My Phony Valentine

by Marie Ferrarella

His strength failed him.

  Christopher had told himself it was because he hadn’t taken the time to eat anything this morning. Never a fussy eater, he usually enjoyed almost everything he sampled. This time around, however, he’d skipped breakfast. And the food on the plane had been completely unappetizing to him. Even the sight of it being passed out to other passengers had caused his stomach to lurch in protest.

  Just as it was doing now. The cold sweat that accompanied it wasn’t welcomed, either.

  He was turning as gray as his suit. TJ. took Christopher’s arm, suddenly envisioning him passing out at her feet. “Anything wrong?”

  Christopher shook his head, which was a mistake. Dizziness descended over him, bringing with it little pointy spears that jabbed him from all sides.

  T.J. braced her shoulder against Christopher just as he sagged.

  He flashed what he hoped was an apologetic smile, struggling to straighten. It took effort for him to do both. “I’m not sure.”

  Perspiration was now popping out all along a very handsome brow. This wasn’t good.

  “Emmett,” T.J. called to the back of the man’s head.

  Shifting the weight of the valise to his other hand, Emmett turned. Concern slithered over his bony face. He left the valise behind him as he hurried over. “What happened?”

  Christopher felt like a fool. He also felt weak. Weaker than he could ever remember feeling in his life.

  “I don’t know. Suddenly I feel as if I have tissues for knees.” He looked at T.J., who had propped herself under his arm. Any other time, he would have enjoyed having such a beautiful woman so close to him. Now, even the light delicate scent he detected on her hair was making him dizzy. He tried to raise another apologetic smile and had no idea if he succeeded. “Must be the company.”

  “Yeah, I have that effect on men.” The quip was equal parts sarcastic and self-deprecating. The last time anyone had said she’d made him weak in the knees, it was because she had hit him from behind. She’d been eight at the time.

  “But not this bad,” she realized. Mothering instincts took over and T.J. felt Christopher’s brow. It was damp and feverish to the touch. “You’re hot,” she said with dismay.

  “I’ve been told that,” Christopher mumbled, or thought he did. It was an effort to keep from being swallowed up by the lightheadedness that was reaching out for him.

  Nervousness faded. What she had on her hands was a situation and T.J. was never better than when she was handling problems. It was a hell of a lot easier dealing with a crisis than it was pretending to be someone else, even if it was Theresa.

  “Emmett, help me get him to the limo.” As the smaller man lent his support on Christopher’s other side, T.J. caught the attention of a passing attendant. She commandeered him into service. “I need help with this man’s valise.”

  Picking it up, the man followed them out to the loading zone.

  Five minutes later, with the attendant’s help, T.J. got Christopher into the back seat of the limousine. Pressing a tip into the man’s hand, TJ. climbed in beside a rapidly worsening Christopher.

  Even before the limo left the curb, T.J. got to work. She loosened Christopher’s tie quickly. The shirt beneath his jacket was wringing wet and plastered to a surprisingly muscular chest.

  Christopher was vaguely aware of the fluttering, light fingers working over him. He didn’t like not being in control and he hated being ill, which was exactly what, to his enfeebled disgust, he was. Out of control and sick as a dog.

  He tried for flippancy when all else seemed to be eluding him, escaping like mice leaving a sinking ship. He laid one hand over hers, stilling her fingers. “Why, Ms. Cochran, we hardly know each other.”

  She wondered if deep down, there was a Southerner mixed in with his ancestry. The man oozed charm even as he perspired. “I don’t have to know you well to loosen your tie. You’re sick, Mr. MacAffee.”

  Tell me something I don’t know. “Beautiful, intelligent and clairvoyant, too, what more could a person ask for?”

  How she wished Theresa was here to handle this. “A lot of things.”

  Emmett glanced over his shoulder. The limo was in the far lane, the one that ultimately wound up threading into the freeway. He needed a destination before then. “Where to?”

  Christopher had the most beautiful dark lashes, TJ. thought, looking at the man’s pale face. Lashes that any woman would have killed to have. Right now, they fluttered along a very pale cheek. Emmett cleared his throat dramatically. Caught, she flushed, her eyes shifting to the chauffeur.

