by Joanne Rock
“I think you’re safe with asparagus.” He’d always thought she’d eaten too little, even before he started training with athletes who calculated protein versus carb intake with scientific precision to maximize their workout goals.
His plan for dinner had been to keep things friendly. No more toying with the sexual tension in the air, in spite of how much that might tempt him. He needed Adelaide committed to his plan, not devising ways to escape him, so he would try to keep a lid on the attraction simmering between them.
For now.
If she moved into his house, he would spend more time here, too. He’d keep an eye on her over the next few weeks, solidify their friendship and learn to read her again. He’d taken her friendship for granted and he regretted that, but it wasn’t too late to fix it. He’d find time to help her with her future business plans, all while convincing her to stick out the rest of the season.
“You don’t understand.” She pointed her fork at him. She’d put on one of his old Hurricanes T-shirts about six sizes too large for her, her dark hair twisted into a knot and held in place with a pencil she’d snagged off his desk. She still wore her black pencil skirt, but he could only see a thin strip of it beneath the shirt hem. “I peeked in the dessert containers while you were finding a shirt for me and I already gained twelve pounds just looking at the sweets. There is a crème brûlée in there that is...” She trailed off. “Indescribable.”
“This you know just from looking?” He remembered how much she loved sweets. When they were growing up, he’d given her the annual candy bar he’d won each June for a year’s worth of good grades. Now that he could have bought her her own Belgian chocolate house, though, he couldn’t recall the last time he’d given her candy.
“I may have sampled some.” She grinned unrepentantly. Then, as if she recalled whom she was talking to, her smile faded. “Dempsey, I can’t stay here.”
“Can’t, or won’t?”
“I’ve already told you that I don’t want to pretend we are engaged in front of your family, and this puts me in close proximity to them every day,” she reminded him. Then she pointed wordlessly to a screen showing a catch worthy of a highlight reel from one of the players they’d be facing in next Sunday’s game. It was a play that he’d already heard about in the Hurricanes’ locker room.
He admired how seamlessly Adelaide fit into his world. He’d had a tough time bridging the gap between life as a Reynaud and his underprivileged past, acting out as a teen and choosing to work his way up in the ranks as a coach rather than devote all his attention to the family business. But Adelaide never acted out.
Or at least, not until today.
“I saw that catch,” he said, acknowledging her. “We’ll definitely keep an eye on that receiver.” Then, needing to focus on Adelaide, he shoved aside his empty plate. “But regarding staying in the house, you don’t need to worry about my family. I will spend more time here, too, so I’ll be the one to deal with any questions that come up.”
“Can you afford to do that? I know you often sleep at the training facility.”
The schedule during the season was insane. He was in meetings all day, every day. He talked to his defensive coordinator, his offensive coordinator, and addressed player concerns. And through it all, he watched film endlessly, studying other teams’ plays and tailoring his game plan to best counter each week’s opponent. Yet he couldn’t regret that time, since it was finally going to pay off this year in the recognition he craved, not just for himself but for the people he’d brought up with him. People who had believed in him.
“You are important to me. I will make time.”
He’d surprised her, he could tell. For the first time, he was seeing how much he’d let her down in recent years, focused solely on his own goals. His own friend was surprised to hear how valuable she was to him.
“That’s kind of you, but I know you’re busy.” She frowned. “It’s no trouble to simply enjoy the comfort of my own home.”
He made an exaggerated effort to look around the room.
“Is this place lacking? Hell, Addy. Upgrade my sheets if they’re not to your liking.”
“I’m sure your sheets are fine.” She set aside her plate and made a grab for her water, taking a long swallow.
He watched the narrow column of her throat and wondered how he’d ever look at her in a purely friendly way again. Just thinking about her under his sheets was enough to spike the temperature in the room. To distract himself from thoughts of her wrapped in Egyptian cotton, he stood, stalking around the table to sit on the ottoman right in front of her, turning his back on the game.
“But?” he prompted, an edge in his voice from the pent-up frustration of this day with her.
“But no matter how lovely your home is, I’d rather be close to my own things. I don’t see the benefit of being here.”
“The benefit is the complete privacy as well as safety, since the family compound is absolutely secure. No media gets through the front gate.” He knew she valued privacy as much as he did. This angle would be more effective than telling her the truth—that he wanted her close at all times so that he would never miss an opportunity to push his agenda over the next four weeks. “You know as well as I do that public interest in our engagement will be high, especially after how thoroughly the press covered my split with Valentina.”
“So I hide out here because of a manipulative ex-lover?” Her expression went stony. “I have business to conduct.”
“Use my office,” he offered, hitting the button to mute the sound on the television. “The facilities are excellent.”
She frowned. “I do not like being put in this position.”
He hoped that meant she was done arguing. He couldn’t remember ever arguing with Adelaide before today—or at least not since she’d worked for him. “I don’t like you leaving, but I’m trying to find a workable solution.”
She opened her mouth to speak and then closed it again.
“What?” he prodded her, wanting to know what was going on in her head.
“I’m not looking forward to being in the public spotlight with you.”
