FIANCÉ FOR HIRE

by Pamela Burford

  She settled against the worn vinyl upholstery, mulling over her options. She had to move fast, a preemptive strike. If she waited too long, her Wedding Ring pals would set whatever scheme they'd concocted into motion and she'd be left trying to play catch-up.

  The cabbie glanced in the rearview mirror. Even though he was wearing dark shades, Amanda knew he was looking at her. A prickle of awareness raced over her skin.

  "You all right?" he asked.

  "What? Yes, of course." After a moment she said, "Why?"

  His broad shoulders lifted and lowered. "You were kind of muttering to yourself. And you had this look on your face like a spring was poking you right through the seat."

  Amanda smiled. She couldn't help herself. Normally she avoided conversation with taxi drivers, but this fellow was so personable, without being pushy or, worse, leering. She felt herself begin to relax.

  "I've got a conundrum," she said, and immediately wondered if he knew what the word meant. "That is, I'm trying to solve a—"

  "Work or love?" he asked, with another glance in the rearview mirror. "Or family? Whatever you're puzzling over, chances are it's one of those three."

  Well, well. Not only could this taxi driver converse in the Queen's English, he possessed a respectable vocabulary. Clearly he dwelled at the top of the cabbie food chain.

  Amanda checked out the hack license mounted behind the driver's head. His name was Nikolaos Stephanos. Of Greek extraction, then. She squinted at the accompanying photo, too small and blurry to tell her much, except that Nikolaos Stephanos didn't smile for license photos.

  "I'm not trying to pry," he said, when she didn't respond.

  "Sure you are. And since you ask, it's about love. Well, not really. It's about well-meaning friends who don't know when to butt the hell out of other people's lives."

  In the rearview mirror she saw Nikolaos Stephanos grin, saw the flash of straight white teeth, in startling contrast to his swarthy skin. And was that a dimple? Oh my. If all New York cabdrivers looked this good, and smelled this good—she inhaled deeply of the clean masculine scent that drifted into the back seat—no woman would ever take the subway.

  "So, what?" he asked. "Your friends have their own ideas about who you should be with?"

  "Something like that." Amanda chewed her lip, while her fertile imagination took an unexpected detour.

  Nah … he's a taxi driver, for heaven's sake!

  "Why do people always think they know you better than you know yourself?" he asked, as he turned right off Seventeenth onto Eighth Avenue. "Reminds me of something the Earl of Chesterfield once wrote. Let me see if I remember this right. 'In matters of religion and matrimony I never give any advice; because I will not have anybody's torments in this world or the next laid to my charge.'"

  Good Lord, the man quotes dead earls! Amanda peered at the hack license again. Yep, Mr. Stephanos was indeed a genuine, honest-to-God New York City taxi driver.

  And an accomplished one, judging by the swift progress they were making up Eighth. Too swift, even for a quick-thinking woman of action like Amanda. She needed time to ruminate on this some more—time she didn't have.

  Amanda scooted forward on the seat. "Um, this may seem like a strange question, but … have you ever done any acting?"

  He glanced at her again in the mirror, only now his dark eyebrows were pulled together in a frown. "A little, in high school. Why?"

  It would have to do. "Listen, I don't want you to think I'm coming on to you or anything, but if you're interested in earning a nice chunk of change, I have a proposition I'd like you to consider."

  The thick silence lasted only a few seconds, but it seemed an eternity to Amanda. He asked, "What are we talking about here? Something…?" He took his right hand off the steering wheel and made a rocking gesture, which Amanda interpreted as a reference to nefarious activities.

  "No!" she said. "Nothing illegal. Nothing … weird or … whatever it is you're thinking."

  He waited.

  She swallowed. "I want you to pretend to be my boyfriend."

  "Your boyfriend."

  "Yeah, it's these friends of mine."

  "The ones who can't keep their noses out of your business."

  "Right. Exactly. See, the thing is, if I act like I have a serious relationship with a man, then they'll leave me alone. They'll stop trying to run my life."

  "What makes you think so?"

  Amanda wasn't going to tell him about the Wedding Ring. She might be engaging in subterfuge to defeat the pact she'd agreed to so long ago, but it was still, well, a sacred vow, a solemn promise made to her best friends in the world. And one of the rules was you don't let outsiders in on it.

