The Boss's Fake Fiancée
SUSAN MEIER
Will this relationship stay fake forever?Mitch needs a fiancée – fast – and PA Lila Ross is just the girl he needs to fill the role. Lila’s had a crush on her boss since day one, but surely pretending to be his fiancée is a step too far? She knows she’ll be heartbroken when she has to walk away… Unless Mitch finds Lila indispensable – in every way!
The perfect fake fiancée—his assistant!
Billionaire Mitcham Ochoa never expected to be the best man for his brother and his own ex! But what better way to prove he’s over her than to have his very own “fiancée” at his side?
PA Lila Ross has had a crush on her boss since day one, but surely pretending to be his fiancée is a step too far? She knows she’ll be heartbroken when she has to walk away... Only Mitch is beginning to find Lila as indispensable in life as she is in the office!
Mitch turned to the door, then faced her again. “And don’t worry about missing me while I’m busy. I’ve arranged for us to have a private dinner here in the apartment tonight.”
Lila’s breath froze. Private dinner? She remembered those thirty seconds when he’d yanked her against him on the dance floor. The sizzle. The confusion.
And the longing.
She fought the urge to squeeze her eyes shut. She’d had a crush on this man forever. When he’d pulled her so close… well, her thoughts had spun out of control and she’d felt so many wonderful things.
What if he’d felt them too?
Oh, boy.
The words “private dinner” took on a whole new meaning.
But he opened the door and was gone before Lila could blink, let alone argue. She straightened her shoulders. She wasn’t going to fall into the trap of thinking he intended to seduce her. They’d shared one “crackly” moment the night before. He hadn’t instantly fallen in love with her. He probably wanted them to have dinner alone so he could catch her up on whatever happened at the family business meeting that day.
She was, after all, his assistant…
The Boss’s Fake Fiancée
Susan Meier
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
SUSAN MEIER is the author of over fifty books for Mills & Boon. The Tycoon’s Secret Daughter was a Romance Writers of America RITA® Award finalist, and Nanny for the Millionaire’s Twins won the Book Buyers’ Best Award and was a finalist in the National Readers’ Choice Awards. She is married and has three children. One of eleven children, she loves to write about the complexity of families and totally believes in the power of love.
Contents
Cover (#u4b614abe-961f-5948-bc78-69ab0d3264aa)
Back Cover Text (#u226cf89e-af4a-5d38-8eff-e843cce4dd56)
Introduction (#u464cd095-48f8-5bf8-a484-39435289c57a)
Title Page (#udee02de5-5baa-5954-84f2-3ff837700015)
About the Author (#ufb4fe5e6-5e93-5645-9fb7-f4cb3ff2773d)
CHAPTER ONE (#u16a175c3-f80a-5b6f-9132-27f6a106525f)
CHAPTER TWO (#u7bd71be5-e46f-5eeb-bffc-3e82120ffe40)
CHAPTER THREE (#ucdee7061-6fc7-5240-8e05-87dd0ee84ca1)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#u5b3203b3-176f-5884-bbf8-47c23c903e46)
“I THINK YOU’RE going to have to do more than show up at the wedding.”
Mitcham Ochoa tossed his pen to his desk and glared at his cousin Riccardo. It wasn’t exactly like looking in a mirror when he saw Riccardo, but it was close. All the Ochoa men had dark hair and dark eyes. Most were tall. The same age, Mitch and Riccardo didn’t just share physical characteristics; they behaved like brothers and knew everything there was to know about each other. Both had also been dumped by a woman they thought they wanted to marry. Except Riccardo had been broken to his very core when his fiancée chose her former boyfriend over him and Mitch eventually realized he hadn’t really loved Julia. Because Riccardo knew that, Mitch was not pleased with what Riccardo was hinting.
“I’m over her.”
Riccardo winced. “You know that and I know that, but it isn’t every day that a woman leaves her boyfriend for his brother, and then the jilted brother is asked to be the best man at their wedding. Tongues are going to wag, my friend. Everybody’s going to watch every move you make. Unless—”
“Unless what?”
“Unless you have no reason to be jealous.”
Righteous indignation whipped through Mitch and he bounced out of his tall-back black leather office chair. If anybody knew Mitch felt nothing but happiness for his brother and Julia, it was Riccardo. It annoyed the hell out of him that his cousin was pushing this nonissue. “I have no reason to be jealous!”
“Your brother is the oldest. He got the CEO-ship of your family’s business. He stole your girlfriend.”
Mitch growled.
“And let’s face it. He’s better looking.”
Mitch tossed his pen at Riccardo, who ducked.
“It’s reactions like that that will have Nanna fussing over you for the two weeks we’re in Spain celebrating this wedding. Do you want to have Nanna hovering?”
Finally seeing what Riccardo was doing, he slowly lowered himself to his seat again. “No.” Oh, Lord. He did not want Nanna hovering. His mother would be bad enough, but his grandmother? If she thought he was having even one iota of sadness over Julia marrying his brother, she’d do everything but spoon-feed him his dessert and make him look pathetic, when he wasn’t. Finding his brother in his bedroom with his girlfriend two years ago hadn’t been upsetting as much as it had been a wake-up call that rippled through his whole life. Losing Julia had put him back into the dating pool where he’d realized maybe their “love” was more about convenience than real emotion. They’d been together so long that staying together just seemed like the right thing to do. Recognizing the mistake he’d almost made in the name of comfort had jarred him. And now he was smarter, sharper, alert to the pitfalls of getting too comfortable with anything.
“Then you have to figure out a way to prove—from the very second you step off the Ochoa Vineyards jet—that you’re not just fine with this wedding. You are happy.”
Unfortunately, his family didn’t seem to see that his brother’s betrayal hadn’t really been a betrayal but a way for Mitch to dodge a big, fat bullet. They didn’t see how it had spring-boarded him to the kind of success he’d always longed for. All they remembered was that the initial shock of it had thrown Mitch into a tailspin. This was what he got for moving an ocean away. They hadn’t seen how quickly he’d bounced back. And when he tried to tell them, they thought he was either attempting to smooth things over or save face.
“The only way Nanna will ever think I’m happy is if I’m married.”
Riccardo frowned. “You can’t get married before your brother. No time.” He stopped. His face shifted and he burst out laughing. “But you could bring a fiancée to the wedding celebrations.”
“Right.”
“No! I’m serious! All you have to do is find a woman to agree to be your fiancée for the two weeks we’re in Spain. You make up a story about how you met. You create some romantic schmaltzy thing about how you proposed. You kiss her a few times in front of Nanna and—” He snapped his fingers. “You’re no longer the rejected brother.”
“Except I’m engaged?”
“No. No. A couple weeks later, you call Nanna. You say you had a fight and you’re not engaged anymore. And you don’t really have to explain too much until the next time you go home.”
