“I’m sorry,” she finally found her voice to say. “I should not have let Mercury bring me here.”

  “Nonsense. I saw the luggage by the door and wondered who it belonged to. Have you had lunch yet?”

  Lunch? She’d barely had breakfast. She had grabbed a doughnut and coffee at the diner on the corner. That was when she’d spilled coffee on her blouse. “No, but I couldn’t possibly let you feed me, too. Mercury said I could stay the night, but it’s your house and your decision. If you prefer I leave, then—”

  “Of course you won’t be leaving. I will show you to the guest room, where you can get settled, freshen up and join me and my husband, Drew, for lunch.”

  “Did I hear my name?”

  Sloan turned to see a very handsome older gentleman stroll into the courtyard. Eden’s son might have her eyes, but everything else belonged to the man who came over to join them and place an arm around Eden’s shoulders. Galen’s and Mercury’s coloring was a combination of their two parents, but their chiseled, handsome looks were from this man. She couldn’t help wondering about the other four brothers. Galen said all six had their mother’s eyes, but did they have their father’s handsome features?

  “Yes, sweetheart.” Sloan watched as Eden smiled up at the man with both love and adoration in her eyes. Sloan wasn’t sure how she recognized such emotions, since she wasn’t around them often, but in this case, she could. “Mercury brought us a houseguest. A friend of his, Sloan Donahue.” Then to Sloan, she said, “This is Mercury’s father, Drew.”

  He bestowed a smile that was nearly identical to Galen’s. She couldn’t say it was similar to Mercury’s, since she’d yet to see him smile. “How are you, Sloan?”

  She took the hand he extended. “I’m fine, but I need to correct something,” she said, looking from Drew to Eden. “I’m not a friend of Mercury’s.”

  Drew lifted his brow. “You’re not?”

  “No. In fact, I’m almost certain he doesn’t like me very much.”

  “Why do you think that?” Eden asked.

  Sloan released a deep breath. “His car was stolen a few nights ago and he found it today...with me driving it.” At the surprised look on their faces she said, “I unknowingly bought a stolen car.” She then told them about their trip to police headquarters and meeting Galen.

  “And Mercury brought you here after leaving police headquarters?” Drew asked curiously.

  Sloan shook her head. “No, there’s more. It’s a rather long story.”

  Eden smiled and gently patted her shoulder. “And we definitely have time to hear it. Over lunch.”

  * * *

  Mercury got off the elevator and walked over to the woman sitting at the huge desk in the reception area. “Good afternoon, Pauline. Have the Eastwoods arrived?”

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Steele, and no. They did call and say they were on their way. They got caught up in road-construction traffic.”

  Good, Mercury thought. The last thing he wanted was to keep them waiting again. “Thanks. I’ll be in my office. Please send them in the minute they arrive.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He entered his office and closed the door behind him. After removing his jacket and placing his briefcase aside, he placed his cell phone on his desk before easing down in the chair behind it. He then leaned back to think. Not about the Eastwoods because he felt fairly confident that was a deal in the making.

  His thoughts were on Sloan Donahue.

  Maybe he should have said goodbye. She would spend the night at his parents’ home, which would give her a chance to convince her own parents to unblock her credit cards and bank account. And then she’d be gone.

  No matter what she’d told him, he just couldn’t fathom anyone’s parents holding such a hard-line position when they discovered she’d been evicted. There was no way they would want her living homeless on the streets.

  And even if she was right about her parents, once she explained her situation to Eden, his mother would probably make a few calls and secure Sloan a job as a live-in companion to one of the older women at his mother’s church. Even if she took the position only temporarily, it would allow her to save money, get her own place and apply for higher-paying jobs.

  Either way, Sloan wasn’t his concern anymore.

  Picking up the paperweight on his desk, he exhaled, thinking about how Sloan had dropped into his day. He would admit that he found her attractive. What man in his right mind wouldn’t? However, the woman had issues, and he still couldn’t get beyond the fact she’d been driving his car. His stolen car.

  His cell phone rang. He clicked it on after checking caller ID. “What do you want, Galen?”

  “I thought you would like to know the Camaro is parked safely in your garage. Jonas is here to give me a ride back home, and we figured we should take some of your Scotch, as a thank-you for all our help.”

  Mercury rolled his eyes. “Kind of early in the day for Scotch, isn’t it?”

  “Not if we each take a bottle.”

  Mercury sat straight up in the chair. “You didn’t help me that much, and I honestly don’t recall Jonas helping at all.”

  “He came here to pick me up. That’s helping. And maybe I should mention that we also washed your car. It was dirty but at least there weren’t any dents.”

  “Yes. Despite everything, I appreciate that. And I guess since the two of you washed the car, that earned you each a bottle.”

  “Stop being so stingy. It’s not as if your booze cellar isn’t stocked with enough wine and liquor to last a lifetime,” Galen said.

  “Whatever.”

  “So, did you get Sloan home okay?”

  A frown touched the corner of Mercury’s mouth. “Yes. Just in time to be evicted.”

  “What!”

