Lifting a piece of gauze draped around the column of Juliet’s balcony, Stephanie wrapped it loosely around her shoulders and assumed a theatrical pose. The bright violet hue of her improvised shawl contrasted sharply with the beige skirt and sweater that she wore. The dull color did little to accentuate her fair complexion. However, her bright eyes flashed with intensity discernible even from Alex’s back-row seat.
“As the timeless bard himself so eloquently put it—‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts…’”
Alex was struck by the quality and sincerity of the voice delivering those lines from memory. Had his own high-school teacher taught with such zeal, it was entirely possible that he might have developed an honest appreciation for the great master of thees and thous. As it was, he still blanched at the thought of so much as attending a Shakespearean production, let alone participating in one.
Unaware that her form was being reviewed on multiple levels, Stephanie continued with raw feeling. “If you dare to dig deep enough inside yourself to speak these immortal lines from the depths of a young star-crossed lover’s heart, when you plunge a dagger into your own breast and die for us upon this very stage—”
Stephanie paused to gesture toward the wooden flooring beneath her feet as if it were indeed hallowed ground. “If you can manage that, then you can fix Romeo and Juliet’s tragic sacrifice like a brilliant meteor streaking across the night sky of your audience’s minds and change their perception of the world forever.”
Alex was tempted to applaud. He was stunned to discover that beneath the breast of their mild-mannered school librarian beat the heart of a hopeless romantic. One capable of inspiring a cast of adolescents, not to mention a self-proclaimed playboy who had long ago given up on such a starry-eyed notion as irrefutable true love. Alex couldn’t remember the last time he had longed for more than a fleeting liaison to hold his interest. Without her even knowing he was part of an audience, this dowdy librarian turned director made him suddenly wish he wasn’t so jaded.
Maybe he’d been wrong about Stephanie Firth. Anybody who could draw him toward the flame of romantic ever-afters like a hapless moth intent on self-immolation might actually stand a chance of convincing some devious criminal that she was willing to pay any price to make her dreams of motherhood come true.
Alex felt a tug upon his elbow.
“Didn’t I tell you she was wonderful?” Carrie Whelan whispered in his ear. Her hazel eyes danced with gleaming flames the same color as her hair.
“You don’t have to convince me,” Alex told his self-appointed emissary in his quest to enlist this woman’s help. “The reason that we’re here is to see if your friend is willing to put her acting talents to a real-life test.”
“Absolutely not!” Stephanie exclaimed, shaking her head as if to clear her ears of a painful obstruction.
She couldn’t believe that her friend had actually broached the subject of her faking a marriage with the most infamous playboy in all of Texas. Scanning the area for hidden cameras, she wondered if her reaction was being broadcast on one of those practical-joke reality shows that she hated. In her opinion, the pranks tended to be more mean-spirited than funny. This one was no exception. If Carrie had endured that awful rehearsal just to get Alexander Kent up on stage with her, Stephanie had to wonder at their friendship. It felt like a horrible practical joke. She hated to even consider the possibility.
Stephanie’s dismay was evident in her dark brown eyes that widened just enough to allow Alex to sample their chocolaty depths. He was as surprised by her antagonism as by how lovely those eyes were without the aid of cosmetics. The women he usually spent time with wouldn’t be caught dead without their makeup meticulously—if not professionally—applied. Flecks of gold dust shimmered in the dark irises of Stephanie’s eyes. Velvet-brown dark curtains that briefly opened in surprise to reveal a soul untouched by evil snapped shut again with a blink of naturally long eyelashes.
Hoping that humor would be a good strategy to ease the tension, Alex fell back on his characteristic charm.
“In certain quarters,” he said, “women have been known to leap at the chance of having me as their husband, albeit prematurely.”
“Would that be in the French Quarter?” Stephanie demanded. She was clearly not in the least impressed with the opportunity to join the ranks of those women.
Carrie snorted indelicately.
When Alex had the audacity to look hurt, Stephanie refused to feel any empathy for him. If Alexander Kent was expecting to win her over with the kind of superficial charisma that had every other woman in Royal panting over him, he had another long, hard think coming. Had he asked exactly why she seemed to take such an immediate dislike to him, Stephanie would have been forced to admit that it had less to do with his effect upon women and more with the fact that he had never given her as much as a passing glance. She could never hope to be included in this man’s circle of rich and beautiful friends. That didn’t bother her nearly as much as the fact that he made her so acutely aware of her shortcomings in terms of standards of beauty set forth in women’s magazines—the same magazines in which his latest girlfriend could surely be found modeling this year’s skimpiest swimwear.
A case in point was the last school fund-raiser in which she and Alex had been thrown into contact. Not that she expected Alex to recall the incident. Carrie had coerced Stephanie into volunteering her creative talents at the poetry booth where, for a simple donation, Stephanie had penned original poems for customers on any topic of their choice. Carrie had put her friend’s words into calligraphy and wrapped the masterpiece in a delicate, ribboned scroll. As ingenious as their efforts had been, the adjoining stand took away most of their business.
