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“You said yourself it would be much more believable if the models were real people.”
“Well, yes, it would. But isn’t it a little shady to pretend?”
“Who does it hurt?” Trey asked coolly. “The only difference is that on the last page, the happy couple will ride off into the sunset separately instead of together.”
“You’ll keep up the fiction all the way?”
“Right up to the end of the campaign—and then cut, stop the action. It won’t matter to the customer who’s looked at the ads. She’s already had her thrills along the way.”
“I don’t know,” Darcy said doubtfully. “Customers can be funny that way.”
“Look, it’s no different than if Caroline and Corbin had made it all the way through the ad series and then he hit her the night before the wedding.”
“Except that you’re planning the exit before the engagement ever gets off the ground. Of course, if you’re going to be convincing to all your customers, you’ll have to play it very close to your chest right up till the moment when you don’t go through with the wedding. And that could be a problem.”
“Interesting that you think so. Tell me why.”
“Because if you’re acting as if you’re serious in public, the woman you choose as your supposed bride might get the idea that you really are. Serious, I mean—no matter what you tell her in private.”
Trey nodded. “That’s exactly what I was thinking. In fact, Dave pointed out that it could end up in something like a breach-of-promise case.”
“He would say that. Skittish guys all think alike.”
He lifted an eyebrow at her. “Skittish guys? You saw the problem just as quickly as Dave or I did.”
He’d caught her on that one. Darcy shrugged. “So I guess that makes me a skittish girl.”
“And that’s why…” He raised his cup and sipped. The silence drew out.
Darcy felt her breath catch and wondered why she was feeling so anxious. All this had nothing to do with her. Or did it?
“That’s why,” Trey said very softly, “Dave suggested that my supposed bride be…you.”
CHAPTER TWO
TREY hadn’t spent a lot of time in his life contemplating proposals—how the question should be phrased, what the best occasion to ask it would be, or even who he might want to address it to. He figured there would be plenty of time to consider all that, because he was thirty-two and not in the least anxious to settle down.
But there was one thing he would never have expected—that when the day came and he actually suggested to a woman that the two of them might become engaged, she would choke on her coffee and turn purple at the very idea of becoming Mrs. Andrew Patrick Kent the Third.
Stunned and a bit dizzy, maybe—he could understand that sort of reaction. Shedding tears of joy, perhaps. Completely unable to speak and having to indicate agreement by gesturing, even.
But asphyxiating in shock?
Of course the notion of being Mrs. Kent wasn’t what was actually sending Darcy Malone into coughing spasms at the moment. It couldn’t be, because he’d made quite clear that an actual marriage wasn’t what he was offering. She was gasping for air merely because he’d suggested she be his temporary fiancée.
And that made no sense whatsoever. Considering the number of women who’d angled for the position over the years, why was this one puffing in agony over the notion that she simply pretend for a while that she wanted the title?
“Darcy,” he said. “If you could stop this for a minute and just listen…”
“If I could stop…” She clutched both hands to her chest. Her voice was a barely understandable croak. “I would. Just go away, all right?”
“Not as long as you’re threatening to strangle. Here, have a drink of water.” He held a glass to her lips and she managed to sputter a few drops. Her coughs died down to a low wheeze, and he said, “There, that’s better.”
“Maybe it is from your point of view.” She leaned weakly against the counter.
“Look, I don’t understand what’s so awful about the idea. I’m not asking you to have my baby, you know.” He set the water glass down with a bump. “Most of the women I know would be flattered.”
“Which is precisely why you’re asking me, instead of one of them. Right?”
He nodded, relieved that she understood.
“Because I’m not fool enough to take you seriously. So there you have it.”
Trey frowned. “I guess that didn’t come out quite the way I intended it to.”
“Maybe you’ll figure out what I mean in a year or two. Or maybe I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and see how that comment is really a compliment to me. But I wouldn’t count on it.”
“If you’d just listen to what I have in mind, I think you’d see it differently,” he suggested. “There would be considerable advantages for you in this plan, you know.”
“Name two.”
“You need a job.”
“I’ll get one on my own, thanks. I’m perfectly well qualified.”
Her tone was a bit truculent, just enough to make him suspicious. Trey wished he’d thought to ask Dave exactly why she was unemployed at the moment.
“I could make it easy for you,” he said. “You said you’re applying to the Kentwells chain—”
“And what do you think my working conditions would be like on any job you could give me? I’m sure my new supervisor would be simply delighted to have an employee foisted on him by the boss.”
“I’m not stupid enough to make it obvious, Darcy.”
“And exactly how are you going to keep it from being obvious? Are you planning to make the announcement about hiring me before or after my picture is splashed all over the newspapers and the airwaves, standing next to you and choosing lamps for our bedroom? Do you really think your other employees can’t connect the dots and see what’s going on?”
“All right, then—I’ll get you a job somewhere else.”
“I told you, I’ll do it myself, on my own merits. I don’t need a handout.”
“Stubborn, aren’t you? Dave said you were.” Maybe that explained why she was here and not still wherever she’d been living. San Francisco—was that what Dave had told him?
“For a guy who’s supposed to be devoted to the principles of confidentiality, Dave talks too much.”
