The Mandy Project

by Toni Blake

  Just now, Heather had told her Benton had clearly been threatened by her intelligence, another observation which couldn’t have surprised Mindy less. “And he implied that if I got married, I should give up my professorship!”

  The phone calls made Mindy want to hang her head in shame. Deep inside—oh heck, maybe even on the surface—she’d known the dates wouldn’t go well. Couldn’t go well. The vast majority of her female clients were smart and independent, not to mention career-driven. And the fact was, both Heather and Chelsea’s profiles had pointed to these being bad matches. Heather wanted a down-to-earth guy she could be herself with, while Chelsea had requested a man with a great sense of humor. And Mindy had actually possessed the nerve to stick them with him?

  Yet the problem remained—no woman wanted a man like Benton Maxwell, and she’d promised him three.

  “Let me guess,” Jane said, seeing Mindy’s frown. “Mr. Tall, Dark and Steamy’s second victim?”

  “You got it. And she had every right to be angry. I never should have sacrificed a good client—two good clients—to a wolf in tailored clothing.”

  Jane gave her head a sympathetic tilt. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. It could happen to anybody. I’m sure all matchmakers occasionally have off days.”

  “But that’s just why I feel so terrible. It wasn’t an off day. I knew exactly what I was doing. I was leading those two women to the slaughter, making them my sacrificial lambs in exchange for money.”

  Jane flashed a skeptical look. “Don’t be so dramatic. It was a couple of failed dates, not a disaster of Biblical proportions.”

  “Even so, I feel I have an unspoken vow with my clients, to use my matchmaking abilities for good, not evil, to try my best to make matches that will work for each person involved. I’m not sure I can send another poor, unsuspecting woman out with him, Jane. After all, I’ve probably lost Heather and Chelsea’s faith in me—I don’t want to risk losing anyone else’s.”

  “Well,” Jane said, “I guess you could give Benton Maxwell back a third of the money he paid and tell him adios.”

  At that precise moment, the door to Mates By Mindy burst open and a tall, angry man came marching through.

  “Speak of the devil,” Jane whispered, and Mindy cast her a quick look of reproach before rising to round her desk and meet Benton Maxwell head on.

  He looked just as devastatingly handsome as she remembered, every hair in place, today’s suit a charcoal color that enhanced his eyes, even if they were brimming with displeasure at the moment. And unfortunately, he was still much taller than her—something she’d sort of forgotten about—leaving her keenly aware of the disadvantage it gave her.

  “Ninety-five percent!” he said, towering over her small frame. “Ninety-five percent?”

  He leaned so near, brought their faces so close, that for one shocking, almost horrifying moment, Mindy actually froze. She caught the unmistakable scent of musky male and—wait a minute! That doesn’t matter, since who does he think he is, barreling into my shop like this, spouting my success rate at me as if it were a lie!

  Catching her breath, she took a step back and quickly refocused, narrowing her gaze on him. “Ninety-five percent. Before you came along, that is.”

  “Considering the choices you made for me, I can’t believe you have a success rate of five percent. I don’t know what you were thinking when you selected those two women, but you couldn’t have been following the list I gave you.”

  Mindy had had just about enough of this man, and she still didn’t like how much taller than her he was, sexy scent or not. “Take a seat,” she said, then planted one hand firmly on his chest and nudged him back into the chair across from her desk.

  As Benton Maxwell landed, he looked entirely perplexed, as if he didn’t know what had hit him, as if no one had ever taken the upper hand with him before. Which was probably part of his problem, now that she thought about it. She liked having gotten him off-balance.

  “That’s better,” she said of his seated position—and she considered returning to her own chair behind the desk, but decided she liked being the one who got to tower for a change. She held her ground and crossed her arms. “You, Mr. Maxwell, have a lot to learn about women.”

  “Is that so?” He looked a bit less cowed now, however, to her disappointment.

