by Vanessa Vale
“It sounds pretty creepy,” I repeated. Mike wasn't a guy to sound so desperate, so out of control. He was a man who took charge and could handle any situation. Any woman. Except a crazy one...or his mother.
“Well, do you?”
“What?”
“Have a boyfriend.”
I sighed and placed the lingerie back on the counter. “No.”
“So, be my girlfriend.”
I swirled the phone cord with my finger as if I were back in high school. “I'm filling in for Veronica to make some extra money for grad school. I can't just drop everything and fly to Alaska.” And deal with your mother. If she discovered the little ruse, she'd kill me with her bare hands.
“I'll pay you.” I knew he was desperate now. “Whatever. Just come. The woman's bat shit crazy. I can't handle bat shit crazy.”
This Susan woman, or Mike's mother, both fit that description, so I couldn't be sure whom he was talking about. I'd never heard him talk this way before. He fit the typical alpha male stereotype: strong, assertive, protective and commanding. Adding all those caveman qualities with rock hard abs and a drop-dead smile, he was every woman's dream. On top of that, I'd heard Goldie and Veronica both hint that Mike was a man who liked to be in charge in a relationship. Dominant. And didn't that just burn my butter?
The fact that this Susan woman was falling over him, literally, was not much of a surprise. The fact that he hadn't found a woman to claim was.
I turned around and Jane and Goldie stood right behind me, so close I took a step back and bumped my hip against the counter. Goldie lifted one blonde eyebrow in a gesture that screamed 'tell me now.'
I put one hand over the receiver. “It's Mike Ostranski. He's at his uncle's in Alaska and he wants me to come up and pretend to be his girlfriend because there's a crazy woman who lives next door who wants to marry him and make babies. And his mother is helping her.” God, I was rambling.
“Is that all?” Goldie asked. “I thought there was a real problem.”
Knowing Mike could probably hear, I decided to be diplomatic. “I guess it's all relative. And it sounds like the woman's...um...bat shit crazy.” Again, since the description fit both women, I let Goldie decide for herself who I was talking about.
“So go help him out. Pretending to be his girlfriend won't be too much of a hardship.” Goldie cocked her head and gave me that look. “Unless you don't like that tall, ginger and handsome type.”
I darted my eyes between Jane and Goldie. Jane shrugged her shoulders and said, “She has a point.”
I covered up more of the phone, embarrassed even thinking Mike could hear what Goldie was saying. “Of course, I do,” I hissed. “Every woman in town thinks he's hot. But Alaska? To be his fake girlfriend? Mrs. O's there. She never really liked me.”
I'd always wanted to go to Alaska, and being three thousand miles away from Goldie wouldn't be a hardship.
“Violet, I'm not deaf. I heard you the first time,” Goldie said. “You should go. It sounds like fun, and Claudine isn't so bad. Besides, Mike is one fine specimen of a man. If you don't do it, I will.”
I glanced at Jane, who just shrugged again.
I pictured the scene at the airport in Alaska when Mike picked up Goldie to be his girlfriend. Probably not what he had in mind, especially since Goldie had been married for over forty years.
“Goldie, Veronica and I switched places all the time so I didn't have to go to her karate class. I think maybe Mrs. O knew.”
Goldie gave me a serious look. “How old were you? Ten? Eleven?”
I nodded my head meekly. It did sound stupid when you put it that way. But I was still scared of the woman.
Goldie and Jane were right. I had a hot guy desperate for me, okay, not in the way I wanted, but still. He needed me, and I was debating. It wasn't very complicated. In fact, it was downright simple. “I guess I won't find a man working here, will I?” I asked.
Mike might not really want me, but working at Goldilocks with no summer adventure was actually worse.
Jane raised her hand like she was in elementary school and got a dreamy, faraway look on her face. “I did,” she commented. “I met Ty for the first time”—she pointed to the counter—“right here.”
“Yeah, but he's a fireman and was doing a safety check on the building, not some guy getting a toy when he had a date or a porn flick when he didn't.”
“Okay, maybe not a fireman for you, but he could be the next person through that door,” Goldie added.
