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“Oh,” was all she could manage, grateful he stood behind her and could not watch her face redden.
“The shoes were a little trickier. I hope they’re comfortable.” His tone was dubious.
Tess noticed the pair of strappy black leather heels lined up at the foot of the bed next to a pair of size-eleven men’s dress shoes. For some reason the sight of their footwear sharing space next to a bed seemed more intimate than the fact the man had helped pick out her unmentionables.
“Well, everything seems to be in order,” he said, rubbing his hands together. He walked to the closet and pulled out a new suit. It was double-breasted and the color of charcoal, with the barest hint of a pinstripe. She noticed the tags still dangling from the cuff. At her questioning gaze, he offered a careless shrug.
“The chili didn’t come out. I guess you could say my American Express card got quite the workout today, especially since I had to have them do a rush job on the alterations.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up a hand to forestall the apology that she was about to offer. “Don’t say you’re sorry, Tess. After tonight, we’re more than even.”
“Okay,” she agreed. “I won’t apologize. But can I say thank you?”
He grinned, that sexy little dimple tugging in his cheek. “You’re welcome. Now we’d better get ready. I can change in the bathroom, unless you’d like to freshen up first?”
“Yes, please. I think I smell like chili dogs.” She crinkled her nose. “I’ll just take the dress and the other things in there with me,” she told him, quickly gathering them up. “I won’t be long.”
Jack glanced at his watch. “I hate to rush you, but it’s almost twenty after,” he said.
Jack Maris had never known a woman who could be ready in five minutes. Nancy and her endless fussing over her appearance had caused them to be chronically late.
He changed into his suit and paced the length of the room once. Then he went to the closed bathroom door and raised his hand to knock, planning to tell Tess he would meet her downstairs. He didn’t want to keep his new partner waiting. The door opened before he could knock, however, and Jack’s eyes widened at the sight that greeted him.
“Ready,” she announced. She gave her head a little shake that sent copper-colored curls dancing.
He sucked in a sharp breath. None of the fantasies he’d had about her hair matched the reality. It corkscrewed nearly to her waist in rivulets of molten lava.
“I took down my hair,” she said needlessly when he kept staring at it. “I can put it back up. I just thought—”
“No, no,” he interrupted her, his voice a little gruff. “Leave it down. It’s…” Then Jack noticed the dress. The woman whose firm curves filled it out so nicely needed no flounces, ruffles or sequins to compensate for—or camouflage—any shortcomings. Perfection, he thought, as his heart picked up speed. She was sheer perfection.
“Tess. I…” His voice trailed away along with his train of thought, and whatever he had been about to say was swallowed up by the awkwardness of the moment.
He watched as color suffused her face. She seemed to look everywhere in the room but at him, and Jack wondered what had possessed him to stand there gawking at her as if he were some pimply-faced schoolboy on a first date. This wasn’t a date at all, he reminded himself, although it was difficult to ignore the sexual attraction that had his blood heating.
Finally, his tone crisp and businesslike to compensate for the erotic thoughts he’d been entertaining, he said, “Come on, let’s go get this over with.”
Tess followed Jack through the beveled-glass doors of the Saint Sebastian’s dining room and looked around. With the exception of an older couple seated near the rear of the restaurant, most of the faces were unfamiliar. Most likely out-of-town guests, she decided, wondering who she and Jack were there to meet. She smiled at the diners seated at each table they approached, eager to look the part of a happy bride-to-be, but Jack just kept walking. He walked past the young couple enjoying linguini in the booth near the wall. Past the dark-suited businessman scribbling notes on a yellow pad of paper. Past the trio of middle-aged women sipping coffee and eating cheese-cake. That’s when she knew, and her stomach felt as if it had dropped to her feet. She snagged Jack by the arm and tugged him to a halt.
“Wh-what is it?” he asked.
“The Fausts,” she replied in a hushed tone. “You didn’t tell me we were eating dinner with Ira and Cora Faust.”
His eyes widened as his face bleached of color. “Please tell me you don’t know them.”
“Everyone in Pleasant River knows them,” she whispered frantically. “They’re the city’s first family, so to speak. They sponsor just about everything that goes on around here, from the Christmas pageant to the annual blueberry festival. I was Miss Blueberry twice in high school. Ira Faust crowned me, for heaven’s sake!”
