by Lisa Jackson
Valerie sucked in a surprised breath. Her eyes widened, and she stared at him as if he truly had gone mad. “Twenty-five thousand?” she repeated.
“Plus expenses.”
She raised her chin a fraction, but he sensed she was wavering.
“I’m not for sale, Mr. Donovan.”
“Think of it as rent.”
Her eyebrows pulled together. “Rent? That’s worse!”
But he could hear the hesitation in her voice, knew she was mulling over his offer. He felt a twinge of disappointment. So she did have a price, after all. “Look, you need a job, and I need you.”
“Not me—any woman.”
He shook his head. “A woman who will be believable as my fiancée. Neither Stowell nor his daughter would believe I’d just linked up with anyone.”
“If you’re trying to flatter me—”
“I am. And you should be. I’ve looked at women from every agency in town. None of them fit the bill. In order for someone to pose as my bride to be, she’s got to be everything I’d want in a wife. She has to be more than beautiful, Valerie. She has to be smart, savvy and have a sense of humor.”
“You don’t know the first thing about me!”
A muscle worked in his jaw. “Twenty-five thousand is a helluva lot of money for two weeks’ work, which I should remind you is simply cruising up the Pacific coast on a private yacht, docking at Portland, Seattle, Victoria and anywhere else we want to! All you have to do is pretend to like me a little.”
“That might be impossible,” she shot back. What arrogance! “I think I’d have to put in three years at some Hollywood drama school before I could pull off an act like that.”
He grinned—that irreverent slash of white that took her breath away.
“I’ll make it easy on you,” he said. “I’ll try my best to be irresistible.”
“You just don’t know when to give up, do you?”
“I know what I want.” He pierced her with his narrowed eyes. Valerie swallowed against a suddenly dry throat. “And you think that whatever it is can be bought.”
“Can’t it?” he goaded.
Her temper, already strung tight, snapped. She crossed the small room in three swift strides and positioned herself squarely in front of Hale. “I came to Donovan Enterprises for a job, a real job! I can audit your books or program your computers. I’ve had experience working with attorneys as well as the IRS and I’ve even made coffee for the boss when I worked in the secretarial pool. But I’ve never, never been asked to pretend to be the boss’s mistress!”
She was so close he could feel the heat radiating from her, see fire sparking in her eyes. “I didn’t ask you to be my mistress,” he said succinctly.
“Yet—”
“I don’t intend to.”
Pursing her lips, she said tautly, “I sincerely hope not, Mr. Donovan. Just because I didn’t file a complaint against my boss at Liddell doesn’t mean I’ll go along with anything as cheap as—”
He caught her by the hand. “Twenty-five grand isn’t cheap,” he said quickly, gripping her wrist. His nostrils flared, and his eyes sparked. “And don’t get the wrong impression about me. If I wanted to sleep with you, I wouldn’t go about it this way.”
She wanted to slap him, but the fingers curling over her wrist clenched so tightly she barely dared to breathe. There was a power running through him as charged as an electric current, leashed by the thin hold he was keeping on his patience. And yet, she couldn’t help bait him. “No?” she goaded, tilting her head back. “And just how would you go about seducing me?”
“You want a demonstration?” He slid his jaw to one side. His gaze, as fierce and bright as a silvery moon, delved into hers, then shifted pointedly to her mouth.
Valerie’s breath lodged deep in her throat. Unconsciously she licked her lips. Hale stiffened, his gaze moving lazily from her lips to her eyes and back to the corner of her mouth.
She watched as his Adam’s apple worked. For a breathless second she was sure he was going to kiss her. Her knees went weak at the thought that she’d pushed him too far. “I don’t think a demonstration would be such a good idea,” she whispered.
“Neither do I,” he agreed, his mouth a thin line, his voice raw. Dropping her wrist, he stepped back a few paces, leaning his back against the wall and ramming his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “What I’m offering you, Ms. Pryce, is the chance to live the life of a princess for two weeks. And I’m willing to pay you very well for the opportunity. Most women—”
“I’m not like most women.”
His head snapped up, and he impaled her with his sharp, magnetic gaze again. “I know. That’s why I want you.”
Her heart began to pound so crazily she thought he could surely hear it.
“Do we have a deal?”
If she had any pride at all, she thought, she would tell him to get out, to take his bloody offer and shove it. But she wasn’t stupid, and unfortunately she needed the money. Twenty-five thousand dollars would go a long way to pay off her loan from college, help pay her mother’s bills and leave enough of a nest egg to tide her over until she could find another job.
But what kind of strings were attached? She didn’t know him, and couldn’t let herself trust him. Why did she feel he was holding something back?
From the corner of her eye, she noticed Shamus sneaking toward the drapes. Valerie stalled. “Maybe I should talk this over with my roommate,” she said.
“Your roommate?” He glanced around the room, and Valerie realized he was looking for any trace of a man.
Shamus ducked behind her rolltop desk. “Yes, uh, he and I discuss everything.”
“He?” he repeated, turning back so his eyes could bore into hers. “But I thought—”
“Oh, it’s nothing like that,” she said hastily, enjoying her joke. “Very platonic . . .”
