by Lisa Jackson
“In that case,” Jacob said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a little shell ring, the kind they sold on the boardwalk for three dollars. Celia laughed and held out her hand. Tears came to her eyes as he slipped it on.
“I love it,” she said.
“Next year I’ll replace it with coral,” Jacob joked.
“I can’t wait until we get to the starfish anniversary,” Celia said. Hand in hand they began walking the beach. A little ways down, Jacob stopped.
“Recognize where we are?”
Of course she did. Celia followed his gaze up to the boardwalk, and then to that special spot underneath it.
“Want to repeat history?” Celia said.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
“But first.” Jacob pulled her into him and kissed her deeply. Celia felt the sound of the ocean waves crashing onto the shore as she passionately kissed him back. Then the two ran for the spot where they had first made love, where Jacob would have proposed the first time, where they had been left wondering what happened to their love and why. Everything had come full circle. She was back. She was where she was always meant to be. Only this time she wasn’t just a summer girl, and Jacob wasn’t just a summer love. Celia Jensen was filled with a spirit of abandon, and love, but most of all, hope. Soul lifting, rejuvenating, unconditional hope.
HIS BRIDE TO BE
LISA JACKSON
CHAPTER 1
“Damn it, Leigh, I was counting on you!” Hale Donovan swore loudly, not caring that the door to his office was ajar and his secretary could hear his every word. He stretched the telephone cord tight, pacing across thick fawn-colored carpet and wishing he could ring Leigh Carmichael’s beautiful neck. As he glared out the window of his office, twenty stories above the crowded streets of San Francisco, he clenched his fingers tightly around the receiver. Outside, the lofty spires of the city’s skyscrapers rose against the vibrant California-blue sky.
Hale barely noticed—he was too furious.
All he could see was the entire deal with Stowell Investments going down the proverbial drain. He’d been a fool to trust Leigh; she was cut from the same cold cloth as his mother, Jenna Donovan, a woman he could barely remember.
“Hale, you still there, darling?” Leigh’s husky voice sounded over the wires, and she chuckled softly.
“Of course I’m still here,” he snapped back.
“Good. Then you understand.”
“What I understand is that you’re reneging. Why?” he asked, knowing Leigh was trying to manipulate him. Again.
“I’m not interested in pretending,” she said sulkily.
He could almost hear the wheels turning in her mind half a world away.
“I can’t see ruining my vacation in Marseilles just to save your neck.”
“You picked one helluva time to tell me! The cruise starts Friday!”
“Well, then, if you want me to go so badly, maybe you should make the engagement official,” she suggested, her voice sultry and suggestive.
“What’re you trying to do, Leigh? You know the whole thing’s an act.”
“Not to me. The only way I’ll come back to San Francisco and pose as your fiancée is if you really want me to be your wife!”
Shoving one hand through his hair in frustration, Hale dropped to the corner of his desk. His eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he conjured up her face—a gorgeous face—with high cheekbones, pouty lips and ice-cold jade-green eyes. “Just what is it you want, Leigh? A ring?”
“Not just any ring, Hale. A diamond ring with at least three sparkling carats, and a promise that we’ll walk down the aisle within the next two months.”
He laughed. She was joking. She had to be! Their affair had ended six months before and they were both happier without the entanglements of a relationship. He yanked off his tie and slung it over the back of his chair. “Look, Leigh, I don’t have time for games.”
“This isn’t a game.”
For the first time he heard the undercurrents in her voice—the thread of steel running through her words. “I don’t want marriage, Leigh. I’m not cut out for it. Neither are you.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” she wheedled. “I think I’d be perfectly content to become Mrs. Hale Donovan.”
“Damn it, Leigh—”
“Call me back if you change your mind.”
The receiver on her end of the line clicked loudly in his ear.