At any other time, Jack thought, he might have been amused by the quaint image her words brought to mind, but with the beginning of a nasty headache pounding behind his eyes, he could only groan. Briefly, he considered turning around and slinking out. Later he could make up some excuse. But Ira took away that option by calling out, “Look, dear, here they are.”
Jack sent Tess a pleading look, then plastered a smile on his face as they joined the Fausts at their table.
“Good evening, sir. Sorry to have kept you waiting.” He turned to the plump, silver-haired matron who was seated next to Ira and said, “This must be your lovely wife. It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”
Any hope he harbored that the older couple would not recognize his date was dashed immediately.
“Why, this is a surprise,” Cora Faust said, her tone incredulous and a little excited. “Don’t tell me that Pleasant River’s very own Tess Donovan is your fiancée?”
“Young man, why didn’t you mention that your girl was a local?” Ira admonished good-naturedly. “This is extraordinary.”
“Hello, Mr. Faust,” Tess said. Jack noticed her discreetly wiping her palm on her dress before shaking the older man’s hand. Turning to Ira’s wife, she said, “It’s good to see you again, Mrs. Faust.”
They were seated, and the waiter came for their drink order, forestalling what Jack knew was only the inevitable. Tess ordered a club soda, apparently determined to keep a clear head. Jack, however, ordered Scotch. False courage, he decided, was better than nothing. The black-vested server had barely moved out of hearing range when Cora lobbed the first verbal volley of what promised to be a long evening of probing questions.
“Tess, dear, I ran into your mother just last month at the beauty shop. We chatted while I was waiting for my manicure to dry. She never mentioned your engagement. When exactly did this occur?”
“Um, well, actually…” Tess turned to Jack, her gaze silently beseeching him to clear up this misunderstanding before it went any further.
For the millionth time, he wondered why he had listened to Davis’s foolish suggestion, even as he admitted that the plan had worked splendidly. He had the job. And, God help him, he wanted to keep it. Below the folds of the linen tablecloth he reached for Tess’s hand, offering a reassuring squeeze, and sent her a look that begged for understanding.
“It happened rather suddenly. In fact, we haven’t told our families yet. We wanted it to be secret, just for a little while longer. I’m sure you can understand that.” His gaze strayed to Cora and he winked at the older woman, as if including her in some Shakespearean plot. Cora’s eyes misted, evidence, Jack decided, of her romantic heart. He felt himself relax a bit.
“Oh, of course. Ira and I were young once. I remember how love was at the beginning. Not that it’s not still wonderful after all these years, but at first it’s all…” she seemed to hunt for the right word, then, she sighed, “…magic.”
“This calls for a toast,” Ira announced, giving Jack an affectionate thump on the back. The waiter had just arrived with their drinks, but as he transferred them from the tray to the table, Ira said, “Any proper toast must be done with champagne.”
The waiter returned and was filling their glasses with sparkling wine when Cora said, “Where on earth did you two kids meet? Ira tells me you’re from Boston, Jack. When did Tess take a trip to Boston?”
The tale they had concocted in the car clearly no longer applied.
“That’s actually a very interesting story, isn’t it Tess?” Jack began, buying time. Tess nodded vigorously, and he watched her gulp down champagne, nearly emptying the fluted glass before she returned it to the table. Apparently she also needed a little false courage now. Always one to oblige a woman in distress, he reached over to refill her glass.
“You were saying,” Cora prompted helpfully.
“Um, yes, how Tess and I met. It’s a very interesting story,” he repeated inanely. His mind, however, remained stubbornly blank. Ira and Cora Faust seemed to lean forward in their seats, as if willing the words out of his mouth, but no matter how fast his brain searched for a scenario they would believe, nothing came. It was no use, he decided. He sent Tess an apologetic little smile and opened his mouth, ready to expose his idiotic deception and beg the Fausts’ pardon.
“The truth is—”
That’s all he got out before Tess interrupted.
“It was last spring.”
Jack watched her swallow thickly as she realized she had the Fausts’ undivided attention. They regarded her with polite curiosity, while he had the feeling his own expression held a mixture of gratitude and panicky desperation.
Tess drained the rest of her champagne, stalling shamelessly as she searched her imagination for some plausible explanation. She couldn’t believe she was going to lie, and not just some lie of omission either, but a whopper elaborate enough to satisfy the town’s pre-eminent busybody. A painting hung on the wall behind Cora, a gilt-framed watercolor of a basket of fresh-cut lilies. It gave her an idea.