  “What?”

  “Where do you want me to drive?” Emmett nodded toward Christopher. Slumped in his seat, Christopher looked as if he was only semiconscious. “You don’t want to take him to the office like this, do you?”

  “No.” T.J. bit her lip. She bent over closer to Christopher. “Do you want to go to the hospital?”

  There were two of her now. He tried to pick out which one was the real Theresa. He chose the one on the left. “No, this is exactly what the old man had. It’ll pass in twenty-four hours.” Although, right now, it felt as if he was going to pass with it.

  “A virus with a wristwatch,” T.J. muttered under her breath with a shake of her head. Now what? She blew out a long breath as Christopher’s head drooped onto her shoulder. “Well, you’re in no condition to fly home or to go to the office.” She looked at Emmett. “Maybe we’d better book him into a hotel.”

  Emmett snorted. “Good luck with that.”

  “What do you mean?” He was obviously privy to something she didn’t know. The last thing she was in the mood for was games.

  “Haven’t you heard? There’s a computer convention in town. It’s so big, they had to split it in half. One half’s at the Anaheim Convention Center, the other’s in L.A. There’re computer nerds spread out all over the place and probably not a single thing left except a manger behind the inn.”

  She blew out a breath. “Great.”

  Christopher looked as if he were unconscious. There was no other choice available to her. Besides, she really didn’t like the idea of just dumping him in some suite, no matter how high priced. After all, the man was sick. It wouldn’t be right to leave him alone.

  T.J. made up her mind. “Take him to my house, Emmett.”

  Emmett’s tufted brows disappeared beneath the brim of his cap as he turned to look at her. “Your place?” His expression was dubious. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure,” she answered, resigned.

  “No, I CAN WALK,” Christopher protested when Emmett tried to brace himself on one side of him. T.J. was holding him up on the other.

  The protest died as Christopher sagged between them. They both made a grab for him, barely succeeding in keeping his knees and his very sharply pressed crease from making contact with the driveway.

  “Maybe tomorrow,” T.J. promised. “You can walk all you want tomorrow.” In fact, I’ll insist on it.

  There were no more words of protest. “You make a nice crutch.”

  TJ. shifted to get a better position beneath his outstretched arm. She held on to his hand for balance. “I’ll include that in my résumé.”

  He looked at her, or tried to. He was beginning to feel mildly giddy. “Do presidents of family-owned companies need résumés?”

  She thought of her father, who would have been president if only his sense of moral duty hadn’t taken him into parts unknown. “Sometimes.”

  “I’ll have to keep that in mind,” Christopher mumbled. He blinked, trying to focus on the two-story house before him. He vaguely wondered if it was real, or, like the two images of Theresa in the limo, this was an illusion, too. “This isn’t what I expected.”

  TJ. thought of Theresa’s large, rambling three-story structure in Beverly Hills. It was as homey as a museum and often reminded her of one. Had Christopher seen a photo of it somewhere? T.J. seemed to vaguely recall that Theresa had opened the estate up to a film crew from a po
pular tabloid program a year or so ago.

  “I like to live unpretentiously,” she answered crisply, hoping that would put an end to his questions for now.

  Whatever else Christopher was about to say in response, he didn’t. Instead, the front walk seemed to come spinning up at him. When he closed his eyes to avoid the sight of the pending impact, he found himself wrapped up completely in darkness.

  T.J. felt the difference immediately. She almost tumbled backward as all one hundred and eighty pounds of Christopher MacAffee turned into deadweight. “Oh my God. Emmett!”

  “I have him,” the older man cried with more confidence than he exhibited. His voice was strained as he struggled to keep from sinking to his knees beneath the weight. Emmett couldn’t even move his head to look at T.J. “I’m asking for a raise after this.”

  T.J. gritted her teeth. Between the two of them, they managed to keep Christopher upright. “I’ll put in a recommendation.”

  She pressed the doorbell urgently, hoping that Cecilia hadn’t taken Megan out somewhere for the afternoon. There were house keys in her purse, but T.J. was afraid that any sudden move to initiate a search would throw them all off balance.