  Yet Mindy was far from deflated. “Yes. For one thing, you cannot narrow a woman down to a list of attributes and expect to find a suitable life mate. And if you are going to present a list of attributes, it helps if they don’t sound like they came straight from the 1950s.”

  Benton Maxwell sighed. “I simply told you what I’m looking for in a wife and asked you to find some suitable candidates.”

  “Easier said than done in your case, I’m afraid.”

  “Then you’re saying you can’t do it? You aren’t capable?” He tilted his handsome head, his voice going a bit softer, his eyes taking on a look of bewilderment. “Let me ask you something, Miss McCrae. Is this how you treat all your clients? Lecturing them, berating them for their preferences…” he glanced around a bit helplessly, then motioned vaguely to the chair he now sat in, “…and pushing them, for heaven’s sake?”

  And that was when it hit her, a revelation as pure and clear as a cloudless summer sky. She gazed down into this man’s bluer than blue eyes and understood, without doubt. He didn’t know.

  He didn’t know he was overbearing.

  He didn’t know he was unreasonable.

  He didn’t know he was a chauvinist.

  He didn’t know he was seeking a woman who had gone out of style decades ago.

  He just plain didn’t know.

  And he clearly thought she was crazy—the look in those eyes said so.

  So she held the gaze, and for a few short seconds it became a blatant hope that he could see into her, too, that he could see that she wasn’t crazy, that she was really a nice, normal, friendly person, and a perfectly capable businesswoman.

  When his sexy eyes remained baffled and half-angry, though, she gave up and decided she didn’t care what he thought of her, couldn’t care. After all, what self-respecting woman would care about this guy’s opinion? She might have glimpsed him in a whole new, almost innocent light, but that didn’t excuse him for not having a clue.

  Nonetheless, she realized, she did want to fulfill her obligation to him, and she would. She felt challenged now, compelled to prove she could do her job. No matter what it took. “Listen,” she said in a calm, firm tone, “I will find you a third date, someone who fits your criteria, someone you can at least tolerate.”

  “Frankly, I’m not sure you’re up to it.”

  Well, that figures. The last remnants of her unexpected empathy fled the scene. “Is that so?”

  “Yes, that’s so.”

  Mindy uncrossed her arms, planted her fists on her hips, and attempted to raise subtly on her tiptoes in order to tower over him even more. “Well, Mr. Maxwell, we’ll just see about that, won’t we?”

  “Well, you’ve got yourself in a pickle now,” Jane said as the door shut behind Benton Maxwell a few minutes later.

  But Mindy only turned to her assistant with a thoughtful expression. “No, as a matter of fact, I don’t.” Because in the time it had taken to usher him from her office, she’d made a decision concerning Benton Maxwell’s third and final Mates By Mindy date. It was an outlandish decision, but the notion had come to her when she’d realized he honestly didn’t know how unreasonable his expectations were. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more all the pros—the things it would accomplish—outweighed the cons, of which there was only one, the fact that it was outlandish.

  “I’m waiting,” Jane said, sounding completely impatient.

  “I’ll go,” Mindy said.

  “You’ll go where?”

  “On a date with him. I’ll be his last date.”

  “What?”

  “Of course, I can’t be me, I can’t be Mindy. So I’ll
pose as…Mandy, my imaginary evil twin.”

  Mindy smiled in triumph, but Jane looked as if Mindy had suggested she eat worms.

  “Quit looking so horrified,” Mindy demanded. “Your face might stick like that.”

  “But I am horrified. That’s the craziest idea I’ve ever heard.”

  Mindy simply shook her head—clearly, she wasn’t explaining this right. “Listen to me. This will work perfectly—I can fit the criteria. I’m petite, I have a nice enough shape, and I’m certainly intelligent, but I don’t have to let it show. Unless it becomes necessary, of course.” She lifted one finger. “Which I presume means if he needs help solving a problem or wants to impress someone. And I’ll wear that blonde wig I bought for your Halloween party last year—you remember, when I came as Dolly Parton?”