Stephanie had been flabbergasted when sexy playboy Alexander Kent waltzed into the kissing booth and proceeded to make as much money as the other booths put together. Carrie’s flippant offer to buy her a much needed kiss from that scoundrel vividly stuck in her mind—perhaps as much for her angry protests that she wasn’t that desperate as by the fact that she had secretly been tempted to take Carrie up on her offer. Alexander, however, had been so busy puckering up for the seemingly endless line of Royal’s single women stretching across the gym floor that he hadn’t so much as noticed Stephanie’s presence.
Now that “Hot Lips” Kent suddenly needed her to play a part in some ridiculous game, he thought all he had to do was turn on that notorious smile and she would melt like a strawberry ice-cream cone on a hot summer’s day.
Fat chance.
Just because she wasn’t the loveliest swan in the lake didn’t mean this ugly duckling didn’t have her pride.
“Look, Steph,” Carrie interjected before Alex had the chance to defend himself. “You have to know that I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t for a good cause. Please just hear us out before making your decision.”
Suspecting that she was the “good cause”, Stephanie worried that Carrie was up to her old matchmaking tricks once again. Granted, this veritable Adonis was a far cry from the last uninspired blind date that Carrie had thrust upon her, but at least that date hadn’t made her feel like a charity case. Then again, that pleasant but uninteresting man hadn’t had the effect on her senses that Don Juan here did. Her body betrayed common sense as her pulse leaped in feminine awareness of Alexander’s nearness and she turned her ire upon the source of her distress.
“If Mr. Kent needs a piece of eye candy to dangle off his arm for some amusing spot of entertainment, I hardly think he’s in the right shop,” Stephanie said primly.
She was determined not to let anyone beat her to a punch line about her personal appearance.
Alex tested his weight against one of the pillars holding up Juliet’s balcony and found it surprisingly sturdy. He picked up her cue like a true professional and drawled, “With a disposition as sweet as yours, I can’t imagine how you could po
ssibly categorize yourself as being sugar free.”
They glared at each other. As if she feared what such verbal sparring could lead to, Carrie held up both hands in a classic crossing-guard pose.
“This is no game,” Carrie assured Stephanie. “It’s about helping unsuspecting women like my future sister-in-law who were tricked into believing that their babies died at birth so some monster parading as a doctor could make it rich selling them to the highest bidder.”
Stephanie’s gasp echoed her sense of outrage. Everyone in town knew about how a wild-eyed, disheveled woman by the name of Natalie Perez stumbled into the Royal Diner a few short months ago with a baby in her arms, but only a select few were privy to the real story behind her amnesia. Any overt speculation had been stifled by the fact that she had recently married Carrie’s overly protective and notoriously hot-tempered brother. Now Carrie proceeded to relate the seedier aspects of Natalie’s harrowing tale, and Stephanie found herself wiping away tears blurring her vision.
Upon delivering a baby girl, Natalie had been told by her boss, who also just happened to be her doctor, that her infant had died at birth. Natalie had discovered that Birkenfeld had hired other pregnant single mothers in the past to work for him—and that an abnormal percentage of them also lost their babies at birth or shortly thereafter. Further investigation led her to find a partial list of birth certificates corresponding to the supposed deaths.
When her own baby was stolen, through an amazing set of circumstances, she was able to steal the infant back—as well as a sizable amount of cash used to fund such operations. Realizing that she would have to involve the baby’s unwitting father in the whole sordid mess if she hoped to ever offer their child a normal life, she sought him out by means of a Texas Cattleman’s Club card that he had given her when they had parted, insisting she call him if she ever needed his help.
Carrie had confided that her brother, Travis, was the child’s biological father and that he had officially accepted responsibility for the baby and her mother the day they were wed. Stephanie could certainly understand why Natalie wouldn’t want to involve herself any further in this investigation until the perpetrators of this heinous crime were behind bars. And why she still worried about her baby’s safety.
Carrie admitted that Natalie still suffered nightmares in which the criminals whom she’d thwarted pursued her relentlessly, intent on recovering the money she had “stolen” from them and exacting their revenge upon her. At the present time, the most Natalie could do without further endangering herself and her baby was to point the Cattlemen in the direction of the private adoption agency in Las Vegas that had shown up so frequently in Birkenfeld’s mail while she was working for him.
Stephanie knew little about the exclusive Texas Cattleman’s Club other than what she’d read in newspaper accounts of their glittering off-limits parties. What Alex proceeded to tell her in strictest confidence came as a tremendous shock to her. It seemed that the Club was actually a front for the wealthiest men in the state to work covertly on secret missions to save lives. It was even more unbelievable to think that Alexander Kent was a part of such a courageous organization. The idea that he might be using his playboy image as subterfuge to hide such a secret was hard to swallow.
Stephanie had always held that stuffy old boys club in contempt. Despite the charitable contributions the Cattleman’s Club made to innumerable worthy causes, she couldn’t help turning a resentful eye to an organization that made such a point of excluding everyone but the most privileged from their ranks. Still, Stephanie was moved by the tragic story. Romeo and Juliet had nothing on Natalie Perez. Having always secretly longed for a child of her own, the thought of someone stealing an infant for monetary gain made her sick to her stomach.