Muttering, Hale slammed the receiver back into its cradle. In a way he was relieved. Two weeks of pretending to be in love with Leigh would have been hell. However, he needed a woman to pose as his wife-to-be before he set sail on William Stowell’s yacht on Friday. Only a fiancée would prevent Stowell’s daughter, Regina, from throwing herself at him.
Frowning, he strode to the bar and splashed brandy into a short crystal glass. He wanted to buy out William Stowell so badly he could taste it, but he wasn’t willing to marry William’s daughter, Regina, just to clinch the deal. Unfortunately she was scheduled on the cruise, as well.
Twenty years old, spoiled and sullen, Regina had continually pursued Hale for the past six months. Hale wasn’t interested. Not in Regina, and especially not in marriage.
As far as he was concerned, marriage was a trap. What he needed was a woman—a woman he didn’t know—a woman who would agree to pose as his intended for two weeks, then conveniently drop out of sight once he’d bought out William Stowell’s shares of Stowell Investment Company. Hale’s lips compressed into a cold grimace as he sipped his brandy. He would call Paul Hastings in Personnel and tell Paul to find him a woman who had beauty, brains, charm and, most important of all, a vast, unsatiated greed!
Valerie Pryce shifted uneasily in her chair and waited. Across an expansive mahogany desk, the personnel director of Donovan Enterprises studied her résumé as if it were the Emancipation Proclamation.
A short man with a neatly cropped red beard, stiff white shirt and expensive pin-striped suit, Paul Hastings fingered his collar. “You graduated from UCLA in business two years ago.”
“That’s right.” Valerie managed a smile that felt forced. She couldn’t let Hastings know how much she needed a job—any job.
“And while you went to school you supported yourself by modeling and acting?”
“Just a few commercials and a small role on a soap opera.” What did that have to do with anything? she wondered. Smoothing her skirt and hoping she didn’t look as nervous as she felt, she met his gaze evenly.
“But you didn’t want an acting career?”
“The jobs dried up.”
“Oh.” He scanned the first page. “You’re single.”
Valerie bristled a little, but reminded herself that she needed this job. “Yes.”
“Never been married?”
“ No.”
“What about boyfriends?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business,” she said, clamping her hands over the arms of her chair.
He lifted a palm. “You’re right, of course. Just asking.” Paul tilted his chair back and stared at her, his eyes narrowing behind thick glasses as he took in her features. “I’d like you to meet Hale Donovan.”
“The president of the company?” she repeated, stunned. Good Lord, why?
Stuffing her résumé into a file, Paul chuckled. “Around here we refer to him as God . . . or Lucifer. Depending on his mood.”
“Sounds charming,” Valerie observed.
“He can be.” Paul dialed the phone, spoke quickly into the receiver, then shoved back his chair and led Valerie through a maze of hallways to a private elevator. He punched out the number for the twentieth floor, and the doors slid shut.
“Is it normal for anyone applying for a job as an administrative assistant to meet Mr. Donovan?” she asked as the elevator groaned and started to climb.
“It is when they’re applying to become Mr. Donovan’s personal assistant.”
Valerie nearly gasped. Person
al assistant to Hale Donovan? “That’s the job?”
Paul slanted her a nervous glance. “It just opened up yesterday afternoon. Ah, here we are.” He waited for her to exit, waved at a tiny gray-haired receptionist behind a spacious desk and smiled. “He’s expecting us, Madge.”
Without missing a beat at her computer keyboard, Madge nodded and Paul shoved open one of two gleaming cherry-wood doors.
Valerie drew in a deep breath. Since she’d first set foot inside Donovan Enterprises less than an hour before, she’d been shuffled from one office to another, spoken with several assistants in personnel and finally landed here, in front of Hale Donovan’s office, reading his name engraved in brass as she was bustled inside. She braced herself. She hadn’t expected an interview with God himself.