We all turned our heads to look at said door. Coincidentally, it swung open, slammed against the exterior wall and a woman dashed in as if the hounds of hell were chasing her.
“Or maybe not,” I grumbled.
“You've got a hot man on the phone,” Goldie reminded me, but the woman who approached the counter quickly distracted her attention.
“Miss Goldie,” the woman panted. She was out of breath and her dark hair was a mess as if she'd just woken up from winter hibernation. She wore jeans, a white T-shirt which was wrinkled and in need of a wash. No makeup. “DEFCON ONE.”
Jane and Goldie gasped in unison. I darted my eyes between all three of them, not knowing what that meant. The way the woman was dressed, global thermonuclear war could possibly be imminent.
“Violet!” I heard yelled through the receiver.
Crap. I'd forgotten about Mike. I kept my eyes on the woman as I said into the phone, “Hang on.”
Jane and Goldie rushed around the counter and surrounded the woman.
“Who is she?” Jane asked breathlessly.
“A contractor from Salt Lake,” the woman said, sniffling. “She's here on a new project for at least six months.”
“Ellen, are you sure?” Goldie asked.
Ellen nodded as she bit her lip. “He bought new shoes.” Her eyes filled with tears.
“She's sure,” Jane replied, placing her hands on her hips in that pissed off woman stance.
I'd never seen either Jane or Goldie so serious before.
“Stupid men,” Goldie grumbled, shaking her head. “If you're going to cheat, buying shoes is a complete giveaway.”
She had a good point. No man I knew bought shoes for themselves on their own. There had to be another woman.
“He hasn't cheated. Yet. But she's got him in her sights and it's only a matter of time.”
Jane and Goldie nodded their agreement.
“That woman's going down,” Goldie told Ellen. I wasn't sure what they had in mind, but the looks on their faces indicated a murder and a body tossed off a remote cliff.
“Violet!” I heard through the phone. I put it back up to my ear. “Sorry, Mike. Small emergency.”
“So will you do it?”
“What?” I'd forgotten what we'd talked about. I was still trying to figure out what DEFCON ONE meant outside of national security. “Oh, yeah. Um...” Mike needed help. My help. I wasn't sure if that meant fawning all over him or if I had to kill this Susan woman for him. Could Alaskan bears eat a body before it was discovered? Did it really matter? A hot guy needed me.
Goldie and Jane were with Ellen in the lingerie section and I saw they were intensely debating the merits of several items, I guessed for the purpose of luring back her husband. Unless the roof blew off the building, I wasn't going to disturb them.
I took a deep breath and jumped off the deep end. “Fine. I'll help.”
Mike sighed with relief. “That's so great, Vi. It's too late for you to leave today, so I'll book a flight for tomorrow. Give me your email for the ticket confirmation.”
I told him.
“Great. Then I'll pick you up at the airport.”
“Okay, but Mike, we need to figure out how I'm supposed to pretend the girlfriend part.”
Mike paused. “If being with you now is anything like high school, there may not be much pretending.”
Which is exactly what I was worried about. It would be easy for my mind to put on an act, but I knew my hormo
nes would be going for the real deal.
Chapter 3
“How come you got so much luggage to go to Alaska, Miss Miller?” Zach West, Jane's seven-year-old son, asked me the next day on the way to the airport. One suitcase was on the backseat beside him, the other in the storage area. I did have a lot of luggage. Going into battle, one had to be prepared. I didn't know what to expect, so I packed everything in my girlfriend arsenal: lacy bras to long underwear. Summer seduction in the Tundra, even when it was just pretend, required a lady to be ready for anything.
Jane had volunteered to drive me, mostly to get the scoop on my Alaskan adventure. She and Goldie had been so preoccupied with Ellen's DEFCON ONE situation, and getting her all geared up to keep her husband's eyes focused solely on her, that I had been able to slip out at the end of my shift before they could grill me.
It had been strictly intentional on my part because Goldie was meddlesome enough in my real relationships, or lack of. I didn't need her giving advice on a pretend one. Pretend, it seemed, was something I could do. Mike had all but begged me to help him.