“You’re not his client. I am.”
“So he can talk to you about me, but he can’t tell me about you? Oh, that’s charming.”
“Unless we’re engaged. Then he can say pretty much whatever he wants because we’d be—in a sense—family.”
“In a sense,” she agreed. “You’re not giving this idea up, are you?”
“I think it’s the perfect arrangement.”
“What makes it so great—if I’m allowed to ask?”
“For one thing, sudden engagements are always suspicious, but—”
Darcy’s eyes widened. They were an odd shade of brownish-green, he noticed. Trey had never seen anything quite like them.
“What?” she gasped. “You’re saying you don’t believe in love at first sight?”
He ignored the irony dripping from her voice. “But since you’re my friend’s sister and not just some stranger, we could easily have met months or even years ago. You’ve lived out of town for a while, so that explains why my other friends haven’t met you or heard about you. But since I travel a fair amount, I could have been visiting you often. They’ll believe it.”
“Not just some stranger… That sounds like a great title for a made-for-TV movie.”
She said it under her breath, but there was no missing the fact that Darcy had gone past irony all the way into sarcasm, so Trey pretended he hadn’t heard her. “People will still be startled when I announce that I’m getting married, of course—”
“I don’t doubt that a bit.”
“But not as startled as they would be if I said I was engaged to someone they’d known all along.”
She nodded. “Someone you’ve obviously not been serious about before.”
He was making progress, Trey told himself. He could almost see the dents starting to show in her armor. “Right. You’re the unknown, so they’ll reserve judgment for a while. And it’s conceivable that I could have fallen in love with you, so—”
She rubbed her temple as if it hurt. “Gee, thanks. I feel so honored.”
Trey felt like swearing. What on earth had he said that was so terrible? She was easy on the eyes, she had a graceful walk, she projected a certain confidence even in ragged sweat clothes. If he could just surgically remove that sharp tongue, she’d be next door to perfect for the role. “I was paying you a compliment.”
“Drop it, Trey. You’re only digging yourself a deeper hole, here.”
“Anyway, the fact that we’re admitting we’ve only seen each other at random intervals will even help account for why the whole thing falls apart in the end—when we break off the engagement.”
“Because when we start spending lots of time together, we’ll realize we aren’t as compatible as we thought we were.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, that’s not hard for me to picture,” she said. “You really have thought of everything.”
“It’s not like this will last forever, Darcy.”
“But it will go on for a while.” She sighed. “Just for the sake of discussion, and not because I’m agreeing to anything, how long do you expect it would take?”
Trey stopped to calculate. “Two or three weeks.”
“How did you come up with that? I thought you said it was going to be a three-month long campaign.”
“Well, yes—we’ve bought ad space that far ahead. I mean it’ll be two or—more likely—three weeks for photography and production. We’ll have to start from scratch, you see.”
“And after the shooting’s done, everything just runs on autopilot?”
He frowned. “I suppose there would be the occasional public appearance, just to keep up the fiction, until the ads finished running.”
“That’s what I thought. Somewhere around Christmastime, in other words.”
“It’s not like it would be every day. Dave said there’s no one in your life, so—”
“And since I obviously don’t have anything better to do for the next few months, I might as well do this?”
“That isn’t quite the way I’d have put it, but…”
“Pardon me while I go ask my brother to refer me to a good attorney.”
Trey wrinkled his brow. “Dave is an attorney, Darcy.”
“Yes. But after I murder him, I’m going to need someone else to defend me.”
“Dave has only your best interests at heart. You’re at loose ends right now, and a job hunt may take months, especially since you’re not working at the moment. Employers always want to know what happened to the last job.”
She sighed as if she’d found that out the hard way.
Trey pushed his advantage. “I’m willing to compensate you for the time you spend with me.”
“Oh, thanks very much for making me sound like a call girl.”
“It’s nothing of the sort! You’d have a paying job right away, even if it’s not exactly what you’ve been applying for. And within a few weeks, by the time the photography’s all finished, I’m sure I can arrange something for you that’s closer to your field.”
“Any job you could possibly arrange for me would look very fishy.”
She had a point, and Trey had to admit it. “All right, if an easy-to-get job isn’t your thing, then what sort of bargain do you have in mind? There must be something you want.”
“You mean, if I could have anything at all?”
He noted a sudden gleam in her eyes. Greed, he thought. Or avarice. Or maybe just plain ambition. “Within reason,” he said warily.
“Then I want my own firm.”
He was waiting for her to say a million dollars, and so it took a few seconds for him to register what she’d actually demanded. “I said within reason, Darcy.”
“I think I’m being perfectly reasonable. I don’t want you to set me up with a Fortune-500-sized company. I just want my own, one-person graphic-design firm.”
“And you think it wouldn’t look suspicious if I was behind that?”
“Who’s going to know you’re behind it? I’m tired of working for other people. I’m tired of producing infinite variations of dull subjects. I want to be able to choose which projects I handle, and set my own work schedule.”
“Being in business for yourself isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
“It’s better than having to deal with a boss who’s been stuck with me against his will. You help me set up my office. Then after we break our engagement, the Kentwells chain hires me to create a new logo and—”
