Matchmaker and the Manhattan Millionaire

by Cara Colter

  “Somehow, way too many celebratory shots of tequila later, I was betting the car—this car—that I would be as committed as he was by the time I reached the age of thirty. That is a date that is rapidly approaching and that my now brother-in-law is gleefully ticking off on his calendar.”

  “That’s silly. He won’t hold you to it.”

  “Oh, he will, and with delight, I might add.”

  “It’s not like it’s a legally binding contract, for heaven’s sake.”

  “I shook hands on it. That’s binding to me.”

  What do you consider the most important attribute in another human being?

  She remembered how she had loved Alexandro’s answer. Honor.

  “That’s a very twisted kind of honor,” Krissy decided, for both Jonas’s benefit and her own. “You’re willing to pretend you have made a commitment to win a bet you shook hands on while clearly inebriated.”

  “Exactly,” he said, and glanced over at her. He grinned with utterly enchanting mischievousness. “I guess you have to take into account the basic competitiveness of my relationship with Mike. If he won this bet, he would lord his ownership of this car over me for the rest of my life.”

  “That is a long time to have something lorded over you,” she admitted. She felt like she was learning quite a bit about Jonas. He was fun loving. This problem—how to keep his car—was a game to him.

  It was all quite charming. But buried in there was a larger message, the reason for the bet in the first place, the reason it had become a problem at all. The man was commitment phobic.

  It would be best to accept this ride home from him and call it a day. Tangling with him in any way—particularly in a phony engagement way, fraught with the potential for complication and emotional catastrophe—was inviting peril into a life she had made deliberately safe.

  Too safe, she chided herself. Strawberry milkshake safe.

  “Are you close to your family?” she asked.

  There was a long pause. She glanced over at him. She could see a sudden tension in his shoulders and around his mouth.

  “What’s left of them,” he said quietly. “My parents were killed in a car accident when my sister and I were in our late teens. I think it made Theresa and me closer. And now that family includes Mike. And two monster nephews.”

  His voice was ragged with both pain and affection.

  In the muted light of the dashboard, Krissy saw the utter torment of a man who had loved completely—and lost—cross his handsome features. It was far from the playboy image that she generally would associate with commitment phobia, and somehow it made him so much more compelling.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

  “It was a long time ago,” he said brusquely. “I’m not sure why it came up at all. I guess thinking about the excursions to the ice cream parlor brought it to mind.”

  In a moment of madness, egged on by the purr of the car engine and deep leather seats, heady scents, and most of all, by his unexpected vulnerability, Krissy took a deep breath.

  Her aunt had always told her life could be an adventure, and here she was. Despite all her efforts to avoid it, the unexpected had found her. This morning the closest Krissy had come to excitement for a long, long time was stepping in dog doo.

  But now, she was in a gorgeous car with an even more gorgeous man, and life for the first time in a long, long time seemed like it held the potential for... What? Almost anything.

  “I’ll do it!” she blurted out before she could change her mind.

  She tilted her head to look at him, waiting for him to smile. Or laugh. She thought the twinkle would return to those deep sea blue eyes, and that he’d turn to her with gratitude and say something cool and approving like, Thatta girl, say yes to the adventure.

  Instead, humiliation flared to life and then deepened as the silence stretched out between them, and he looked straight ahead. There was a faint frown around his mouth.

  Jonas obviously had decided she wasn’t suitable!

  Krissy debated, briefly, leaping from the moving car. It was barely moving, because they had just stopped at a traffic light. But she couldn’t even order a Triple Chocolate Volcano Sundae, let alone jump from a car to save her wounded pride.

  Besides, there was no point letting him know how wounded her vanity was. And on a practical side there were the boxes stowed in the back to think about. She couldn’t just abandon Aunt Jane’s things over a point of pride.

  So instead of making the dramatic escape she longed for, Krissy sank back in her seat and followed his example by looking straight ahead. She tried not to gasp when he changed lanes, and the car shot forward as he passed a truck.

  See? The hard beating of her heart told her the sad truth. It was too late. She had gotten herself into a strawberry milkshake kind of rut, and you couldn’t just decide to get out of it. You couldn’t change who you basically were—and nor should you want to on the basis of how damnably attractive a man was.

  She just wasn’t a take chances kind of person.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  JONAS SLID KRISSY a look. She had her hands folded primly on her lap, and was looking straight ahead. Still, exactly because of her schooled lack of expression, he knew how deeply he had hurt her feelings.

  Which was precisely why she would not work as a fake mate!

  He couldn’t have a woman whose feelings were easily hurt. Or a woman who made him blurt out his secrets, either. Why had he told her about his parents? He rarely mentioned the family tragedy to anyone. His pain was intense, and it was private.

  But it also made him the man who most understood the desolation of loss, and he wanted her to know she was not alone with all those feelings. Jonas also found he could not be the kind of man to be responsible for hurting her more deeply than she already was. He had to break the silence that was causing her so much pain.