I had no doubt Jane was a spy for Goldie and would report back any juicy tidbits of information. But, sadly, I didn't know anything new. I’d received the ticket confirmation an hour after Mike had hung up. That's it. No other contact. Which made me linger over his parting words. There may not be much pretending.
What had he meant by that? That he still felt something for me after all these years? That it would be obvious to all of his family that I wasn't really his girlfriend? That he was a really bad actor? I had no idea. Fortunately, a seven-year-old sat in back in his booster with a strange ceramic garden gnome in his lap and I couldn't divulge any R-rated, or even PG-13 guesses.
“Alaska has funny weather like here in Montana,” I told Zach, eyeing the gnome. “I have to bring lots of different things to wear: raincoat, shorts, long pants, rain boots, jacket. All kinds of stuff. Plus, I packed my waders in case I go fishing.”
“Did you forget your pajamas?” he asked. “You always have to wear your pajamas.”
Jane smirked as she kept her eyes on the road. It was early afternoon, the sun bright in the blue sky, the windows down to let in the fabulous weather. My first flight would take me to Seattle to savor a lengthy layover before catching the late flight to Anchorage. I wouldn't get in until after one in the morning. It was going to be a long day.
“I packed my pajamas,” I told him.
“Yeah, but what kind? What if it's cold, then you need your winter ones. Or if it's hot, you can just wear your underpants. Do you wear your underpants to bed when it's hot?”
“Zach,” Jane prompted. “We don't talk about Miss Miller's underwear.”
I couldn't help but smile. As a teacher, I got ridiculous questions all the time, so I was used to it. “Why do you think I have that second suitcase?” I turned my head to look back at Zach, saw him shrug. “For all the different kinds of pajamas.”
He giggled. “And underwear.”
“Zach,” Jane warned.
“And underwear,” I repeated. “So, who's that?” I asked Zach, pointing at the gnome in his lap.
“This is George.” He gave the gnome a loving squeeze. “He's my friend.”
“Hi, George,” I said to the gnome. He had a pointy blue hat, red coat, white beard and a cheeky grin that said he knew exactly what kind of underwear was packed in the extra suitcase. I remembered Jane's crazy adventure from the summer before and how George the Gnome had caused it all. She and Zach and Bobby had found him at a garage sale. They'd also found themselves in heaps of trouble when she discovered black market bull semen stashed inside of George. If that wasn't icky enough, she'd had to deal with a psycho wannabe-Dom who had wanted her dead.
Needless to say, George survived the experience—and so did Jane.
“Speaking of underwear,” Jane said, either in synch with the gnome or trying to get the subject off of Zach's unusual friend.
“I thought we don't talk about Miss Miller's underwear,” I replied.
Jane darted a glance at me and rolled her eyes. “I wasn't talking about your underwear. I was thinking of Mike's.”
“Why were you thinking of Mike's? I thought you thought of Ty's.”
Jane's fiancé, Ty, was a gorgeous hunk of a firefighter. It was impossible for any conscious woman not to think of Ty in his underwear.
“Ha-ha. Are you planning on seeing if he's a boxers or briefs man?”
I already knew Mike was a boxer man. I'd seen him in them, and less. The memory alone kept me warm at night more frequently than I'd like. But he'd been eighteen and even though I hadn't seen him in less since then, I knew he'd filled out to be even more impressive, and I didn't mean in his boxers. His shoulders were broader, his muscles were now stacked on top of muscles from taking advantage of Montana's wilderness: hiking, rock climbing, skiing, kayaking, even ice climbing. If he'd gotten me all hot and bothered as a teenager, I could only imagine what he could do now. My palms became damp, as well as other places, at the very idea.
“I'm not sure if that's a perk of a pretend girlfriend.”
“Oh, a perk? So you're saying you'd like to see him in his underpants.”
I shifted in my seat to face Jane. “You are as bad as Goldie.”
Jane's mouth dropped open. “Oh, my gosh, I am. I'm turning into my mother-in-law.” She lifted a hand from the steering wheel and tucked her long blonde curls behind an ear. “I'm so sorry!”
I waved my hand at her. “To answer your question, any woman with a pulse would want to see him in his underpants. I don't think it's limited to just me.”