Hale glanced meaningfully down at the daybed. “Platonic.” His jaw tightened, and at that moment Shamus poked his head from under the desk and sauntered over to Valerie, who reached down to pick him up.
“Meet Shamus,” she said with a bright smile. “My roommate.”
Hale wasn’t amused. His eyes grew dark. Glancing pointedly at his watch, he muttered, “Our five minutes are over. So what’s it going to be, Ms. Pryce?”
Valerie dropped the cat on the couch. She swallowed hard, trying to find her voice. “Okay,” she finally agreed, trying to think rationally while her thoughts were spinning out of control. If she were going along with his crazy plan, she wanted some concessions—big concessions. “I’ll do it. On . . . one—make that two—conditions.”
“Name them.”
“One—I don’t sleep with you.”
He twisted his lips into a lazy, disarming smile that caught her completely off guard.
“Agreed.”
“Two—I want a contract that spells out the terms of my employment. And I want to work for you not just for two weeks, but for six months.”
He clenched his jaw. “No way—”
“Oh, yes!” she insisted. “I want to prove to you that I can make it at Donovan Enterprises, and not just as a bimbo strutting around in a bikini, batting my eyelashes at you while we’re sailing the seven seas!”
“Just one ocean,” he corrected her.
“Look, Mr. Donovan—”
“Hale. We’re engaged. Remember?”
“ ‘Hale,’ ” she repeated, “I’ve worked long and hard to get where I have. Just give me a chance. After the initial two weeks, I’ll work for the same salary I was getting at Liddell.”
“And how will we explain that we’re no longer engaged?”
“Those things happen all the time.”
“Not to me.”
“This scheme was your idea,” she reminded him. “It’s got to be easier to break a phony betrothal than to pretend it exists.”
“It would make more sense if we never saw each other again.”
“Maybe so,” sh
e said, gambling. “But it’s the only way I’ll go along with it.”
Hale hesitated as he reined in his temper. He shoved one hand through his hair in frustration. “You drive a hard bargain, Valerie.”
“So do you.”
Reaching into the pocket of his jacket, he withdrew an employment contract. “Got a pen?”
She found one in her purse and handed it to him.
Before he signed, he eyed her. “You are single, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Very.”
“Is there anything else that would prevent you from becoming my wife?”
She smiled at that. “You mean besides common sense? No.”
“Good.” Hesitating only a second, he pulled off the cap of the pen with his teeth, read the document, made a few quick slashes and scrawled an additional paragraph. After signing, he handed the contract to her.
She read it slowly, paragraph by straightforward paragraph. Hale had scratched in an additional clause, which lengthened the term of her employment from two weeks to six months and allowed her a salary of five hundred dollars more per month than she’d earned at Liddell. All in all, her employment with Donovan Enterprises was almost too good to be true.
Her stomach fluttered and her palms began to sweat.
“Satisfied?” he asked.
Nodding, she shoved aside all her nagging doubts, took the pen from his outstretched hand, then signed her name quickly on the line next to his. “There you go,” she said, handing him back the single sheet. “When do I start?”
With a grin, he said, “Right now.”
“Now—but I can’t!”
Hale’s eyes narrowed angrily. “We have less than forty-eight hours to get to know each other. I think we’d better get started.”
“But—”
“Listen, Valerie,” he said coldly. “You just signed on—the meter’s running.” He flopped onto the couch and leaned back as if he were incredibly weary. “Start at the beginning. Where you were born, if your parents are living and where. Tell me about your brothers and sisters—and if you’ve been married before.”
The magnitude of what she’d just done hit her full force. There were a lot of things she’d rather keep secret from Hale Donovan—a private side of her she’d like to remain that way. “Just how much do you want to know about me?” she asked boldly, already regretting that she’d signed his damned contract.
“Everything.”
She cleared her throat. “There are some things that are private—I don’t share them with anyone.”
He sighed, and some of his toughness seemed to disappear.
Closing his eyes, he leaned his head against the back of the sofa and said, “Everyone is entitled to privacy. I’m not trying to turn you inside out. I just need to know that I’m not in for any surprises.”
“Such as?”
“Such as a husband or boyfriend who’ll want to start throwing punches the next time he sees me.”
“I already told you I wasn’t married.”
“No boyfriends at all?”
“Not currently.”
He relaxed a bit. The lines around his mouth vanished. “Good. Another man would be hard to explain.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” she said, thinking fleetingly of Luke. She wondered if she should mention him, but decided against it. Luke was long gone—somewhere in Montana by now—and Valerie didn’t want to think about him. Ever.
“Let’s get started,” Hale said, straightening. “Where did we meet? In Union Square? The Caribbean? At the office?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, already resenting her part in this deception. “I’ll leave the lies to you.”
“I’m not very good at lying.”
“Then you should have come up with another idea.”
“It’s too late now,” he said, his voice stone cold. “I already had our engagement announced in the papers.”
“You what?”
“It’ll be in the next edition.”
“But you didn’t even know I’d agree!” she gasped, outraged. She thought of her mother and the stack of newspapers at her bedside. Surely she would read the news!