He had to admit there was a certain poetry to it. He’d sneaked home to propose to Julia the night he’d found her and his brother in the bedroom of their apartment. They were fully clothed, but there weren’t a whole hell of a lot of reasons why Alonzo would be in her bedroom, except that they were lovers. Alonzo had vehemently denied it. He’d even told Mitch he’d walked in on their first kiss. They weren’t cheating. They didn’t want to hurt him. But it was clear from the way Alonzo protected Julia that Mitch’s brother might not be sleeping with her, but he loved her.
He’d been gobsmacked, but the whole mess had prompted his dad to give him the go-ahead to start the project he’d been angling to try for years: put his family’s wines online. He’d moved to New York for a change of scenery and grown to love the city. He’d also gotten so good at selling his family’s wines that he’d started a second website. That site sold wines from numerous vineyards—and glasses, wine racks, corkscrews, aprons, T-shirts with funny wine sayings, books on wine, books on serving wine, books on hosting wine-tasting parties—anything and everything related to wines. That was the site where he made money. Lots of money. Enough money to bring Riccardo from Spain to New York to help him start three more specialty websites. One sold anything and everything to do with cycling. One sold cooking supplies. One sold anything to do with golf.
All he had to do was pick a topic, find the vendors who made the “best” of whatever he wanted to sell, test their products, rule out the weak, choose the good and create a site. There was enough variety in the duties that he was never bored, and Riccardo was a financial genius. Whatever money Mitch’s websites brought in was invested to make more money. Though they wouldn’t tell their family, they were on track to be worth more than the entire Ochoa family enterprises in as few as three years.
So losing Julia had opened the door for him to become the businessman he was today. The very fact that he wouldn’t go back and change the outcome was proof that everything that had happened was for his benefit.
Still, none of those things would sway Nanna into believing he was happy, and she’d more than hover. She’d make him look pathetic. Worse, his grandmother making a big deal about him would put a real damper on his brother’s wedding. This was supposed to be Julia and Alonzo’s special time, two weeks of celebrating, and if he didn’t do something, his presence could actually ruin it.
But if he didn’t attend the wedding, refused to be best man, people would gossip that he was upset and the whole wedding would be about him not being there.
Either way, Julia and Alonzo’s wedding could become all about him.
He had to fix this.
“So where do we find this woman who’d be willing to pretend to be my fiancée for two weeks?”
* * *
Lila Ross gathered the sheets of paper that flew out of the copier, stacked them neatly, stapled them and headed into her boss’s office. It wasn’t often that she had both Mitch and Riccardo in the same room at the same time. She had to take advantage of this opportunity to get their approval on last month’s income statements, especially since they were leaving the next day for a family wedding.
Reports ready, she shoved her big-frame glasses up her nose and headed for the open door. She knocked twice to let them know she was there, then entered the room talking.
“I have last month’s income statements.”
Mitch said, “Great. Thanks. Come in.”
Riccardo’s face shifted. His eyes narrowed. His forehead wrinkled. His head tilted.
Deciding that expression probably had something to do with whatever they’d been discussing before she came in and was, therefore, none of her business, she handed one of the reports to Mitch and one to Riccardo before she sat on the empty chair in front of Mitch’s huge chrome-and-glass desk. The floor-to-ceiling windows behind Mitch displayed a beautiful view of the Manhattan skyline, glittering in the bright sunlight of a perfect June morning. The big geometric print area rug beneath her feet protected hardwood floors bleached then stained a medium gray that complemented the gray paint on the walls. The ultramodern black sofa and chair sat with a chrome-and-glass coffee table and end tables that matched the desk. The room was the picture of luxury and success that didn’t surprise her. Mitch Ochoa had the Midas touch.
Not to mention good looks and charm.
He glanced up at her and smiled. “Give me two minutes to peruse this, and then we’ll talk specifics.”
Her heart pitter-pattered. When he smiled, it was like the sun breaking over the horizon in her soul. “Sure.”
He smiled again before he began reading.
She told herself not to look at his shiny black hair as he read, but that only took her eyes to his broad shoulders, white shirt and black tie. He was so urbane. Born and raised in Spain, he’d been all over Europe before he’d come to the United States. She had no idea why he’d chosen New York City to start his breakaway business, but every night she’d thanked her lucky stars that he had—
Every night until last night.
Last night, she’d finally realized that she’d been his assistant for an entire year. They’d eaten many a lunch together. Not to mention late-night dinners when they worked until midnight to get something online or to wait for stats at the end of a new product day.
He could have kissed her thirty-seven times. She’d counted.
But while she’d gazed up at him with stars in her eyes, he’d looked down at her with the eyes of a friend. No. Scratch that. He’d looked down at an assistant. She hadn’t even broken the barrier to become his friend.
And last night—
She fought the urge to squeeze her eyes shut as pain and emptiness assaulted her.
Last night, she’d realized he would never see her as anything other than an employee, and she had to start job hunting. As long as she was this close to him day after day, she would continue believing that someday he’d notice her. But if he hadn’t noticed her—not even as a friend—after an entire year of late nights and weekends, he wouldn’t ever notice her. It was time to get on with her life.
And if she really wanted to get on with her life, she had to find a job with a company where she could climb the corporate ladder and eventually earn enough money that she could start looking for her birth mom. They’d been separated when she was ten. Raised in a series of foster homes, she’d been without a family, a place, since then. Finding her birth mom would give her the sense of belonging she’d always yearned for. That meant she had to get away from the distraction of Mitcham Ochoa.
Riccardo cleared his throat. “These numbers look fine, Mitch.” He tossed his copy of the income statement to Mitch’s desk. “So maybe we can finish talking about that thing we were discussing before Lila came in.”
Mitch’s head jerked up. His gaze flew to his cousin, then over to Lila and back to Riccardo again, as if reminding Riccardo they had an employee in the room. “Now?”
“I just want you to see the opportunity you have before you. We were talking about not being able to find a certain person to fulfill a specific job, and suddenly I’m thinking perhaps that person is right under our noses.”
Okay. She wasn’t stupid. They were talking about her. If she was reading this situation correctly, they had a job they needed to fill and she fit the bill. For Mitch to be cautious, the new job had to be a promotion.
Her heart leaped with joy. A promotion would mean more money—maybe enough to hire a private investigator to begin searching for her mom—
Then she remembered that for her sanity and her future, she had to leave Mitch Ochoa’s employ and her heart sank. Wasn’t it just like fate to finally give her a chance at a promotion when she’d decided—firmly decided—it was time to move on? As hard as she’d worked to climb the ladder in this growing company, she also knew herself. Other people might think she simply had a crush on Mitch. But she couldn’t work for someone for a year without getting to know him. In her heart, she genuinely loved him. And promotion or not, she had to leave this job or she’d end up living her life for a man who barely noticed her. Then even if she found her mom, she’d be a broke, single spinster. Not a mom. Not a wife. Not a woman who gave her mom grandkids. She’d be none of the things she longed to be.
