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Plain Jane's Plan
Kara Lennox
Will Plain Jane Catch Her Playboy?Allison Crane exchanged her dumpy look for new clothes, a new "do," even a new attitude to help Dr. Jeff Hardison by playing his fiancée–and the ungrateful cowboy didn't even notice! It was bad enough that the entire town of Cottonwood, Texas, knew she'd been in love with the playboy Hardison brother since grade school. Now they all knew how he didn't feel about Allie. It was time to move on….Then one wild, passionate night proved Jeff had noticed. And Allie got news that changed everything. Did she dare bare her soul to this man who might love her and leave her–on the chance that reformed playboys make the best Hardison husbands of all?
Plain Jane Allison was now pretty. No, gorgeous!
Her clothes were stylish and revealing, her hair fluffed around her face. People she’d known her whole life passed her on the street without a flicker of recognition. Allison hadn’t run into Jeff yet, but he was due to pick her up soon. She tried to corral the butterflies in her stomach. Would he whistle with appreciation? Would he stare with his mouth open? Would he take her in his arms and kiss her passionately?
The doorbell rang. Allison held her breath and opened the door.
“Hey, Allie.” Jeff flashed an easy smile. “Are you ready?”
“Um, yeah,” she managed.
“I’ll get these.” He took her two bags to the car and stashed them alongside his. “Hey, we have matching bags.”
Allison wasn’t sure how she managed to assemble words and phrases, but she must have done all right, because Jeff didn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary.
And that was just the problem, wasn’t it? She had changed everything about her appearance. And Dr. Jeff Hardison hadn’t even noticed!
Dear Reader,
What a special lineup of love stories Harlequin American Romance has for you this month. Bestselling author Cathy Gillen Thacker continues her family saga, THE DEVERAUX LEGACY, with His Marriage Bonus. A confirmed bachelor ponders a marital merger with his business rival’s daughter, and soon his much-guarded heart is in danger of a romantic takeover!
Next, a young woman attempts to catch the eye of her lifelong crush by undergoing a head-to-toe makeover in Plain Jane’s Plan, the latest book in Kara Lennox’s HOW TO MARRY A HARDISON miniseries. In Courtship, Montana Style by Charlotte Maclay, a sophisticated city slicker arrives on a handsome rancher’s doorstep, seeking refuge with a baby in her arms. The Rancher Wore Suits by Rita Herron is the first book in TRADING PLACES, an exciting duo about identical twin brothers separated at birth who are reunited and decide to switch places to see what their lives might have been like.
Enjoy this month’s offerings, and be sure to return each and every month to Harlequin American Romance!
Happy reading,
Melissa Jeglinski
Associate Senior Editor
Harlequin American Romance
Plain Jane’s Plan
Kara Lennox
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Texas native Kara Lennox has been an art director, typesetter, advertising copywriter, textbook editor and reporter. She’s worked in a boutique, a health club and has conducted telephone surveys. She’s been an antiques dealer and briefly ran a clipping service. But no work has made her happier than writing romance novels.
When Kara isn’t writing, she indulges in an ever-changing array of weird hobbies, from rock climbing to crystal digging. But her mind is never far from her stories. Just about anything can send her running to her computer to jot down a new idea for some future novel.
Books by Kara Lennox
HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE
840—VIRGIN PROMISE
856—TWIN EXPECTATIONS
871—TAME AN OLDER MAN
893—BABY BY THE BOOK
917—THE UNLAWFULLY WEDDED PRINCESS
934—VIXEN IN DISGUISE * (#litres_trial_promo)
942—PLAIN JANE’S PLAN * (#litres_trial_promo)
Contents
Chapter One (#u33c302a2-c20f-5e37-b52e-cda101db07f1)
Chapter Two (#u31c86621-68a1-545a-83a2-5c7e83f26102)
Chapter Three (#u9452d784-7846-574a-abe5-2a5935e67eb5)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
“You are coming to the conference, aren’t you, Jeffy?” the sultry female voice asked through Jeff’s answering machine. “We had so much fun last year, and I just can’t wait to see you again.” The voice lowered to a sexy whisper. “I’ve got the most incredible new black dress. You’ll love it. Okay, Jeffy? See you next weekend, bye-byeeeeee!”
Jeff Hardison groaned and flopped onto his leather sofa. He could almost see Sherry McCormick’s frosted lips as she’d cooed her way through the message. Last year, at the medical products convention in Dallas, he’d found the man-crazy nurse an amusing distraction. But a little of Sherry went a long way, and he had no intention of spending four days with her stuck to him like a tick.
He briefly considered skipping the conference, but he really needed to go, since his father couldn’t make it this year. Jeff and his dad prided themselves on having all the latest diagnostic equipment, despite the fact they ran a small-town medical practice in Cottonwood, Texas.
So how was he going to dodge Sherry? In fact, he’d just as soon dodge any female who had her sights on him. He was tired of shallow relationships with shallow women who saw a single doctor as their ticket to the country-club life. He was even a bit tired of the ones who just wanted to party.
A knock on his door distracted him momentarily from his dilemma. When he opened the door, he was pleased to see his friend Allison Crane on his porch.
His pleasure quickly turned to concern when he realized she had a bleeding elbow. A huge tear in the leg of her sweatpants revealed a nasty case of road rash along the side of her leg. Her bike was lying in the grass in his front yard with a bent wheel, telling the rest of the story.
“Hi, Jeff,” she said quickly before he could express his concern. “I’m fine, don’t worry, I just slid in a patch of gravel, hit a pothole, and got myself two flat tires. Since I was right up the street—” she shrugged “—I just want to use your phone.”
Jeff dragged her inside. “Hell, Allie, you’re going to kill yourself on that bike if you don’t slow down.”