“Of course I did. Everyone has a price.”
Valerie wanted to argue the fact, but couldn’t. He’d bought her, hadn’t he? She shuddered inside. The ink on her employment agreement wasn’t even dry and she was already second-guessing herself, wondering if she’d just made a deal with the devil himself.
CHAPTER 3
“Okay,” Hale said, studying Shamus with a wary eye. “Other than what’s written on your résumé and that you live here with this friendly guy”—he tried to pet the tabby’s striped head, but Shamus backed away, hissed loudly, then streaked across the room to the French doors—“what else should I know about you?” He turned his attention from the cat to Valerie.
“You want to know my background,” she murmured, feeling stripped bare under Hale’s steady gaze. For something to do, she opened the doors to the balcony, and as the cat slunk out, a warm, moist breeze invaded the room.
“Right. All the high points. You can tell me on the way to dinner.”
“Dinner?”
“And shopping,” he said, starting for the door.
Things were moving much too quickly. “Shopping—for what?” “An engagement ring, for starters.”
“No way! I’m not going to—”
“Sure you are,” Hale cut in. “This has got to look convincing. And as far as the rest, you’ll need clothes for the cruise.”
“I have clothes.”
He cast a glance toward her ridiculously small closet. “The Stowells dress for dinner every night—and I’m not talking about cutoff jeans and flip-flops. I mean they dress in formal attire. You’ll need at least ten designer dresses—some evening gowns to start with—”
“Slow down,” Valerie said. “I agreed to pretend to be your fiancée, but I didn’t say I’d change anything about me.”
“You’ll have to fit in or Stowell will know something’s up.”
“Fit in?” she threw back at him. “I thought I was the perfect woman—the only one who would do.”
“You are.”
“Then you’ll have to take me as I am, which is not, by the way, anything close to uppercrust. I’m just a working girl trying to make something of myself, and you and William Stowell and the rest of the world will have to accept it!”
Hale frowned, his brows forming a thick, single line across his forehead.
“You wanted the facts—well, you’re going to get them,” she went on, warming to her subject. “I was born in Phoenix, Arizona. My folks moved to L.A. when I was five and we stayed there until I was thirteen, when my father died of a heart attack. I don’t have any brothers or sisters and I’ve never been married. I put myself through UCLA by taking small acting parts—mainly commercials—and modeling assignments. I graduated and landed a job at Liddell, but you know all about that—”
“Not all,” he reminded her.
A blush, starting at the top of her shoulders, climbed up her neck and tinged her cheeks. Ignoring him, she said, “My mother’s name is Anna Pryce. She lives here in San Francisco and is recovering from an accident in which some idiot plowed into her car with a huge pickup, then took off. He’s never been found.”
“Hit and run?”
“Yes,” she said, cringing inside. “Fortunately she’s recovering, but she’s got a lot of time on her hands and she just happens to read the newspaper from the front page through the automobile ads. I doubt if she’ll miss our engagement announcement.”
“We can explain that.”
“Can we? I just came from her apartment, where I told her that I didn’t get the job at Donovan Enterprises. Her comment was that the guy that interviewed me wasn’t too smart.”
A crooked smile crept across his jaw. “I think I’d like to meet your mother.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll get your chance.” Angry with herse
lf, she walked onto the balcony, where Shamus was perched on the rail, eyeing gray-and-white sea gulls that swooped and floated on the wind overhead.
Hearing Hale’s footsteps behind her, she turned, squinting against the late-afternoon sunshine. “You know, Donovan, if we’re going to play this game, we’d better do it right. Otherwise your web of lies might start untangling. Just think what might happen if my mother called the editor at the Times, told him he’d got his facts wrong and demanded an apology—in the paper?”
“She wouldn’t.”
“You don’t know my mother.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder. “And you don’t know that William Stowell, or any of his family, doesn’t read the society news. If the Stowells see a retraction, instigated by my mother—”
“You’ve made your point.” He clamped his mouth shut.
“Good.” Feeling the warm breeze tangle her hair and brush her cheeks, Valerie stared once again at the view. The noise of the city sounded distant, and the fragrant scent of roses from the planters on the deck wafted in the air. She thought about her mother—how hurt she would be that Valerie hadn’t confided in her. “I think we’d better straighten things out with Mom, and fast.”
“I already said I’d meet her.”
“And charm the socks off her, right?”
“For starters.”
Valerie didn’t want to think about her mother’s reaction to Hale. The way Valerie’s luck was running, Anna Pryce would probably like the arrogant son-of-a-gun and welcome him as her future son-in-law! What a disaster that could be! “Listen, Hale, I don’t want to lie to Mom.”
“What’s this—a latent sense of conscience?”
“She’ll have to be told the truth,” Valerie said, thinking aloud. Her mother deserved to know she had no intention of marrying a man like Hale Donovan.
“No way,” he said, his smile fading. “I can’t take the chance.”
“Just my mother—no one else has to know.”
His smile collapsed. “Do you think I’d go to all this trouble, then sabotage myself? It’s only for a couple of weeks. Then, once the papers with Stowell are signed and we’re back on land, you can tell her anything you want.”