The memorial service was torture-until the ballroom door creaked open, and an angel walked into the room.
An angel at Reginald Summerhill's memorial? Nicholas Long would never have expected it-not unless she was dispatched from Hell.
Nick looked over his shoulder, intrigued by the newcomer. She was late and dressed in a colorful hodgepodge that was more Camden than Mayfair. Her hair was in a messy topknot and she looked faded around the edges, as though she needed a bed straight off.
He was more than willing to offer his to her.
He mentally chastised himself. Bloody hell-he was at a memorial, sitting next to his stepsister Summer. He shouldn't be thinking of shagging anyone.
Summer angled her head toward his and whispered, "That's Rosalind Summerhill."
Fabulous-not only was he ogling a woman at a memorial, but he was ogling Summer's mourning half-sister. "She's late," he replied lamely.
"She lives in California. Beatrice, Viola, Portia, Imogen, and Titania all live here, though Imogen obviously travels all the time."
He glanced at the angel. "Why is she the only one who was named properly?"
"They all have Shakespearean names."
He didn't have to look at Summer to know she was resentful about being the odd man out. All her life she'd wanted to be a Summerhill sister. She knew it was impossible, given she was a bastard born to Reginald Summerhill's mistress, but that'd never stopped her from wishing.
"You're fortunate," he murmured to her. "With your luck, you'd have been named Puck."
She elbowed him, but there was a hint of a smile on her lips-the first one since they received news that their mother had died days ago.
The irony that he was a Formula One racer and yet it'd been his mother who'd died in a car crash didn't escape him.
Tabitha Welles hadn't been his biological mother-his birth mother had run away weeks after he'd been born-but Tabitha had been one in every other way from the moment his father had introduced the two of them. Nick had fallen in love with the beautiful, kind woman the same way she'd fallen in love with him. When his father's family had denied taking him in after his father's untimely death, Tabitha had joyfully kept him, saying he was already hers. She'd been a lovely woman, despite her regretful taste in men.
Like the prick, Reginald Summerhill.
He heard Tabitha tell him to mind his manners, that the dead deserved respect.
The thing was, Nick had hated the man. Reginald Summerhill, Earl of Amberlin, had been a royal ass in life. The man had doled out his affection like crumbs to a pauper.
Tabitha never tolerated any unkind thoughts about the man who kept her his dirty secret for almost thirty years. Her Reggie had been a saint in her mind, even though he'd only come around when it'd suited him.
Summer felt the same way about the man. Though how his sister could feel such a connection to a man who wouldn't claim her as his daughter baffled Nick.
He looked at Rosalind Summerhill. How did she feel about her father?
If anything, she looked angry.
Now that he knew she was one of the Summerhill sisters, he couldn't believe he hadn't guessed it. She had the noble cheekbones and blond hair that even Summer had inherited.
Nick needed to stop staring at the woman. The stepson of her father's mistress was the last person she'd want sniffing at her heels. So he focused on the drone of the speaker, one of Summerhill's pompous cronies.