  "Trust me," she said. "They'll back off."

  She spotted a street sign. Thirty-first. They were almost there.

  "So what's the deal?" he asked. "Are you a lesbian?"

  "What? What makes you say that?"

  "Well, this whole charade with the fake boyfriend. You're a very attractive woman," he said matter-of-factly. "It's not like you can't get a man. So I figure maybe you're just not ready to come out of the closet."

  "Well, you're wrong." Amanda drew herself up, though the "very attractive" remark took a bit of the sting out of his outrageous speculation. "It's nothing like that."

  "How much money are we talking about?"

  "Um … well, I'd need you for three months."

  "Why three months?"

  "Never mind, that's how long it has to be. Like a part-time job. Weekends mainly. Double dates, that sort of thing. So my friends can see us together. Getting serious. Getting, um, engaged."

  She expected another frown, but instead he laughed.

  Her face heated. Damn it—she never blushed! "An engagement in name only, needless to say. How about a flat fee of, say, a thousand dollars?"

  "Let's see … three months—call it thirteen weeks. An average of two 'dates' a week, four hours per date." With barely a pause, he added, "That comes to a hundred four hours, at an hourly rate of nine dollars and sixty-two cents. Correct?"

  "Uh … correct. That's what I came up with, too." Amanda resisted the urge to haul her calculator out of her briefcase and verify his math. "Is that acceptable?"

  "Off the books, tax-free? No heavy lifting?" He shrugged. "I've had worse jobs."

  "Is that a yes?"

  "That's a yes, boss."

  "Oh. Good. Well. Your first, uh, performance will be this Saturday, eight o'clock. My friends are throwing me a birthday party."

  "Is that so?" He steered the car toward the entrance to Penn Station, looming ahead. To the tune of "Happy Birthday" he sang, "How old are you now?"

  "How old do you think I am?"

  A crack of laughter was his only answer. "I'm not naive enough to play that game with any woman. Come on—fess up."

  "Thirty. I turned thirty last Saturday."

  "Well, happy birthday. I'm five years past that myself. It wasn't so earth-shattering, the big three-oh."

  It wouldn't be so earth-shattering for her, either, if not for a certain long-ago pact that had come back to haunt her.

  The more she thought about it, the more she realized that this was the ideal man to play the part of her significant other. Not only was he completely unknown to her friends, but there was no danger of him making more of it than there was. He was just a taxi driver, after all, doing a job to pick up extra cash—as if she'd hired him to mow her lawn or paint her house.

  As soon as they pulled over at the curb, a trench-coat-clad man materialized, waiting with ill-disguised impatience for Amanda to relinquish the cab. She looked at the meter, opened her wallet and counted out the fare plus two hundred dollars. "Nikolaos, is it?"

  "Only if you're my mom. Everyone else calls me Nick."

  Leaning forward, she thrust the money at him. "The first installment on your fee, Nick."

  He stared at the four fifties for a long moment, his eyes still concealed behind the sunglasses. This cl
ose, she took note of the faded jeans and threadbare T-shirt, the disheveled hair, the dark beard stubble that roughened his jaw.

  What am I doing? she thought. Was she crazy to try to pass off this guy as her one and only? Raven, Sunny and Charli had only seen her on the arms of smooth-talking, upward-climbing, nattily attired gentlemen from her own elevated socioeconomic stratum. Nick Stephanos might be at the top of the cabbie food chain, but there was still a yawning evolutionary gap between him and the slicker-than-pond-scum types she normally kept company with.

  Nick finally took the bills and pocketed them. "You're very trusting."

  "Here's my card." She handed it over.

  "Amanda Coppersmith," he read. "What do your meddling friends call you? Mandy?"

  "Amanda." A reluctant smile pulled at her mouth. "Only my mom calls me Mandy."

  Nick jotted his phone number on the back of her receipt, which Walt Frazier's recorded voice reminded her to take. "How far is the party from your place?" he asked, ignoring the man in the trench coat, now rapping on the window and glaring at her.

  "About fifteen minutes."

  "I'll pick you up Saturday at a quarter to eight."

