Fortune's Valentine Bride

by Marie Ferrarella

  Katie’s radar went up. Wendy was going to try to change her and, while that kind of a breezy, flirtatious manner suited Wendy to a T, it just wasn’t her, Katie thought. Wendy could effortlessly have men eating out of her hand—before she’d met Marcos, she’d had men eating out of her hand.

  But flirting to Katie meant leading someone on just to satisfy her own ego—if she actually had one—and she didn’t see the point of that. Still, she didn’t want to sound ungrateful.

  “Wendy,” she began a little hesitantly, “it’s not that I don’t appreciate what you’re trying to do for me, but—”

  Wendy was very good about reading between the lines and knew where her friend was heading with this. However, the sad fact of life was that nice girls did finish last more times than not, and a little something extra to help tip the scales never hurt. She knew just what to say to make Katie come around.

  “You’d rather he wound up with that spoiled Southern belle?”

  Katie shook her head. Brittany would just use Blake all over again. They both knew that.

  “No,” she said with feeling.

  Wendy had expected nothing else. With a smart nod of her head she declared, “All right then, case closed. You’re learning how to flirt.”

  It was obvious Katie had no choice in the matter—there was no known record of anyone ever winning an argument with Wendy, at least not directly—so Katie surrendered. She settled in and listened to what her friend had to say. She had no intention of putting anything she was about to be told to any active use, but listening to Wendy was a great deal easier than arguing with her and refuting anything she had to say. So, in essence, Katie silently chose to take the high road.

  Mercifully, Wendy was brief and succinct. The lesson involved mastering alternating looks of adoration and out-and-out sexy expressions. There was also mention of a sexy walk, complete with a gentle, come-hither swaying of the hips, but since Wendy was bedridden, the instructions were all verbal rather than visual.

  And just when Katie thought Wendy had exhausted her subject, her friend suddenly pounced on the topic of clothing.

  Pressing her lips together, Wendy looked reprovingly at what Katie was wearing. “Does everything you packed look like that?”

  Caught off guard, Katie looked down at what she had on. It was a navy blue skirt with a matching jacket, beneath which she had on a light pink blouse. It was crisp, subdued and professional. Katie saw nothing wrong with it.

  “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” she wanted to know.

  Wendy didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but there was a great deal at stake here—for all three of them. If Blake hooked up with Brittany, Katie would be heartbroken and Wendy herself would be in danger of being sent away for justifiable homicide. Brittany had always rubbed her the wrong way.

  And then, of course, down the line Blake would be dumped and his ego would take a beating, never mind his heart. As far as she was concerned, it was crucial that Katie win this battle for her brother’s affections.

  “Nothing,” Wendy agreed, “if you’re bucking for Marketing Assistant of the Year. But if you want to be noticed as a woman, you need something softer and maybe just a tiny bit slinkier.”

  “I came to work, Wendy,” Katie pointed out, “not to slink.”

  Wendy’s eyes met hers. “Yes, but the ‘office’ is a room in my brother Scott’s ranch.”

  Katie had no idea where Wendy was going with that line. “What does that have to do with anything?” she wanted to know.

  “Blake improvised,” Wendy pointed out. When the light apparently didn’t dawn for Katie, she added, “You do the same.” She could see she still wasn’t getting through. Or, if she was, then Katie was resisting what she was being told. Wendy pointed toward the double doors on the other side of the room. “Open my closet, please,” she instructed.

  She didn’t want Wendy’s clothes. She liked her own just fine. “Wendy, I—”

  “Don’t argue with a pregnant woman.” Wendy pointed toward the closet again, this time more regally, like a queen commanding her servant. “Open my closet,” she repeated more firmly. “You and I wear the same size, or did before I became as big as a house,” Wendy observed ruefully. She wanted this baby desperately. Loved this baby desperately. But she absolutely hated being pregnant. “Pick out something more feminine.”

  “Why?” she asked warily.

  “Just do it,” Wendy ordered wearily. “If I can’t get you to flirt—and don’t bother denying it,” she interjected quickly, “I can tell by the look in your eyes that you’re not going to do a thing I just tried to teach you to do—I can at least get you to stop hiding how pretty you actually are.”

  Now that just wasn’t true, Katie thought. Where did Wendy get these ideas? “I’m not hiding anything,” Katie protested.

  Wendy didn’t want to waste time waltzing around words. “All right, not setting your features off to their best advantage. Better?”

  This was all useless, Katie thought. If Blake didn’t want her as herself, then maybe there was no point in pursing this any further. She couldn’t maintain a facade indefinitely, even if it meant having Blake in her life instead of his daydreaming about the likes of Brittany.

  “Wendy—”

  Knuckles digging into the mattress on either side of her, Wendy drew herself up in her bed.

  “Do I have to get up and find clothes for you?” Wendy wanted to know. “Because I will.” To illustrate her point, she threw back the covers from her bed and began to swing out her legs.

  “Stop!” Katie cried. Hurrying over to Wendy, she pushed the covers back over Wendy’s legs.

