The Corporate Marriage Campaign. Leigh Michaels
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What a name.”
“It fits him. The idea is to minimize setup time for each photo by working through the store in a logical way, not necessarily in the same order the ads will appear. We’ll do the engagement ring tomorrow, of course, because that’s the first ad which will run and they need the art right away. But then we may do household linens and lawn furniture, because they’re in the same section of the store. You know how the departments are laid out in sort of a rough circle.”
“Actually,” Darcy said, “no, I don’t. I haven’t been in a Kentwells store in years.”
Trey blinked in surprise. “Oh, of course. All our stores are in Chicago, and you’ve been out west.”
She said, very slowly, “Yes.” It was true, as far as it went. And there was no point in alienating him by telling the whole truth—that she’d always preferred to do her shopping with Kentwells’s competition. You wouldn’t volunteer that information if you were interviewing for a job, she reminded herself. This isn’t much different.
“We’ll have to start early in the morning,” he warned. “There’s still a lot of prep work to be done because we’re starting from scratch with you.”
Starting from scratch… “You’d better smile when you say that, partner. I’m not exactly in the frame of mind to play Cinderella.”
Trey sighed. “I do keep putting my foot in my mouth, don’t I? I just meant that the clothes which were chosen for Caroline won’t work for you, and the hairstyle and makeup you need will be much different, too.”
A woman in a white jacket deposited a pizza on the table between them and went away without a word. Trey looked at it in puzzlement. “Did we order this?”
“Sort of. It’s my standing order—I just wave at Jessie in the kitchen whenever I come in.” She took a paper plate from the stack on the table and slid a steaming wedge onto it. “Try it, it’s the best hand-thrown pizza in town. Since you brought up Caroline, I had a question. She does understand this is all made up, right?”
“Of course.”
“Because she seems to be a bit of a dreamer. She’s not serious about the engagement party, is she?”
“Of course she is. The best way to make it convincing is for everyone around us to act as if it’s real. Caroline throwing a party, Dave giving a toast to the happy couple—it all adds a touch of reality.” He helped himself to a slice of pizza. “Now—let’s get down to business. Tell me everything I could possibly need to know about my wife-to-be.”
CHAPTER THREE
NO SOONER had his request popped out than Trey regretted it—or at least he regretted the way he had phrased it. Asking a woman to tell him all about herself—what had he been thinking?
He’d never met one yet who wouldn’t take that as a blanket invitation to share an entire evening’s worth of self-analysis. By the time Darcy finished her Freud act, he’d probably known what she’d had for breakfast on her first day of school, and all about the lasting wounds it had left on her psyche.
Why hadn’t he settled for asking simple, straightforward questions that would elicit the facts he needed without including hours worth of padding—explanations that would make it practically impossible to keep his eyes open?
“Age twenty-seven,” Darcy said crisply. “Born and raised in the west suburbs of Chicago, parents died eight years ago in a car accident. I finished my degree, worked at a PR firm downtown, then spent some time in San Francisco, and came back here. Anything else?” She tore another slice of pizza from the pie and took a big bite, obviously finished talking for the moment.
Trey was too stunned at the machine-gun approach to comment.
She obviously took his continued silence for a lack of further questions, because she swallowed and said, “If I’d realized that’s all you wanted to know, I’d have given you one of my job applications this morning and saved you the trouble of asking. Are you all right?”
“I was just thinking that if I’d asked Caroline how she felt, I’d still be sitting here listening in a couple of hours. Ask you for a rundown of your life and you’re finished in fifteen seconds.”
Darcy shrugged. “Mine hasn’t been a terribly exciting life.”
“Normally for a female that’s no bar to talking about it at length,” Trey said dryly.
“Oh, so that must be why you’re not interested in actually getting married—because women are boring and self-centered and don’t know when to shut up.”
He knew better than to think there was a safe answer to that. “I’ve known a few talkative types,” he admitted. “But the fact is I’m not established well enough to even think about marriage just now.” She’d never believe that he was telling the truth, but at least it might distract her.
Darcy rolled her eyes. “Right. A hundred-year-old department store chain isn’t stable enough to support a wife…And I trusted you to set me up in business? I knew I needed my head examined.”
“You made an agreement,” Trey pointed out.
“And I’ll hold you to your end of the bargain. In the meantime, however, I suppose there are some things we should work out before we go public with this act.”
“Like what?”
“Like when we supposedly met. How long we’ve supposedly been dating. When we’re supposedly getting married.”
“Maybe we could agree to leave the supposedly out of this and act as if it’s real.”
She shrugged. “If you like. I thought perhaps you’d feel more comfortable if I was continually reminding myself that it wasn’t real. But you’re the boss. Which reminds me—you said the photo crew had already started working with Caroline and Corbin as the models. How are you going to explain the sudden change?”
“Corbin’s been called out of town on business.”
“Really?”
“No, but I expect he’ll decide to make himself scarce until I’ve cooled off enough not to kill him.”
Darcy sat back in the booth seat and looked him over thoughtfully, her lips pursed.
“What?” Trey asked.
“I was just noticing this violent streak in you. First you threaten Joe, who might be a nuisance but is certainly nothing more. And even though Corbin sounds like the worst kind of bad guy—”
“I didn’t threaten your pal Joe. You’re the one who suggested if he had another beer he’d be threatening me. I was merely commenting that I’m perfectly able to take care of myself if he does. And where Corbin is concerned, I was talking about what he’s thinking just now—that if he lies low for a while, it’ll all blow over. Personally, I’d much rather send him to jail, and then ruin him when he finally comes out, than to actually end his miserable existence.”
“Oh, that’s comforting.”
“Good,” Trey said. “Glad we got that settled. So after your parents died, it was just you and Dave? No wonder he pulled the parent act, telling you to be careful who you dated. And that must be why he never talked about having a little sister, either. He felt responsible for you.”
Darcy smiled. “Or else he didn’t trust his frat brothers. I wouldn’t know which it was. But that’s all ancient history. When are we supposedly…”
He wagged a finger at her.
“Oh, all right. When are we getting married?”
A cold trickle edged down Trey’s spine. It made him sit up just a little straighter.
“What’s