  “I think you’re just too close to your aunt’s death,” Jonas said carefully. “Obviously, it’s too much to ask of you right now.”

  “All right, I understand,” she said, clearly unconvinced of his sincerity, clearly determined to take his rejection of her as fake mate personally and as an insult.

  “Good,” he said, knowing he could only make this worse if he kept trying to convince her.

  Then she said quietly, “Though I have to say, the last hour has been the most respite I’ve had from that awful swarm of feelings since I got the news my aunt had died. Her death feels like a nightmare I just don’t wake up from.”

  Jonas remembered oh, so well the intensity of that awful swarm of feelings, that sense of having entered into a nightmare that wouldn’t go away.

  Don’t do it, he ordered himself. But human decency required more of him. He’d known she was the kind of woman who would require more from him.

  “Well, if you think it might be a distraction from your grief...” His voice drifted away.

  “I was trying to do you a favor,” Krissy said, her voice low, faintly wounded, but faintly angry, too. “Not have you take pity on me and feel like you’re doing me the favor. Besides, I think based on my milkshake choices, you have found me lacking in some way, so I withdraw my offer.”

  He slid her another look. She turned her head quickly to look out the window, as if something really interesting was happening out there, when in fact they had just left New York and were now flying along in near total blackness.

  How had this happened? He now felt like he should be begging her to do what he least wanted her to do, which was accept his original poorly conceived proposition.

  “I haven’t found you lacking,” he said.

  “Oh, please.” She did not turn to look at him.

  “No, really. It’s not that at all.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Krissy, to be honest you just seem like the kind of woman things could g
et really complicated with.”

  “So, it wasn’t all about giving me room to grieve!” she said, triumphant at having caught him in the little white lie. Told for her own good, but no brownie points there.

  And thinking of her own good, Krissy was a little too smart for it. And definitely too smart for his own good, as well.

  “In what way am I complicated?” she said dangerously.

  In this way, right here, he thought, but wisely refrained from saying it. There would be no way to answer that question correctly, so he said nothing.

  “Like I might not understand it was a game? Like I might forget it was all fake? Like my grief might make me needy and clingy? Like I might find you irresistible and cross the line? Like I’m just some pathetic homely girl who would be so far out of her league—”

  “Stop it! You are neither pathetic nor homely. This is exactly the problem—you’re complicated.”

  “And you like uncomplicated.” She said it as a statement, not a question.

  “Yes,” he said, relieved that she got it. “That’s what I asked your aunt for. Uncomplicated. Someone who would understand the clearly defined parameters of our arrangement from the beginning.”

  “I can’t believe my aunt went for that.”

  “Well, she did. Not only did she go for it, but she took a big deposit and she guaranteed my satisfaction.”

  “Well, I offered to fulfill the contract, and you said no, so—”

  “I didn’t exactly say no.”

  “Your unenthused silence spoke volumes.”

  “I was thinking!”

  “Yes, about how to get out of your ridiculous offer and my misguided acceptance of that offer. Which I accepted to help you. But you thought it would be too complicated, so now you have gotten out of it. Your contract with my aunt is null and void. And I’m not giving you a refund, either!”

  “That’s fine,” he said tightly. “No refund is required.”

  What was required was that this awful journey with her be over. He was not cut out for rescuing damsels in distress. He was not a man accustomed to second-guessing himself, but he wished he had not offered her a ride home.

  He was so glad when they pulled up into the tiny hamlet of Sunshine Cove. He put the address she gave him into the GPS he’d added to the car and avoided its instructions to take Main Street, which would bring them right past Moo-Moo’s. Instead, he took the alternate route.

  He pulled up in front of a cottage. Once it must have been the carriage house for the manor house that shared the lot. Now, its postage-stamp-size yard had been separated from the larger house with its sweeping lawns, by a thick hedge of lilacs, heavy with wilted blooms. The carriage house itself was tiny and looked like something out of a fairy tale—paned windows and pansy-filled window boxes, Tudor timbers exposed under the curving A of the roofline.

  Krissy scrambled out of the car as if she was trying to escape something that smelled bad. He would have been quite happy to roar away, but unfortunately he had to help her with her boxes.

  “Just put them there,” she ordered outside her front door, not looking at him, fishing for her key. The scent of finished lilacs was heavy in the air.

  A dog that sounded huge howled on the other side of the door. He decided he might be wise to make his exit before the beast was unleashed.

  “Well,” he said with relief, “it’s been nice meeting you. Again, I’m sorry about your aunt.”

  “Likewise,” she said. “Sorry for your losses. Nice meeting you. Have a nice life.”

  That was supposed to have been his line!

  Before he could make good his escape, she said, “And just for your information, I would have been the safest bet ever for a fake mate, because I am never getting married. Ever. There was absolutely no possibility of a phony engagement to me becoming complicated.”

  Jonas highly doubted that. It was already complicated, because he wanted to ask her what had made her so vehement on the topic. Instead, he turned quickly and went back to his car.

