Any Way You Want It (Brand Clan #2)(50)

“But if it’s a boy,” Lena said, “he’ll be named after his daddy.”

“Roderick Junior.” Remy nodded approvingly. “Has a nice ring to it.”

“It does,” Zandra agreed.

Lena smiled. “Of course, if we have a boy, we already know he’s going to come out looking just like Roderick and Remy and the rest of them. The Brand men have the strongest genes I’ve ever seen.”

“Don’t they?” Zandra chuckled. “It’s crazy.”

“I think it’s good.” Roderick grinned, turning his head this way and that to show off his handsome profile. “Why should all this go to waste?”

“Oh, please,” Zandra snorted, and they all laughed.

“Oh, my God.” An excited feminine squeal cut through the crowd. “Is that Roderick and Remy Brand?”

The foursome glanced around to see a honey-toned, heavyset woman bearing down on them. If it hadn’t been for the gratingly perky voice, Zandra wouldn’t have recognized the approaching newcomer. But as she peered closer, she realized, with a surprised jolt, that she was about to come face-to-face with her former high school nemesis.

Tawny “The Tiara” Forrester, so dubbed because she’d been crowned homecoming royalty four years in a row. By the time she was named homecoming queen during senior year, it had been so anticlimactic that the crowd had only reacted with halfhearted applause. Though many students had privately bemoaned the unfairness of Tawny’s long reign, no one had been bold enough to publicly vent their displeasure for fear of antagonizing her. Not only was she one of the most popular students, cheerleading captain and president of the drama club, she’d also been the most vicious.

She and Zandra had been bitter rivals, but not because they’d wanted the same things. Zandra was an honors student, the first female president of the math club and a student ambassador. She was a brainiac who’d had the misfortune of being just pretty enough to make Tawny feel threatened. Her jealousy had been cemented when Zandra began tutoring her boyfriend, Kevin, in math. When the couple broke up a month before prom and he asked Zandra to be his date, Tawny had been livid. She’d glared at them the whole night, and threw a hissy fit when Kevin and Zandra were crowned prom king and queen.

But she’d gotten her revenge. After the prom, Kevin had dropped Zandra off at home and headed straight to Tawny’s house to spend the night. Two days later at school, she’d taken great satisfaction in bragging to everyone that Kevin had come crawling back to her after ditching lame Zandra on prom night.

As Zandra watched her old nemesis approach, she realized that she hadn’t seen Tawny since graduation, when she’d sneered her way through Zandra’s valedictorian speech.

“Help me out here,” Remy murmured in Zandra’s ear. “Who is that?”

Zandra smiled thinly. “Tawny Forrester.”

Recognizing the name—but not the woman coming toward them—Remy chuckled under his breath. “Damn. This ought to be interesting.”

By the time Tawny reached them, she was slightly out of breath from her trek across the crowded concert grounds. “The twins. Oh, my goodness, I can’t believe it. It really is—” As her gaze belatedly landed on Zandra nestled between Remy’s legs, her eyes widened in surprised recognition.

“Zandra?”

Zandra sat up slowly, but made no move to stand and greet Tawny. They’d hated each other in high school, so she saw no reason to be phony. “Hello, Tawny.”

She watched, quietly amused, as the other woman’s mouth flapped open and closed like a guppy out of water.

Taking pity on her, Zandra said smoothly, “It’s nice to see you again. You obviously remember Roderick and Remy.”

“Hey, Tawny,” they greeted her. “How’s it going?”

Recovering from her shock, Tawny beamed at them. “Hey, fellas. This is such a crazy coincidence. I was just asking one of my neighbors about you guys. She went to our high school and was in your grade, but you two were so popular you might not remember her. Anyway, you both look great. But that’s nothing new.” Spying the diamond wedding and engagement rings twinkling on Lena’s hand, Tawny tacked on a smile that was just as bright, but not an ounce genuine. “Lisa told me that you’d gotten married, Roderick. She said your wedding was splashed all over the papers. Aren’t you going to introduce me?”

Roderick smiled indulgently. “Tawny, I’d like you to meet my wife, Lena.”

As the two women smiled politely and shook hands, Tawny openly assessed Lena, always sizing up the competition—even when they weren’t.

“Congratulations on snagging one of the twins,” she told Lena. “Every girl at school had a crush on these two. Roderick was voted Most Likely to Succeed, and Remy was voted Most Likely to Save the World.”

Lena chuckled. “I can believe that.”

As Tawny’s eyes returned to Zandra and looked her over, her lips tightened with envious displeasure. Though she’d gained a lot of weight since high school, Zandra thought she was still very pretty. She might even have told her so if there hadn’t been such bad blood between them.

Tawny eyed Zandra and Remy speculatively. “You two look pretty cozy. Are you...?”

Before Zandra could respond, Remy drawled, “I’m working on it.”