  “C‘mon, c’mon, Cecilia, open the door.” T.J. leaned on the bell.

  A moment later, T.J.’s housekeeper threw open the door. Bewilderment transformed into amazement, and then satisfaction, all in the blink of an eye.

  The six-foot-four woman grinned at TJ. as she got out of the way. “You brought home a man.”

  “Don’t get excited, Cecilia. We can’t keep him. He’s only on loan from Theresa.” Was it her imagination, or was Christopher getting heavier with each step?

  Dark gray eyes did a quick appraisal. The grin broadened. “I do like the cut of the lady’s castoffs.” Cecilia peered at Christopher more closely. It wasn’t her imagination. The man was unconscious. “What’s the matter with him?”

  “He’s sick.” TJ. huffed out the words. Perspiration was sliding down the small of her back. “This way, Emmett.” She inclined her head toward the right. “We’ll put him in my room.”

  “I’ll flip you for him,” Cecilia said with a deep, throaty laugh, leading the way to T.J.’s bedroom.

  Their path was suddenly blocked by an animated little girl. Her honey brown hair fluttered all around her head like a fluffy halo, giving her a cherubic look that camouflaged a mischievous streak.

  With an elated cry, Megan dropped the action figures she had been playing with and hurried forward, about to throw herself into her mother’s arms.

  T.J. snapped to attention. “Catch the flying daughter” was a game she couldn’t play today. The last thing she wanted was to expose Megan to whatever it was that had struck down Christopher.

  “Cecilia, quick, take Megan to the family room. I don’t want her coming in contact with Christopher.”

  Cecilia caught Megan by the edge of her rompers and scooped her up. Holding on to thirty pounds of wiggling child was a challenge. She bounced the little girl against her hip.

  “Don’t blame you.” She grinned as she retreated. “If I had a man like that leaning all over me, I wouldn’t want to share him, either.”

  T.J. was in no mood for Cecilia’s sense of humor. “Because he’s sick, Cecilia, because he’s sick. And he’s not mine. He’s a client.”

  Cecilia paused in the hall to give Christopher a long, last appraising look. “I’d say that business seems to be looking up.”

  The woman was impossible. Not even her own mother, with her prim sense of decorum and traditional roles, had been this bad. Ever since she had hired Cecilia to help care for Megan, the older woman had appointed herself T.J.’s personal matchmaker. T.J. wanted no matches. All she wanted out of life was to do her work and devote her spare time to Megan. That was enough happiness, she thought, for any person.

  “He certainly is a big guy.” Emmett was visibly struggling as they brought Christopher across the threshold and into the bedroom.

  “Just be glad my bedroom’s not on the second floor.” The bed had never looked so far away from the door.

  “So what are you going to do with him?” Emmett puffed as they deposited Christopher’s inert body onto the bed.

  Waiting until her own breathing leveled out before answering, T.J. took Christopher’s shoes off and placed them beside her bed.

  He looked completely out of place here in her room, in her bed.

  Like some fantasy come true, she couldn’t help thinking. If her fantasies ran in that direction. Which they didn’t. Marriage to Peter had taken care of that for her.

  T.J. shrugged in answer to Emmett’s question as she raked her fingers through her wayward hair. “Undress him, I guess.”

  “Oh, please, let me do it,” Cecilia called from the next room.

  Despite everything, TJ. laughed. “You get to undress the next sick man I drag in. Besides, one of us exposed to this twenty-four-hour virus of his or whatever he has is enough.”

  Reaching for Christopher’s jacket, she stopped. The idea of even partially undressing Christopher was suddenly far too personal, virus or no virus.

  T.J. looked at Emmett. “No, wait. You undress him and I’ll go to the supermarket and get some orange juice and aspirin.”

  Megan was safely planted in front of an elaborate fort Cecilia had constructed for her earlier. That meant she had bought them about five minutes. Using it, Cecilia ventured back into the narrow hall, eyeing the man in T.J.’s bed.

