The Engagement Plot

by Phillips, Krista;

  “Oh, I do. But a hockey stick or baseball bat might do better than a chair.”

  He pulled out his ever-present phone and ignored her jab. “I got a text during the game but ignored it. Let me see…”

  Hanna straightened her back and steeled herself for whatever news there might be. “What is it?”

  Will studied the screen. And continued to study it. And took way too long for Hanna’s comfort. “What’s wrong? What does it say?”

  He looked up at her, his brown eyes containing an expression she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen before. A mixture of remorse, sadness, and almost…almost rage. “You don’t want to see this. It doesn’t matter anyway. They just need time.”

  It couldn’t be that bad, could it? Maybe they still thought she was pregnant. Had edited in a bigger baby bump. Whatever it was, she needed to face it. Not seeing it wasn’t an option. “Give me the phone, Will.”

  “Sit down first.”

  Dread slugged her in the gut. “Let me see it now.”

  He handed her the phone.

  A picture of the front page of a disgusting tabloid made her knees buckle underneath her. As the world tilted and everything fuzzed, strong arms scooped her up.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Familiar, scratchy fabric pricked at her fingers. Something fuzzy draped across her body. Warmth caressed her cheeks then her forehead. What was going on?

  Hanna peeked open an eye, and her breath caught in her throat.

  Will knelt beside the couch, his hands rubbing her face.

  She batted them away. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “You fainted.”

  “And that gives you permission to get all handsy on me?” She couldn’t let him know that her face had loved it…until she’d come to her senses. “Besides, I don’t faint.”

  “You do now. You scared me.”

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “I didn’t get him yet. Wanted to give you a second to wake up first before I panicked him.”

  At least Will could do something right. “Well, don’t. He’ll be hauling me out in this stupid blizzard thinking I need a doctor or something. Which, by the way, I don’t.”

  “You’re spunky. Anyone ever tell you that?”

  Not spunky enough, given that she’d fainted. Why in the world—

  Then she remembered the article cover.

  She curled into a ball and rolled to face the plaid polyester couch cushion. Their plan had backfired. Royally.

  SEX SCANDAL: HANNA the SEX ADDICT is PREGNANT WITH ANOTHER GUY’S BABY—but Will says he’s still in love with her anyway.

  Worse still, there was a picture. Somehow, a reporter had made their way up here, despite the snow and warnings, and snapped a shot of them outside. The one nonblizzard day, when they’d gone outside to check on the chickens in the barn, someone had gotten a photo.

  Right after Will had thrown a snowball at her.

  Hanna, dressed in an oversized parka that made her look about six months pregnant or more from the right angle, yelled at him before launching a missile of her own.

  And her angry face, along with Will’s pleading expression, is what the camera caught. She looked like a maniac.

  “This can’t be happening, Will. We’ve made everything worse.”

  Will rubbed her back in a circular motion. She should make him stop. But everything was just so crazy. And honestly, she liked his hand there. Needed it even.

  “I’m sorry, Hanna. But remember, these are the trashy tabloids we’re talking about. No one really listens to them anyway. People know they make things up. It’s the social media and entertainment news we really care about.”

  “Yeah, but they are ignoring us. All everyone hears is ‘pregnant.’ ”

  “But you’re not. And in a few months, it will be quite clear to everyone when there isn’t a baby Hanna anywhere.”

  “They’ll probably report that baby Wilanna was abducted by aliens.”

  “I hope they do. It’d just underline their ridiculousness.”

  A tame beeping came from his pocket. Who had such a boring ringtone?

  As Will answered the call, Hanna made a mental note to change it sometime for him. No fiancé, real or not, could have a yawn-worthy phone. He needed a cool cover, too. Maybe some leopard print. Or better yet, she could get out her old bedazzle kit and decorate it really cute.

  Oh, how she could make his life miserable.

  Just like he’d made hers.

