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I could rehearse the story of our relationship before I introduce you to my employer.”
“Rehearse?” He couldn’t see her, but his mind didn’t care. It went into erotic overtime. “That sounds—interesting.”
“It’s business,” she said. “This is serious. Don’t worry. Just keep an open mind. I have everything all worked out.”
Mitchell tried to open his mind but it refused, choosing instead to imagine what his “fiancée” meant by rehearsing. “I’m pretty much a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of guy. You might want to reconsider your plan.”
“It’s too late for that, Mitchell.”
It was too late. Bettina always said he lived his life as if it was a James Bond adventure, but this time he felt as if he’d just stepped into Alice’s rabbit hole—except this rabbit hole had nothing to do with tea parties and chess games. And the “off with their heads” line ran eerily through his mind. Once he’d admitted to being Mitchell, he’d sealed his fate. Short of hanging up, he had to follow through. It was a matter of honor. If he said he’d do something, he did it. Besides, he told himself, it was only for a weekend. And she’d probably be as plain as dry toast.
“Bring casual clothes for the lake and a dress suit for the wedding,” she went on, more confidently now. “I don’t know why people have to get married in June. It’s too hot. By the way, I don’t want to know who you really are. Bettina called you Mitchell Dane, and that’s who my co-workers are expecting. At least she gives her men last names, even if she keeps her own a secret.”
“Mitchell Dane?” Bettina gave Anne Harris his last name but kept hers a secret? What was she thinking of? Then it hit him—using his photograph…her sudden need for a vacation… This entire weekend was a setup. “Just look after the office for three days, Mitchell, in case of an emergency. Please?” She was getting even for all the high-handed rules he’d imposed on her when she was growing up.
She hadn’t appreciated the early curfews he’d set, when her friends had more freedom. He hadn’t handled his responsibility well. He was still a teenager with raging hormones and thwarted dreams. And he might have gone too far while he forced her to study business instead of art, but he’d tried to make sure she could take care of herself. Now she was either getting even or returning the favor. She thought it was time for him to settle down. The last time he was in town and she’d invited one of her clients to dinner, he’d hightailed it out of town a day early. This latest incident proved she hadn’t given up. She’d turned him into Anne Harris’s future husband. He wondered if Anne was even a real client or not, and if Jess and Ran were in on her plan. If not, they’d better get ready. They’d be next.
Anne interrupted his thoughts. “I’m already packed.” She gave him her address, then added, “Please hurry, Mitchell. We need to get going,” and hung up before he could back out. And he still didn’t have her telephone number.
Mitchell sat for a minute, considering his next move.
He had let a hoarse, sexy voice and a woman in trouble get to him. Bettina had counted on that; his past had made him a caretaker. He couldn’t fight the guilt for Melia’s death or the need to help any woman or child in distress. He’d never admit it but he was a romantic. He’d watched Casablanca on every black-and-white television set in every language in the world. He would never have let Ingrid Bergman’s plane leave without him.
But that was a movie, and he had to assume Anne Harris was truly one of his sister’s clients. If this was a setup, well, maybe he’d turn it around and the joke would be on Bettina. He had a couple of weeks between assignments… Anne Harris wanted to rehearse… He was beginning to warm to the idea. She needed a lover who would play his role to the hilt. He’d give her what Bettina had promised. He just had to dust off his hilt a bit.
2
ANNE HARRIS HUNG UP the phone and, as she had a hundred times, picked up the black-and-white photograph of the man who was supposed to be her fiancé. He was very tall and lean, with windblown, fair hair that was too long. He looked as if his thoughts were a thousand miles away as he balanced himself against a gray rock on the beach and looked directly into the camera. The expression on Mitchell Dane’s face was one of restlessness, of private longing. She didn’t have to be told that he didn’t share himself freely. She knew.
She knew because she’d had to learn to be that way. She traveled alone now, not willing to share her creative ideas with her co-workers. The last time she’d done that, the man she’d shared them, and her life, with stole her idea, sold it to another company and left Baltimore. She was still paying off the debts he’d run up and replacing the money she’d been forced to borrow from her mother’s account. Bundles of Joy was her second chance and she couldn’t blow it.
As one of Bettina’s models, this was just another job to Mitchell Dane. Anne couldn’t expect him to understand how serious this was. Neither had her mother, Faylene, the day she’d met Anne’s new boss, Alvin Jacobs. She’d seen Faylene’s eyes light up when she saw Mr. Jacobs and, worse, she’d seen Mr. Jacobs’s response. When Mr. Jacobs announced that his granddaughter had just become engaged, Faylene, overdosed on romantic bliss, waxed poetically about planning her daughter Anne’s wedding as though it was an upcoming event.
Anne should never have let her mother’s remark go unchallenged. Any other time, she would have corrected Faylene’s imaginative claim. But Mr. Jacobs had been instantly reassured that hiring Anne had been inspired. Anne had let it go, intending to arrange a quiet breakup with her imaginary fiancé once she’d proved to Mr. Jacobs that she didn’t need a husband and children to sell baby goods. But the charade had gotten out of hand.
To buy time to untangle the problem, Anne made her second mistake by following her mother’s advice and visiting Bettina to contract for a Bachelor-in-a-Box. Then came the photograph, and from the first moment she saw Mitchell Dane she’d felt a connection, as if he were some kindred spirit as familiar with loneliness as she was.
The week after, Faylene had seen Mitchell’s picture and gone into total ecstasy. “He’s perfect, Anne,” she’d insisted. “He looks regal, heroic and,” Faylene had added with a softness Anne hadn’t expected, “as much in need of someone to care about him as you are. All we have to do is find the man in this picture.”
“Mother, he’s just a model,” she’d protested. “Bettina probably doesn’t even know him. He’s like all her bachelors—exciting, dangerous and delicious—because he isn’t accessible. Besides, I am absolutely not interested in a man. I don’t know how I ever let you get me into this.”
“But he’s not one of those corporate executives you go out with.”
“Went out with,” Anne corrected with a pang. She considered herself a smart woman but her whirlwind courtship with Phillip and the embarrassment of being used and dumped had taught her a lesson: don’t trust a man who’ll do anything to be successful and don’t marry one who isn’t.
“Bettina says Mitchell is single, a wanderer who never stays in one place.”
“That’s the fictitious background Bettina supplied, Mother. Mitchell isn’t real. He’s probably a fertilizer salesman from Yazoo City, Mississippi.”
But she didn’t believe that. Logically, she knew she was creating a man to match her fantasy, a man she’d never have. His expression said sad, but the voice on the phone was full of life. A man who flew by the seat of his pants. A man who was free, the one thing she longed to be. Her sisters were happily married; they’d inherited all the nesting ability they needed from Faylene. Anne, well, what she might have wanted didn’t matter. She had to be responsible. But, unlike her father, she also had to be a success.
The Georgia sunlight streaming through her bedroom window caught the stone in her phony engagement ring—mistake number three—and winked mockingly. She’d bought the ring the week after the photograph from Bettina arrived. It was a constant reminder