by Susan Meier
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 s
omething 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
“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 som
ething 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.”
