a fiancée,” he said patiently.
“For what? If this is a joke, Dylan Cole, so help me I’ll—”
“It’s no joke,” he said quickly. “Calm down, Katy. See, since Matt got married I seem to have become the favorite target of every love-starved female in town. Plus, Brandee’s back in town.”
“Brandee Haycox? Head cheerleader, homecoming queen, all-around Miss Popularity—that Brandee Haycox?”
“Ha-ha,” he said, “very funny. There’s only one Brandee Haycox.”
“Which has what to do with you? Last I heard, she’d gone off to run a health club in Denver or some such.”
“And now she’s healthy and she’s moved back again.” He squirmed in his chair. “And she…uh…seems determined to add me to her list of conquests, if you know what I mean.” He gave a self-conscious shrug of wide shoulders. “My spirit is unwilling but my flesh is weak. I gotta do something to protect myself, fast.”
Laura looked puzzled. “I don’t get it, Dylan. Can’t you just tell her you’re not interested?”
“I am interested—heck, a man would have to be dead not to be—but not in any long-term way, if you get my drift. I need someone to save me from myself.”
“Or save Brandee,” Katy said, annoyed because it seemed to her that he was trivializing her own problem, which was much more serious—i.e., more important—than his own. “Good grief, Dylan, you’ve never been a wimpy sort of guy. Just avoid her—avoid all of them.”
He gritted his teeth. “It’s not a matter of wimpy, it’s a matter of survival. And there’s something else.” He looked disgusted. “Since Brandee’s daddy owns just about everything in this town, including the bank that holds my mortgage, I’d just as soon not offend his baby girl.”
Katy nodded emphatically. “Okay, I get it. So your plan is to…what?”
“Well,” he said, “before I overheard you moaning and groaning about needing a fiancé, I didn’t have a plan. But now it occurs to me that if I wasn’t available, Brandee and the rest of ’em might take the hint.”
“What happens when she realizes your new love isn’t exactly on the up and up?”
He smiled. “You know Brandee. By then, she’ll have moved on to someone better.”
Katy did, indeed, know Brandee. Which meant she also knew he was right on in his assessment of the beauteous blonde. Brandee didn’t have a mean bone in her body but she could be very tunnel-visioned—and she liked men. A lot. “How long do you need this fictional sweetheart?” Katy wanted to know.
“I dunno, not too long. A few months? You?”
“A few months,” she agreed. “Until my birthday, for sure.”
He nodded. “October twenty-fifth.”
She gaped. “You remember my birthday?”
“Why not? I went to enough of your stupid birthday parties growing up.” He made a face. “The only thing that made it bearable was that your mother always baked a good cake.”
“Yeah, and she’s the one who made me invite you. She always liked ‘that nice Cole boy.’ Which proves she didn’t really know you.”
Dylan grinned. “Your mom likes me? That’s great. I need all the fans I can get.” His expression grew cautious. “So what do you think?”
“Give me a minute to think about this.” Eyeing him warily, she wondered if there was any way they might get along for more than five minutes, even with so much at stake. Certainly he was not bad looking—handsome, according to many. Owner of the Bear Claw Ranch west of town, he was popular with men and sought after by women, one of whom had caught him; he’d been married and divorced.
But could they make such a charade work? Unfortunately, Katy was desperate enough to find out….
“Okay,” she said, “we might as well give it a try. What do we have to lose?”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Nothing except our lives.”
“We’ll have to get a lot of things straight first,” she warned. “For example, how will we ever convince anyone we’re a couple?”
He grinned. “I’ve got a tougher question than that. How will we ever convince anyone that a dyed-in-the-wool career woman like you even wants to get married?”
“Why, of all the nerve!” She practically sputtered in her outrage. “Of course, I want to get married! What makes you think—”
Laura waved her hands for order. “Hold it, you two. This is no place to work out the details.”
Katy glanced around, saw several pairs of eyes watching, and groaned. “You’re right. Where—?”
“My house.”
Dylan blinked. “ Your house, Laura?”
She nodded. “For dinner tomorrow night at six—the kids need to eat early, and then we—I mean you can work out all the details without an audience.”
Dylan made a face. “Matt will really get a kick out of this.”
“Quit grumbling,” Katy snapped. “We’ll be there, Laura.”
“Speak for yourself,” Dylan flared.
“Okay, the floor is yours.” She slumped back in her chair peevishly.
“We’ll be there, Laura,” he said, as if this were new information. “Now if you ladies will excuse me—” Lifting his hat from the table and clapping it on his head, he rose and strode toward the door.
Katy stared after him until he’d disappeared outside. Then she groaned. “Laura, what have I done?”
“Everything you can to make your grandmother happy. Remember that, Katy.”
As if she could forget. There was no other reason in the world she’d deliberately subject herself to the company of Dylan Cole.
Dinner with the Reynolds family was curiously awkward.
Katy couldn’t quite figure out why. Matt and Laura were her dearest friends, and she adored their talkative children. And although she didn’t put Dylan into those exalted categories, she was, at least, accustomed to him.
Maybe it was just the strain of trying not to fight with him.
Whatever it was, he seemed to be feeling the pressure, too. In fact, he looked entirely ready to grab his hat and run out the door at the slightest provocation.
“So,” Matt said, lifting another piece of Laura’s good fried chicken off the platter, “what do you two think about the new gasoline station going up on the west side of town?”
“I