  Jane looked completely bereft. “How could I forget? My poor boys drooled over your fake boobs for weeks.”

  “So I’ll wear the wig and claim I’m my sister,” Mindy went on. “And I’ll let him order my dinner and I’ll defer to his judgment and I’ll pretend my greatest goal in life is to throw tasteful garden parties for the ladies at the club. I’ll seem like a completely appropriate candidate, one he can’t complain about. See? It’s perfect.”

  “Uh, just one problem, Min. What if he likes you?”

  Mindy let a wicked grin take shape on her face. This was the best part. “Easy, he won’t. Because while, on the surface, Mandy will appear to be the perfect woman for him, once the night progresses, I plan to…shake up his world a little.”

  Jane looked skeptical, but undeniably intrigued. “Shake up his world?”

  Mindy nodded. “By evening’s end, I—I mean Mandy—will be the antithesis of everything he wants in a woman, and in the process, I’ll kill lots of birds with one little stone.”

  “These birds being?”

  “Well, I’ll succeed in showing him that I—the real I, Mindy—can indeed find a woman who at least appears to be what he wants. But I’ll also succeed in showing him that women, even seemingly docile, dependent types, are more complex than a list of silly attributes. Most importantly,” she concluded, “when the evening draws to a close, my obligation to Benton Maxwell will be over, and I’ll never have to see him again.”

  Chapter Three

  “Another date tonight, huh?” Phil Harper asked Benton over lunch at Nada, a downtown eatery near both their offices.

  The third member of their party, Mike Kelly, was late, but slid into his chair just in time to hear Benton’s answer, which he kept short and simple. “Yes.”

  They were his best friends—buddies from college—but he hadn’t chosen to tell them his means of procuring his recent dates, lest they think he was desperate instead of just busy.

  Mike grinned hopefully, a slightly crooked tie hanging from his white shirt collar. “Well, maybe this one will work out better than the last two. Carrie’s always saying it’s time you settle down and find yourself a good woman.”

  Benton just nodded. His happily married friends had been offering such comments for the last couple of years, but he hadn’t told them he’d recently decided they were right. It just didn’t come naturally to admit that anything in his life came with less than perfect ease.

  “And hey, the big three-five is coming up soon, isn’t it?” Phil asked. “Sounds like just about the right time for a wedding.”

  If they only knew how closely his own thoughts mirrored theirs.

  Mike laughed and added, “Yeah, before you’re too old to enjoy the nighttime perks.”

  Again, though, Benton ignored the kidding jab and just kept it simple. “We’ll see.”

  Because the sad truth was that he didn’t hold out much hope for his last Mates By Mindy date, and was almost sorry he’d even mentioned it to his friends.

  Unfortunately, this one felt much different than the other two, already. The other two he’d actually looked forward to. The other two had made him feel optimistic and hopeful. The other two, he’d mistakenly believed, had held a chance of working out. But Benton no longer remained so naïve.

  And hours later, as he stepped from the shower, he still felt the same way. He knew—either by instinct or habit—that it would be another disaster. As he dropped the towel circling his waist and got dressed, he even considered calling up this Mandy woman and canceling the whole thing. She’d seemed nice enough on the phone when they’d spoken last night, but he couldn’t be fooled that easily anymore. After all, the same person had planned all three dates. An image of a little redhead with flaming green eyes filled his mind. A spitfire, he thought.

  More than once during his childhood, his father had laughed and said, “You wouldn’t know it now, but your mother was a spitfire when we were young.”

  “Ben,” his mother would scold from the opposite end of the dining room table. But then his parents would share a private wink or a special look, and in those moments Benton had realized they had a “pre-children” history he knew nothing about, and he understood there must be more to their relationship than met the eye.

  Yet he’d never really known exactly what his dad had meant by the term spitfire, and now he thought maybe he did. Mindy McCrae had unwittingly enlightened him.

