her embarrassed dismay, Tess realized she had been staring at him like some infatuated adolescent.
“Um, yes, I remember you. I—I spilled chili in your lap. How is it by the way?”
His eyebrows shot up, and she clarified, “The suit, I mean, n-not your lap. Did the stain come out?”
Jack watched her blush again, as she had the day before, and he found it charming. Not many women blushed anymore, especially women who looked like this one. She wore her hair in a bun today, and once more he found himself wondering what it would look like when she let it down. To his guilty surprise, he began to fantasize again, picturing himself taking out the pins one at a time and watching thick curls the color of hot embers spill over her shoulders.
“Well, did it?” she asked, interrupting his fantasy.
He had to clear his throat twice before he could answer her question. “I haven’t got the suit back from the cleaners yet, so I don’t know if the stain came out.”
“Oh.”
He watched as some of the tension eased out of her shoulders, but the wariness remained in her gaze.
“I’m interrupting your lunch.” He pointed to the half-eaten chicken salad on her plate.
“That’s okay,” she assured him. “I still have another fifteen minutes before I have to go back to work. Can I buy you a sandwich or something, to make up for yesterday?”
Jack smiled engagingly. He couldn’t have asked for a better segue.
“As a matter of fact, there is something you can do for me. A favor, a really big favor,” he stressed, leaning forward in his chair.
From across the table he watched the woman swallow nervously. “Wh-what sort of favor?”
“Nothing illegal, I promise. It’s just that I’ve got myself into a jam. It’s kind of humorous actually,” he admitted with a rueful little chuckle. “I…um…led someone to believe I’m engaged. The only problem is, well, that’s not quite true. But now he’s asked my fiancée and me to dinner tonight.”
“The fiancée you don’t have,” she said, brows furrowed as she tried to follow his story.
“Yeah, that’s right. So, I find myself in the odd predicament of needing a woman.” As he said it, his gaze dropped to her mouth. Generous lips that were naturally rose-colored curved into an embarrassed smile, and he rethought his choice of words. “What I mean to say is, I need a woman to act as my fiancée.”
“And this involves me how, exactly?” she asked, but gauging from her expression, Jack could tell she had guessed and was struggling with whether she should be appalled or flattered.
“Will you do me the honor of being my fiancée for the evening?” he asked in solemn good humor.
Tilting her head to one side, she regarded him for a long moment. “You said this was nothing illegal.”
He nodded.
“And it’s just for the evening, right?”
“Just for the evening.”
“Well, I’m working late, so I won’t get off until seven,” she told him, and Jack let out a relieved sigh. She hadn’t exactly consented, but then she hadn’t told him to get lost either. He decided to go on the assumption that since she was telling him what time she got off work, she was agreeing to his wacky plan.
“Hmm, seven.” He rubbed a hand over his chin and did some quick calculations in his head. “That will be tight, but it could work. Dinner’s at seven-thirty in the restaurant at the Saint Sebastian Hotel.”
Jack heard the woman whistle through her teeth, but he was too excited to wonder at her reaction.
“I have a rental car,” he said, his voice low and conspiratorial. “I could come pick you up here and you could freshen up in my hotel suite if you’d like.”
He hadn’t even finished speaking when she began shaking her head. “Look, I’d really like to help you out, but I don’t have a thing to wear to a fancy place like that. The Saint Sebastian is easily the nicest place in town.”
“But if you had a dress to wear, you’d go, right?”
“I suppose,” she shrugged. “But I really can’t afford to buy a new one right now, even if I had the time to go shopping. I’m sorry,” she sighed with genuine regret, and said again, “I really would like to help you out.”
Jack remained silent for a moment, then gave in to impulse. “Leave the dress to me.”
“Oh no.” She held up a hand and shook her head in protest. “I can’t allow you to buy me a dress.”
“Why not?”
“First of all, after what happened yesterday I’m the one who’s supposed to be doing you the favor, remember?”
“So? You’d still be doing me a favor. If it helps, think of the dress as a prop that I’ll supply and that you get to keep afterward,” he suggested with a smile.
“But I hardly even know you,” she sputtered. Then, “I don’t even know your name!”
“That’s easy enough to remedy. It’s Jack. Jack Q. Maris. The Q is for Quinten.” He squinted at her in mock challenge. “I don’t tell many people that because I hate the name, but I tend to make exceptions for close friends and pseudo-fiancées.”
When she just sat there and stared at him as if he had grown two heads, he prompted, “And you are?”
“Oh! I’m Tess. Officially, Tessa Claire Donovan, but nobody calls me Tessa,” she added, narrowing her eyes in much the same way he had.
Jack held out his hand and waited until she extended one of her own. He clasped the slender hand tightly and, for the third time since he had first seen her, he watched Tess blush.
“It’s nice to finally meet you.” Still holding her hand, he added, “By the power vested in me by the state of desperation, I now pronounce you, Tessa Claire Donovan, my make-believe fiancée.”
Tess stood outside Earl’s Place, shoulders hunched against the crisp November evening. She had managed to clock out fifteen minutes early and to change into the jeans and cotton blouse she’d worn to work that morning, and she was hoping Jack would be as good as his word and arrive on time. She still couldn’t believe she had agreed to go to dinner with him, much less pose as his fiancée for the evening. What did she know about the man, after all, except that he had the most gorgeous green eyes, a sexy smile, and a body that seemed chiseled from rock? For all she knew he could be some deranged madman loose from a psychiatric ward, or a serial rapist stalking his next victim.
But then she remembered the way he’d said her name, wrapping his tongue around that one simple syllable as if he were savoring it. And she recalled the way a mere handshake had stolen her breath. To herself, she admitted that even if yesterday’s mishap had not compelled her to agree to help him, she would be waiting outside Earl’s Place anyway. The man intrigued her. And her unprecedented reaction to him intrigued the practical,