  Wendy suppressed her triumphant smile. Instead, she calmly ordered, “All right, then you go and select some decent clothes. Just remember, if you win over Blake, you’ll be doing me a favor. Because if Blake gets that woman to go out with him, and—God forbid—marry him, I’m going to have to kill her and then my baby is going to grow up with a jailbird for a mother.”

  Katie couldn’t hold back her laughter. “When did you get so melodramatic?”

  That was simple enough to answer. “When you started being so stubborn.”

  Katie relented. “Point taken. Okay, I’ll pick out something.”

  That wasn’t enough to convince Wendy. She wanted more of a commitment. “And wear it?”

  With a sigh, Katie nodded and gave her word. “And wear it.” Like a soldier on a forced march, she opened the closet doors and disappeared into its depths.

  Only then did Wendy begin to relax. Katie never lied. “That’s my girl.”

  “Maybe I should just wear a bikini to work tomorrow,” Katie said sarcastically, her voice drifting out from inside the closet.

  “Wrong season,” Wendy pointed out matter-of-factly. “It’s too cold for that. Otherwise, that would be a good solution.”

  Katie peered out to see if Wendy was serious. Her expression made it impossible to tell.

  “Pick five outfits and bring them out,” Wendy instructed. “So I can rank them.”

  Katie rolled her eyes. Wendy, apparently, was in full battle mode and dead serious. There would be no negotiating, no arguing with her. Resigned, Katie went back into the closet to find her battle armor.

  “Have I seen you in that before?” Blake asked Katie the following morning. Picking her up for another day of strategizing amid a smattering of actual work, he’d been in the middle of talking as he led the way back to his car when he’d abruptly stopped and really looked at her. If the expression on his face was any indication, he was scrutinizing every inch of her.

  “No,” Katie answered quietly. Tossing her purse on the passenger floor, she got into the vehicle.

  “Oh.” He slid in behind the steering wheel. “Reason I asked is that
it looks familiar.”

  She was wearing a long-sleeved, turtle-necked turquoise dress that lovingly adhered to her curves—and ran out of material about four inches above her knees. Like most of Wendy’s clothes, it was an outfit that was intended to make a man sit up and take notice.

  It was on the tip of her tongue to own up to that, but then she’d be forced to explain why she was wearing his sister’s clothes. She didn’t believe in lying and, anyway, she wasn’t good at it. But telling him the real reason she was wearing this and had in her closet other bright, sexy outfits that his sister had made her borrow, well, that was just too embarrassing for words. To spare both of them, she went with a creative, evasive version of the truth.

  “No,” she said innocently, avoiding his eyes, “I’ve never worn this before.”

  Blake nodded absently, taking the information in. “It looks nice on you,” he commented and then dropped the subject.

  Katie smiled to herself. Score one for Wendy, she thought. Not that she was going to tell her friend that, at least, not immediately. Wendy was in desperate need of something to occupy her mind and her time. If she thought that her order—it really couldn’t be thought of as a suggestion at this point—had borne fruit, there was no telling what her friend might come up with next. Katie knew that Wendy was rooting for a torrid romance to ignite between her and Blake, but that just wasn’t going to happen. Nobody looking at her, no matter what she was wearing, was going to associate the word torrid with her name, and she wasn’t about to try to recreate herself in some femme fatale role. Blake would probably laugh so hard, he’d wind up injuring himself. Not something she wanted to contemplate.

  “So listen,” he began, looking, in her opinion, exceedingly uncomfortable. “About yesterday—”

  She waited, but his voice had trailed off and he wasn’t trying to fill in the void.

  “Yes?” she finally asked.

  He cleared his throat, intently watching the road. “That was a good idea you had, about dancing. I think that might really impress Brittany.”

  “That’s our main goal,” she said brightly, doing her best to keep the note of sarcasm out of her voice. She wasn’t quite successful.

  “So,” he repeated, “I was wondering if you’d mind practicing with me some more—I promise not to let anything get out of hand again.” He took a breath, but continued staring straight ahead at the road. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  Why in God’s name would he think she’d be offended? What was she in his eyes, some Victorian spinster, given to vapors?

  “You didn’t,” she assured him. Then, in case he was going to continue apologizing—something she really didn’t want to hear again—she told him, “I’ve forgotten about it already.”

  “Oh.” He slanted a quick glance at her, then went back to staring at the emptiness ahead of him. “I guess we’re okay then.”

  “Absolutely.” Just because you’re behaving like an idiot, I won’t hold it against you, Katie silently promised.

  Blake made an honest, concentrated effort to focus on the steps and techniques Katie was trying to teach him and not on the fact that holding her in his arms caused him to experience a very strong reaction to the woman. Her supple body was at times temptingly brushing against his, at other times pressed so closely to him that the thought of following the dance steps fled completely from his mind.

  Those were the times when he would lose his train of thought entirely. His mind a near blank, he would forget to count steps in his head and then stumble, embarrassing himself despite her assurances that this was normal and he was doing fine.

  After he stepped on her feet a third time during a rumba, Blake stopped moving altogether and called a halt to the practice. The session, with a few breaks, had gone on for three hours. Enough was enough.

  “This just isn’t working,” he complained.