She rose from her seat. “I’m not a hundred percent sure what you’re talking about, but I think I should tell you that I—”
Riccardo held up a finger to stop her. “No decisions until you hear us out.”
Mitch said, “Riccardo,” his voice a warning growl.
Riccardo walked behind Lila’s chair, put his hands on her shoulders and sat her down again. In two quick moves, he had her chopstick-like pins out of her chestnut-brown hair, and it fell to her shoulders in a curly waterfall. Then he reached forward and removed her glasses.
If Mitch had done either of those, she probably would have swooned at his touch. Because it was all-business Riccardo, she spun around and gaped at him. “What are you doing?”
He turned her head to face front. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”
Mitch blinked. “Oh, my God. Yes.”
“Sí. She is perfect.”
Mitch rose and rounded his desk to lean against it, in front of her. “Pale and delicate to Julia’s dark features.”
“Short and petite where Julia’s a little taller.”
“Smart,” Mitch added.
Riccardo laughed. “I won’t insult Julia by making the obvious comparison.”
Lila looked from Mitch to Riccardo and back to Mitch again. “What comparison? And could I have my glasses back so I can see?”
Riccardo said, “You can’t see without your glasses?”
She took her thick glasses from his hand. “Why else would anyone wear them?”
“Do you have contacts?” Mitch asked quietly, seriously.
Their gazes met and she swallowed hard. For the first time in a year, he wasn’t looking at her as an assistant but as a woman. She wasn’t sure how she knew the difference, except something in his eyes had shifted, changed, and a million fireflies glowed in her stomach.
“Yes. I have contacts. But I only wear them for special occasions.”
Riccardo said, “We have a very special occasion for you.”
“You’re sending me somewhere?”
“I’m taking you somewhere.”
Oh, wow. The only thing she’d heard in that sentence was I’m taking you. Her heart about popped out of her chest, and she knew she was in more trouble than she’d even believed the night before. She had to get away from this man or she’d be knitting sweaters for him when he was eighty as he dated twenty-year-old starlets.
“Mitch’s brother is getting married,” Riccardo said. “In Spain.”
She frowned. “I know. I reserved the family jet for you guys.”
“Yeah, well, Mitch needs more help than reserving the jet.”
Mitch pushed away from the desk. “You know what? I think Lila and I should talk about this privately.”
Riccardo’s eyebrows rose in question.
Mitch said, “Think it through, Riccardo. The less you know, the better the ruse will work.”
Riccardo laughed. “Okay. I get it.” He scooped up his copy of the income statement. “I’ll be in my office, but just remember I’m your detail guy. You won’t want to leave me out of the loop completely.”
He left the room, but in the last second, reached in, grabbed the knob on the door to the office and closed it.
The oddest feeling snaked through Lila. She’d been alone with Mitch a million times, behind closed doors lots of those times. But suddenly it felt like everything had changed.
“I really do need a favor. A big favor,” Mitch said, walking around his desk and dropping into his black leather chair.
“How big?” Seriously? Had her voice just shivered? The man was not the Big Bad Wolf and she certainly wasn’t Little Red Riding Hood. She’d been a foster child until she was eighteen. She’d fended for herself forever. Even in some ugly situations. How could a man she’d known a year, a man she loved and respected, send that kind of fear skittering through her?
“Riccardo already mentioned that my brother is getting married.”
“Yes.”
He leaned back in his chair. “What you don’t know is that Alonzo’s fiancée had been my girlfriend.” He glanced up, caught her gaze. “I cut a business trip short, sneaked into our apartment to surprise her with an engagement ring and caught them together in our bedroom.”
Her eyes widened. “Yikes.”
He waved his hands. “They were fully clothed. But, really? What reason did my brother have being so comfortable in my bedroom with the woman I’d come home to propose to?”
“None.”
“Exactly. They had the good graces not to even try to deny that they’d taken advantage of my many trips for our family’s vineyard to...get to know each other.”
She couldn’t help it. She giggled. He had such a sense of humor. And he seemed fine with his brother’s betrayal—or was it his girlfriend’s betrayal? Oh, God. It was both. How had he gotten over that? Maybe she shouldn’t have laughed?
He sat up. “That’s exactly the attitude I’d want you to have. That my brother marrying my former girlfriend is no big deal. Funny even. Because I couldn’t be happier for them. Alonzo truly loves Julia. She truly loves him. Theirs is the match that should have been made all along.”
Putting some of this together in her analytical brain, she said, “So you want me to come to Spain with you?”
“Sí.”
“As your date for the wedding.” The very thought made her nerve endings do a happy dance, but she told them to settle down. There was no way she could agree to that.
“No. Actually, I’d want you to pretend to be my fiancée.”
Her breathing stopped. “What?”
“My mom is okay. She has a lot of duties with the wedding to keep her busy. But my grandmother? She’s got way too much free time. I swear to God,” he said, raising his hands and opening them in supplication, “it won’t matter what I say. She’ll treat me like a wounded puppy the entire celebration.”
“And everybody will feel sorry for you.”
“It’s not just about pride. It’s about Julia and Alonzo’s special celebration. I don’t want the focus to be on me. I want it on them.”
“True.”
He leaned a little farther back in his chair. “I turned this arm of my family’s enterprise into our company’s biggest moneymaker. I’m branching out on my own. I don’t want to spend two weeks with my dad looking at me as if I’m emotionally unstable and wondering if he should replace me, even though I’m making tons of money for him and even more money for myself.”
“Never thought of that.”
“Then you don’t know how stubborn and thickheaded Spanish men can be.”
Oh, she had a pretty good idea.
“Your presence alone will satisfy everybody’s curiosity about how I dealt with my brother moving in on my girlfriend while I was traveling.” He laughed. “Or maybe I should say just your presence will prove that I easily handled my brother and girlfriend falling in love. And there will be no talk, no questions. Discussions with my dad will go smoothly. My grandmother will chat you up about our future wedding plans and probably take you shopping for china patterns, not smother me with unwanted, unnecessary sympathy.”
He took a breath, then added, “I’m not going to lie. This will be a long two weeks of acting for you. But I’ll compensate you. In fact, right now I’m so sure this is the best way to go that I’m willing to give you anything you want.”
What she wanted was him.
But that was actually what made this favor impossible. “I can’t.” She’d get stars in her eyes. She’d read into things and when she came home she’d be even more in love with him than she was now. So, no. She couldn’t do it.