  “You heard me.” He then spent the next ten minutes telling Galen what had happened and the information Sloan had shared with him about her parents.

  “I knew it!” Galen said. “I told you she came from money. Please don’t tell me you dropped her off anyway and kept going.”

  “Okay, I won’t tell you.”

  “Mercury!”

  “For Pete’s sake, stop screaming in my ear, Galen. Of course I couldn’t just drop her off, especially after that damn respect-and-rescue crap you told her.”

  “It’s the truth and you know it. So, what did you do? Where did you take her? Please don’t tell me to your place.”

  “You know me better than that. I don’t do female sleepovers, houseguests, drop-ins or otherwise.”

  “So, where is she?”

  “At the best place and with the finest people. They know how to deal with issues like hers.”

  “Ah hell, Mercury. Please don’t tell me that in your haste to get rid of her you took her to a homeless shelter.”

  Mercury rolled his eyes. “No, Galen, I didn’t take her to the homeless shelter. I took her to our folks. More specifically, I took her to Mom.”

  * * *

  “So, there you have it,” Sloan said to Mercury’s parents as she finished off the last of the chicken-salad sandwich Eden had served with chips and a glass of iced tea.

  “My parents refused to back down about me marrying Harold. When I left home, I had a small amount of cash and a couple of credit cards in my name. I used most of my cash when I bought Mercury’s car.”

  Sloan drew in a deep breath. Already she could tell that Mercury’s parents were different from her own. That made her wonder if perhaps they thought she’d made up the entire thing. “I know what I just told you about my circumstances might be hard to believe, but it’s true.”

  Eden smiled and gently patted Sloan’s hand. “Oh, I believe you. In fact, listening to you brought back memories of how Drew and I met.”

  Sloan was surprised to hear that. “Really?”

  “Yes. Like yours, my parents also had money and an arranged marriage in my future. It wasn’t that Mark and I didn’t get along or that he wasn’t a nice guy, but we didn’t love each other, and I had other plans for my future. I wanted to be a model and had actually gotten an agent and was doing a few jobs behind my parents’ backs right after college.”

  “What happened?”

  “They found out and told me to quit the modeling and instead concentrate on becoming Mark’s wife...or else they would stop providing me with anything. Up until then, I’d had the best of everything. Of course, I didn’t believe they would do it, try forcing me into a marriage I didn’t want. But they were determined.”

  Eden took a sip of her tea, and the expression on her face let Sloan know she was remembering that time. “I was deeply upset when they threatened to destroy the model agency representing me, and my agent caved in under pressure and dropped me. When I still refused to do what they wanted, my parents took my car and charge cards, as well as closing my bank account, leaving me with very little to my name.”

  Sloan leaned forward, intrigued by what Eden was sharing and fascinated by how similar it was to her own situation. “What did you do?”

  “I was determined to make it on my own, so with only a couple of hundred dollars in my pocket, I did something rather foolish. Something that these days I wouldn’t advise anyone to do, especially a woman.”

  “And what was that?”

  “I stowed away in the back of a tractor trailer at a truck stop, hiding behind boxes of auto parts the trucker was hauling from Phoenix to California. At the time I was too upset with my agent and my parents to consider the danger doing something like that involved. Luckily for me, the trucker was this guy here,” Eden said, smiling over at her husband. “He said my perfume gave me away and my scent was all over his truck. He’d gone ten miles before he pulled over and found me hiding. He threatened to take me back to the truck stop, but I talked him out of it and persuaded him to take me with him to California. Less than two years later, we were married.”

  Sloan studied Eden and then recognition dawned. Eden Tyson. This was the Eden Tyson who’d been a renowned supermodel right along with the likes of Christie Brinkley, Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell. And she was Mercury’s mother? Wow!

  “I recognize you now and you’re still beautiful,” she said in awe, complimenting the older woman.

  “Thank you, Sloan.”

  “And I’m glad your situation had a happy ending.”

  Eden’s smile widened. “And I have a feeling yours will, as well.”

  An hour later, Sloan walked out of the guest-room bath feeling totally refreshed after her shower. She appreciated Eden and Drew opening their home to her. This was such a lovely guest room. The entire house was beautiful and had the feel of a home and not just a house.

  Sloan also appreciated Eden and Drew sharing their story with her. She could see by the way they looked at each other that Mercury had been right. His parents did love each other. That was how it was supposed to be. Although marriage was not in Sloan’s plans, if she ever did marry it would be for love and nothing else.

  She was about to blow-dry her hair when her cell phone rang. She immediately recognized the caller. Harold. Moving to the bed, she picked up her phone. “Why are you calling me?”

  “Thanks to you, the folks, both yours and mine, are mad at me.”

  Did he honestly call to tell her that? “Not my problem.”

  “It is your problem because now they blame me for you ending our engagement. They’ve given me one week to have you back here in Cincinnati and planning our wedding. So, where are you?”

  If Sloan hadn’t known it before, she definitely knew it now. Harold Cunningham was a jackass, especially if he thought there was a chance for them to get back together. “You don’t need to know where I am because there won’t be a wedding between us. Ever.”