“You’ve been there a million times.” He knew because he usually met her gaze a few times during his press conferences, her hazel eyes wordlessly communicating to him if he was staying on track or not.
“Not in a romantic way.” She shook her head, a few tendrils of dark hair sliding loose from the haphazard knot she’d created. “We’ve got the Brighter NOLA fund-raiser coming up, and no matter what you say about how convincing I’ll be as your fiancée, I definitely don’t look the part.”
“Because of all the hair tossing and slinky gowns.” That comment of hers still burned. He didn’t care for that view of himself. “I believe we’ve covered that. And if you’re correct that I’ve become too predictable in my dating choices, I’m glad for the chance to shake up public perceptions.”
“I didn’t mean to suggest you only dated women for their looks.” She bit her lip. “The sad truth of the matter is a far more practical concern. I have the wardrobe of an assistant. Not a fiancée.”
He tried to hide his grin and failed. “So you’re saying we actually need the slinky gowns to pull this off?”
“You don’t have to look so damn smug about it,” she fired back, making him realize how much he’d missed their friendship.
He held up both hands to show his surrender. “No smugness intended. But I sure don’t have time to dress shop this week, Addy, what with our first opponent being the defending National Conference champions and all.”
“Wiseass,” she chided, shaking her head so that the pencil holding the knot in her hair slipped. She reached up to grab it as the dark mass fell around her shoulders.
He’d seen that move before in private moments with her. Never had it made his mouth wa
ter. Or kicked his lust into a full-throttle roar.
Some of what he was feeling must have shown on his face because the hint of a smile she’d been wearing suddenly fled. Pupils dilating, she stood up fast, letting go of her hair and setting aside the pencil.
“I’ll figure something out.” She stared down at him, her face bathed in the blue glow from the television playing silently in the background, her delicate curves visible through the thin fabric of his too-big T-shirt. “With the wardrobe and with my business. I’ll use your office and stay here. It’s just for four weeks anyway.”
She’d just conceded to everything he’d been angling for, but the reminder of the four-week time limit on their arrangement sure stole any sense of victory he might have felt. Slowly, he got to his feet before she bolted.
“Thank you.” He wanted to seal the deal with a handshake. A kiss. A night in his bed. But putting his hands on her now might shatter the tenuous agreement they’d come to in the past few hours.
She deserved so much better from him.
She nodded, the big T-shirt slipping off one shoulder to reveal her golden skin. “I’m going to let you watch your film now.”
Edging back a step, she moved away from him, and it took all his willpower not to haul her back.
“For whatever it’s worth—I’m proud to call you my fiancée. To my family, the media. The whole damn world.” He thought she deserved to know that much. Today had shown him that he’d taken her friendship for granted too often.
He hadn’t paid attention to her—really paid attention—in far too long.
He paid attention now, though. Enough to see the mix of emotions he couldn’t read cross her face in quick succession.
“Good night,” she said softly, her cheeks pink with confusion.
Watching her retreat, Dempsey turned on the television even as he knew the game film wasn’t going to come close to holding his attention the way Adelaide did.
Four
“Sweetheart, stop fidgeting,” Adelaide’s mother rebuked her, a mouthful of pins muffling the words.
“I’m just nervous.” Adelaide stood on a worn vinyl hassock in the one-bedroom apartment on St. Roch Avenue where she’d grown up.
With less than an hour before her first official public appearance with Dempsey, she had realized the gown she’d chosen for the Brighter NOLA foundation fund-raiser was too long despite her four-and-a-half-inch heels. She could have phoned the exclusive shop where Dempsey had given her carte blanche, but the price tag had nearly given her heart failure the first time around. She couldn’t bring herself to request an emergency tailor visit simply because she’d forgotten her shoes the day she’d chosen the dress.
So instead, she brought the pink lace designer confection to her mother’s apartment for a last-minute fix. And perhaps she also craved seeing her mom when she was incredibly nervous. She hadn’t been home since her “engagement” had become front-page news in the New Orleans paper and she hated that she couldn’t confide the truth to her mother. But she could at least soak up some of her mom’s love while she got the hem adjusted—with Evan waiting for her out front in the Land Rover.
“Addy.” Her mother straightened, tugging the pins out of her mouth and setting them in the upside-down top of the plastic candy dish on the coffee table. “You’re engaged to one of the richest, most powerful men in the state. You could have a dozen seamstresses fixing this gorgeous dress instead of your half-blind mama. You know better than to trust a woman who needs bifocals to do this job.”
Guilt pinched Adelaide more than her silver-and-pink stilettos.
“You’re not half-blind,” she argued, leaning down to kiss her mother’s cheek and breathing in the scent of lemon verbena. “And you could sew stitches around anyone working on Magazine Street. But I’m sorry to foist off the job on you last minute. I just missed you and I didn’t want a snippy tailor frowning at my choice of shoes or thinking how my breasts don’t suit the elegant lines of the gown.”