“Okay, let me be frank. The family jet leaves tomorrow. I can’t go out and hunt up a woman to do this for me. Not someone whose discretion I trust. Because you truly have to keep this secret. If my family even suspects this is a ruse, it will backfire.” He held her gaze. “I trust you in a way I’ve never trusted anyone. And I need you. I honestly don’t think anybody but you could pull this off.”
She said nothing, torn between agreeing simply because she was an employee who believed it was her job to do whatever her boss wanted, and recognizing this wasn’t a normal boss/assistant request. It was above and beyond her duties. And potentially heartbreaking for her.
“Isn’t there anything you want?”
She said nothing.
“Anything you need?”
That’s when it hit her. She did have something she needed. She could ask him to use his considerable resources to find her mom, but then she’d still be working for him. She’d spend two weeks pretending to be his fiancée and come home to being his assistant again. That was a heartbreak waiting to happen.
But a new job would not only provide money for a private investigator to locate her mom, it would get her away from Mitch and her pointless crush. She really would be getting a fresh start.
“I need a new job.”
He frowned. “What?”
“I want a new job.” Assistant jobs, though a dime a dozen, didn’t always pay well. With his connections he could find her one of those gems of a job that didn’t get advertised in any of the job search websites. Plus, if she handled this right, going to Spain could be the end of her association with him. She wouldn’t have to come home and pretend they hadn’t kissed—albeit for the benefit of his family. She would be gone. Off to start a new job. A new life. The life she wanted.
“You have lots of friends and connections. I’d need to get a job that would pay me more than this salary. And the job would have to lead to promotions.”
“You don’t like your job here?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I could raise your salary.”
“Mitch, if you want me to do this, today has to be my last day with Ochoa Online.”
He didn’t even blink. “Okay.”
CHAPTER TWO (#u5b3203b3-176f-5884-bbf8-47c23c903e46)
LILA WALKED OUT of the office building that housed Ochoa Online and toward Mitch’s black limo, which awaited her on the busy New York City street.
Opening the back door, his driver, Pete, said, “Good morning, Lila.”
“Morning, Pete. We’ll be stopping two blocks up on the right to pick up my friend Sally.”
“Very good.”
She slid onto the seat. He closed the door, and she made herself comfortable as he took his position behind the wheel and eased into traffic. Two blocks up, he stopped, jumped out and opened the door for Sally.
When Pete pulled out into traffic again, pretty blonde Sally turned to Lila and said, “All right. Spill. What did you agree to?”
She sucked in a breath. “Two weeks of pretending to be my boss’s fiancée. In return, he’s going to find me a new job and I’m going to use the extra money I earn to find my mom.”
The expression on Sally’s face showed that she was trying to understand, but in the end she shook her head. “You are certifiable. Your motives are good, but pretending to be the fiancée of a man you actually like? That’s nothing but trouble.”
“That’s why I couldn’t just have him hire a PI to find my mom. Because then I’d still be working for him. I had to ask for a new job so that no matter what happens in Spain it wouldn’t follow me home. Once I leave Spain, I’ll never see him again. Plus, he assured me that most of the time I’d be on my own while he and his brother, father, uncle and cousin talked business.”
“On your own?”
“After I agreed to do this, he told me that I’d spend most of the two weeks with his nanna shopping or running errands, or helping his mom organize the house for a ball a few days after we get there that opens two weeks of celebrations, a second ball the following week to greet latecomers, a reception the night before his brother’s wedding and a party the day after.”
“You are going to have to be one hell of an actress.”
“Or I can just look at it as an extension of my job. I plan Mitch’s yearly Christmas party. I plan the business dinners he hosts at his penthouse.” She shrugged. “I’m just going to look at it like another Ochoa party.”
Sally sighed. “And the other?”
“What other?”
“When you have to be his date?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“You’ll be pee-your-pants nervous.”
Lila laughed. “Maybe at first. But I’ve also decided to look at that as an extension of my job.”
“Kissing your boss?”
“I’ll pigeonhole it somehow.”
“You’re crazy.”
“No. I’m getting a new job out of it. A new life.” She angled her thumb to point behind them. “Me walking out of that office building a few minutes ago was me walking out forever. I told him the two weeks we spend in Spain are my two-week notice and when we get back I will expect him to have gotten me a new job, one that pays more than what I make with him.”
“Wow. You’re really leaving.”
“I have to. He was surprised when I said I wanted a new job, but when I pushed he didn’t seem at all upset to see me go.” And that had hurt more than she cared to think about. But it also proved he absolutely had no feelings for her. “He might as well have come right out and said that he desperately needed this favor, or that he just doesn’t give a damn that I want another job. Either way, it sort of proves doing this was the right thing. If he needs a fiancée this badly, I have to help him. And if he doesn’t care that I want a new job, then it really is time for me to go. It’s win/win.”
“Are you sure you’re not going to be sorry?”
“I’ve had a crush on this man since the day I met him. He’s never noticed me. Only an idiot hangs around forever.”
“True.”
“And this way I don’t merely have a new job that pays enough that I can find my mom.” She waved two credit cards. “I get a new wardrobe out of it.”
Sally grabbed the cards. “Seriously?”
“Yep. That’s why I need your help this morning. I have a hundred-thousand-dollar credit limit on each. Riccardo said use it all. Get everything, including fancy luggage. He said the wedding is formal and I’ll also need a gown for the reception the night before. Not to mention the opening ball and a few cocktail parties. He said I’ll need enough jeans and shorts and dresses and bathing suits never to be seen in the same thing twice.”
Sally gaped at her. “You have hit the jackpot.”
“Nope. Believe it or not, Riccardo and Mitch see this as absolutely necessary. I have to look like somebody Mitch would want to marry. To them it’s like wardrobe for a play. So, all I have to do is endure two weeks of pretending to be in love with the man I actually do love, and I’ll walk away with my freedom, a new job that hopefully pays enough that I can find my mom and enough clothes to be a whole new person.”
She also had to not take any of it seriously, keep her wits about her and not end up with a broken heart.
But she didn’t tell Sally that. She’d had enough trouble convincing herself she could do it. Sally would never let her go if she thought there was even an inkling of a doubt—and she desperately wanted to find her mom. She wanted the life they’d missed out on.
Oddly, pretending to be in love with the man she actually loved was her ticket away from him and to that life.
* * *
Mitch paced the tarmac at ten o’clock the next morning, nervous about this plan. Yesterday, it had seemed like a good idea. Today, thinking about Lila’s unruly hair, glasses and frumpy clothes, he found it hard to believe he actually thought they could pull this off. He liked her as an assistant—No. He loved her as an assistant. She was smart and thorough and always at his side, ready to do whatever needed to be done. But in the entire time they’d worked together they’d never even had a good enough conversation to tip over into becoming friends.
How in the hell could he have been so desperate to imagine they could pretend to be lovers for two weeks?