  Escape was within reach. Once he got to that car, he never had to see her again. Fake mate, indeed. Not complicated? From their very short acquaintance it was more than evident to him that Krissy was too sensitive, too smart and way too sensual in that understated way of hers.

  Even glancing back at her, seeing her standing under the glow of her porch light, he had a renegade thought what it might be like if he had delivered her home after a date, what it would be like to be standing there debating whether or not to kiss her good-night.

  You couldn’t have thoughts like that with a fake mate!

  He was sliding into his car when she got her key in the door.

  The dog that erupted out that door was every bit as big as it had sounded like it would be: a monster of a dog, a creature of near-mythical proportions, its gray head the color and size of a rotted pumpkin.

  It leaped at her with joyous enthusiasm that might have been adorable in a Pomeranian but was frightening in such a large dog. Its immense paws found her shoulders, and a huge tongue lolled out. Partly laughing, and partly outmatched, she turned her face away, but the dog was not to be deprived of its kisses.

  She lost her balance in her twisting effort to avoid the worst of the slobbering affection and went to her knees. The dog shoved her the rest of the way over, and she was completely pinned as the giant dog jumped on top of her and swiped at her face with a tongue about the size of a paint roller.

  Jonas suddenly understood the lack of makeup and the casual outfit. His escape thwarted, he got back out of the car and strode up the walk. Before he reached them, the dog froze, cocked his head and took off running.

  Jonas arrived at Krissy and offered his hand. Her laughter had dried up the second the dog took off, but she still had that “just kissed” flush on her face.

  He was so irritated—with himself for being so aware of her or with her easy acceptance of the dog’s unacceptable behavior he wasn’t sure—that he might have used a little more force than was absolutely necessary to yank her to feet.

  She fell against him, and her hair finally pulled completely free from the clasp that had held it so sloppily in place. It cascaded around her shoulders in a rich wave of color, scent and curl.

  For the second time tonight he found the lusciousness of her curves pressed full-length against him. How much could a man take?

  * * *

  Krissy could feel the hard line of Jonas’s body and she tilted her chin and looked up into his face. The sudden downturn of his mouth—not happy to be rescuing her again—did nothing to detract from how handsome he was. In fact, it brought his every feature into sharp focus: the intensity of his eyes, the height of faintly whisker-shadowed cheekbones, the fullness of his lower lip, the faint cleft in his chin. His eyes trailed to her hair and then to her lips, before they came to rest, darkened, on her own eyes.

  She knew he was every bit as aware of her as she was of him. Something unexpected sizzled between them.

  She had opened herself up to being surprised by life and here it was.

  She wanted to taste him. She wanted to kiss this man who was a virtual stranger. Was this the complication he had spotted so readily? Was this the danger?

  Of course it was. She looked at the sensuous firm line of his lower lip. She should pull away, and yet she felt herself pull in closer, drawn to him helplessly, like a magnet to steel.

  The bark of her dog in the distance jolted her out of her foolishness. She pulled away from Jonas and scanned the direction the dog had gone.

  There he was, at the base of a tree, barking at the neighbor’s cat that was glaring at him from a low branch.

  “Crusher!” she called.

  “Crusher?” Jonas said with a groan. “Seriously?”

  The dog spared her a glance. The cat took its opportunity and leaped from the tree. The dog
bolted after it.

  She took off after Crusher, and with a sigh of pure resignation, Jonas took off with her. When the dog and cat went over a fence into a neighbor’s backyard, Jonas put one hand on the fence and vaulted over it. She heard the distinct sound of his pants ripping as she scrambled after him.

  She was fairly certain, as they dashed through darkened backyards, they were going to have their second encounter of the evening with the police.

  Half an hour later, they finally cornered the dog and avoided arrest.

  Jonas took off his belt to use as a temporary leash. There was a large tear in his slacks; the zipper had pulled clean away.

  She started to laugh.

  He glanced down at himself, and then back at her, sheepish.

  “You’re blushing,” she crowed.

  “I’m not,” he denied firmly.

  “And you’re wearing tighty-whities!”

  “I’m not!” he said.

  “Well, what are they then?”

  His blush intensified. He glared at her. “You said you wouldn’t be complicated, but here we are in the middle of the night discussing my underwear.”

  But then a grin tickled the edges of his mouth, and then a snort of laughter escaped him. In a second, they were both laughing, doubled over with it, the dog bouncing between them, taking turns leaping on them and swiping their faces with his huge tongue.

  At last, Jonas handed her the belt leash and pulled off his jacket, and tied it around his waist. He took the makeshift lead back from her when Crusher nearly yanked her arm off.

  “Stop it,” he told the dog. Or maybe he was telling her to stop it, because she was still giggling, the moment effervescent with surprising delight.

  The dog did stop. He quit pulling and walked quietly at Jonas’s side, which was a good thing, because Jonas literally had his hands full. Krissy laughed most of the way home as he tried to keep his dignity while he juggled the dog, his beltless pants and his coat cover-up.