by Misty Simon
She wiped under her eyes and took a quick glance in the mirror hanging on the wall before heading back out into the kitchen. He heard her thank Frank for everything and then the swinging door whooshed shut. The tray could wait a few more seconds while he found his smile for the rest of the guests. Yeah, he was a good sport, but was he going to lose a piece of himself when Chelsea walked away? That remained to be seen.
****
Lunch went off without a hitch. Jack had played his part well, coming in to wrap his arm around her every once in a while or kissing the top of her head when he walked past. Nothing overt, but those kisses and touches had set something on fire inside her. She’d just have to extinguish that fire, to have any hope of living through the next few days.
Now everything was quiet in the big house. Mazzy had gone down for bed without much of a fight about forty minutes ago. Spending time with her grandparents was going to make the child spoiled, but Chelsea couldn’t make herself put her foot down. Normally they only saw Leigh and Hugh a couple of times a year, when her parents could get down to Bettleton. They talked often on the phone, yet it wasn’t the same.
Taking the baby monitor with her, Chelsea descended the stairs. She wanted a book to read in bed. She’d mistakenly assumed she’d be so busy she’d fall exhausted into bed every night; however, so much was already laid out in the lists from Paige that she had a free night.
Those free moments were going to be precious as the wedding lead-up really got into swing tomorrow, so she might as well take advantage now. She could seek out Jack, but she didn’t want to intrude more than she already had. She wished she had never said anything to her mom about an engagement.
And yet there was a part of her that enjoyed having a man’s attention for the first time in a long while. That kind of thinking was not going to do her any good, though.
In the library, she went straight to the bookshelves filled with paperbacks.
“Did Mazzy go down okay?” Jack said from behind her.
She hadn’t seen him sitting in the chair facing the unlit fireplace. With her hand on her heart to calm its racing, she cleared her throat.
“Um, yes, she went down just fine, thanks. I think today has been a big day, and we have a whole lot more in front of us. I’m going to have to make sure she gets a daily nap if I don’t want her to be grumpy.” She was rambling but couldn’t seem to stop herself. Jack had stood up, looking relaxed and casual in a way that made her feel anything but casual or relaxed.
Low-slung jeans sat on his slim hips, a dark green T-shirt fit him to perfection and ended only inches below the waist of the jeans. His dark hair was slightly tousled and his green eyes sparkled in the low light of the library.
“I think she’s going to do fine. She’s a tough little girl and quite the comedian.” A slight curve in his lips told her he found her daughter a pleasure instead of the burden Paul had considered her.
“Well, thanks,” she said into the slight pause. “I guess I should go on upstairs. I’m not going to be the most pleasant of people, either, if I don’t get proper rest.”
As she went past him, he made a grab for her hand. She let him catch it, anticipating the way his palm would feel against hers. They’d been good friends once, and he’d held her hand on numerous occasions when they’d gone hiking or to help her out of a car when she and Paige needed to be driven around. He was a toucher. She hadn’t appreciated that quality enough until it was totally absent with Paul.
This thinking about her ex-husband had to stop. It was completely inappropriate to the situation. Paul and Jack had nothing in common and didn’t need to. Chelsea was not looking for another long-term commitment; she just needed him to play his part until Sunday.
“Hey, do you have a few moments before you head up?” Jack played with her fingers, touching each of the pads in a rhythm only he was privy to.
“Um, sure.” Perhaps they should take some time to discuss what their story was and how they were going to play those parts.
“Good. Meet me in the speakeasy in three minutes. I have to run up to my rooms for something. I’ll be right back. You know where everything is down there.” He loped out of the room, a tall, lean man with a backside she should not be staring at.
As she walked down the stairs to what normally would be a basement in any other house, she lectured herself. She would not let Jack be a rebound crush. For one thing, he was better than that, and for another, there was no hope there. She wouldn’t be moving back and he wouldn’t be moving to her. He liked her kid, sure, but that did not make any difference in the scheme of things.
Three minutes on the dot later, Jack bounded back down the stairs. Chelsea sat in one of the high-backed pub booths with her tightly clenched hands in her lap. How to start the conversation? It wasn’t as if she’d ever done anything like this before, so she didn’t know the rules. She’d read plenty of romance novels where the fake engagement turned into something more, but she wasn’t a heroine in a book and this was not going to end happily.
Clinking sounded behind her, and then there was Jack with two glasses of wine and a smile that made her wonder why no one had yet snapped up the town’s most eligible bachelor.
“I think we need to set some ground rules,” she blurted out.
“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. But first,” he nudged her glass toward her, “try this new wine I’m thinking about carrying. The winery is right over the next mountain. I was thinking it’d be nice to support someone local.”
She took a sip, rolled the fruity liquid around her tongue, and relaxed, something she hadn’t done in a long time. Though this conversation might not be terribly comfortable, she was sitting across from a man who had come to her rescue more times than she had thought, once she’d had time to run back over their years together. Of course Paige had always been there, but she’d realized Jack was in far more of her memories than she had anticipated.