  It wasn’t the first time in the last two days a vision of her had assaulted him. As they’d stood there yelling at each other, she’d looked cuter than he’d recalled. She’d worn a casual yet shapely dress of lime green, which, although rather loud, had somehow suited her. Well, not that it mattered what suited a crazy lady, but…he’d noticed her in a way he hadn’t on their first meeting. That probably had something to do with the way she’d pushed him back in that chair—another image that kept entering his head unbidden. He wasn’t used to women getting rough with him. In fact, he was fairly certain it was a first. As he straightened the knot in his silk tie, he realized he remained just as baffled about it now as he’d been the moment it happened.

  Besides filling him with the sense that he’d entered some alternate universe where things didn’t work quite the way he was accustomed to, the encounter had left him shaken in another indefinable yet intense way. It made sense that his heart had been beating like a drum in his chest when he’d left, that his palms had grown sweaty, his breath short; he’d been angry. But it made less sense that he still felt the same way each time he relived it in his thoughts.

  Because Benton Maxwell was nothing if not in control—of himself, his life, his relationships. Take Miss Binks, for example. She was crazy about him and it didn’t affect him, emotionally or otherwise. And he possessed that same control in business situations—nothing ever got to him, and it made him effective; he was cool under pressure. Yet one little redhead knocks him back into a chair and he’s sweating? He gave his head a slight shake as he grabbed up his suit jacket and exited the bedroom.

  Do not think about that little redhead now. This is no time to sweat. Yet as he reached up to slide one finger between his neck and crisp white shirt collar, he already wished he could loosen his tie.

  As the Mercedes pulled to the curb outside Mindy’s house, her heart leapt. Oh sure, this had seemed like a barrel of fun when she’d come up with the idea, but now she actually had to go through with it. What have I done?

  But with no time to worry over bad decisions now, she let the curtain drop back in place over the window, then pivoted toward the full length mirror on the back of her bedroom door. Not one red hair peeked from beneath the platinum blond wig that hung neatly past her shoulders, the ends curved under, the whole head of hair a bit tamed down compared to when she’d worn it on her Dolly outing. Pale shades of pink lipstick and blush complemented her new hair color, as did her shell pink dress with decorative cutouts at the neckline. The stylishly fitted dress stopped inches above her knees, yet it said classy, allowing her to check another attribute off his list.

  “What do you think, Venus?” she asked the slender tabby cat who watched from a windowsill across the room.

  She took
the feline’s silence, as well as the fact that she didn’t seem too freaked out over Mindy’s appearance, as a good sign. She stepped out into the hall, closing the door behind her just as the doorbell rang.

  She paused to quickly glance around her, checking things off her own personal list. Cat hidden in bedroom. House much more tidy than normal—something she’d figured would matter to a guy like Benton. Yes, everything was in place.

  When the doorbell buzzed again, she turned a derisive glare toward it. “Impatient as ever,” she murmured, then started across the room. Taking a deep breath, gathering her courage, and putting on her practiced “Mandy smile,” she whisked open the door.

  “Hello, you must be Benton!” she said cheerfully, and oh my, was he ever Benton. She kept forgetting how good-looking the man was, how utterly drop-dead handsome from head to toe. As usual, every dark hair lay smoothly in place, every stitch of clothing descended straight and smooth and creaseless against his broad physique, and as far as she could tell, every inch of him was beyond perfect.

  She was so caught up in drooling over him, in fact, that she almost missed the look of shock in his stunning blue eyes. He tilted his head, as if trying to make sense of what he saw. “Uh, Mindy?”

  Showtime. She widened her smile. “No, but it’s an understandable mistake.” She spoke in a softer-than-usual voice and splayed frosty pink fingernails across her chest. “I’m Mandy, Mindy’s sister.”

  Predictably, his jaw dropped, and Mindy couldn’t deny the twinge of pleasure in her bones She definitely enjoyed catching this man off guard. “Mindy has a sister? A twin?” Although he’d said it in the same tone one might say A monster? and appeared even further horrified when she nodded.