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He winced as if her challenge hit too close to home. “Of course I can, but to tell the truth, I’m beginning to feel like a lamb being led to slaughter.”
“A lamb?” Her eyebrows rose as she considered the man who looked more like a rogue than a lamb. “Hardly, Mr. Kirkpatrick. You’re the furthest thing from a lamb I can think of. That’s why I wanted you.” She paused long enough for him to get the message. “And by the way, under the circumstances, you can call me Emily.”
“Circumstances?” Instead of looking chastened, he eyed her suspiciously. “What circumstances would that be?”
“I’ll tell you tomorrow.” She reached into her purse for a roll of the peppermints she chewed on whenever she was nervous and offered one to him.
“No, thanks,” he answered, his mind busy working on how to swim out of muddy waters before he got in over his head. He wondered just how soon he could fall back on his tried-and-true backup plan to get out of the way of trouble. “Why tomorrow and not today?”
“Tomorrow,” she repeated firmly, and popped a peppermint into her mouth.
His mind was made up. Emily Holmes was not the woman for him, but he knew just whom she was for. As far as he was concerned, his meeting with Emily Holmes had been ordained. Just the thought made him feel virtuous. “Maybe I ought to give you my business card and an address where you can find me if you need me. Say around noon?”
She took the card and carefully put it in her purse. “I’ll be there.”
PROMPTLY AT TWELVE, Emily showed up at the address noted on the business card T.J. had given her yesterday. She checked the address against the sign in front of the building site and relaxed. T.J. Kirkpatrick, Historical Building Restoration, was a real business. Recalling the calculating look in the man’s eyes yesterday, she’d been half-afraid the card had been a fake.
Ahead of her, four men in dusty jeans and worn T-shirts were busy rebuilding a crumbling red brick wall. A weathered sign across the front of the aging structure dated 1939 proclaimed the building to once have been a fire station. Today it looked more like a private building of some sort badly in need of repair. A dozen more men dressed in jeans, sleeveless T-shirts and helmets roamed over the site. When one man removed his hard hat and wiped his forehead, her gaze unerringly found the man she was looking for. All six feet of him.
She was in the right place.
He was wearing leather boots, worn jeans and a shirt open to his slim waist. Rolled-up sleeves revealed muscular forearms. His brow was beaded with sweat. The faint, dark shadow of a beard covered his tanned face. Clearly in charge of the operation, he was muttering to himself as he dried off his face and turned to check the efforts of the work crew.
Yesterday at the auction, she’d decided he wasn’t her type. Today her eyes widened, and her body warmed at the sight of him.
She’d taken their photograph to the law office yesterday afternoon as proof she was married. To her dismay, she’d been told she had to come up with the man himself.
There was something different about the man today, she thought as she waited for him to notice her. He looked a little older, taller, a bit more muscular and, if possible, more attractive. With his sun-tanned skin and muscular chest showing under his open shirt, he didn’t look to be quite the same man. In the photograph he’d reluctantly taken with her yesterday, he’d been dressed in a tailored suit, white shirt and paisley tie. An immaculate fop.
As a result, she’d spent a sleepless night planning this meeting and its intended outcome. Now that she was here, she was beginning to have her doubts. What she had in mind, coupled with his sexy appearance, made her wonder if she hadn’t gone overboard in her efforts to get his full cooperation. There was a problem. He was still the kind of man a woman liked to dream about, but not the kind of man a woman necessarily takes home with her. After being jilted by her too-handsome-for-his-own-good fiancé, she wasn’t going to go down that path again.
The more she gazed at her target, the more uneasy she became. Yesterday, he’d merely been a means for her to get her inheritance. Today, judging from her physical reaction, he’d turned into a flesh-and-blood man, decidedly striking.
His masculine appearance couldn’t be ignored, she thought. Not when his every move touched off an answering response in her.
She had to be honest and objective. It was her own appearance that was beginning to worry her. Deliberately calculated to draw T. J. Kirkpatrick’s interest and keep it until the task she had in mind for him was safely accomplished, she was afraid she might have overdone her appearance. She sighed and reached for a peppermint.
She might be a librarian whose worldview largely came from books, but she could recognize sensuous attraction when she felt it. And she felt it now. Maybe she would have been better off winning a harmless, ordinary man she wouldn’t have needed to impress. Considering the circumstances, sometimes a woman had to do what she had to do to get her man.
The men scattered over the site stopped to stare when she finally caught their attention. Whistles and catcalls filled the air. One or two waved, another threw down a pail and shovel and started toward her. The look in his eyes was clearly predatory. She fought the urge to leave.
T.J. turned to check out the activity. A studied smile pasted on her lips, a woman stood there looking as if she were poised to run. She was dressed in a wisp of a light-blue summer outfit that covered vital areas and little else. Her silky auburn hair flowed around her bare shoulders, and a single gold chain hung around her neck. A green jade charm dangled from the chain and lay between her breasts. When he could tear his gaze away from the jade charm, he noticed she held a small white cardboard box in her hand.