Hale heard the door open and wished Paul Hastings would just go away. Since the previous afternoon, when he’d called and demanded to meet a woman to pose as his bride to be, he’d interviewed nearly forty would-be Mrs. Hale Donovans. Forty of the most self-centered, vain and nervous women he’d ever seen. None had come even close. He couldn’t imagine spending two hours cooped up with any of them, and the thought of two weeks aboard a yacht as he pretended to care about one of those shallow, self-directed women turned his stomach.
He was beginning to think his plan wasn’t worth the effort.
Paul cleared his throat.
Rubbing the back of his neck, Hale turned, uninterested until his gaze collided with the serious eyes of a tall, slender woman who held herself with a bearing that could only be described as regal. Her hair was honey blond, highlighted with pale streaks and swept away from her face in a French braid. Wearing a magenta blouse and black skirt that matched her jacket, she crossed the room.
Large, intelligent hazel eyes rimmed in curling dark lashes peered at him, and the tilt of her chin was bold, nearly defiant. Her cheekbones were high, tinged pink, and her lips were curved into a wary smile. “Funny,” she said, staring boldly at Hale, “I never pictured God wearing blue jeans.”
Paul inhaled swiftly and looked as if he’d just swallowed something much too large for his throat. Choking, he shot the woman a warning glance and made hasty introductions. “Hale Donovan, this is—”
“Valerie Pryce,” she said, extending her hand.
Hale clasped her slim fingers, and was surprised at the strength in her grip.
“Ms. Pryce brought her résumé in this afternoon. She’s looking for a job with the company.”
“She’s not from an agency?” Hale was surprised—he’d pegged Valerie for a model, a sophisticated New York type.
Paul shook his head. “No, she’s a walk-in, but I think she’ll work out,” he said, eyeing Valerie curiously. “Her résumé’s in here.” He placed the file folder on the corner of Hale’s desk. “Keep me posted.”
“I will.”
Paul exited, closing the door behind him.
“I think you made him nervous,” Hale said, amusement flickering in his gaze.
“I didn’t mean to.”
Hale twisted his thin lips. “He’s had a long day.”
“So I gathered.” She watched this man cautiously. He simply wasn’t a typical executive, at least not in her opinion. Dressed in faded jeans and a blue cambric shirt with its sleeves shoved over his forearms, he looked as though he belonged on a ranch, or in the back lot of a movie studio, working as a stuntman on a B-grade Western, not in a chrome-and-glass office decorated with metal objets d’art and tan leather.
His hair needed to be trimmed; black locks curled over his collar and his jaw was dark with a day’s growth of beard. His features, all angles and blades, fitted into a face that was too rugged to be called Hollywood handsome. A long nose separated hollow cheeks and stopped just short of a thin, almost cruel mouth. His looks might have been classified as severe, had it not been for his eyes. Steel gray and deep set, guarded by thick black brows and long straight lashes, they were lit by an inner spark, a flicker of humor.
He picked up her résumé, scanning it as he crossed an expanse of thick carpet to an overstuffed leather chair.
She noticed how easily his legs and buttocks moved beneath the denim—fluidly, gracefully, though she sensed a restlessness to him. He seemed to have the coiled energy of a caged animal.
“You worked for Liddell International?”
“Two years.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Why’d you quit?”
“It was time,” she said.
“It is my business, you know.”
“Only if you hire me.”
Sighing, he dropped onto the arm of the contemporary chair. His gaze never left hers. “What happened? Liddell is a great company.”
There was no reason to lie. He’d find out soon enough. “My boss and I had a . . . disagreement.”
“About?”
Her lips twisted cynically. “Personal rights.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning he came on to me, okay?” she shot back angrily. “We were working late, he made a pass, I didn’t respond and my career at Liddell died.” There was more to it, of course. But she didn’t think the fact that Brian Liddell, Jr. had expected her to sleep with him was any of Donovan’s business.
Hale was staring at her. “That’s sexual harassment,” he said softly.
“I know.”
“You could sue.”
Drawing in a deep breath, she whispered, “I decided I’d just rather forget it. Besides, I don’t have time for a lawsuit. I need to make a living.”
