this man or she’d be knitting sweaters for him when he was eighty as he dated twenty-year-old starlets.
“Mitch’s brother is getting married,” Riccardo said. “In Spain.”
She frowned. “I know. I reserved the family jet for you guys.”
“Yeah, well, Mitch needs more help than reserving the jet.”
Mitch pushed away from the desk. “You know what? I think Lila and I should talk about this privately.”
Riccardo’s eyebrows rose in question.
Mitch said, “Think it through, Riccardo. The less you know, the better the ruse will work.”
Riccardo laughed. “Okay. I get it.” He scooped up his copy of the income statement. “I’ll be in my office, but just remember I’m your detail guy. You won’t want to leave me out of the loop completely.”
He left the room, but in the last second, reached in, grabbed the knob on the door to the office and closed it.
The oddest feeling snaked through Lila. She’d been alone with Mitch a million times, behind closed doors lots of those times. But suddenly it felt like everything had changed.
“I really do need a favor. A big favor,” Mitch said, walking around his desk and dropping into his black leather chair.
“How big?” Seriously? Had her voice just shivered? The man was not the Big Bad Wolf and she certainly wasn’t Little Red Riding Hood. She’d been a foster child until she was eighteen. She’d fended for herself forever. Even in some ugly situations. How could a man she’d known a year, a man she loved and respected, send that kind of fear skittering through her?
“Riccardo already mentioned that my brother is getting married.”
“Yes.”
He leaned back in his chair. “What you don’t know is that Alonzo’s fiancée had been my girlfriend.” He glanced up, caught her gaze. “I cut a business trip short, sneaked into our apartment to surprise her with an engagement ring and caught them together in our bedroom.”
Her eyes widened. “Yikes.”
He waved his hands. “They were fully clothed. But, really? What reason did my brother have being so comfortable in my bedroom with the woman I’d come home to propose to?”
“None.”
“Exactly. They had the good graces not to even try to deny that they’d taken advantage of my many trips for our family’s vineyard to...get to know each other.”
She couldn’t help it. She giggled. He had such a sense of humor. And he seemed fine with his brother’s betrayal—or was it his girlfriend’s betrayal? Oh, God. It was both. How had he gotten over that? Maybe she shouldn’t have laughed?
He sat up. “That’s exactly the attitude I’d want you to have. That my brother marrying my former girlfriend is no big deal. Funny even. Because I couldn’t be happier for them. Alonzo truly loves Julia. She truly loves him. Theirs is the match that should have been made all along.”
Putting some of this together in her analytical brain, she said, “So you want me to come to Spain with you?”
“Sí.”
“As your date for the wedding.” The very thought made her nerve endings do a happy dance, but she told them to settle down. There was no way she could agree to that.
“No. Actually, I’d want you to pretend to be my fiancée.”
Her breathing stopped. “What?”
“My mom is okay. She has a lot of duties with the wedding to keep her busy. But my grandmother? She’s got way too much free time. I swear to God,” he said, raising his hands and opening them in supplication, “it won’t matter what I say. She’ll treat me like a wounded puppy the entire celebration.”
“And everybody will feel sorry for you.”
“It’s not just about pride. It’s about Julia and Alonzo’s special celebration. I don’t want the focus to be on me. I want it on them.”
“True.”
He leaned a little farther back in his chair. “I turned this arm of my family’s enterprise into our company’s biggest moneymaker. I’m branching out on my own. I don’t want to spend two weeks with my dad looking at me as if I’m emotionally unstable and wondering if he should replace me, even though I’m making tons of money for him and even more money for myself.”
“Never thought of that.”
“Then you don’t know how stubborn and thickheaded Spanish men can be.”
Oh, she had a pretty good idea.
“Your presence alone will satisfy everybody’s curiosity about how I dealt with my brother moving in on my girlfriend while I was traveling.” He laughed. “Or maybe I should say just your presence will prove that I easily handled my brother and girlfriend falling in love. And there will be no talk, no questions. Discussions with my dad will go smoothly. My grandmother will chat you up about our future wedding plans and probably take you shopping for china patterns, not smother me with unwanted, unnecessary sympathy.”
He took a breath, then added, “I’m not going to lie. This will be a long two weeks of acting for you. But I’ll compensate you. In fact, right now I’m so sure this is the best way to go that I’m willing to give you anything you want.”
What she wanted was him.
But that was actually what made this favor impossible. “I can’t.” She’d get stars in her eyes. She’d read into things and when she came home she’d be even more in love with him than she was now. So, no. She couldn’t do it.
“Okay, let me be frank. The family jet leaves tomorrow. I can’t go out and hunt up a woman to do this for me. Not someone whose discretion I trust. Because you truly have to keep this secret. If my family even suspects this is a ruse, it will backfire.” He held her gaze. “I trust you in a way I’ve never trusted anyone. And I need you. I honestly don’t think anybody but you could pull this off.”
She said nothing, torn between agreeing simply because she was an employee who believed it was her job to do whatever her boss wanted, and recognizing this wasn’t a normal boss/assistant request. It was above and beyond her duties. And potentially heartbreaking for her.
“Isn’t there anything you want?”
She said nothing.
“Anything you need?”
That’s when it hit her. She did have something she needed. She could ask him to use his considerable resources to find her mom, but then she’d still be working for him. She’d spend two weeks pretending to be his fiancée and come home to being his assistant again. That was a heartbreak waiting to happen.
But a new job would not only provide money for a private investigator to locate her mom, it would get her away from Mitch and her pointless crush. She really would be getting a fresh start.