That counted for something in her book. And while she didn’t relish the thought of using him, she didn’t think it was exactly like that.
“Very nice. I bet this will be a great addition to the speakeasy.”
“I’m glad you think so. It’s also the wine we’ll be serving at the wedding on Saturday.”
Which brought her right back to the point she’d been about to make before he distracted her. “Look, I think we need to get some sort of story ironed out, figure out the boundaries of what we’re going to do until after the wedding.” Something occurred to her and she gasped. “I didn’t even ask if you were dating someone. Oh, my, this isn’t going to get you in trouble with another woman, is it?” Her face was on fire with embarrassment. Thank God for the low lighting in the room.
He chuckled. “No, you’re not going to get me in trouble with another woman. There aren’t any in my life right now, so no worries.”
“Thank goodness.”
He peered at her over the rim of his wine glass. “What would you have done if I had a girlfriend?”
“I have no idea. Talk about awkward, though. My mom would have known right away I was lying.”
“Instead, you’re going to just lie to her for the week, then break up with me, and she’ll be none the wiser?” His eyes twinkled, but there was something more behind his words.
“When you put it like that, it sounds mercenary.” She plopped her chin into her hand, rimming her glass with her pointer finger. “I don’t like lying to her, and believe me when I say this is not exactly comfortable for me. But I just can’t face a room full of bachelors at a wedding. And I know for certain she wouldn’t just confine it to the wedding. Various single men would show up at every function this week, from the barbecue to the rehearsal dinner. Heck, she’d probably have some guy accidentally bump into us while we were having facials. I just don’t want that kind of pressure while I’m here on vacation.”
“So you’d rather pretend to be my fiancé?”
His words made her take a second look at him. “Is this goin
g to be really tough for you? We lost touch over the years, of course, but if you don’t think you can pull it off, I’ll figure something else out.”
He touched her hand, just the back of it, with a fingertip. “Don’t worry about it, Chelsea. I’m sure it won’t be a problem. And it’s only a week, right?”
“Right.” She gulped her wine as he continued touching her. She shouldn’t feel anything, with so little of their bodies touching, but there it was. That tingle from the point of contact all the way up to her brain. And since she had yet to finish her first glass of wine, there was no way it was the alcohol.
“Ground rules,” she blurted out before she could turn her hand over to clutch his fingers.
“Ground rules.” He slouched against the tall booth back. “Well, since I’ve never done anything like this before, I don’t have much to offer as far as ground rules go.”
“It’s not like I’ve ever done this before, either.”
“I wasn’t saying you had, so let’s just agree this is blind territory for both of us.” He rubbed his chin. “Is there anything I should know about your life now that’s different from before?”
“Like what?”
“Do you like broccoli now? Did you end up finishing college? Do you sleep in the nude?”
She leaned forward in her seat to swat him for that last one. “I don’t think you need to know about my sleeping habits. Let’s see. We could have fallen in love by email and talking on the phone. Since we’ve known each other forever, it’s not a sudden thing so much as just seeing each other in a different light.”
“True.”
“So we’re getting married because we know we want to be together forever, but we’re going to have a long engagement and continue to get to know each other as full-fledged adults instead of all those days together as kids.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“I’m still going home after the wedding to tie things up, but I’m going to be coming back after I quit my job, to find something up here.”
“Okay.”
“Aren’t you going to help at all?” She blew a breath out, ruffling her bangs.
“Sorry,” he said with a smile. “I think you should change the part about finding something up here, though. Don’t you think most people will assume you’re going to help me with the inn? Plus, jobs of your caliber are in short supply in this area.”
“I hadn’t thought about that.”
“See, I helped.”
She swatted him again, and this time he caught her hand.
“I brought something down for you. I hope it fits, because I’m not sure about getting it refitted.”
He placed a beautiful emerald set in a ring of diamonds on her left ring finger. Her breath caught as she stuck her hand out in front of her, turning it left and right. It was the most stunning ring she had ever seen. And it fit perfectly.
“Where did you get this on such short notice? Were you engaged before?”
“Nah, it was my grandmother’s engagement ring.” He took a healthy swig of his own wine.
****
The ring fit as if it had been made for her. Jack fought back the sigh rising in his chest. Of course it did. Could fate have been any crueler to him? He wouldn’t deny there had been a part of him who’d had fantasies about Chelsea coming up here, falling in love with the area all over again, and the two of them getting to know each other as more than teenagers. Maybe she would have taken his calls and gone out with him a few times when she came back for visits. And that was him settling in a way he hadn’t settled before now.
“Okay, so the ring’s out of the way. I think we have the story straight. Now what should I expect this week?” he said, reminding himself this was temporary. The first time he’d been engaged and it wouldn’t last more than a week, with him being dumped at the end. Great.
She continued to look at the emerald his grandmother had worn for all fifty-seven years of her marriage. Shifting it back and forth on her hand brought light and heat to a stone he had always thought of as cold, or utilitarian at the least. On her it could have been the sun.
