“Mom. Dad. I’d like you to meet Felicity.”

Fliss’s anxiety turned to the sort of morbid terror that came from facing something she knew wasn’t genuinely life-threatening but still turned her blood cold, like a giant spider.

The couple stole a moment to recover from their shock, then rose politely. Ted Montgomery was a peek at what Saint would look like in forty years—distinguished and even more stern, still wearing an aura of power that hadn’t diminished at all.

His mother was the source of his star power, though. Norma was easily fifteen years younger than her husband. Her figure was fit, not the least bit matronly. She wore a sequined drop-waist dress that glinted and shimmered in the candlelight. Her beauty would have been a standard blonde-and-blue-eyed variety if not for an intrinsic sparkle that might have dimmed with age, but it was still there, demanding she be noticed.

“How charming. Call me Norma,” his mother said, offering her hand in a very brief, weak shake. Her cool gaze skimmed down, taking in every detail of Fliss’s appearance, including coming back to the earrings before transferring a silent question toward Saint.

“Ted.” His father didn’t offer to shake hands. He moved to help Norma with her chair.

“A bottle of Dom,” Saint said to the hovering maître d’ as he held Fliss’s chair.

She sank gratefully into it, knees weak. Her throat had constricted so tightly she felt as though she sipped oxygen through a straw.

“This is why you went to London?” Ted asked with only a flickering glance toward Fliss before shifting his glare back to his son. “You didn’t say a word about her in our meeting this morning.”

“I was waiting on an email that I’ve forwarded to both of you,” Saint said blithely. “You can read it later, but the important piece is that you’re being informed of our happy news at the same time. I’m not playing favorites.”

“Hap—Saint.” His mother’s voice was a gust of betrayal.

“There’s no dispute?” His father reached for his phone.

“None,” Saint assured him. “I sent it to Elijah so he can begin making adjustments to my will.”

Ted sent her a look that was both accusation and disgust. His mother’s eyes gleamed with angry tears.

“Wow,” Fliss couldn’t help saying. “When you said your family dinners were a nightmare, you meant it.”

Shock slacked everyone’s jaws.

“Oh, did I say that out loud?” She facetiously touched her lips. “I thought that’s what we were doing.”

Ted’s gaze narrowed. Norma’s gaze dropped, and her red face turned redder.

Saint sat back, angling to face her.

She’d gone too far, she knew she had, but she had her passport in her clutch and enough room on her credit card to get herself back to London. She could go straight to the airport from here. She didn’t have to put up with anyone treating her this way.

“As I said, I’d like you to meet Felicity,” Saint drawled. A glimmer of admiration stole into his expression as he continued looking at her. “How you feel about her is irrelevant. How you treat her is not.” He sat straight again, making a point of looking at both of his parents in turn. “If you drive her away, you drive me away, so think about the words that are coming out of your mouths.”

The bucket of champagne arrived with four crystal flutes.

Saint held up a finger to hit pause on the popping of the cork.

“Are we staying?” he asked them.

CHAPTER NINE

SAINT WOKE AT four in the morning to find the bed beside him empty. The sheets were cool. He lurched up in bed.

“Fliss?”

She wasn’t in the bathroom. The door was open, the room dark.

He shrugged on his robe and padded downstairs, finding her in a pool of lamplight, kneeling at the coffee table. A cup of tea was steaming near her elbow. On the table in front of her were three cards face up on a square of black velvet.

“Do you always do this during the witching hour?”

“My body is still on London time. I couldn’t sleep.” She sipped her tea. “I decided to see what I could see.”

“And what do you see?” He started to lower into the chair opposite her.

“That’s Granny’s spot.” She pointed at the cup of milky brown tea on the side table, also releasing a wisp of steam.

“Excuse me, Granny,” he said to the empty chair, nonplussed, and moved to sit behind Fliss so he could peer over her shoulder. Three cards were laid in a row. The image in the middle was right side up, but the ones on the outside were upside down.

“The Empress is abundance.” Fliss touched the card on the left. “And love. Venus.” She pointed to a symbol. “She’s reversed because the abundance I’m enjoying is yours, not mine. And because my love is flowing out.” She nodded at the empty chair. “Not back to me.”

Saint was skeptical of all of this, but he couldn’t be dismissive. Her profile was too solemn. She’d been through a lot in the last thirty-six hours or so. If she needed to pretend her grandmother was here so she didn’t feel so alone, who was he to judge?

He gave her silky hair a pet and left his hand on her shoulder.

“What about your pregnancy? Venus is the goddess of fertility, isn’t she?” He leaned forward to lift the Empress onto its top edge. “Aren’t babies usually upside down inside the womb? Maybe that’s what it means.”

She twisted a glare of mock horror at him and whispered, “Don’t touch my cards.” She delicately took it to lay it down again. “But thank you. I like that interpretation.”

“What’s the stick?” He pointed to the one in the middle, labeled Ace of Wands.

“That’s your fault.”

“Oh?”

“It’s a new idea that is starting to take root in my mind. You said I should focus on lingerie, and I can’t stop thinking about that. It’s really hard—”

“The stick?”

“Lingerie.” She slid him another admonishing look.

“But you can see from the way that fist is clutching that very sturdy branch, I thought the interpretation was going in a different direction.”

“And you can see that the cards never lie. You see what you want to see.”

Saint wanted to see her smile. She hadn’t since before dinner, but at least her tone had lightened.

“For the record, my lingerie remark was not serious when I made it.” He gathered her hair as he spoke so he was holding the thick rope of it in his stacked fists. He carefully dragged her head back to see her face. “But I wholeheartedly support your shift in focus. In fact, I’ll volunteer to be your beta tester.”

“You want to wear one of my G-strings to see if it’s comfortable?”