His limo suddenly appeared around the corner of the hangar. He’d bought a cab to the airport, leaving Pete and the limo for Lila to make sure she got to the correct place. Seeing them pull up, though, only added to his apprehension. How was he going to pretend to love somebody he barely knew?
The limo stopped. Pete jumped out and opened the back door. One pale pink strappy sandal appeared, then a long length of leg, then the pink hem of a skirt, then Lila stepped out completely. Chestnut-brown hair had been thinned into a sleek, shoulder-length hairdo and now had blond highlights. Her lips were painted a shimmery pink. The little pink dress hugged her curves.
Holy hell.
Big black sunglasses covering half her face, she strolled up to him, a smile curving a lush mouth that he’d never noticed before.
“Do I pass?”
He fought the urge to stutter. “You look—” Unbelievable. Amazing. So different that his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. “Very good. Perfect.”
“I took you for the sunglasses and miniskirt type.”
And who knew her legs were so long, so shapely?
He covered his shock at her perception of his taste in women with a nervous laugh. “You maxed out Riccardo’s credit cards, didn’t you?”
She glanced back at Pete, who pulled suitcase after suitcase out of the car. “He told me to, but I didn’t. You don’t grow up a foster child without getting some mad skills with money. It would have killed me to pay full price for some of these things. Besides, clearance racks sometimes have the best clothes.”
She made a little motion with her fingers for Pete to bring her luggage to the plane, then she headed for the steps. Mitch watched her walk up the short stack and duck into the fuselage, vaguely aware when Pete walked up beside him.
“Who knew, huh?”
“Yeah.” Mitch didn’t have to ask what Pete was talking about. His Plain Jane assistant looked like she’d stepped off the cover of a magazine. Her high-heeled sandals added a sway to her hips. Sunglasses made her look like someone who summered in the Mediterranean.
Pete said, “Better get going.”
Realizing he was standing there gaping like an idiot, he walked to the steps and climbed into the plane. Lila sat on one of the four plush, white leather seats that swiveled and looked like recliners. He stopped.
She peered up at him over her sunglasses. “The pilot told me to sit anywhere and buckle in.”
“Pedro?” The good-looking one? Why did that make his chest feel like a rock?
She shrugged and pulled an e-reader out of her oversize purse. “I don’t know. The guy with the great smile.”
It was Pedro. He might not be a millionaire businessman who came from a family with a vineyard, but pilots made a tidy sum, especially private pilots. And the man was a flirt.
He told himself he only cared because Lila was supposed to be his fiancée, and she couldn’t use this trip to cruise for dates. “When we get to Spain, you can’t be noticing the great smiles of other men.”
She laughed. “Jealous?”
“No.” The rock from his chest fell to his stomach. He wasn’t jealous. This was a make-believe situation. Great hair, sexy body, flirty sunglasses or not, this was still Lila. “I’m saving myself a ton of grief with this ruse. Not to mention that I’m getting the focus off me and onto the happy couple where it belongs. I do not want to spoil my brother’s wedding.”
He sat on the seat across the aisle and buckled in. Pulling a sheet of paper from the breast pocket of his suit jacket, he swiveled his chair to face her and said, “Riccardo came up with this last night.”
She glanced around as if confused. “Where is Riccardo?”
“He took a commercial flight so he could get there ahead of us to pave the way for our story. He’s going to tell everyone I’m engaged. He’s going to pretend to have let it slip and tell my mom and Nanna they have to behave as if they don’t know because I wanted to surprise them.”
She frowned. “That’s weird.”
“No. It adds authenticity to the story. Makes it more believable.”
“Ah.”
That one syllable gave him a funny feeling that tightened his shoulders and made his eyes narrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She laughed. “It just meant I understood.” She laughed again. “You’re cranky in real life.”
“Yeah, well, you’re...” She was a knockout in real life. How had he not noticed this? He couldn’t remember a damned thing she’d worn to work, which meant it had to be nondescript—nothing worth remembering. Her hair had always been in those odd chopstick things. And her glasses? Thick as Coke bottles.
“You’re different too.” He finished his thought with a bunch of lame words that didn’t come out as much of a comeback.
And that was another thing. When had she gotten so sassy?
He opened the folded sheet of paper. “Riccardo decided that we should stick with the fact that you’re my assistant.” He glanced up and saw her watching him intently, clearly wanting to get her part down so she could play it. He relaxed a bit, though it did send an unexpected zing through him that she’d taken off the sunglasses. She must be wearing contacts on her smoke-gray eyes. Very sexy smoke-gray eyes that tilted up at the corners and gave her an exotic look.
He cleared his throat. “Anyway, the whole thing started with a long chat one night when we were working late.”
She caught his gaze. “We never chatted.”
“Yeah, I know.” And he suddenly felt sorry that they hadn’t. “But this is make-believe, remember?”
She smiled slightly and nodded.
He sucked in a breath, not liking the nervousness that had invaded him. If he couldn’t even read the facts off a sheet, how was he going to perpetuate this charade?
“After our long talk, we started eating dinners together on the nights we were working late.”
“Hey, we did do that!”
“But we talked about work.”
She bobbed her head. “Yeah, but because we actually did eat dinners together we have another bit of authenticity.”
Her answer softened some of the stiffness in his shoulders. “Sí. Good.” He pulled in a breath and read a little more of Riccardo’s story. “Then we started going out to dinner.”
She leaned her elbow on the armrest. “We certainly took our time.”
He looked up, met the gaze of her soft gray kitten eyes. “I think Riccardo is trying to show we didn’t act impulsively.”
“God forbid.”
He wasn’t sure why, but that made him laugh. “Stop. Riccardo’s already telling this story and we have to stick to it.”
“What if we came up with a totally different set of circumstances? What if we said that one day you ravaged me at work, and we started a passionate affair but we changed the story for Riccardo because we didn’t want him to know we couldn’t keep our hands off each other?”
All the blood in his veins caught fire. He could picture it. If she’d come to work looking like this he might have ravaged her.
He pulled his collar away from his throat. The plane’s engines whined to life.
“Let’s just stick with Riccardo’s story.”
* * *
Lila nodded quickly, wishing she hadn’t said anything about the passionate affair because with the way he’d been looking at her since she arrived, she could imagine it. If he’d ever, even once, looked at her like that, she might not have been able to resist the temptation to flirt with him—
She’d been flirting with him since he got on the plane. And that was wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. She didn’t want to like him any more than she already did. Worse, she didn’t want to become another one of his one-night stands. And that was the real danger in this. That they’d take this charade to the next level, with him thinking it was just a part of the game, and her heart toppling over the edge into something that would only hurt her.
So, no more flirting. She was smarter than this.
She drew in a cleansing breath, gave him what she hoped was a neutral smile and motioned for him to continue. “Go on.”
