put an arm around her shoulder, gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Only the best for my favorite fiancée.”
She eased out from under his hold. “You’re blowing me off.”
“No, I’m not.”
“It just, you know, seems like it’s kind of overkill. Way too frickin’ expensive overkill. I mean, I know you have your investments and all, but I hate to see you waste your hard-earned money.”
“Stop worrying—and anyway, I didn’t raid my portfolio for this.” He leaned in closer and lowered his voice to a soft growl. “Did I ever tell you about my giant trust fund?”
“You did, but you always said—”
“—that I would never touch it. And I haven’t. Not once. Until now.”
She turned to him, met his kind dark eyes. “You broke into your trust fund for this?”
He gave her an easy smile. “About time, I was thinking—and no, I didn’t break into it. It’s mine, after all, just sitting there, waiting for me, the prodigal son, to finally take advantage of what being a Bravo has always offered me.”
She smiled too, then. “The prodigal son. I never thought of you that way. And I thought a prodigal was a wild-living big spender.”
“I was thinking more in the sense of the son who left home.”
“Well, you are that.”
“And my mom only wants me to come home.”
“And get married to a nice Texas debutante…”
“Lucky for me, I have you to save me from that.”
She had the strangest desire to lay her hand along the side of his smooth, freshly shaved cheek. But that seemed uncalled-for. They weren’t pretending to be engaged yet, after all. “Yeah, well,” she said vaguely. “We’ll see….”
“Ahem.” It was Jonathan. He stood over by the sitting area, holding a laptop against his narrow chest. He set the laptop on the gleaming glass surface of the coffee table and then clapped his skinny hands together. “All right, then. Let’s begin.” He sat down on the sofa and patted the cushion next to him. “Samantha, come and sit by me.” She sent Travis a what-have-you-gotten-me-into glance and then went over and sat next to Jonathan, who signaled to Travis with a dramatic flourish. “You, too. Have a seat.” Travis claimed a wing chair across the coffee table.
Sam was realizing that she found her new coach kind of amusing. She liked his take-charge attitude and self-assurance. He might be little, but every sentence, every gesture, was delivered on a grand scale. “So, Jonathan, what’s your last name?”
He turned slowly to look up at her, one pencil-thin eyebrow raised. “Just Jonathan, darling.”
Oh, wow. Now she was his darling. She chuckled. “Well, all right.”
Travis got up and went to grab an apple from the basket on the granite wet bar. “I flew Jonathan in from L.A. And before I did, I checked out his references. He comes highly recommended.” He bit a big, crunchy hunk out of the apple.
Jonathan almost smiled—or at least the corners of his tiny mouth lifted a fraction. “I have my own cable show,” he said proudly. “Jeer-worthy to Cheer-worthy.” He opened the laptop and fiddled with the keyboard for a moment. His picture appeared on the screen. He sat in a plush leather chair in a red-walled room, his hair bigger and wavier than it was in person. A bookcase behind him was filled with gold-tooled leather volumes and accented with what seemed to be valuable antiques. “My website,” he said. She’d already figured that out, of course, from the ornate gold header at the top of the page. “JustJonathan.com.”
“Uh. Real nice,” she said.
“Thank you, darling.” He clicked the mouse. A really sad-looking redhead appeared on the screen. Ruddy skin, frizzy hair, a face as round as a dinner plate. “Amanda Richly. Before.” Click. “And after,” he said proudly.
The second image was the same redhead. But the same redhead, transformed. Now her hair was thick and wavy and completely unfrizzed, her skin pink and perfect, her blue eyes framed by long, lush red-brown lashes. She was no longer sad. In fact, her happy smile brought out the cute dimples in her cheeks.
“Wow. Way to go, Jonathan.” Sam elbowed him in his itty-bitty ribs.
He almost fell over sideways. But not quite. “Please don’t hurt me, darling,” he said drily. She laughed. And then he preened, “Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”
“I can see that.” She shared a nod with Travis, who remained by the wet bar, polishing off his apple.
Jonathan clicked through several more transformations. Each one was amazing. Sam was impressed and she told Jonathan so.
Finally, he snapped the laptop shut and frowned at her. “If we are to work together, I need to be able to be perfectly frank.”
“Go for it.” She braced herself for the bad news.
“You’re a disaster, my sweet.” He caught her hands, turned them over, gave a small gasp of pure distress. “Look at these. What have you been doing with them, scraping barnacles off a ship’s hull?”
“Close,” she confessed.
He shook his head. “Never mind. Don’t tell me. I don’t need specifics.” He turned her hands over again, set them on her knees, and patted the backs of them. Next, scowling, he touched her hair. And then he caught her face between his soft, warm palms. “We must get you to the spa immediately,” he announced. “You will need everything. It’s going to take a while. And the peels, the scrubs, the masks and the mud wraps, the hair, nails and makeup are only the beginning. There will be shopping. Intensive, goal-centered shopping. I will go with you, of course, give you guidance, save you from yourself should you try and buy another unfortunate pantsuit.”
She winced and looked down at the pantsuit in question. “Unfortunate? I bought it yesterday. I know it’s not great. But I thought it was better than just unfortunate.”
He wiggled a finger at her. “Remember. Absolute honesty.”
“Yeah. All right. Hit me with it.”
He caught the fabric of her sleeve, fingered it and shuddered. “You must learn to buy clothing made from natural fibers, my love. It not only looks so much better, but it also lets the skin breathe and doesn’t trap odors.”
“Odors,” she echoed weakly, way too aware of the lingering dampness beneath her arms.
“I noticed you had just that big black bag.”
She shrugged. “Well, I only brought a couple of changes of underwear and some pj’s. I thought we would be buying the rest.”
“Very good. Excellent. Out with the old and all things polyester. And in with the new. By the time I’m through with you, you won’t be afraid of five-inch Manolo Blahniks, or a little color.”
She wasn’t a complete idiot. She knew who Manolo Blahnik was. She’d watched