  Unshed tears of pain stung Katie’s eyes. This last assault on her feet had almost had her crying out in pain, but she managed to hold it back.

  “I tell you what,” she suggested with as much cheerfulness as she could muster, “why don’t you stick to slow dances for now? You have those mastered—and it doesn’t require all that much movement,” she pointed out.

  He knew what Katie was really saying. “Or stepping on feet.”

  Katie grinned, her eyes crinkling. “There’s that, too.”

  He supposed he was just frustrated and tired, but there was a small part of him that was wondering why he had never noticed the way her eyes sparkled when she smiled.

  Trying to block the thought—and the accompanying sensation that seemed to be shimmying through his system like a random electrical current striking without warning, he asked, “Okay, what’s next on the agenda?”

  Me, Blake, me. I’m next on the agenda. Or I should be. Brittany’s never going to care about you the way that I do.

  But there was no point in thinking what she couldn’t say out loud, so instead she said, “Next, you’re going to write a love letter.”

  He blinked, staring at her and certain that he couldn’t have heard her right. “I’m going to write a what?”

  “A love letter,” she told him brightly.

  Okay, so it wasn’t his hearing that was going. It was her mind. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No, I’m not kidding.” She saw a look that bordered ever so slightly on disgust. Another man who doesn’t really like putting his feelings down on paper, she thought. Too bad. “Hey, you’re the one who asked me to help you.”

  Blake had his doubts about the effectiveness of her latest suggestion. “Do women still like things like that?”

  “Very much,” she told him honestly. If you wrote “I love you” on the back of a Band-Aid wrapper, I’d keep it forever.

  “But I don’t know how to write poetry,” he was protesting.

  “Who said anything about poetry?” she wanted to know. “A love letter doesn’t have to be flowery or rhyme,” she assured him. “It just has to be honest. Tell her how you feel.”

  “I like her. No,” he amended, knowing Katie was waiting for more. “I love her.”

  She kept her smile pasted on her face as she said, “Good start. Now, what else?”

  “What else?” he repeated. “There has to be more? What else is there?” he asked, looking as if he was at a complete loss.

  Nothing, if you’re dealing with a narcissistic Daddy’s girl like Brittany. But, for the sake of form, she knew she had to at least go through the motions of helping him, even if her heart was wishing that she would be the one on the receiving end of this yet-to-be-written composition.

  “Okay, give me a few minutes,” she suggested, sitting down at his desk and kicking off her shoes. “Let me see what I can come up with.”

  He looked relieved to have her take over. “You’re the best, Katie, you know that?”

  “I’ve heard rumors to that effect,” she quipped.

  Ten minutes later, she looked up from the sheet she was writing on and said, “Okay, this is just a rough draft, but I think this is what you need to tell her.” Even as she began to read the love letter out loud, she could feel her own anger begin to rise and fester. In no way did Brittany deserve to receive this.

  “Dear Brittany,

  I’ve loved you for a very long time. Whenever I’m not around you, it’s as if the sun has left the sky. The only time it comes out again is if I catch a glimpse of you. The sound of your laughter fills my heart with happiness. Whatever went wrong between us the last time is in the past and I would welcome the opportunity to show you how much I’ve grown as a person. I know that I am now capable of loving you the way you deserve to be loved.”

  Finished, she forced herself to raise her eyes to his face. “Like I said, it’s just a rough draft ri
ght now, but that’s the general idea. What do you think?”

  Lost in the words she’d just been reading to him, it took Blake a moment to extricate himself. Because just for a moment there, watching Katie’s lips as she read, he’d felt a glimmer of something. Something stirring. But then he roused himself and it was gone.

  “What do I think?” he echoed. “I think if I send that to her, she’s absolutely going to become putty in my hands,” he happily responded, all but adding a joyous war whoop to his words. “You’re right, that is good. Like I said, you’re just the best, Katie. Send this to Brittany right away,” he instructed.

  She hadn’t meant to be that successful. To be completely honest, she wasn’t striving for simplicity, she’d been trying for just this side of nauseating. Obviously, from Blake’s enthusiasm, she’d stopped just short of her goal.

  Chapter Eight

  “You look like I feel,” Wendy commented when Katie popped her head in later that evening.

  Her workday was over and Katie just wanted to make sure that Wendy was all right before she went on to her bedroom and pulled her covers over her head. If she was lucky, she thought dejectedly, she’d suffocate during the night and this nightmare, otherwise known as Project Brittany, would just be a thing of the past.

  “Talk to me,” Wendy requested with a note of urgency in her voice.

  No way was Katie going to unload on Wendy, especially not if she was interpreting Wendy’s demeanor correctly and her friend wasn’t feeling well. She wasn’t that selfish, Katie thought.

  Katie flashed a comforting smile at her. “If you’re not feeling well, you should rest,” Katie told her, then promised, “We’ll talk in the morning.”

  “No, please, talk now,” Wendy urged, putting her hand out as if to grasp Katie’s—which wasn’t exactly possible, given that she was still standing in the bedroom doorway, all the way across the room. “I need some distraction. Juanita just left for the night and Marcos has to stay late because there’s a last-minute party booked at Red.”