Her mother gave her a narrow look. Taller than Adelaide, her mother was a commanding woman who had worked hard to raise Adelaide after her father died in a boating accident when she was just a toddler. Della Thibodeaux had given Adelaide her backbone, but there were days when Addy wished she’d gotten more of that particular trait. Her creativity and her dreamy nature were qualities she’d inherited from her father, apparently. But it was her mother’s unflinching work ethic that had helped Adelaide excel at being Dempsey’s assistant.
“Bite your tongue,” Della said. “How will you survive your future mother-in-law if you can’t put an uppity dress-shop girl in her place?”
“I know. I’m being ridiculous.” She blinked fast, trying to control her emotions. It had been a crazy week fulfilling her duties as Dempsey’s assistant while maintaining her commitments to her new business. And now she had a role to play as his fiancée, all the while fighting off waves of nostalgia for what she’d felt for him in the past. “Living the Reynaud life with Dempsey has put my emotions on a roller-coaster ride. I’m not used to the way the Reynauds can just...order the world to their liking.”
From personal chefs to chauffeurs, there was no service that wasn’t available to Dempsey around the clock. And now to her, too. While she’d witnessed that degree of luxury from a business standpoint for years, she hadn’t really appreciated the way there were no limits in his personal life. He’d offered to have designers send samples from Paris for tonight’s gown, for crying out loud.
And the ring he’d ordered for her... She’d nearly fainted when she’d opened the package hand delivered by a courier who’d arrived at the house with a security escort earlier in the day. The massive yellow diamond surrounded by smaller white ones had literally taken her breath away.
Between the ring—temporarily stashed in her purse, since it seemed over-the-top for her mother’s house—and the dress, she’d started to understand how closely scrutinized she would be as Dempsey’s fiancée. It increased the pressure for tonight tenfold.
“My sweet girl.” Her mom spared a moment to put a hand to Adelaide’s cheek. “If you are emotional, is there any chance you could be pregnant?”
“Mom!” Embarrassed, she fluffed the hem to see how the length was coming. “There is no chance of that.”
Her mom studied her for an extra second before bending to her task again. Della took up the needle and continued to make long stitches to anchor the hemline.
“Well, you must admit the engagement came a bit out of the blue. People are bound to talk.” Her mother straightened, still wearing purple scrubs from her shift at the hospital where she’d worked for as long as Adelaide could remember.
She hadn’t thought about that. “Well, it’s not true, and the world will know soon enough when I don’t start showing. I just want tonight to go well.” She kicked out the sagging hem of her gorgeous dress. “I feel as if I’m off to a bad start already since I lost time to do my makeup and my hair when I realized I had a wardrobe malfunction.”
Her mother frowned. “Addy, you just got engaged. You should be glowing with joy, not running to your mother and fretting about your makeup. Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”
Closing her eyes, she realized her mistake in coming here. Her mother didn’t suffer fools lightly. And Adelaide was taking the most foolish risk of her life to put herself in close proximity to Dempsey every day and night. What if her old crush on him returned?
Actually...what if it already had? Remembering the way her thoughts short-circuited whenever they had spent time alone together this week, she had to wonder.
“You know I’ve always liked Dempsey,” she began, unwilling to lie to her mother.
She could at least confide a little piece of her heart to the woman who knew her best.
“I would have to have been blind not to see the adoratio
n in your face from the time you were a girl.” Her mother went back to sewing, taking a seat on the chair next to the hassock. “Yes, honey. I recall you’ve always liked him.”
“Well, his proposal caught me by surprise,” she admitted, her gaze rising over the sofa and settling on the wooden shelves containing her mother’s treasures—photos of Adelaide, mostly. “And I want to be sure—” she cleared her throat “—that he asked me to marry him for the right reasons. I don’t want to just be convenient.”
Her mother paused and then resumed her sewing. Adelaide waited for her mom’s verdict, all the while focusing on a chipped pink teacup Adelaide had painted for her for Mother’s Day in grade school.
“Damn straight you don’t,” her mother said finally. “That boy’s whole life has been convenient ever since he was whisked out of town in a limo.” She knotted the thread once. Twice. And snapped it off. “Maybe you should ruffle his feathers a little? Catch him by surprise.”
“You think so?” Adelaide worried her lip, remembering she’d better start her makeup if she didn’t want to be late.
Evan had made her promise she’d be finished in time to meet Dempsey outside the event promptly at 7:00 p.m. so they could walk in together. A shiver of nerves—and undeniable excitement—raced up her spine.
“Honey, I know so.” Her mother held out a hand to help Adelaide down to the floor. “You’ve made yourself very available to that man—”
“He’s my boss,” she reminded her.
“Even so.” She shook her finger in Adelaide’s face. “He’s not going to be the boss in the marriage, is he? No. Marriage should be a partnership. So don’t let him think you’re going to be the same woman as a bride that you are as his assistant.”
Easy enough advice if her engagement were real. But for the next few weeks, she was still more an employee than a fiancée. Then again, he had looked at her with decided heat in his eyes ever since that accidental touch in the stadium last weekend. And truth be told, it stung that he thought he could boss her into an engagement when they were supposed to be friends.