  She turned to see Will pacing the living room while he talked. “Yes, I saw it. Not what we were going for.” Pause. “I don’t care about that. I want it fixed.” Pause. “Do you think someone’s feeding them?” Pause. “I’m not an idiot, Sam. I’m well aware of that. But this is just crazy. You and I both know it.” Pause. “Fine, we’ll fly back the first chance we get.”

  Hanna threw off the brown furry blanket that covered her and jumped to her feet. “Wait a second. We? Fly?”

  Will held up a finger to his lips to shush her then continued to talk into the phone. “It depends on the weather. Their Internet is spotty up here, so I only have the news stations and my phone to rely on. I’m lucky to get data reception at all. Can you look at the forecast for me?”

  He was doing it again. Fixing everything without even consulting her. He didn’t know everything. And she was not flying anywhere with him anytime soon. “Don’t shush me, William Preston. I’m not going anywhere.”

  He gave her a look then spoke into the phone. “Can you hold on a second?”

  A second later, he took her hand and yanked her toward him, causing her to crash into his side. His arm wrapped around her waist and pressed her flat against him. “Hanna, you have to trust me. I’m trying to fix this. So unless you want me to kiss you to quiet you down, I suggest you hush. I’m game either way.”

  Breathing was impossible for Hanna. The memory of their kisses, their magnificent, off-camera kisses that reduced her to a pile of wobbly Jell-O, flitted in her brain. Those kisses had made staying “Holy Hanna” very difficult that weekend.

  Maybe just this once…

  But Will took her silence as agreement and went back to his conversation. “So it clears up after Sunday? Well, go ahead and book us on a flight Monday afternoon. We can always change it if we need to, but that should work well for now. Tell Emma to get a name and number from any reputable outlet that calls, and ask what they have in mind. Other than that, remember—”

  He chuckled for a moment and nodded his head. “Exactly. No comment.”

  The man was going to “no comment” his way to no job if he didn’t watch it.

  After he slipped the phone back into his pocket, Hanna raised her head in question. “Care to explain?”

  “I’d love to. But unless you’d like that kiss, I suggest we sit back down.”

  Hanna glanced down to where she was still snuggled to his side then jumped away faster than a frog in a frying pan. She plopped onto the couch and hugged a throw pillow to her belly for protection.

  Will sat in the brown leather recliner across the room. “If we can’t make them believe our press release, then we have to go to them. You said yourself you aren’t working right now. So we’ll do a couple face-to-face interviews. Show them your nice trim figure, and that’ll be that.”

  “I still have a life, ya know. And I help Dad here on the farm.”

  “He managed before.”

  What did he know about how her dad managed? “He had a helper. His helper quit, and he was struggling. It’s the middle of winter, a pretty bad one at that.”

  “From what I’ve seen, right now the only thing he has to do is feed the chickens and make his own food. Pretty sure he can deal with that on his own, Hanna. Should we ask him in the morning?” As much as she loved to use her dad as an excuse, that plan had backfired once before. “Fine, so we leave on Monday if the weather permits. Who will be interviewing us?”

  “Haven’t decided that yet. We’ll find out who’s
offering then make a decision. That fair?”

  The whole thing sounded foolish, expensive, and insane. “Well, your travel guru will need my credit card for my ticket. And where will I be staying?”

  A throw pillow flew across the room, and Hanna snatched it before it plowed her in the face. “What was that for?”

  He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, determination in his dark brown eyes. “If you think for a minute I’m letting you pay a dime of this, you’re out of your mind. And you’ll be staying at a nice, classy hotel with all the trimmings.”

  Lovely. Now she sounded like his mistress he was secreting away. “Ooh là là. Careful, I might faint again, Mr. Moneybags.”

  “Don’t give me credit for that. I fully plan on expensing this to the company. They’re the ones who got us into this mess in the first place.”

  She tossed the pillow back at him. “You’re the one that signed up for the show and let your macho ego run wild.”

  “I’ll take the blame for the ego thing. Fully my fault. But the show, that was most certainly not me.”