“Can we count on you?” Carrie asked.
Her friend’s trust weighed heavily upon Stephanie. To be honored with such highly confidential knowledge of the Texas Cattleman’s Club’s clandestine operations was in itself a rare honor. Not to mention that a person would have to have a heart of stone not to want to help such unfortunate young women and their poor babies. Carrie knew full well that one of Stephanie’s greatest faults was that her heart was too tender for her own good.
Still, she had her reputation to consider. As a school employee and role model for the young people with whom she worked, Stephanie could hardly go gallivanting around the country over spring break posing as a married woman with one of the most notorious playboys in the state and expect to have a job waiting for her when she returned. Nor did she relish the thought of people laughing behind her back at the news that the most eligible bachelor in all of Texas had settled for someone generally considered as dull and conservative as their local school librarian. No doubt, many would leap to the assumption that pregnancy played a hand in this hasty marriage.
At thirty-one, she may have given up any illusions about ever being cast as an ingenue in a real-life role, but the idea of playing the part of the comic foil to Alexander’s handsome hero wasn’t exactly appealing either. Having spent a goodly portion of her adult life doing everything within her power to keep from being openly laughed at, as she had been during her public-school days, she hesitated to commit to this plan.
“I’m n-not sure,” she stammered.
“So I guess all that pontificating onstage about putting aside one’s personal feelings for the good of the cause was nothing more than an act designed to manipulate naive teenagers who don’t know any better than to trust anyone the school board hires. Apparently you don’t buy into any of it yourself.” Sensing her wavering commitment, Alex couldn’t refrain from goading her. He had been there the night that Natalie had stumbled into the Royal Diner, and he would never forget the terrified look on her face before she collapsed. And the idea that this uptight little bookworm considered herself too good for him was a blow to his sense of masculine pride. He was quick to hold up a mirror so she could take a good look at herself.
Stephanie bristled.
“Who are you to judge me?” she snapped. “You don’t have a clue who I am or what I stand for. Yet you have the gall to stand there in your expensive Italian loafers and mock me.”
The fire in those deceptive doelike eyes intrigued Alex. He wondered if, like her self-righteous indignation, passion had the power to stir those fascinating embers to life.
“One could say the same for you,” Alex replied. “I would think that as a librarian, Miss Firth, you of all people should know better than to judge a book by its cover.”
The old axiom failed to coax a smile from her lips. Stephanie was obviously skeptical of the devil-may-care-rogue front that Alexander used as a member of the Cattleman’s Club. It kept anyone from trespassing too closely to his true feelings. That this prim-and-proper librarian brought those repressed feelings to the surface was more than mildly disturbing. Although he had initially been doubtful about involving Stephanie Firth at all, Alex suddenly wanted very much to get to know this woman better, if only to prove to her that he was not the shallow fellow she thought him to be. He sensed that he would have to proceed carefully if he hoped to convince her to join forces with the Texas Cattlemen.
“The only other reason I can think of for you to turn this offer down is that you’re worried your own acting skills aren’t up to a real-life test. You would rather hide in the wings than to commit to using your own talent.”
Turning his eyes upon her like emerald drill bits, Alex moved in for the kill.
“I’m sure you’re familiar with the old expression. Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.”
Nothing else he could have possibly said would have had the power to infuriate Stephanie more. Like her colleagues, she was sensitive to such off-base criticism. She would love to see how long Alexander Kent would last in a public school setting. She’d wager a month’s salary that the kids would eat his lunch before he could so much as file a single overdue book. They had literally tied up the last substitute drama coach who had f
illed in for her when she was out with the flu, and left her onstage hollering for help for the better part of an hour.
“If anyone needs to be concerned about their acting abilities, rest assured it is not I, Mr. Kent,” Stephanie rejoined in a regal tone. “It’s going to take a whole lot more than dashing good looks to convince anyone that you’re someone who would want a baby in his life for anything more than a photo opportunity.”
Her words cut more deeply than Stephanie could have known. They jolted Alex back to a childhood in which he himself had been used by a number of selfish women as a means of getting their hooks into his all-too-vulnerable father after his mother had deserted them.
“I’m up to the challenge if you are,” he said, tossing down the gauntlet with a cocky smile that belied the painful memories flitting through his mind.
By now, Stephanie was so infuriated that she would have strapped herself to a motorcycle and attempted a jump over the Grand Canyon had that been the dare leveled at her.
“You’re on, pretty boy,” she said, accepting his challenge with the impetuousness of a character in Shakespeare’s Verona rather than the demure woman who spent her days cataloging books in a Texas secondary-school library.
“As my wife, don’t you think you should call me by my first name, sweetheart?” he purred, gracing her with a smile known to liquefy even the most stubborn ice princess.
“That’s not the name that comes to mind,” Stephanie muttered under her breath.
Indeed, the endearment ricocheting in her head was one that local censors objected to in any of the books occupying space in their hallowed public-school library.
Pretending with the Playboy Page 2
