Marriage by Mistake

swiveled his wheelchair to face his sister. The expression on her face was quizzical.
    Gee, it would be nice if people around here knocked before opening other people's bedroom doors. Matt sighed, wheeling toward her. He was sixteen years old, after all. Didn't he deserve a little privacy?
    "Are you all right?" Kerrin put a hand to his forehead. "You look all flushed."
    "I'm fine." Drawing his head out from under her palm, Matt flushed even more, hardly wanting her to guess what he'd been doing right before she'd horned in on him. If his older sister got an inkling of Matt's secret fantasies she'd be all over him to go back to physical therapy. Kerrin was a decade older than he was, but full of naïve delusions. She'd get a gooey look in her eyes and spout a lot of nonsense about how Matt could recover the use of his legs. She'd probably tell him he could become an Olympic star. Kerrin was completely crazy.
    "I made spaghetti and meatballs," his sister now informed Matt, leading the way down the hall.
    Matt stifled a groan. "You made dinner?"
    Kerrin turned around with a hurt expression. "Is there something wrong with that?"
    Matt was too smart to answer. "What happened to Mom? She go into town?"
    "Mom and Dad drove to Bishop. They've got one of their outer space meetings."
    Brother and sister exchanged a look. Matt grinned. "One has to admit, we've got the most interesting parents in town."
    "Out of this world," Kerrin agreed. "Oh dear, I think that's my garlic bread I smell burning."
    Still grinning, Matt watched her race down the hall, her tawny curls flying. All right, so she was completely hopeless in the kitchen, but she managed it with a certain screwball charm. There was no reason on earth Kerrin should be adding 'town spinster' to the list of other town titles she'd begun to collect, he thought, as he wheeled down the redwood panelled hall.
    In the airy kitchen, the garlic bread smoked on the counter while Kerrin busily threw some spaghetti into a bowl. The resigned way the noodles fell told Matt that Kerrin had managed to overcook them. She'd probably had her nose stuck in a book and forgotten to turn off the heat. The woman had two master's degrees and ran the Mono county school system with the strategy and skill of a four-star general, but she couldn't quite manage pasta.
    She couldn't handle living on her own, either, and though she claimed she preferred the company of her family, Matt suspected something else was going on. It was probably just as well. She would have starved.
    Matt rolled to a position by the kitchen table. "Dad says you're going to L.A. tomorrow."
    Kerrin started. Guiltily, Matt thought. "He told you that?" Her eyes avoided Matt's as she brought the food to the table.
    "Uh huh." Matt watched as Kerrin attempted to dish him some sticky, and hence uncooperative, noodles. "But he wouldn't tell me why you were driving two hundred miles to a place I know you loathe. So I figured—" Matt paused, watching her face closely. She'd been touchy as a kitten for a week now. He had one guess why. "So I figured it must be a man."
    Kerrin choked and nearly dropped her load of noodles onto the Formica surface of the kitchen table. Matt could hardly believe his eyes as color rose to her cheeks.
    "My God," he exclaimed, astonished. "It is a man!"
    "No!" Kerrin gave a determined shake to the serving ladle, and managed to divest it of clinging noodles. "It is not. That is—" Her color deepened. "All right. I suppose he is male in gender, but it's not what you think."
    "C'mon Ker." Matt was grinning from ear to ear. "You can tell your own brother. Where did you meet?"
    "We haven't met—yet. And it's not a date." The thought seemed to make her flustered as all get out. "It's...town business."
    A lie . All right, so Kerrin had been fool enough to let Ollie, the town's auto mechanic, talk her into becoming mayor instead of him this year, but there was no possible 'town business' that could involve Los Angeles, two hundred miles to the southwest.
    "Give," Matt said.
    "It's an interview," Kerrin elaborated. "I'm interviewing someone."
    Another lie . "Really? For what?"
    Her green-gold eyes glanced at him and away. "Summer school teacher."
    Matt stopped eating. He was so discomfited he didn't even notice the faint, whispery tone of Kerrin's answer, indicative of a third lie. "Summer school?" he squeaked. "I thought the state wasn't giving us any money for summer school." In fact, he'd been counting on