“True. Very, very true.” It was hard to tell through her dark sunglasses, but I could practically see Jane imagining Mike in his underwear. After a minute, she said, “I don't care if you lump me in with Goldie. I want all the juicy details when you get back.”
Twelve hours later, I walked out of the gate area, my carry-on schlepped over my shoulder, and into baggage claim with all of the other passengers from our flight. My eyes burned with exhaustion and I was stiff from sitting, and trying to sleep, in the middle seat. The man in the aisle seat had been large enough to ooze over the armrest and into my personal space. Sadly, it was the closest I'd been to a man in a long time.
The small child behind me had chosen the first hour of the flight to kick the back of my seat, then the next hour to scream before passing out to the relief of everyone within a ten-seat radius. As a stomach sleeper, trying to get some shut-eye upright was next to impossible. All I wanted to do was climb into the nearest bed and pass out for the next ten hours.
But as I walked through the concourse, my nerves started to build, my palms to sweat. My heart kicked into overdrive at the very thought of Mike waiting for me. For me. I was going to spend the week with him as his fake girlfriend. I had no idea what that meant exactly or what I had to do to make people believe we were together, but judging from the way I was feeling about just seeing him at baggage pickup, I was pretty sure I could pull off the infatuated look.
Surprisingly, Anchorage baggage claim was a happening place at nearly two in the morning. Wild animals weren't the only nocturnal things in this state. Several flights had recently arrived from somewhere and the carousel area was filled with people, luggage, fishing rod carriers, waxed boxes of recently caught frozen fish, and glass display cases of stuffed animals. Not teddy bears and other cuddly toys, but real wolves, bears, raptors, and other 'taken' animals. Taken seemed to be the Alaskan euphemism for shot.
There, waiting for me, stood Mike Ostranski. Tall, gorgeous, and, for one week, all mine. In a pretend sort of way. All six-feet-plus of burly, sexy, massive masculinity. A nervous burst of adrenaline shot through me just looking my fill. Faded blue jeans hugged him in all the right places. He wore a blue fleece pullover that stretched across his broad shoulders and a pair of old sneakers that had seen better days. Even semi-conscious, my body responded, heated at the sight of him.
The stubble on his chiseled jaw was a darker shade of red than the rumpled hair on his head and I had an overwhelming urge to run my palm over it to see if it was as scruffy as it looked. He was slightly disheveled, as if he'd climbed out of bed to meet me. The very idea that I'd pulled him from his sleep was appealing and surprisingly erotic. I knew right then that my brain was not functioning on all cylinders, but my libido certainly was.
The side of his mouth ticked up in a smile as I approached. “You're a sight for sore eyes.”
I knew he was lying because I had to look like a complete disaster. Three thousand miles of travel did not look good on anyone. He opened his arms in welcome and I stepped into his big bear hug. My cheek nestled into his chest, the fleece soft, his arms wrapped around me. I closed my eyes and breathed him in. He smelled like fabric softener, soap and, well, Mike. Memories of the last time I was this close to him overwhelmed me. Back then, we hadn't been wearing nearly as many clothes. It was as if his scent had been hard coded on my brain on graduation night.
“I need to tell you something,” he said, one hand rubbing up and down my back in a casual caress. He didn't seem to be ending the hug anytime soon.
At the moment, that was just fine with me.
“Violet!”
I tensed at the words, the voice. Oh shit. Mrs. O. She was here, and working her way toward us from somewhere. Plane ride from hell, perhaps?
Mike lifted my chin with one finger, tilted my face up so he could look me in the eye. His blue eyes were a little panicked, a little serious. “There isn't time to explain,” he murmured so only I could hear. “Play along.”
Before I could respond, he lowered his mouth to mine in a searing kiss. There, in the middle of baggage claim, Mike got to first base, tongue and all. With his mother, the dead bear and all the other passengers free to observe.
With his mouth on mine, the world slipped away. I forgot everything but the soft feel of his lips, his taste, the intensity of the kiss, the way it melted my bones like wax beneath a flame. His hard body pressed firmly against mine.