“Riccardo says our dating life was fairly normal. Shows, dinners, weekends in Vegas and the Hamptons.”
She nodded, liking the dispassionate direction the conversation had taken. “Your family’s house in the Hamptons is pretty.” When he gave her a puzzled look, she added, “Riccardo showed me pictures.”
“He goes there more than I do. But it’s good you know what the place looks like. That’ll probably come in handy.”
He sounded so nervous that she smiled again. “You don’t like this charade.”
“I don’t like lying to my family. But this is necessary. It isn’t just the fact that I don’t want to be hounded by Nanna. This is Alonzo and Julia’s big celebration. The focus shouldn’t be on me. Not in any way, shape or form.”
“You don’t think your engagement will be reason for them to make you the center of attention?”
“We’ll let them fawn one night. Tonight. Then after that when they get too happy or too focused on us, we remind them that it’s Julia and Alonzo’s celebration. Not ours.”
“Makes sense.” She cocked her head. “You really are over her.”
He sighed. “I’ve said it a million times. No one seems to believe me.”
“Maybe because everybody knows getting over your brother’s betrayal would be harder.”
He sniffed a laugh. “When’d you get so perceptive?”
“I’ve always been perceptive. That’s how I stay one step ahead of what you need.”
He nodded, as if just figuring that out, and sadness started in her stomach and expanded into her chest. He might think her pretty in the pink dress, showing off her legs and even being a little sassy with him, but in the end she was still the assistant he barely noticed.
But that was good. If she was going to start a new life when they returned, she didn’t want to do it with a broken heart. A woman who needed to find her mom and fix their damaged past couldn’t afford to make stupid mistakes. Though she’d always believed she was destined for something great, she also realized that that fairy tale had just been a vehicle to keep her sane, keep her working toward things like her high school diploma and eventually a degree. Lately the desire for “something great” was taking a back seat to the things she really wanted: her mom. A family. That’s why her crush on Mitch had seemed so pointless that she’d decided it was time to move on.
Mitch’s groan of disgust brought her out of her reverie. “That’s the stupidest engagement story I’ve ever heard.”
Oh, crap. He’d been reading Riccardo’s notes and she’d missed something important. “Read it again. Let me think it through.”
He gaped at her. “How would you possibly need to hear it again? It’s ridiculous. I wouldn’t rent a hot air balloon. I wouldn’t hire a skywriter to spell out the proposal at sunset so I could get down on one knee in a balloon.”
She laughed. Wow. That was bad. “Okay. So it’s a bit schmaltzy.”
“It’s pedestrian.”
“What would you have done in real life?”
He sighed. “What I’d planned for Julia was to come home early, pour two flutes of champagne, walk around the apartment until I found her, tell her she was beautiful and I wanted her in my life forever...then give her the ring.”
“Oh.” Her breath wobbled. His proposal idea was perfect. Elegant in its simplicity. “That would have been nice.”
“Yeah, if I hadn’t caught her with my brother.”
She laughed, then stopped herself. How was it that he could make her laugh over something that had probably broken his heart—even though he seemed to be over it?
“Well, it was a great proposal idea.”
“I thought so too. But apparently my brother did some grand gesture on the yacht.”
“Oh, I get what Riccardo’s doing. He’s making sure our proposal keeps up with Alonzo and Julia’s. But maybe he’s making things suspicious by thinking you need to compete with Alonzo.”
“I’m not like my brother.”
“Plus, simple is better sometimes.”
He met her gaze. “Exactly. He should have said something more me. Like I gave you the ring, then stripped you naked and we spent the weekend in bed.”
This time her breath froze. If Riccardo had come up with that scenario for their engagement story, she wouldn’t be able to breathe anytime anyone told it. Better to stick with the fake one.
“So maybe the hot air balloon idea is a good one.”
“It’s not me.”
“We’ll try not to tell it too often. We’ll use the ‘this is Julia and Alonzo’s celebration’ excuse.”
He nodded. “Good idea.”
He focused his attention on the sheet of facts Riccardo had written up, but stopped reading out loud. Her gaze swept the five o’clock shadow growing on his chin and cheeks, then rose to his nearly black eyes and up to his shiny black hair. Her fingers itched to run through the thick locks, and it suddenly struck her that maybe sometime in the next two weeks she could.
Just as her heart stumbled in her chest, his gaze rose and he smiled at her. “Riccardo also says this flight would be a good time for us to exchange stories.”
“Exchange stories?”
“He thinks I should tell you about things like the time I jumped off the roof of one of the winery’s outbuildings, thinking I could fly.”
She didn’t know whether to laugh or gape at him. “Why would you think you could fly?”
“I was eight and I had a cape.”
A laugh burst from her. “That’s hysterical.”
“Didn’t you ever do anything stupid?”
Her earliest memories were of her mom sleeping on the couch. She’d sit on the floor in front of the sofa and watch her mother’s chest rise and fall, being scared silly because technically she was alone. Four years old and all alone. She was six or seven before she realized her mom kept sleeping because she drank too much alcohol. And it wasn’t until she was ten that she understood what a hangover was.
The only stupid thing she’d done was mention that to a social worker.
CHAPTER THREE (#u5b3203b3-176f-5884-bbf8-47c23c903e46)
“I LED A very quiet life.”
Even as that statement came out of Lila’s mouth, Mitch remembered her answer when he’d asked if she’d maxed out the company credit cards Riccardo had given her. “Weren’t you a foster child?”
She brushed at her dress, as if trying to smooth out nonexistent wrinkles. “Yes. But that doesn’t mean my life was exciting.”
He knew little about the American foster care system, but he did understand the basics. A child was taken in by a family who was paid by the state to care for him or her. He supposed that left little room for being silly or stupid or even experimental, if you wanted to keep your home. Because if you didn’t keep your home—
The picture that brought to mind tightened his chest. Not wanting to think of Lila as a child on the street, alone and scared, and not wanting to examine his motives for the emptiness that invaded his soul just considering that she might have been alone or scared, he changed the subject.
“How were your grades?”
She grinned. “I was a star.”
He knew that, of course. They’d checked into her when they’d hired her. She’d been top of her class everywhere from elementary school to university.
“Anything I should know about your love life?”
She glanced across the aisle at him, caught his gaze. “No.”
“At least tell me the story of your first date.”
She smoothed her hair off her forehead. “Oh. Well, I guess that depends on what you consider a date. I had a huge crush on my next-door neighbor when I was five.”
He laughed. “Not that far back.”
“Okay. I went to the prom in high school.”
“Seriously? That was your first date?”
She shrugged. “I was busy getting those good grades, remember?”