  And without saying goodbye, Sloan disconnected the call.

  Six

  “Is it true?”

  Mercury glanced up to find his brothers Eli and Tyson standing in the doorway of his office. Neither believed in knocking, and since Pauline had left early today, they’d taken advantage of not having to be announced.

  He really wasn’t surprised to see either Eli or Tyson today. Eli’s law firm took up the entire twentieth floor and he was known to drop in and talk about his wife and one-year-old son, Elias. Like Galen, Eli had fallen into the role of family man like he’d been bred for the part.

  As far as Tyson, the Steele brother who was a gifted heart surgeon, was concerned, Mercury knew, from running into Hunter earlier, that Tyson was here picking her up from work for one of their date nights.

  A huge smile touched Mercury’s lips. “I guess you guys heard that I signed Norris Eastwood today. It will probably make the news this evening.”

  “We hadn’t heard that,” Eli said, coming into Mercury’s office with Tyson on his heels.

  “Congratulations,” they both then said.

  “Thanks.” Mercury leaned back in the chair behind his desk. “If the two of you didn’t know about Eastwood, then what are you asking about being true?”

  Eli eased down in one of the guest chairs. “The fact that you took a woman home to Mom. And according to Galen, she’s a sizzling-hot looker and a prim-and-proper lady. She’s just the type a guy would take home to his mother. What could you have been thinking? A man never takes a woman home to his mother for any reason unless it’s serious.”

  Mercury rolled his eyes. “Galen has blown things all out of proportion. The woman was down on her luck and needed a place to stay for the night.”

  “And you honestly think our mother will give her refuge for just one night? If Mom likes her, and Galen is convinced that she will, chances are that woman will stay while Mom turns her into your future bride.”

  Mercury sat up straight in his chair. “That won’t be happening.”

  “You’ll never convince Mom of that,” Tyson said. “Have you forgotten how Mom and Dad met?”

  “Of course I haven’t forgotten. Mom stowed away in the back of Dad’s rig.”

  Tyson was still grinning. “And do you recall just why Mom did that?”

  The line of concentration along Mercury’s brow deepened. “Yes. She was on the run from her parents...”

  His voice trailed off when he remembered. Clearly remembered. He gazed over at his brothers, who were staring at him. Now they were both grinning with a “you really set yourself up for that one” look on their faces.

  “I need to talk to Mom,” Mercury said, quickly moving to the coatrack and grabbing his jacket. The last thing he wanted was for Eden Tyson Steele to fill her head up with romantic ideas, just because she had ended up marrying her rescuer.

  “It might be too late, Mercury. You might as well accept your fate.”

  He ignored Eli’s comment as he briskly walked out of his office.

  * * *

  “And you’re sure you’ll be okay?” Eden asked Sloan again.

  Sloan smiled. Drew and Eden had a prior dinner engagement that they’d offered to cancel. Sloan wouldn’t hear of it and refused to disrupt their plans for the evening. “I’ll be fine. Since you graciously offered me the use of your computer, I’m going to search the internet for more job opportunities.”

  “Well, if you’re sure, then all right,” Eden said, smiling. “You have my phone number if you need me and if you get hungry there’s plenty of food in the refrigerator.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be fine.”

  When Drew and Eden left, Sloan crossed her arms over her chest and thanked her lucky stars. She appreciated Mercury for bringing her here. His parents were super. They’d even suggested she remain with them until she was back on her feet. Of course, she couldn’t do that, but she had agreed to stay an additional day. She’d sent a text to her friend Lisa, who’d quickly responded and said she could send her a thousand dollars without any problem. The only problem was on Sloan’s end since she had no way of receiving the money with a closed bank account.

  Another thing she appreciated was Eden letting her use the computer in her office since the battery in Sloan’s laptop had died hours ago. After mentioning to Eden that she spoke several different languages, Eden had asked her if she’d ever considered working as an interpreter. It just so happened that she knew the Miss Universe pageant was looking for someone with her credentials. Eden had a friend with connections to the pageant and would arrange for the woman to talk with Sloan about it.

  An hour later, Sloan pushed away from the computer feeling irritated at not being able to open a new bank account online. It seemed that her driver’s license number was being blocked for some reason. She sighed, trying not to feel defeated.

  She was about to try again with another bank when her phone rang. She hoped it wasn’t Harold calling again. Her heart kicked up a beat when she saw the caller was her mother.

  She clicked on. “Yes, Mom?”

  “We expected you back by now, Sloan Elizabeth. We do have a wedding to plan, sweetheart.”

  Sloan swallowed deeply, knowing it was going to be one of those conversations. Why had she hoped her mother was calling to tell her that she and her father had been wrong trying to force her into a loveless marriage?

  Placing the phone on the desk, she decided to put her mother on speakerphone so she could talk while maneuvering through the sites of several banks. “Sorry to disappoint you. I keep telling you that there won’t be a wedding. Why won’t you and Dad believe me?” she asked her mother.

  “Because we know you. Why are you being difficult? You are only hurting yourself. You know your father. He is going to get his way about this or else...”