard all the women who matched my stepbrother’s parameters for his ideal match. He was counting on me to find him a woman that would make him a suitable wife and these women were all also hoping that I would find them a romantic match, as well. I had two people whose wishes I needed to make come true, regardless of what I wanted—needed—to have.
Romance, for me, had been touch and go all of these years. Holding down a boyfriend was difficult, harder still when marriage is expected to happen fairly quickly, especially where my mother is involved. She’d been trying to get me married off since before I was even old enough to walk, scheduling playdates with the boys she’d see as the up-and-coming members of high society that she hoped I’d fall all over as I grew into a young woman. It never worked out well. High society can make men into monsters, their heads filled with entitlement and expectations of what a woman is meant to do for them. I had little time for useless men like those.
Tristan had always been different, though. While he was an arrogant pig at times, he still maintained a kind of charm that always made my heart start to hammer like I’d just run a mile. He could be kind and cunning, that grin of his always belying the inner workings of that gloriously brilliant brain of his. That quick wit was never in short supply, never failing to bring a smile to my face whenever we’d been stuck at one of our family’s dinners while the two of us were in our teens. Just the fact that he was back in town had brought me back to the feeling of being a teen once again, awkward and shy, just hoping that my dashing stepbrother would notice me and take me into his arms like I’d dreamed of since the day we met.