He took a second, calculating look around and decided he’d better check out the visitor before he had a mini-riot on his hands. He waved off the workmen and sauntered toward his visitor.
“May I help you?” His gaze took in the enticing areas of pink-tinged skin at her neck and shoulders, graceful, slender, bare arms and a body carved to perfection. Pink, manicured toes peeked from white sandals that matched her handbag. To his mind, she was the perfect package of femininity.
The way she affected him made his senses whirl and, in spite of his common sense, his body stir. Speculation as to why she was here in the first place blew his mind. He had to remind himself tempting women like her had no place on a job site. Not that he was a monk when it came to admiring and dating beautiful women, but at the moment he had more important things to think about.
“I told you I’d be here today,” she answered, following his gaze down her dress. She gave a little shrug in an effort to make the neckline of the dress move up a little higher, with no discernible results. When she noticed his growing interest, she shrugged again. To her chagrin, it only made matters worse. She tried a smile. “I figured this dress was more appropriate for this warm weather than what I was wearing yesterday.”
Appropriate? Yesterday?
T.J. glanced over his shoulder at the crew, who were making no bones about their enthusiasm for his unexpected visitor. “Take thirty!” he called before he turned back to his visitor. Behind him, his crew continued to laugh and joke about their visitor. Sure enough, “take thirty” didn’t mean a damn when there was a beautiful woman to look at.
He couldn’t blame them. He was taken by her, too. The brilliant sun overhead shone on fiery auburn hair and cast a golden glow over her very visible porcelain skin. To add to her appeal, when he got close to her, he discovered that her scent was fresh and minty. Pungent enough to sharpen his senses and add to his growing awareness of her charms.
It took a moment or two before his gaze swung to her intriguing hazel eyes. They were filled with questions. So was he.
Why was an attractive, obviously well-bred woman wandering around the construction site? And why was she dressed in an outfit surely calculated to draw male attention?
“Appropriate for what?” he prompted. When she stared wordlessly at him, he went on patiently. There was no use pushing her, and by now, he was in no mood to try. “How about starting with your name, or is it too much to ask?”
“My name is Emily Holmes. I told you that yesterday,” Emily answered, tearing her gaze away from the cleft in his chin. “As for what I have in mind, that’s what I came here to tell you. Just as I promised yesterday.” She glanced over at their audience and took a deep breath. “Is there someplace where we could talk privately while you have lunch?”
He glanced at his watch, shrugged and smiled. Heck, it was lunchtime anyway—or close to it. “I usually wait for a food truck to show up. Either you’re early or they’re late. At any rate, I didn’t brown-bag it today.”
She thrust the white cardboard box at him. “I didn’t want you to miss your lunch hour so I had the hotel kitchen put together a box lunch for you.”
“Thank you. A free lunch is something no hungry man would pass up.” He wiped his hands on a large bandanna he took from his pocket, glanced around the building site and finally pointed to a small grassy area shaded by a single tree. “Hang on while I find something for us to sit on. I wouldn’t want you to soil that outfit.” He cast a lingering glance at her cleavage before he strode away.
Emily bit back her reply and waited while he found, dusted off, and set up two empty crates under the tree. She might be a little underdressed, but at least she had his attention.
A lunch truck sounded its horn and drew up alongside the construction site. The crew cheered and headed for the truck.
“Lemonade?”
“Yes, thank you.” She took a seat and watched while T.J. ambled over to the truck and ordered two bottles of lemonade and a cup filled with ice. She’d never met a man quite like him. The sun glinted off his warm brown hair. His stride was confident. Yesterday at the auction, he’d appeared to be attracted to her. She hadn’t been interested, but today, for some reason, the feeling had become mutual. Not even her ex-fiancé had affected her this way. She shivered at the thought.
T.J. bantered with the truck driver and crew until he had them all laughing. Embarrassed at her own reaction, she didn’t know which got to her more: the sound of his easy laughter, or the way those tanned muscles rippled on his chest as he swung his hands.
Either way, T. J. Kirkpatrick could probably charm the birds right out of the trees, she mused as she watched him wave goodbye and stride back to where she waited. When he winked at her, she began to have second thoughts.
Somehow T. J. Kirkpatrick didn’t look to be the kind of man who would go quietly wherever she led. Maybe it would have been easier if he weren’t every woman’s walking dream. She’d have to remind him she’d won him fair and square and that this visit was strictly business. And, while she was at it, she’d remind herself he was the right man for the role she had in mind for him. Nothing more. When her need for his time was over, he’d be expendable.