  "Well take my car."

  Nick handed her the receipt. "Call me old-fashioned, but as long as I'm the testosterone-based life-form, I'm driving." As if reading her mind, he added, "Don't worry, my personal vehicle doesn't have a meter. Now, go catch your train, boss. You're holding up my fare."

  * * *

  Chapter 2

  «^»

  They've got to be kidding, Nick thought.

  "They've got to be kidding," Amanda said.

  They'd just stepped into the living room of the sprawling waterfront home owned by Amanda's friend Charli and her husband, Grant Sterling. After viewing the exterior of this impressive three-story house, with its granite-and-cedar construction and white Tuscan-style columns, he'd expected an equally elegant interior. And it was elegant.

  If you didn't count the garish Happy Birthday banner and multicolored balloons, the bowls of Cheez Doodles and Goldfish crackers, and the Pin the Tail on the Donkey poster mounted on one wall.

  And the clown. The clown done up in full regalia, down to the white-face makeup, bulbous red nose, Bozo hair and big floppy shoes. Not to mention the double bourbon on the rocks clutched in one white-gloved hand.

  The party was already in full swing, with about thirty people enjoying cocktails and salty snacks, wearing pointy, glittery birthday hats and listening to a recording of Sesame Street songs.

  Nick leaned close to Amanda and whispered, "You said your friends were nosy busybodies. You didn't tell me they were demented."

  "Oh, did I forget that part?" Amanda appeared shell-shocked.

  Nick knew this wasn't her first eye-opener of the evening. That had come a short while earlier when he'd rung her doorbell. She'd failed to conceal her surprise—and relief—at his physical appearance. He wore a well-tailored sport coat and slacks, a collarless white twill shirt and polished loafers. He was freshly shaved, his hair neatly combed. "I clean up pretty good," he'd said when she stood mutely gaping at him. At least she'd had the grace to look embarrassed.

  Last Monday when she'd let herself out of his cab, he'd watched her walk across the pavement and into the entrance to Penn Station. He'd watched her long legs, all the longer and more shapely for those spiked heels. He'd watched the delicious sway of her compact fanny under that short, snug skirt.

  "I've had worse jobs," he'd told her. Understatement of the year.

  Tonight she wore a short black cocktail dress, sheer black stockings and strappy high heels. Her only jewelry aside from diamond-and-black-pearl earrings was a brooch in the shape of a spider—eerily realistic, as if the diamond-encrusted bug were actually crawling up her shoulder.

  Nick was beginning to detect a sartorial pattern: his new employer favored figure-hugging outfits short enough to show off those sensational legs. As for the spider pin, the nonverbal message seemed to be If you don't get it, too darn bad. It was the wardrobe of a woman comfortable with her body and confident of her own taste and appeal. Her pale, glossy hair swung free, just brushing her shoulders, in contrast to the tight, sophisticated do she'd worn for work.

  As soon as her friends spotted the guest of honor, they swarmed her. Amid birthday wishes, kisses and hugs, Amanda managed to introduce her new "friend." Nick raffled off a string of polite greetings as he shook the hands of her meddlesome friends and their husbands.

  "I'm so glad you could join us, Nick," Sunny said as she fitted him with a shiny red birthday hat, positioning it practically on his forehead like a unicorn horn and securing the short elastic string behind his head. Amanda rated a gold cardboard crown printed with the words Birthday Girl in pink and silver glitter.

  She said, "I'm afraid to ask what inspired this particular theme."

  "Don't you remember?" Raven said. "Last Sunday at Kirk and Sunny's wedding reception, when you told us not to throw you a party because you're not some little kid who needs—"

  "Birthday candles and a pointy hat," Amanda finished in a tone that said she should have anticipated this bizarre result.

  "We thought it sounded like a darn good idea," Charli said. "And lucky you—you got here just in time for musical chairs!"

  An hour later, Nick and Amanda were ensconced on the short end of the L-shaped, beige suede sofa. He was sipping an India Pale Ale and playing with the tiny hand-held pinball game that was his prize for coming in first at duck, duck, goose.

