Anne had let it go, intending to arrange a quiet breakup with her imaginary fiancé once she’d proved to Mr. Jacobs that she didn’t need a husband and children to sell baby goods. But the charade had gotten out of hand.
To buy time to untangle the problem, Anne made her second mistake by following her mother’s advice and visiting Bettina to contract for a Bachelor-in-a-Box. Then came the photograph, and from the first moment she saw Mitchell Dane she’d felt a connection, as if he were some kindred spirit as familiar with loneliness as she was.
The week after, Faylene had seen Mitchell’s picture and gone into total ecstasy. “He’s perfect, Anne,” she’d insisted. “He looks regal, heroic and,” Faylene had added with a softness Anne hadn’t expected, “as much in need of someone to care about him as you are. All we have to do is find the man in this picture.”
“Mother, he’s just a model,” she’d protested. “Bettina probably doesn’t even know him. He’s like all her bachelors—exciting, dangerous and delicious—because he isn’t accessible. Besides, I am absolutely not interested in a man. I don’t know how I ever let you get me into this.”
“But he’s not one of those corporate executives you go out with.”
“Went out with,” Anne corrected with a pang. She considered herself a smart woman but her whirlwind courtship with Phillip and the embarrassment of being used and dumped had taught her a lesson: don’t trust a man who’ll do anything to be successful and don’t marry one who isn’t.
“Bettina says Mitchell is single, a wanderer who never stays in one place.”
“That’s the fictitious background Bettina supplied, Mother. Mitchell isn’t real. He’s probably a fertilizer salesman from Yazoo City, Mississippi.”
But she didn’t believe that. Logically, she knew she was creating a man to match her fantasy, a man she’d never have. His expression said sad, but the voice on the phone was full of life. A man who flew by the seat of his pants. A man who was free, the one thing she longed to be. Her sisters were happily married; they’d inherited all the nesting ability they needed from Faylene. Anne, well, what she might have wanted didn’t matter. She had to be responsible. But, unlike her father, she also had to be a success.
The Georgia sunlight streaming through her bedroom window caught the stone in her phony engagement ring—mistake number three—and winked mockingly. She’d bought the ring the week after the photograph from Bettina arrived. It was a constant reminder of the lie she was living.
She still wore the ring, but she’d turned Mitchell’s photograph facedown on her desktop, unable to stop the flights of fancy the man evoked. Who was he? Where was he and what was he thinking to give him such an expression? Even the odd smile on his lips added to the mystery. A longing in his eyes, yes, but something about him said that he was neither a ne’er-do-well, as her mother’s first husband had been, nor driven and determined like the second, Anne’s father. And if she dreamed about Mitchell Dane every night, she was the only one who knew.
When her night dreams gave way to daydreams, Anne decided she was in trouble. And this time it wasn’t totally Faylene’s fault. Mitchell had become far too real in her mind, if not in her life. And the steady parade of female employees who made up excuses to come through her office just to see his picture boxed her in even tighter. Now in order to stay in Mr. Jacobs’s good graces, she’d just made arrangements to put her fiancé on exhibit. She’d be spending the weekend with Mitchell Dane.
She told herself she had no choice. She had her mother to consider. Not only had her father left a letter asking her to take care of Faylene, he’d also named Anne administrator of her trust. Unfortunately, after paying off his business debts, there hadn’t been enough money in the trust left to manage. Even worse, she’d been forced to make a small withdrawal to pay for her move from Baltimore to Atlanta. Faylene wasn’t worried about the loan but Anne was.
“I’ve held back all my life for my children,” Faylene had said. “Now I’m going to enjoy myself. When I run out of money, I’ll find another husband. Too bad you don’t do the same thing—look for a husband, that is. You need to loosen up, Anne. Stop worrying about me. Have some fun. Fall in love.”
But Anne worried. As the only unmarried junior executive in line for a promotion at Bundles of Joy, this was the wrong time to confess her deception. If she didn’t produce her fiancé, this weekend would be the end of Anne Harris’s career and the payments on her mother’s RV would come to an end. She had no choice. This weekend had to succeed.
The doorbell rang. “This is it, Anne,” she muttered to herself. “If this is the wrong man, you’ll just have to face Mr. Jacobs and confess your deception sooner than you planned.” When she opened the door, she heard a gasp. She wasn’t certain if it came from her mouth or his. This was the man in the picture, the man Bettina had called Mitchell Dane, the wanderer who never stayed in one place. And he was…perfect.
The black-and-white photograph hadn’t begun to do him justice. Bathed in the June sunlight, he looked down at her with blue eyes that sent a shock wave of awareness through her. She opened her mouth, but her voice died in her throat. How could she have been so wrong about the expression in his eyes? Longing was wrong. Restless was even more wrong.
Mitchell Dane had bedroom eyes.
He was taller than she’d expected, perhaps six feet four inches or so, and, though he was slim, his shoulders were broad. He needed a haircut but she suspected that the ragged, casual cut was intended to show a wild streak. With skin the color of warm copper and tawny hair bleached to a white gold by the sunlight, he was a wild savage who only had to look at a woman to promise forbidden pleasure.
The connection she’d felt with the photograph was even stronger in person. The heat filled her throat, swooped down through her lungs, sucked out all the air, and puddled in the pit of her stomach as hot as lava straight from a volcano.
She couldn’t breathe. She just waited. When she didn’t show up at the wedding, Faylene would discover her standing in the doorway, turned into a petrified shell of ash.
To Mitchell Dane, meeting Anne was like being hit by a tidal wave. Or a tornado. Now he knew the reason for Anne Harris’s hoarse, whiskey voice. This was a woman so hot, she was on fire.
He stared at his new fiancée in stunned silence. Her hair was a rich mahogany color, like fine wood rubbed to a flawless sheen. It hung straight, touching her shoulders in a saucy swing as she stepped back. In the right setting, with a spray of orchids behind her ear, she could be a barefoot pagan girl on some South Sea island. In fact, for a minute, he thought he was looking at Melia.
“Mr. Dane,” she finally managed to say. “Thank you for coming.”
Mitchell nodded, finding it difficult to speak.
“It’s really you,” she said. “You’re my Mitchell.”
“It’s really me.”
If this was a joke, Bettina had really pulled it off. Mitchell had assumed Anne Harris would be as plain as dry toast. Boy, was he wrong. This woman could walk down the street, hold out her hand, and find a ring on every finger before she’d gone two blocks.
Casual clothing, she’d said. And that’s the way she was dressed, sort of elegant casual. Her khaki cotton shorts were matched with a tan tank top and covered with some kind of neutral-colored gauzy shirt with flowers the same bright hue of her turquoise canvas shoes. His fingers itched for the camera he had packed