  “So you really didn’t want to do it at all?”

  He shook his head. “The producers approached a board member, and they all thought it was a grand idea. Their young, new CEO becoming America’s reality heartthrob, or some nonsense like that.”

  “I guess you were thankful I bailed on you then, huh? Saved you the misery.”

  His eyes bore into her even from ten feet away. “That day I called you only to be hung up on was the worst day of my life.”

  Hanna shook her head. She didn’t want to sympathize with him. He didn’t deserve it. Time to change the subject. “So, we have a weekend of snow to endure. I hope you like checkers and chess a whole stinkin’ lot.”

  “Actually, your dad said if it lets up a little tomorrow, he might take me ice fishing.”

  Hanna smiled. Oh, how she prayed it would let up long enough. Stiff-shirt Will in the middle of a frozen lake with a pole in the ice. She would give a million dollars to see that.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Will clutched the armrest of the truck. What crazy person drove on a lake? Frozen or not, there had to be some law against it.

  But as far as he could see, little ice houses—if the small shacks could be called houses—sprinkled the snow-covered ice, a little street plowed out in the midst of it all.

  “Are you sure this is safe, Jim?”

  “Of course I’m sure. Wouldn’t take you out here if it wasn’t. This lake has been frozen solid since first of December. No one’s even fallen in this year.”

  That would leave the assumption that in past years people had fallen in.

  Will took a deep breath and let it out. He would not be a pansy about this. He was a man. He could ice fish. At least he’d been a science major, so with a little guidance, he could probably clean a fish. Dissecting he could do.

  But ice? He doubted he could even walk on it. In Nashville, if it flurried, schools shut down for a week.

  Jim parked in front of a dilapidated shanty and hopped out of the truck. “Hurry up. We’re missing the good ones.”

  Will opened the door, swung his legs to the sideboard, and edged the toe of the boot Jim had loaned him onto the ice as a test.

  It slid over the ground.

  Test failed.

  Sitting in the truck, watching Jim collect gear from the back, Will weighed his options.

  (A) he could call for help and look like a ninny asking Jim to hold his hand as they walked on the ice, or (B) he could step out on his own and risk falling on his rear end and looking like an amateur.

  He’d take amateur over ninny any day.

  Again, he put his foot to the ground and, this time, put his weight on it.

  It held firm.

  He added his other foot to the ice then stood.

  Will wanted to give a good Tarzan yell in celebration but refrained. No use getting overly confident just yet.

  Adjusting the large blue parka, another Jim hand-me-down that made him look like a bloated Smurf, he took a few steps to the bed of the truck, holding a hand to the black metal to steady himself.

  This wasn’t so bad. Ice? No problem. “Hey Jim, can I give you a hand?”

  The older man nodded from the other side of the truck. “Sure. Here, take this bag.”

  Will looked in horror as Jim tossed a duffel across the truck bed. He held his arms up to catch it just as his feet gave way to the ice. The sky shifted, and a moment later his rear end met the ice, followed by his back and head. Pain ricocheted through his entire body.

  He lay there, in shock, when Jim’s face appeared above him.

  “You okay, son?”

  Suck it up, Will. He was a man. A little fall wasn’t going to kill him. But he didn’t trust his voice to speak in a non-high-pitched tone, so he simply nodded his head.

  Jim’s hand reached for his. “Let me help you up.”

  Personally, he’d rather stay still until the pulsating throbs subsided a little. Instead, he lifted his hand to accept the help and gasped at the pain as he stood to his feet, sliding all the while. Jim put a hand on his shoulder to steady him.

  “Uh, thanks.”

  “You’ll get used to the ice. Just take small, slow steps.” Jim thudded Will on the back again, causing Will to grab the side of the truck to prevent himself from falling again.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jim picked up the duffel bag and handed it to Will then set off toward an ice shanty a few yards away.