“Uh, Jack and I met at the French Impressionists exhibit at the Detroit Institute of Art. We’re both huge fans of Monet.”
Tess smiled in relief. She had gone to the exhibit alone, so no one would be able to prove or disprove her story. The Fausts and Jack seemed to be waiting for her to continue, so she did, surprised by how easily it all came to her as one falsehood after another slipped from her lips, transforming her staid, predictable life into something to sigh over.
“Um, we, uh, corresponded for months afterward. And talked on the telephone a lot, too. But it was through his letters that I fell in love with him.” She sent Jack a shy smile that had Cora Faust’s ample bosom heaving in appreciation.
Tess was thinking about the love letters the star-crossed Abelard and Héloïse had sent to one another in the twelfth century. She had studied them in a history class during her freshman year of college. They were beautiful letters, full of passion and heartache and unbearable longing. She had read them with a box of tissues at her side; her heart breaking for two lovers who had remained true to one another despite the horrendous circumstances that forced them apart forever. She wanted a love as pure as that—minus the tragedy, of course.
Tess smiled at Cora and confided, “You get to know a lot about a man by how well he can put his thoughts down on paper.”
“So when’s the big day?” Ira asked.
“We haven’t set a date yet,” Jack responded at the same time that Tess, still caught up in the romantic fantasy she’d been concocting, replied rather dreamily, “June.”
They stared at one another in stricken silence as Ira and Cora looked on in amusement.
“Women always want June weddings, my boy,” Ira said, nodding sagely. “Marriage is about compromise. They demand and we bend.” He added a sly wink when his wife slapped his arm. “Might as well start by compromising on the wedding date.”
“I’ll think about it, sir,” he mumbled, trading champagne for a bracing gulp of Scotch.
The waiter returned for their dinner orders and, for the time being they were spared having to devise any more creative responses. For the next twenty minutes Jack managed to steer the conversation back to Faust Enterprises and his new responsibilities there. But when their entrées arrived, Cora routed the conversation once again to matrimony by exclaiming, “My goodness, dear, where is your engagement ring?”
She captured Tess’s hand and held it up to her myopic eyes for inspection.
“Oh…well,” Tess sputtered.
“Honey,” Jack tsk-ed. “You must have left it next to the bathroom sink in our suite.”
Tess smothered a groan while Cora’s mouth puckered into a shocked O.
“You’re staying in his hotel room?” the older woman asked in a scandalized voice, holding a hand to her bosom.
Tess wanted to die. The sexual revolution might have taken place decades ago, but a woman like Cora Faust, who donned white gloves on Sunday and probably still wore a corset, didn’t hold with co-habitation before marriage. What had Jack been thinking, giving the woman the impression that he and Tess were physically intimate? Tess pictured Cora and the other ladies at Mabel’s Style Haven discussing Tess’s sleeping arrangements as they sat under the dryers, and she knew if her mother caught wind of this, Rita Donovan wouldn’t need a permanent to put curl in her hair.
“N-n-no, ma’am,” she stuttered, offering a prim smile as she fidgeted in her seat like a first-grader caught eating paste. “I got off work at seven, and it was easier to come straight here and get ready upstairs than to drive all the way home and wait for Jack to come pick me up there.”
That much, at least, was the truth. And while Cora nodded, Tess had the feeling the cagey older woman wasn’t completely convinced of Tess’s chastity.
It was almost ten when the waiter brought the check, and Tess left the restaurant on shaking limbs, unable to clearly remember all of the lies she and Jack had spun for the Fausts’ benefit. All she knew for certain was that she had started out the day worried about a midterm exam and ended it with the town’s most celebrated gossip believing she was engaged to, and carnally involved with the gorgeous new vice president of Faust Enterprises.
Tess had traded black silk for denim and cotton, and sat huddled in the front seat of Jack’s rental car waiting for the heat to kick in as they drove back to Earl’s Place. Beside her Jack groaned and muttered, “I can’t believe I let it get this far.”
He’d been saying basically the same thing since leaving the Fausts, but this time Tess felt the need to offer her own bit of editorial comment.
“You? My reputation is in tatters. Cora Faust thinks we’ve been…” she gestured wildly with her hand to fill in the blank. Just thinking the words made her uncomfortable. She couldn’t bring herself to say them aloud.
