Falling For Her Fake Fiancé (The Beaumont Heirs 5) by Sarah M. Anderson

still doted on her when she was here. The next Donut Friday, she remembered, he’d had a pretty necklace waiting for her, and once again she’d been Daddy’s girl for a few special minutes each week.
    She didn’t want to sully those memories. “Chadwick and Phillip with my father’s first wife, Matthew and then Byron and me—we’re twins—with his second wife.” She hated referring to her mother by that number, as if that’s all Jeannie had contributed. Wife number two, children three, four and five.
    “You have a twin?” Ethan cut in.
    “Yes.” She gave him humorous look. “He’s very protective of me.” She did not mention that Byron was busy with his new wife and son. Better to let him worry about how her four older brothers would deal with him if he crossed a line.
    Ethan’s eyebrows jumped up. “And there were five more?”
    “Yup. Lucy and Harry with my father’s third wife. Johnny, Toni and Mark with his fourth. The younger ones are in their early twenties, for the most part. Toni and Mark are still in college and, along with Johnny, they all still live at the Beaumont mansion with Chadwick and his family.” She rattled off her younger siblings’ names as if they were items to be checked off a list.
    “That must have been...interesting, growing up in that household.”
    “You have no idea.” She made light of it, but
interesting
didn’t begin to cover it.
    She and Byron had been in an odd position in the household, straddling the line between the first generation of Hardwick Beaumont’s sons and the last. Being five years older than she and Byron, Matthew was Chadwick and Phillip’s contemporary. And since Matthew was their full brother, Byron and Frances had grown closer to the two older Beaumont brothers.
    But then, her first stepmother—May, the not-evil one—had harbored delusional fantasies about how Frances and May’s daughter, Lucy, would be the very best of friends, a period of time that painfully involved matching outfits for ten-year-old Frances and three-year-old Lucy. Which had done the exact opposite of what May intended—Lucy couldn’t stand the sight of Frances. The feeling was mutual.
    And the youngest ones—well, they’d been practically babies when Frances was a teenager. She barely knew them.
    They were all Beaumonts, and, by default, that meant they were all family.
    “What about you? Any strings of siblings floating around?”
    Ethan shook his head. “One younger brother. No stepparents. It was a pretty normal life.” Something in the way he said it didn’t ring true, though.
    No stepparents? What an odd way to phrase it. “Are you close? With your family, I mean.” He didn’t answer right away, so she added, “Since they’ll be my in-laws, too.”
    “We keep in touch. I imagine the worst-case scenario is that my mother shows up to visit.”
    We keep in touch.
What was it he’d said, about long-distance relationships working?
    It was his turn to change the subject before she could drill for more information. “You weren’t kidding about an art gallery, were you?”
    “I am
highly
qualified,” she repeated. This time, her smile was more genuine. “We envision a grand space with enough room to highlight sculpture and nontraditional media, as well as hosting parties. As you can see, a five-million-dollar investment will practically guarantee success. I think that, as a grand opening, it would be ideal to host a showing of the antiques in this room. I don’t want to auction off these pieces. Too impersonal.”
    He ignored the last part and focused instead on the one part Frances would have preferred to gloss over. “Practically?” He glanced at her. “What kind of track record do you have with these types of ventures?”
    Frances cleared her throat as she uncrossed and recrossed her legs before leaning toward Ethan. Her distraction didn’t work this time. At least, not as well. His gaze only lingered on her legs for a few seconds. “This is a