  “You’re passing up a chance like that?” There was no way she would have let modesty dictate her actions if she had the choice.

  This was getting old. “Cecilia, he’s a client. Which reminds me, don’t call me T.J. around him.”

  This had come out of left field. “Why? What should I call you?”

  T.J. frowned. “Theresa.” She had been T.J. ever since Theresa had been born. It had been an incredible sense of competition that had prompted Philip Cochran to mimic his brother and name his firstborn and, subsequently, only daughter after their mother.

  Cecilia’s small eyes became even smaller as she narrowed them. “I thought you hated being called that.”

  She shrugged. “I do, but he—” she nodded toward Christopher “—doesn’t know I’m me.”

  Cecilia watched as Emmett peeled Christopher’s shirt away and sucked in her breath at the sight of the almost perfect torso. “He passed out on your shoulder and he doesn’t know who you are?”

  T.J. didn’t feel like getting into it now. “It’s complicated.” Cecilia obviously wasn’t budging without some sort of an explanation. T.J. gave it grudgingly. “Theresa was supposed to meet with him, but she got into a car accident. She’s okay,” she said quickly before Cecilia could ask, “but they want to keep her in the hospital overnight for observation just in case. Christopher heads MacAffee Toys and only wants to deal with the head man, or woman in this case. Which would be Theresa.”

  Cecilia was trying to keep up. “Who is in the hospital.”

  Emmett, T.J. noted, was really struggling now. Christopher was much too large for him for manage. “Now you’re getting it.”

  Cecilia put her hand to her forehead. “What I’m getting is a headache.”

  “You can have some of the aspirin when I get back.”

  Exhausted, the chauffeur looked toward the two women. “I need some help here.”

  As Cecilia went to oblige, T.J. placed her hand on the woman’s arm. “I think you should avoid contact with him. Megan, remember?”

  The wide lips split into a fresh grin. She gestured toward the bedroom. “Be my guest.”

  T.J. heard the older woman laughing to herself as she went back to the family room and Megan.

  Squaring her shoulders, T.J. marched back into her bedroom.

  You owe me for this, Theresa. Big-time.

  3

  CHRISTOPHER MACAFFEE couldn’t remember a day in his life when he wasn’t in control of a situation, when he was not expected to be in con
trol of a situation. His father had been a stickler for discipline and decorum. His mother hadn’t been there to temper the senior MacAffee. She’d divorced his father and left his life almost before he could form a clear memory of her.

  A parade of solemn-eyed nannies with a clear-cut sense of what he was expected to do had marched through his formative years, teaching him by word and by example what sort of behavior was expected of him. And he was expected to always, always, be in control. Of his emotions, of his destiny, of basically pretty much everything.

  That meant, among other things, being aware of where his pants were and where he was at any given moment in his life.

  Christopher was aware of neither when he finally opened his eyes again.

  The unfamiliar feel of satin greeted him along parts of his body that had never had firsthand acquaintance with the material. Sliding a hand beneath the covers informed him of two things: that he didn’t have his pants on and that he was wearing what felt like a dress.

  That alone startled him into complete wakefulness, a condition the rest of his body protested with feeling. The room he opened his eyes to was completely unfamiliar to him. That wasn’t something he was unaccustomed to. He traveled a lot.

  But there were subtle, female touches here and there—soft, filmy curtains billowing at the window, for instance, and a white eyelet comforter, which led him to believe that he wasn’t in a hotel room.

  The sound of childish laughter wafted from another room, like a tiny silver bell being rung in three-quarter time.

  He was in someone’s home.

  Whose?

  Christopher tried gathering his thoughts together and it was like trying to pick up peas that were being scattered from an overturned colander. The more he grasped at them, the more they rolled away from him. He tried again.

  The last thing he remembered was sagging against a very soft shoulder. Cochran’s. Then this was her house? He attempted to focus his mind.

  Slowly, from behind a hazy curtain, fragments of a memory returned. A modest two-story house. A tremendously long walk from the door to...

  Where?

  Try as he might, Christopher couldn’t remember where the walk ended. Probably here, which was why he didn’t recall the room.