“Well, I imagine my mom is probably going to pull for you to be at most of the family stuff, but I can make excuses, if you want. You do have a business to run, and she can’t expect you to be at every function.” Her amber eyes glowed in the soft candlelight of the wall sconce.
“I can probably make most of them.” He shrugged. “I already know your family, so it’s not as if I’m going to be uncomfortable.”
“No, you’re just going to be playing a part. If it means anything, I told my mom to keep it to herself, so I’ll only have my family to tell about the break-up, if that’s any consolation.”
“No big deal. But we might want to come up with some big romantic way that I proposed. I don’t think your mom is going to go with me just handing you the ring over the table.”
“You proposed out in the gazebo where Belinda is going to get married. It was a moonlit night, my first night here, and you didn’t want another minute to go by without asking me on bended knee to make a forever life with you.”
She painted a picture he could see in his head. The way the trailing moonflowers would have highlighted her hair, even muted in the near dark, the way the tiny sparkle lights would have twinkled, twined around the white wood structure, and glowed against her creamy skin. The moonlight would have reflected in her amber eyes, lighting them up when he presented her with the ring. The words would have flowed from his mouth in his nervousness.
He cut himself off before he could go further. This was unnecessary torture. It also wouldn’t change their circumstances or make the vision any less false.
“Sounds great.” He raised his glass. “To our one-week engagement.”
She clinked her glass to his. What should have been a bright noise rang hollow.
Chapter Five
“Bye, Mommy, bye!” Mazzy waved furiously at Chelsea from her position in the front foyer of the inn Tuesday morning. As she did, she took a step closer to Jack’s side. Chelsea was leaving Mazzy here with Leigh for a few hours while she ran errands. He looked forward to more of the little girl’s antics, but was not especially ready to be grilled by Leigh.
“Have a good day, sweetheart.” Chelsea bent down to place a kiss on each of the girl’s cheeks and then one on her nose.
“You, too, Mommy.” With her words, she took another step toward him.
Chelsea walked backwards in the direction of the door, waving, each curve moving in enticing ways he should not be noticing. With each wave, Mazzy inched another fraction of a step toward him.
Because of her tiny feet it took a little while, but eventually she was up against his leg and grinning at him like the Cheshire cat the moment her mother closed the door.
Bouncing one finger off his knee, then two, then one again, she suddenly turned shy, looking at her shiny black shoes. “So, Big Man, you want to play Candyland with me today?” When she gestured for him to come closer, he bent at the waist, unable to resist the magic of this little girl. “Grammy is not so good at losing, and I don’t want her to have to cheat,” she whispered in a loud voice.
He had a ton of things to do today. And yet Leigh wouldn’t talk about the engagement in front of Mazzy until Chelsea gave her the okay. It was the perfect solution. Plus, his business hinged on accommodating his guests.
Or at least that was the excuse he allowed himself to believe while he went to find the old board game in the attic. He handed his list to Adele as he passed her in the third floor hallway.
****
Three hours later, Chelsea had a fifth of her list done and some artful highlights in her brown hair. Feeling good, she walked into the parlor to find her daughter sound asleep on the floor, swaddled in her blanket, with her favorite teddy under her arm.
Mazzy’s other hand rested on the gingerbread man in her favorite game. At some point she must have moved her arm and swept the cards from the pile into a rainbow of mo
ves across the multicolored board. Chelsea took a moment to just enjoy the sight of her little tornado at a standstill.
Looking around the room for her mother, she was instead hit by the sight of the very attractive Jack Barton sprawled in the big wing-backed chair near the fireplace. His normally neat hair was standing up on end, his long arms draped over the arms of the chair, his long legs thrust out in front of him. He, too, was out like a light. She couldn’t imagine this was his normal routine. Mazzy must have worn him out at some point.
Silently snickering, she backed out of the room, pulling the door closed, then went in search of her mother, who should have been watching her daughter. She found the other woman in the kitchen. No surprise there.
“So anyway, Frank, the mashed potatoes were divine yesterday afternoon, but have you thought of adding a hint of rosemary to the mix? It flavors the potatoes just right and makes the whole thing pop.”
Frank stood at the stove, using a spoon to stir the big pot on the range top, nodding at her mom and smiling. Leave it to her mom to find the kitchen and start trying to run it. Mazzy’s monitor stood right next to her on the counter she leaned against.
“Why doesn’t it surprise me to find you here?” Chelsea stood in the doorway to the kitchen, resting a hip against the doorjamb to keep the swinging door open.
“Oh, come in, hon. Frank and I were just discussing the merits of herbs.”
“Really? Or were you just telling Frank how to make a wonderful dish more like you would have.”
Her mother laughed and blushed. “You caught me.”
“I always appreciate talking food with someone, Leigh, so you don’t worry about trying to help me out. Jack always tells me to spice things up a bit, so I value your opinion.” Frank set down his spoon on a cradle Chelsea would have sworn was a mermaid without a top on—fully anatomically correct.