“We’ve been what?” Jack asked. He turned toward her, and she saw the beginnings of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
“You know only too well what she thinks we’ve been doing,” Tess croaked. They passed the beauty shop, where gossip was dispensed as freely as the hairspray, and something even more depressing occurred to her. “What if this gets back to my mother? I’m twenty-four, but I may as well be in pinafores as far as my mother is concerned.”
He sent her a sympathetic look before returning his attention to the road.
“On the bright side, at least the man you’re supposedly sleeping with is willing to make an honest woman out of you.” When he glanced her way, Tess sent him a withering look intended to tell him exactly what she thought of his attempt at humor.
“Sorry. Just trying to lighten the mood.”
But Tess didn’t want her mood lightened. She slumped against the headrest and closed her eyes. “What if my family learns of our supposed engagement?” she moaned.
“Maybe they won’t get wind of it. Maybe Cora will keep quiet for a while out of a sense of romance, and by the time she says anything to your family, this entire mess will be resolved. Then you can tell them the truth and have a good laugh over it.”
“Somehow, I doubt they would find this funny.”
Jack brought the car to a stop in the lot behind Earl’s Place and shifted into park. He turned to face her and when he spoke, all humor was gone from his voice.
“I’m really sorry, Tess. I didn’t mean to drag you so deeply into my predicament.”
The street lamp illuminated only half of his face, but there was no mistaking his sincerity. She exhaled slowly and straightened in her seat. “Oh, it’s not all your fault. I went along with it, even when I realized who we were supposed to be fooling. I could have said no, but I didn’t.”
“Why did you do it?” he asked softly, his gaze just a little too direct.
Tess looked away. She didn’t have an answer for him, not one she could share without sounding pathetic. How could she tell him that work and school had taken up so much of her life for the past several years that she hadn’t had time for many dates or much fun? And despite all the complications their “date” had wrought, she had had fun. She’d enjoyed putting on a sexy dress and going out to a fancy restaurant. She’d enjoyed Jack’s company and the forbidden feelings he conjured up in her whenever he smiled or touched her hand. It was heady stuff for a woman who spent most of her spare time dressed in ratty sweats, her nose pressed into a textbook.
“Tess?” he prompted.
She decided it was best to ignore the question. “I can’t believe I said we’re having a June wedding. It just got out of control.”
“Yeah,” Jack said with a sigh. He leaned his forehead on the steering wheel and moaned like a man facing amputation without anesthesia. “Way out of control. I guess we should own up to it and apologize. We probably should have done that from the start. It would have been much easier.”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing myself, although I don’t relish the thought of telling Cora Faust I lied to her.” In jest, she asked, “Got any other ideas?”
Jack rolled his head to the side on the steering wheel and squinted at her, as if taking her question seriously. “Well, we could keep up the charade for a little while longer. I mean, just long enough for my position to be secure. Then we could tell the Fausts we called off our engagement.” He sat up and shrugged. “Tell them we decided we just weren’t suited.”
“Jack, I don’t know. My family.”
“I’m asking a lot, I know. Before you say no, think about it. We’ve already asked the Fausts to keep our engagement a secret. We could also ask them to keep quiet about our breakup to spare us any public embarrassment. No one else needs ever know we lied.” He grinned triumphantly. “It’s a brilliant plan, Tess.”
“You mean devious.”
“Well,” he cocked his head to one side. “Maybe just a little, but my intentions, ultimately, aren’t dishonest.”
She remained quiet for a moment, surprised to find she was actually considering what he proposed.
“It wouldn’t be for long, Tess, I promise. A few weeks, maybe a month. What do you say?”
Tess glanced around the empty parking lot and tried to figure out just why she was willing to continue playing along with this scheme, because that’s precisely what she was prepared to do. Surely, she had more than paid Jack back for the ruined suit. But then, Tess knew it had stopped being about the suit several lies ago. Maybe it had never been about the suit at all.
She liked Jack Maris. She liked spending time with him. She liked the way he said her name, and the way he had held her hand as they sat at the table, stroking the pad of his thumb over her knuckles with such casual tenderness. Maybe she was just being a fool, but this—whatever this was—felt right. She thought about her mother’s firm belief in fate. Perhaps Tess should believe in such things herself.
“I must be crazy,” she muttered.
Jack’s brows pulled together. “Is that a yes?”
“Yes, I’ll do it,” she said slowly.