“I wasn’t going that fast,” she protested as he led her into the kitchen. “Can I use your phone?”
“To call 911?”
She laughed. “I’m not hurt that badly, just a scratch. I was going to call Anne and see if she could run me and the bike home in her van.”
In the kitchen, he took a piece of sterile gauze from the cabinet where he kept his first-aid supplies, then poured some antiseptic onto the gauze and faced Allison with a determined expression.
“Get away from me with that stuff. It stings.”
“You can use my phone after you let me fix you up. God knows what kind of germs are lurking in gravel.”
“Oh, you and your germs.” But she capitulated, sitting in a chair at his kitchen table and rolling up the sleeve of her oversize T-shirt.
“I can give you a ride,” he offered.
“That’s not necess—ouch!” She jerked her arm out of his grasp when he tried to clean the cut on her elbow. “Surely medical science has invented a disinfectant that doesn’t sting by now.”
“Stop being a baby.” After wiping away some of the blood, he inspected the cut more closely. “You’re bleeding like Niagara Falls here. You need stitches.”
“No way. I’ll just apply pressure. It’ll stop bleeding in a minute.”
Jeff shook his head. “You are the most pigheaded person when it comes to medical care. You’d bleed to death before you let someone take a couple of stitches.”
“Pigheaded! You’re the one who hasn’t seen a dentist in three years.”
“My teeth are fine.”
“And my elbow is fine. You and your needles can just keep away from me.”
Despite her protests, he managed to clean out the cut to his satisfaction. The bleeding had already slowed. “All right, maybe some antibiotic ointment and a couple of butterfly bandages will do the trick,” he said. “Can I at least do that?”
Allison frowned. “If it’ll make you feel like a hero.”
Jeff stifled the smile that threatened. Taking care of a patient, any patient, always made him feel like a hero. Most people thought he’d gone into medicine simply because his father was a doctor. But that had little to do with his career choice. In fact, he’d been planning a very different path, something related to business or marketing, leading to a fast-paced job and a corner office and all the big-city excitement he could handle. Then his mother had gotten sick, and he’d watched, helpless, as this doctor and that one tried futilely to save her.
Jeff’s father, himself a physician, had accepted her death. He’d accepted the fact that medical science had limits, and he’d let his wife go, knowing he’d done his best. But Jeff hadn’t let go so easily. He’d disappeared into the woods for hours, screaming at the unfairness of it all. Then he’d vowed that he would never be that helpless again. He would learn the healing arts, learn them better than anyone ever had, so no one he loved would get sick and die like that.
As he got older, he realized his outlook had been naive. Doctors weren’t gods, and sometimes patients died. But he always took it hard when one of his patients slipped away. And he’d never gotten over the thrill of finding a cure, easing pain, giving comfort and occasionally pulling off something that bordered on miraculous.
He would never say it aloud, because it sounded so sanctimonious, but being a doctor truly was his calling.
ALLISON WINCED as Jeff deftly cleaned the scrapes on her leg.
He looked up with clear, blue eyes that could melt a glacier. “I’m sorry, did I hurt you?”
“It’s okay,” she said. It wasn’t the pain that made every nerve ending in her body stand at attention. It was the touch of Jeff’s hands on her bare skin. They’d played doctor once, when they were children, but ever since then she had assiduously avoided letting Jeff practice his medical arts on her. It wasn’t that she mistrusted his skill. He was one of the best doctors in all of East Texas. But she was deathly afraid that if he touched her, her bodily reactions would give her away.
Thank goodness he thought her fidgeting and shortness of breath were due to discomfort, rather than the fact she was so hot and bothered she couldn’t sit still.
She was crazy in love with Jeff Hardison, had been since she was thirteen. Unfortunately, Jeff had never given her any indication that he reciprocated, so she had pined away in secrecy. He’d always been a good friend to her—really, her best friend—but nothing more, and she would die a thousand deaths if he ever found out her true feelings.
She’d known since high school that he would never be the one for her. Jeff gravitated toward sophisticated females with style, panache and long legs. She had none of those things. Even losing sixty pounds—a result of her newfound passion for bicycling—hadn’t turned her into the sort of femme fatale Jeff went for.
It was hopeless, completely hopeless. She never should have opened her dental practice back home in Cottonwood, where she saw him all the time. They hung out with each other. She even spent time with his family at the Hardison Ranch, which Jeff’s brother Jonathan ran. She was constantly reminded of everything she couldn’t have. Yet, a certain perverse part of her enjoyed being with him. It was torture, but sweet torture.
Jeff applied a couple of bandages over the worst scrapes on her legs. “There, that ought to keep you from bleeding all over my car.”
“You don’t have to take me home. Anyway, I couldn’t fit a loaf of bread in the trunk of your Porsche, much less a bicycle.”
“You can pick up the bike later. I trust you won’t be riding it right away.”
“Of course I will.”
He gave her a disapproving frown.
“Oh, all right, you can take me home,” she said. as if it were a great concession on her part. In truth, she loved riding in Jeff’s luxurious, dark-green sports car, loved the buttery feel of his calfskin seats and the powerful purr of the engine, barely contained on the calm streets of Cottonwood. “I need to take the bike into the shop, anyway, to have that wheel straightened out.”
She would ride her mountain bike until the racing bike was repaired, but Jeff didn’t have to know that.
“That road rash will be a great topic of conversation next weekend,” Jeff commented as they headed for his garage.
“Next weekend?”
“The convention? You’re going, aren’t you?”
“That’s next weekend? Oh, shoot, I think I forgot to send my money in. I’ve probably got back-to-back patients next Thursday and Friday, too.”
“Allie, you have to go.”
She was surprised by the urgency in his voice. “Why?”
“Because it’s no fun without you. Anyway, you have to save me from Sherry McCormick.”
“That nurse with the curly blond hair?”