  Most of the other guests were clustered around the white fireplace mantel on the opposite side of the room, where Lucky the Clown, following his third double shot of Jack Daniel's, had begun entertaining the crowd by twisting long, skinny balloons into obscene shapes. "This is the besht goddamn party I've ever worked!" Lucky crowed.

  Charli joined Sunny and Raven on the long end of the sofa. "So tell me." Charli leaned toward Nick. "How did the two of you meet?"

  Nick slid his arm around Amanda's shoulders. "This beautiful lady just appeared in my taxi one day—" he felt her stiffen "—and we hit it off."

  "What Nick means," Amanda quickly added, "is that, uh, we both went after the same taxi—I mean, we got into it at the same time and, uh, decided to share it."

  "Oh yeah?" Raven smiled. "How romantic. When did this happen?"

  Nick said "Monday" at the same instant that Amanda said "Wednesday."

  Sunny laughed. "They're having disagreements already. Is that a good sign or a bad one?"

  "We met on Wednesday," Nick said, and squeezed Amanda's shoulder. "It just feels like we've known each other a lot longer."

  Raven said, "What do you do for a living, Nick?"

  Obviously the truth wouldn't do; the boss lady had already made that clear. Before he had a chance to come up with an alternative career, Amanda jumped in with, "Nick owns a fleet of limos."

  Her friends looked suitably impressed.

  "But if you have all these limos at your disposal," Sunny asked him, "what were you doing taking a cab?"

  If Amanda kept stiffening up like that, he thought, her muscles were going to cramp. "It's faster to hail a taxi than call for a limo," he casually drawled. "Besides, if I took one of my cars out of commission every time I needed a ride, it would wreck hell with the bottom line."

  Kirk Larsen came up behind the sofa where Sunny sat. He placed his hands on his wife's shoulders, and she tipped her head back as he leaned down to kiss her. They made a striking couple. Several inches taller than Nick's own five-eleven, Kirk had blond hair practically to his shoulders, and pale blue eyes. Sunny's wavy, reddish-brown hair was quite long, the side strands secured with a pair of antique-looking barrettes. With her expressive violet eyes and vintage-style pastel dress, she looked like a winsome beauty from another era.

  "Wish me luck," Kirk told the small group assembled on the sofa. "On Monday I go under the knife."

  Everyone else seemed to know what he meant. Amanda turn
ed to Nick and explained, "He's having his vasectomy reversed."

  Nick experienced an instant and overwhelming urge to cross his legs. Clearly there was some history here of which he was unaware; Kirk must have been married before.

  Amanda's younger brother, Jared, and his wife, Noelle, joined the group. The siblings shared a strong family resemblance, though Jared's coloring was slightly darker, his hair a deeper honey shade and his eyes more mossy-green than Amanda's silver-gray. Noelle had very short, very red hair and a well-padded physique that threatened to morph from pleasingly voluptuous to overly plump with her next doughnut.

  Jared perched on the arm of the sofa next to his sister. "Wait till you see the birthday present Noelle and I got you."

  Amanda adjusted her cardboard crown. "As long as it isn't a Barbie doll or Play-Doh, I'll be happy."

  "That's all it takes?" Nick reached into the breast pocket of his sport coat and presented her with a tiny box wrapped in iridescent white paper and tied with gold ribbon. "Good to know."

  Amanda stared wide-eyed at the dainty package. "What—what's this?"

  Raven barely restrained a chuckle. "I believe it's called a birthday present."

  "But … you didn't have to do this, Nick!"

  "If you don't take it," Sunny warned her, "I will. Small means expensive. You like expensive."

  At this, Amanda's expression became downright stricken. Now Nick was the one trying not to laugh. He asked, "Do I have to open it for you?"

  Amanda made a conspicuous effort to compose herself. She accepted the gift with a weak smile and sent Nick a look that said this wasn't part of the bargain.

  "Open it!" Noelle urged. "At this rate you'll never get through all your presents."

  "This is…" Amanda said. "I mean, Nick and I have only known each other for five days."

  "Three," Sunny said, "but who's counting?"

  Amanda bit her lower lip. That's right, Nick silently reminded her. You said we met Wednesday. He had no sympathy. The woman should stick to the truth if she couldn't remember her fib from one moment to the next.