He sighed. “All right. If we really were engaged, I probably wouldn’t know every corner of your love life. But give me something I can take to Nanna that will convince her we’re...” He paused, grappling for words, because now that he was getting to know her everything felt funny. He’d already pictured himself ravaging her. Her fault. She’d brought it up. But, because he’d already seen it in his head, he couldn’t quite say lovers out loud.
Finally he just sucked it up and said, “To help her believe we’re intimate.”
“Oh, my gosh. Seriously? Did you just say that? You couldn’t say lovers...or that we’re having sex or even knocking boots?” She laughed heartily. “Mitch, you have got to lighten up. You’ll do more to convince your grandmother we’re engaged with your actions than you will remembering a bunch of useless information about my life.”
Irritated with himself for all these weird reactions, he said, “Yeah, I guess.”
She caught his gaze again. But this time the light of humor brightened her pretty eyes. “I know.”
The awkwardness of being so informal with her pressed in on him again, and he had to get rid of it. Since she seemed to like humor so much, he went in that direction and said, “I suppose this means you’re not going to tell me the story of how you lost your virginity.”
She laughed. “No. And I don’t want to hear about yours.”
“Mine’s a great story,” he teased, so relieved that the tension had been broken that he decided to keep her laughing.
“I’ll bet.”
“I was about fifteen. A middle-aged woman came to the winery for a tour—”
“Oh, my God!” She put her hands over her ears. “Stop.”
“All right. I suppose that one isn’t exactly G-rated. Want to hear about Riccardo’s?”
Her eyes widened comically.
But he realized something important. “If we really were engaged, you might not know about our sex lives, but you would know about Riccardo’s and my antics as kids. So what do you say I tell you some of those stories?”
She slowly pulled her hands away from her ears. “Okay. If I were your fiancée for real, I would know those.”
“Exactly.”
He told her about skipping school, climbing trees, swimming in the lake behind his family’s property before the family put in the in-ground pool. He told her about Nanna covering for him and Riccardo a time or two, then using her knowledge for blackmail.
“Your nanna’s a pistol.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“Thus the reason for the fake fiancée.”
“Sí.” He paused a second, then said, “So what about you?”
She smiled at him from across the aisle. “What about me?”
“What do I need to know about you to fool my grandmother?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, come on, I have to tell her something.”
“Nope. I’m a nonentity in this charade. I don’t matter. Just as Riccardo made up stories about our getting together and your proposal, I can be anything you need me to be because two weeks from now I’m out of the picture.”
“But doesn’t it make more sense to use your real life?” He peeked at her. “You know...for authenticity.”
“Then we’d trip over into too many details that wouldn’t fit. Since we didn’t actually start dating.” Her eyes met his. “We never even became friends. It’s easier for us to make up a background that’s more suited to a woman you’d date.”
Though what she’d said made sense, irritation slid through him. Why was she arguing? Evading him?
“That’s just the point. For better or worse you are the woman I chose. So I think it would make more sense if we figured out why I chose you—sticking with the truth—rather than to make up a story that we’d have to remember. Riccardo’s story is that we started talking and became friends.” He smiled his most charming smile. “So let’s become friends.”
She just looked at him. Her pretty gray eyes softened with a sort of sadness. He expected her to argue again, but she said, “I live in a walk-up in Brooklyn. I put myself through university as a barista in a coffee place. I sort of live to work.” She opened her hands. “Honestly, no hobbies. Nothing really interesting about me.”
“You have to have more to your life than that.”
She shook her head. “Unless you want to dip into the foster child stuff—which I don’t—I am as dull as watching paint dry.”
He would have accepted that, except she avoided his eyes and looked away quickly, the way a person does when they are lying or hiding something.
She did live in a walk-up in Brooklyn.
She had put herself through university as a barista.
She’d told him both of those in her employment interview. So if she wasn’t lying she was hiding something.
He knew it for certain when she firmly said, “Okay. Once we get over the initial introductions, I’ll just keep deflecting questions by reminding everybody this is Alonzo and Julia’s weekend. There’s no reason to get fancy about this.”
He nodded, but his gut knotted. Why would she want to keep something from him? What would she want to keep from him? It couldn’t be a criminal record—her record had been clean when he hired her. Which meant she didn’t sell drugs. Or rob banks. Or even have a permit to carry a gun. But maybe she dated losers? Or collected spiders? Or was one of those people who dressed up like a zombie and went to those weird parties—
Maybe he didn’t want to know?
After all, as she’d said, this charade would be over in two weeks. And if he forced the issue, he’d know an ugly detail of her life that he probably shouldn’t know.
When five minutes went by with neither of them saying anything, she pulled out her e-reader.
Trepidation filled him again. She was about to walk into the heart of his family. They would ask her a million questions. Yes, he understood that she could make up answers about their dating and her life, since this whole deal was fake, but—
No buts. She was right. They’d spent a year working together, not getting to know each other. If she had a private life she wanted to keep private, he should just accept that and trust that she could handle this ruse.
He relaxed a bit, settled back in his seat, used the remote to activate the television and nodded off thinking that his assistant had handled every job he’d ever given her. He should trust that whatever she wasn’t telling him it wasn’t relevant to her job—
Except she wanted to leave his employ and she’d never fully explained why.
Damn it! What the hell was up with her?
* * *
The jet landed in Spain a little after one o’clock in the morning, Spain time. The pilot’s announcement woke Lila and she yawned and stretched.
“So much for meeting your family tonight.”
Mitch blew his breath out on a groan that spoke of someone desperately wanting to continue sleeping. “I don’t know how I got so scattered that I forgot about the time difference, but we’ll get to the winery by two. I can show you to your room and you can either go back to sleep or take a shower or something to wake yourself up enough you can adjust to the new time zone.”
She waved her e-reader at him. “Don’t worry about me. I can always entertain myself.”
He smiled tiredly. “Great.”
His unenthusiastic tone sent a little jangle skipping along Lila’s nerve endings. Now that they were on the ground in Spain, near his family, he didn’t seem as convinced about this plan as he had in New York City. And part of that might be her fault. He hadn’t been pleased that she refused to talk about her past. But, really, they’d spent a year together and he’d never once asked her what she’d done over the weekend, let alone chitchatted about her past. So maybe a little part of her had decided to hold back. But she was still right about the ruse. It would be too difficult to explain how a high-powered executive, a charmer with a killer smile and tons of money, would want her. He hadn’t wanted her in a whole year. They were better off to make up an interesting past for her that turned her into a woman who would attract him and keep his interest enough that he’d want to marry her.
They exited the plane and Lila stood by Mitch as they waited for the copilot and limo driver to unload their luggage and pile it into the trunk of a big black car.
Finally finished, the driver opened the back door of the vehicle and greeted Mitch. “Buenas noches.”
Mitch laughed. “Shouldn’t that be buenos días?”