T.J. handed her a cold bottle of lemonade and a plastic cup filled with ice. He opened the box lunch and looked inside. “Great! Two ham-and-cheese sandwiches, coleslaw, carrot and celery sticks, pickles and chocolate cake!” He looked at her for a long moment, then smiled. “Not bad! Not bad at all!”
She wasn’t sure he was still talking about the lunch.
To her discomfiture, he took a swallow of lemonade before his gaze raked her from the top of her head to her toes. “Let’s see now, Miss Emily Holmes. To begin with, you act as if we’ve met before. I don’t think so. If we had, I’m sure I would have remembered you.
“To add to the mystery, you show up here dressed in a way clearly calculated to rob a man of his common sense. You bring him a lunch designed to soften him up. And, to top it off, you haven’t stopped shivering since you got here.” He gestured to the tree that cast its shade above them. “Considering it’s ninety degrees in the shade, you can’t possibly be cold.” He stopped to contemplate her in a way that made her blood run swift and hot. “So, Miss Holmes, if that’s your real name, you must want something from me awfully bad.”
Mesmerized by the sound of his voice and the vein that throbbed at the side of his throat, Emily found herself lost in the magic of his masculine persona. She would have reached for another peppermint to calm her nerves, but she couldn’t move. The problem was the cat had gotten her tongue, butterflies were waltzing around her middle, and her mind had gone blank.
Still, the moment she’d planned down to the smallest detail had arrived. From the look in the man’s eyes, she’d obviously reached the point of no return. It was now or never.
She nodded helplessly.
He took another deep swallow of lemonade, wiped his lips with the back of his hand and eyed her thoughtfully. “So, Miss Holmes, just what is it you want from me?”
Emily swallowed hard and took a firm grip on her emotions. If the man thought she was out of her mind, so be it. “I—I want you to be my husband.”
Chapter Two
T.J. choked on the lemonade. “Say again?”
She swallowed hard and squared her shoulders. “I said I want you to be my husband.”
“That’s what I thought I heard you say.” T.J. repacked the lunch and thrust the box at her. “Here, you can have this back. You’ve got the wrong man. You’ll have to find someone else to give you a wedding ring. I may be hungry, but I’m not for hire. And certainly not with a box lunch.”
“Wait a minute!” She shoved the box at his stomach, forcing him to take a step backward to keep his balance. “You have the wrong impression. I wasn’t asking for a wedding ring. I only intended to ask you to pretend to be my husband. And only for one day.”
T.J. blinked. If she’d announced a meteor was hurtling toward Earth and was about to land at his feet, he couldn’t have been more surprised. Either he was a victim of sunstroke or Emily Holmes had asked him to be her husband!
No matter how inviting she looked in that wisp of a dress, neither choice was acceptable. Red-blooded man that he was, T.J may have given Emily Holmes his attention all right, but she wasn’t going to have him for a husband.
He shrugged and dropped the box lunch onto the crate at his feet. “The answer is no, not for five minutes, let alone one day. And certainly not while I still have the brains I was born with. Do us both a favor and find someone else.”
“I can’t,” she protested. “You cost me three hundred and fifty dollars. I don’t have the time or the money to make up another game plan.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” he said with a look over his shoulder at the men who were watching them, “I’m not interested. I have a ton of work waiting for me, and I’ve got to get back to it.”
“Wait a minute!” She reached out to stop him. “I’m not finished yet!”
“Sorry, I am.” He turned to go back to work, but the distressed look on her face stopped him. “Now look here, Miss Holmes, no matter who you think I am, I’m still not your man.” To his chagrin, she looked more determined than ever. “If you ask me, it looks as if someone has taken you for a sucker. Who’d you give the money to?”
“To the Foundation for Homeless Children. They had a bachelor’s auction yesterday at the Beaumont Hotel.”
At the mention of the foundation, pieces of the puzzle started to fit together. The answer to the case of mistaken identity was unhappily becoming clear. “I’ve heard of it,” he answered cautiously. “But I still don’t know what this has to do with me.”
“I bid more for you than I’d expected to. The fact is that I won you for a date fair and square. I didn’t have a date in mind yesterday, but I do now.”
“A date?” The thought of taking Emily Holmes out to dinner blew his mind, but at least it was better than being a husband. “You’ll have to make up your mind, Miss Holmes. Just what is it that you want of me?”
“I told you, I want you to be my husband.” When he shook his head, she went on. “You promised to do whatever I asked you to do.”
Enough was enough. Frustrated, T.J. rolled his eyes. “I’m telling you it wasn’t me. I swear I wasn’t even at the auction!”
“Yes, you were. You gave me your business card and agreed to meet me here today,” she went on stubbornly. “I can prove it!” She searched in her bag and came up with the business card. “There!”
T.J. reached for the card and muttered under his breath. There were no two ways about it, the card was his. Or at least, his company’s. “This must be someone’s idea of a joke.”