Hale tried to ignore the compassion that moved him. He hadn’t misinterpreted the flicker of pain in her eyes. Whatever had happened at Liddell had been more than just a simple come-on. Her hands shook a little as she tucked them into the pockets of her jacket. “Would you like a drink?” Standing, he crossed to the bar.
“No, thanks.”
“You’re sure?”
“I think I’ll wait until after the interview.” She seemed to draw from an inner strength, and though she had paled, she was facing him squarely again, having regained her composure.
“Did Paul tell you about the job?” Hale asked, opening louvered doors to the bar. Crystal stemware and shiny bottles sparkled from the soft recessed lights hidden above the mirrored backdrop.
“He didn’t get that far. In fact, he was a little vague about the particulars,” she said, deciding to get to the point. “All he told me is that I’m interviewing to become your personal assistant.”
Hale’s brows quirked as he reached for an opened bottle of brandy and a glass. “That’s one way of putting it.”
“Give me another.”
He didn’t turn around, but his gray gaze caught hers in the reflection of the mirror. “What I’m looking for, Ms. Pryce, is a woman who will pose as my fiancée for the next two weeks.”
“Your fiancée?” she repeated.
He saw her catch her breath. A shadow of disappointment clouded her eyes, and she actually blushed.
“But I thought . . .”
“Paul should have been straight with you.”
“It would have helped!” she snapped, her cheeks flaming. “What is this?”
“A simple business proposition,” he replied, bemused at her outrage. At least he’d shocked her out of whatever secret was tormenting her.
“I don’t like the sound of it.”
“Just listen,” he suggested, striding back to his desk and leaning a jean-clad hip against it. “I’m trying to buy out William Stowell of Stowell Investments. He and I are planning to hammer out a deal next week aboard his yacht. We’ll be sailing up the coast to Canada. Unfortunately his daughter, Regina, is coming along, and William thinks I should marry her. Regina seems to agree.” The corners of his mouth tightened. “I don’t.”
“So why don’t you tell her so?”
Hale smiled faintly. “I have. More times than I want to count. She doesn’t believe me. Neither does her father.”
“You expect me
to believe this?”
“It’s true.” Taking a long swallow of scotch, he studied her before placing the empty glass on his desk.
“It’s crazy.”
“A little,” he agreed, shrugging. “But why would I make it up?”
Good point!
“Besides, it ensures me the company of a beautiful woman,” he added, his eyes glinting.
“Does it?” She drew an outraged breath, slinging the strap of her purse over her shoulder with more aggression than necessary.
“The job is yours if you want it.”
“No way.”
“It could be interesting.”
Was he serious? “What I need is a real job, Mr. Donovan. Not some insane scheme where I pose as your mistress. I didn’t go to night school for three years to be paid to fawn all over you for two weeks. I think you’d better find someone else.”
“There isn’t time.”
“Isn’t time? Give me a break! I’m sure if you looked hard enough you could find any number of women who’d want to play house with you on a cruise. I just don’t happen to be one of them.”
“I’ll make it worth your while.”
“I guess you didn’t hear me, Mr. Donovan. I’m not interested.” She turned on her heel and marched through the double doors, sweeping past Madge in a cloud of indignation. How could she have been so stupid? Assistant to the president! Ha! The problem with anything that looks too good to be true is that it usually is!
Slamming her palm against the elevator call button, she fumed, waiting impatiently. From the corner of her eye she saw Hale Donovan, his jaw set as he strode toward her.
“Don’t you want to hear me out?” he asked.
“No!”
“We haven’t even talked about money.”
“We don’t need to.”
A soft bell rang, and the elevator’s doors parted. Gratefully Valerie stepped inside.
Hale followed, blocking the doors with his shoulder. “Give me five minutes. I’ll bet I can convince you.”
The nerve of the man! Narrowing her eyes, she hissed, “I don’t have a price tag.”