The driver chuckled. “Sí.”
Good day rather than good night.
Lila had to agree with that because it was after midnight, already an hour into the new day, except her body was on New York time. Though she’d had a nap on the plane, a few hours from now when his family was waking, she’d want to go to sleep for real.
Once they were settled on the long, comfortable back seat, Mitch said, “Don’t worry. My family and the entire staff speak English.”
She shrugged. “I toyed around with being a social worker, so I took enough Spanish in college that I’m fluent.”
He frowned. “You thought about being a social worker?”
“Everybody does.” She met his gaze, throwing him a bone with a little personal information since she’d clearly insulted him before when she wouldn’t tell him anything beyond the basics. “Everybody wants to save the world.”
Shaking his head, he said, “Not my family.” He motioned toward the window even though she could see nothing in the dead of night through the darkened glass. “We have a legacy to protect.”
“I think that’s kinda nice. You know—” She lifted one shoulder slightly, trying to be nonchalant, even though she envied him and his casual acceptance of not just having a mom and dad, a brother, a nanna, an aunt and uncle and a cousin, but also a legacy. “A place to belong.”
“Oh, we belong all right. Sometimes I feel like an indentured servant.”
She studied him, confused that he couldn’t see how lucky he was. “Is that why you came to New York?”
“My father released me to more or less follow my dream of setting up a website to sell Ochoa wines online after I caught Alonzo and Julia together. There was no way Dad could have picked sides. Picked one son over the other. Especially since what I’d walked in on was basically Alonzo and Julia’s first kiss. I’d more or less been ignoring her, traveling around Europe, trying to sell wine. So I didn’t have to do a lot of soul-searching to realize I didn’t really love her, and from the way Alonzo protected Julia the next few days, it was clear he did. Allowing me to create and head up Ochoa Online and move it anywhere I wanted, my dad put a positive spin on what could have potentially caused a huge rift in our family.”
“And then you came to New York and you were successful and now it all seems to have had a purpose.”
He tilted his head. “That’s basically how it’s panned out. Except I took it one step further, started the general wine site and headed off in my own direction. Forged my own success. I don’t want this wedding to take the luster off the fact that I stepped away and started my own businesses, any more than I want to have people thinking of me instead of my brother during what should be the happiest time of Alonzo’s life.”
She nodded, totally understanding. But she didn’t want to know too much more or to tell him too much more about herself. That would be a heck of a lot like confiding, a heck of a lot like actually becoming friends, and that was risky to her heart. Not to mention the fact that he might not think highly of a little girl who’d gotten herself sent into foster care and cost her mom a chance to pull herself together and become a good parent.
Worse, while he had told her the stories about himself and Riccardo, she’d pictured him as a devilish little boy and her heartstrings had tugged. So no more confiding. She had to stay strong.
“Oh, I almost forgot.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small black velvet ring box.
Her gaze leaped to his.
He smiled as he opened it. “Will you marry me?”
He said it casually, but her breath froze in wonderment. She remembered her first day of working with him, how he’d knocked her for a loop with his good looks and charm, remembered how much she loved that he was strong and smart. She thought of all the things that she imagined she would think about if he were asking her to marry him for real. Her heart lodged in her throat and her chest got so tight she could barely breathe, but she reminded herself this wasn’t real. And that falling into this kind of emotional land mine was the very thing she had to avoid.
So she laughed and said, “Sure,” as if her feelings weren’t going in a million directions, and she was able to see the humor in their charade.
He slid the rock on her third finger, left hand, and instantly her hand sank along with her heart. Not only was it the biggest diamond she’d ever seen, but it was the most beautiful ring ever crafted, and it was all a sham.
Determined not to fall into any more emotional traps, she glanced up at him with a smile. “Wow. I hope you didn’t pay for this by the ounce.”
He laughed. “It’s on consignment.”
The reminder that for him this was temporary, just a means to an end, a way to accomplish a goal for his family and himself, fortified her. Especially since she was being rewarded for her part. If she wanted a new job, money to hire a PI to find her mom and ultimately a new life, there could be no more slipups. She had to make this look real. And she could do it. It wasn’t like she hadn’t faked her way through things before. As a child she’d had to pretend to like potatoes or peas or ham so her new foster mom wouldn’t think her too picky, and plenty of times she’d had to pretend to love certain television shows just to fit in. When she left that life, she’d vowed she’d be herself for the rest of her days and never pretend again, but this was for a good cause. Two good causes. Mitch could keep the focus of this wedding on his brother and she would find her mom.
Faking to make it work made perfect sense.
They traveled through a country she couldn’t see for forty minutes, then the limo stopped. When the driver opened the door, she saw the magnificent stone mansion in front of her. Two stories and clearly built centuries ago, the house stood like a sentinel, taking care of its occupants, marking the passage of time with lines and wrinkles pressed into the stone by wind and rain.
As she stepped out of the limo, she said, “It’s fantastic.”
The air felt different. Or maybe the knowledge that she was on a different continent had her sensing that the warm air around them was sweeter, earthier.
“The upstairs contains Nanna and my parents’ residences. Winery is in the basement beside a restaurant. First floor holds business offices, tour information and gift shop.”
Well, there went all the romance out of that.
“Oh.”
“Don’t pout.” He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to the right. “We have an apartment in the second building down.”
His voice had dipped low, as if he really was talking to a girlfriend. The place where his hands rested on her shoulders felt like it was on fire. A shower of tingles rained down her spine.
More nervous than she’d ever imagined she could be, she turned, hoping to get out from under his warm fingers. “And the first building is?”
“Alonzo and Julia’s home. He runs the winery. It’s only fitting he has a house.” He smiled casually. “I’m just a guest now.”
Had she heard a little sadness in that? A dollop of emotion?
She studied his dark, dark eyes. There was no hurt in the black orbs. No rancor. He did not begrudge his brother his success. But there also didn’t seem to be an attachment to this wonderful home—this legacy—that she would give half her heart and most of her soul to be a part of.
She broke the connection and turned toward the two newer buildings. Her nerves eased a bit. The last thing she wanted was to find herself in the same house with his relatives. This way she had private space.
Mitch put his hand on the small of her back and guided her to the second building. In the muted glow of small lamps to light the path, she could see lush green grass that created comfortable lawns, but little else.
Vaguely aware that the driver pulled their things from the back of the limo, she allowed Mitch to lead her up the cobblestone path to a front door and into a quiet foyer with a set of stairs to the second floor. He nodded for her to climb them.
As they walked up the thin stairway, she realized his eyes were about level with her butt. That might have made her nervous, except she remembered the casual way he’d given her the ring and knew she had nothing to worry about. When they reached the second floor, he pulled keys out of his pocket, unlocked the door and gave it a nudge to open it. He granted her entry first, then flipped on a light.
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