and turned to face him again. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow at eight. We’re going to go shopping for an engagement ring in the morning.”
She looked as if she wanted to say something. Her lips quivered, then hardened, but she remained silent.
“Oh, and be sure to wear something…feminine.”
CHAPTER TWO
ELAINE GLARED AT her bedside clock as the shrill alarm reminded her that it was time to get out of bed. She hadn’t slept at all. She’d just twisted around in a tangle of sheets, second-guessing everything that had taken place the previous day.
She was no romantic—far from it. She was a pragmatist right down to her ugly shoes. Marriage, at its heart, was only a business arrangement anyway. The signing of a contract to legally bind two people together, with certain penalties applying should the agreement be broken.
But suddenly it seemed so much bigger than just signing a contract. She was actually marrying the man.
She swung her legs over the side of her bed and padded over to her closet. Wear something feminine, he’d said. If only she didn’t need his help so badly she would have told him exactly where he could stick his opinions on her style of dress. But she wasn’t about to blow this deal by being stubborn over every small demand. She would save up for the big things. This, although a blow to her pride, she could do.
She rifled through the tightly packed closet. Nothing but severe-looking suits in dark colors. Practical, but not exactly pretty. Certainly not feminine.
Although his idea of feminine was probably a corset and fishnet stockings!
There was a pale yellow dress wadded up into a ball and stuffed in the far reaches of the closet. She picked it up and shook out the wrinkles. It had flowers. And it was a dress. That, she supposed, would qualify it as feminine.
She took a quick shower and shaved her legs hurriedly. She got out and propped her leg up on the vanity, dabbed at the razor cut on her knee, then made the fatal error of looking in the mirror. She grimaced at the face staring back at her. There were deep purple shadows under her eyes from lack of sleep. She looked like a raccoon.
It had been a long time since she’d tried to play up her looks. These days she took care to tone down her beauty by wearing suits that camouflaged her hourglass figure and by pulling her long golden hair into the tightest bun she could manage. She didn’t like the way she looked, but at least it had made the guys at work stop patting her on the behind and sending her off to make coffee.
She looked at her make-up bag, shoved against the back of the vanity. It was actually dusty. She did a mental calculation on when she’d gone to her last charity ball. Six months ago. That was how long it had been since she’d touched make-up. But it was desperately needed now.
Even without the raccoon eyes she would feel inadequate enough on the arm of a man who looked like Marco De Luca.
He was the perfect example of how it was different for men and women in the workplace. Where his looks were an asset to him, hers made men treat her like their own personal Barbie doll and made women treat her as if she was the enemy.
In the beginning she hadn’t disguised her body. She hadn’t felt she was at a disadvantage being female. But she had learned very quickly. It had only taken one incident to have her blacklisted from every decent real estate firm in the city; one tiny rumor that everyone had believed without so much as a photo to confirm it.
Even the man involved in the incident had denied it, but that hadn’t made a difference to any of the city’s gossipmongers. In the end the man had been allowed to keep his job, and at the age of twenty she had learned exactly where she stood in the male-dominated corporate world.
She applied the bare minimum of make-up needed to cover up the dark circles, and put on a little blush, mascara and lipgloss to play up her features as subtly as possible. She was reasonably satisfied with the results. She wouldn’t be winning any beauty pageants, but the make-up highlighted her features nicely, made them look softer.
She checked her bedside clock. She had five minutes. She raced to her dresser and sifted through her massive collection of underwear, pulling out a pale yellow lace bra and thong. Her affinity for girlie bras and panties was her one concession to femininity. And it was safe, because no one knew about it.
The doorbell rang, and the sound put an uncomfortable jittery sensation low in her belly. She clamped a hand to her stomach in an attempt the squelch the feeling. The last thing she needed was to start acting like a silly teenage girl with a crush. She hadn’t acted like a silly teenage girl when she’d been a teenager. No reason to start now that she was nearly at the halfway mark of her twenties.
“Coming!” she shouted, still trying to clasp her bra.
She gave herself one last glance as she raced by the bedroom mirror, and grimaced. Her hair was starting to curl, and in no time it would turn into frizz. Normally she didn’t dare let her hair dry naturally, but at the moment she didn’t have time to worry about it.
She slipped the dress over her head as she hurried out of her bedroom. It was shorter than she remembered, ending above her knees, and the scoop neck showed a lot more cleavage than she remembered too. The last time she’d worn it had probably been her sophomore year of high school. But it was too late to change now.
She swung open the door and her heart slammed against her ribcage. If he’d been handsome yesterday in his suit, he was devastating today in dark blue jeans and white button-up shirt. The color of the shirt enhanced his golden-brown skin, and he had the sleeves scrunched up to his elbows revealing his muscled forearms.
That tightening sensation was back, winding through her midsection and sending electric pulses through her bloodstream. Muscled forearms were something else she liked, apparently.
She was staring. Oh, no. She was staring and she couldn’t stop. Thankfully, he didn’t notice. Or maybe he pretended not to. Or he was just so used to women gawping at him that he took it as his due.
“You’re ready,” he said, in a tone she wasn’t certain was complimentary. He assessed her slowly, his brown eyes taking a leisurely tour of her body. She had to fight the urge to try and cover up. “Typical female behavior demands that you keep me waiting for at least half an hour.”
“I haven’t picked up my copy of The Rules lately, so I must be out of the loop,” she said waspishly.
He chose to ignore her biting retort and let his eyes roam over her body again. “Don’t you think it’s a little chilly out for a dress that skimpy?” The dress ended well above her knees, showing off killer legs she’d done a great job of camouflaging with her baggy pants.
“Skimpy?” She tugged at the hem, as if trying to add length to it. “It’s perfectly decent. Besides, it’s all I had that was appropriately feminine for you.” She said it sweetly, but he could feel her barely contained annoyance radiating off her in waves.
Fine. That made two of them. The last thing he wanted to do was take a woman shopping. Much less take a woman shopping for a ring. Commitment, and anything resembling it, had been something he’d always endeavored to avoid. He’d spent too much of his life looking out for the needs of others, being the stable influence. As soon as his younger brother had turned eighteen Marco had taken