  Will hobbled after him and gulped as he entered the tiny wooden box. A partially iced-over hole took up the middle of the six-by-six area. Two small fold-out seats sat on either side of the hole, and miscellaneous fishing items hung from the walls, including a picture of Jim and Hanna, each holding a gigantic fish on a string. Another picture showed Hanna at a much younger age, probably in her teens, holding a more modest-sized fish, with both of her parents behind her.

  “That was my Kathy. She wasn’t thrilled about ice fishing herself but came a few times. Now Hanna, she took to it like a walleye in water. Between you and me, she catches more than I do when I let her come out here.”

  Will took a seat on the small camping chair and slid it as far away from the open hole has he could. “Let her come? You don’t like company, then?”

  “Company I don’t mind, as long as they don’t yap all the time and scare away the fish. But I’m telling you, the girl’s good at it. And I have a little pride. She’s competitive and rubs it in my nose every time she catches more than me, which is every dad-blamin’ time.”

  Straight-and-narrow Hanna, competitive?

  Will filed that bit of information away for future use.

  Jim handed him a Styrofoam container and a pole. “You bait up while I clear the ice.”

  “Uh, you mean live bait?”

  Jim eyed him as he used a tool to break up the iced-over hole. “What? You mean you never baited a hook before?”

  “My dad’s a retired attorney in New York. The closest I’ve been to a fish is either at an aquarium or a dead one on my plate ready for me to eat.”

  “A crying shame, that’s what that is. Here, watch and learn, son.”

  Will squirmed as much from the repeated use of the word son as the wiggly black creature Jim was threading through his own hook. He was learning not to take son too seriously, though. The older man had called the teen at the bait and tackle shop the same thing.

  Man up, Will. Baiting a hook shouldn’t be that big of a deal. He could do this.

  After three fumbling attempts and two lost bait down the watery hole in the ice, Will managed to ensnare the chub with the hook.

  The next twenty minutes went by slower than if he had been watching water drip from a leaky faucet. Lines in the water. No talking, since Jim said it would scare off the fish. He found himself eavesdropping on people walking by the ice house just to pass the time.

  Silence wasn’t something he was used to. He preferred th
ings to be moving. Fast paced, get-it-done. One didn’t accomplish goals by sitting on one’s cold, and not to mention sore, bum with a pole in the water.

  That is, until now. Keeping Hanna’s dad on his good side was crucial.

  “So Jim, about Hanna…”

  “I told you to keep quiet. You’ll scare the fish away. You probably already filled their bellies with that dropped bait. A fish isn’t gonna eat what we got if you give food away for free.”

  Will shrugged, his business brain kicking in. Freebies worked. A great sales gimmick actually. “Maybe they’ll go back and tell their friends about the cool place where they got hook-free food, and there’ll be a flood of fish coming our way. They’re probably on their way back for more right now, with all their friends.”

  Jim grunted and shook his head, staring at the still poles in their hands. “Bunch of baloney. You feed ’em, they get full and leave. End of story.”

  Will shrugged his shoulders. A moment later, both poles jerked toward the water.

  Alone at last. Doing the dishes wasn’t her typical idea of relaxation, but right now, with her hands swallowed up in the warm, bubbly water, she welcomed the contrast to the snow outside and frost in her heart.

  Stupid boys.

  The thought made her smile a little. It reminded her of her mom.

  When Hanna was little, her mom always teased about staying away from those “yucky boys” until she was thirty, then she could marry and give her grandchildren.

  She should have listened to her mom’s advice after all. Instead, she’d listened to her best friend, and boss at the time, and applied for a reality TV dating show featuring one very yucky boy she’d made the mistake of falling for, head over tennis shoes.

  Stupid Hanna. Really, that’s what it came down to. Someone needed to hashtag that. At this point, it would be more appropriate than “holy.”

  Hanna washed the last of the dishes then grabbed a dish towel from the drawer to dry.

  As she picked up a plate from the drying rack, a knock at the door almost made her drop it.