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dinner.
    “Amanda Sue, Mr. Logan is eating his dinner. He doesn’t want to help cut up your meat,” Tory told her niece gently from where she sat on the other side of the child. She gave Logan an apologetic look over the little girl’s head, meeting his gaze for the first time all evening.
    “Do too,” Amanda Sue insisted, turning her limpid eyes up at Logan by cocking her head to the side and giving him a beseeching look through the fringe of her bangs.
    “Of course, he does,” Logan agreed, unable to resist that look and hoping to avert a scene. As he went about his task, he surreptitiously watched Tory talking to Curtiss’s wife, Leeanne, who had barely said a word all evening.
    When Tory stepped into the living room earlier, Logan wasn’t sure it was the same woman he’d met that afternoon, but this woman was just as riveting to his senses. She stood framed in the archway, an arrestingly sophisticated figure in a silky paisley cossack blouse and a pencil-slim maroon skirt. Her glossy brown/black hair was down, coming almost to her shoulders with the sides swept back by gold barrettes. She had aimed a haughty look in his direction and gone to greet the rest of her family.
    “Oh, for heaven sake, Pooh, leave Curtiss alone,” Tory called across the table to her oldest brother. “What you don’t know about animals could fill volumes. Let Curtiss handle his own practice.”
    Sanders sent his sister a scathing look before patting his thin mouth with his napkin. “Victoria Camille, I’ve told you countless times how irritating that repellant name is. I don’t want to remind you again.”
    Logan felt like an observer at a tennis match as he turned to watch Tory’s reaction. Her brilliant smile slammed into his heart at high velocity, although it was actually aimed at her brother. “Yes, I know, dear Pooh, that’s why I always remember to use it when you’re being your most pompous.”
    “Now, Piglet, you’re stealing my material,” Trevor broke in, his grin taking the sting out of his reprimand. Of the three brothers he resembled Tory the most—with the exception of a nose that had been broken at least once. “It was my favorite book, and I christened everyone appropriately.”
    “And created yourself Christopher Robin, the only human in the book,” Curtiss added, shaking his shaggy blond head in disgust.
    “You’re just mad because you weren’t born yet, and I was over that phase by the time you came along,” his brother shot back in triumph.
    “Now, ya’ll, I’m gettin’ tired of this bickering. You’re all supposed to be adults,” T.L. interrupted, giving his grown children a dark look. “What’s our company gonna think?”
    Later Logan was appalled by what he did next, even though it earned a look of approval from Tory. At T.L.’s question he burst into laughter, suddenly understanding the meaning of the nicknames. Trevor had been a Winnie-the-Pooh fan and gave his family the names of the characters. Pooh lived in the woods under the name of Sanders. The image of the forty-year-old business man dressed in his Brooks Brothers suit with his head stuck in a pot of honey was the ludicrous picture in his mind. His sense of humor overcame his sympathy for the other man’s displeasure with his sister.
    “I’m sorry, but it suddenly struck me as funny,” he explained weakly as all eyes were trained on him. Enid Herrington would send him to his room without any supper for such a gaffe. “Please, tell me some more. I was an only child, so life wasn’t terribly exciting as a juvenile.”
    As Curtiss and Trevor competed to tell the most outrageous story, Logan caught Tory giving him an assessing look. His mother certainly wouldn’t approve, but he was beginning to enjoy himself. Arkansas might not be as horrible as he had anticipated. A noisy dinner with the Planchets was a vast improvement over his usual solitary meals at his townhouse. The only thing that would give him more satisfaction