His mind awhirl with possibilities, T.J. fingered the card. Surely not his wheelchair-bound adoptive father. The two of them didn’t even look alike.
Cold chills ran down his spine when he recalled his brother joking about his participation in the foundation’s bachelor auction. The same foundation that had facilitated his and his brother Tim’s adoption. T.J. had been asked to participate in the auction himself, but pleading a heavy schedule, he’d made a generous contribution instead.
The answer to the case of mistaken identity was rapidly becoming clear.
What really blew his mind was Tim’s parting comment this morning before he left on an unexpected business trip. Laughing like a loon, he’d told T.J. he was sending him a surprise!
A surprise?
Emily Holmes?
He bit his lower lip. His younger brother’s fingerprints were all over this scenario. And not for the first time, either. Trading on their remarkably similar appearances was Tim’s traditional and not-too-novel way of getting out of the hot water in which he regularly found himself. T.J. was used to putting up with his nonsense, but sending Emily here today as a surprise was going too far. The time for Tim to grow up had passed.
He took a last, long swallow of lemonade, cleared his throat and plunged into muddy, deep waters. “I suppose I owe you an explanation, Miss Holmes. The fact is, T. J. Kirkpatrick is the name of the family business.”
When he had her frowning attention, he took a deep breath and gestured to the sign behind him. “Since my dad, my brother and I all have the same initials, it seemed more practical to use T. J. Kirkpatrick for our building restoration business. My father’s name is Thornton John, mine is Thomas Jefferson, and my brother is Timothy James.”
Emily’s eyes grew wide. “Don’t tell me all of you are called T.J.?”
“Not exactly, but close. My brother and I were renamed when we were adopted and my father, Tim and I all wound up with the same initials. My father is largely retired, so I’m called T.J. now. My brother is called Tim. He’s an architect. He should have told you so yesterday instead of giving you this card.” He smiled wryly. “Sorry for the misunderstanding.”
Her lips tightened, and her eyes lit up. He realized he hadn’t made a dent in her belief that he was the guy at the auction. Not that he blamed her. It wasn’t the first time people had reacted in disbelief to the similar initials. But never as badly as now.
She took a small photograph out of her purse and thrust it under his nose. “Men! I was afraid you’d try to weasel your way out of the deal, and I’ve turned out to be right. As far as I’m concerned, you made up that ridiculous story. It doesn’t wash with me, Mr. Kirkpatrick. I have this picture we took together yesterday to prove you and I were together. Everything I’ve told you is true.”
T.J. smothered a groan and reached for the photograph. It was the type of instant photograph a person could take at a drugstore, an airport or a hotel for twenty-five or fifty cents. He studied it carefully, the truth shimmering before his eyes. There was no doubt about it. The culprit in this caper was Tim.
“I swear this isn’t me,” he said, raising his right hand. “Hold on a minute and I’ll prove it to you.” He looked back at the work crew covertly admiring Emily. “My crew will back me up.”
“Don’t waste your time!” Emily retorted, her eyes blazing fire. “I wouldn’t believe any of them if they swore on a stack of Bibles. They’re probably afraid they’ll be fired if they don’t agree with you.”
In spite of his frustration, there was something about Emily Holmes that struck a chord in him. He’d never been attracted to passive personalities, women included. Hell, he wasn’t one himself. What did attract him to Emily was the way she was willing to fight for what she wanted. It was just too bad he was what she wanted.
Tim’s reason for sending Emily to the building site as a surprise for him was fast becoming clear. It was a setup by his comedian of a brother calculated to put Emily and him together.
Although he’d made a point of avoiding lasting relationships, he was no saint. For that matter, he’d had his share of dates and that was as far as he was prepared to go. The last thing he needed or wanted was to have Tim set him up with a woman who was looking for a husband.
“Sorry, there’s a strong resemblance between my brother and I, but this isn’t me,” he said, mentally kicking Tim. “I was here working overtime with a building inspector yesterday afternoon.”
He handed the photograph back and started to explain again that he and his brother Tim looked so much alike they were often taken for twins. As he tried to ignore Emily’s attraction, he had to convince the lady he didn’t intend to be her husband. Not to pretend. Not ever.
Then he gazed into Emily’s proud, innocent hazel eyes.
Skimpy attention-getting attire and an innate sensuality aside, T.J. sensed there was a vulnerability about Emily Holmes. He’d been in the business world long enough to know people weren’t always what they seemed, and that included Emily. He was even willing to bet she wasn’t a sexpot or a flirt out to get her man. What he did sense was that, for some unknown reason, she needed him desperately.
His first instinct had been to turn her down. His second was to reconsider. Maybe there was some way to help her without getting too involved.
He thought of trying to reach his brother. Make him come back to face up to his “commitment.” Bad idea, he thought with certainty as he gazed into Emily’s troubled eyes. Left to Tim’s devil-may-care clutches, the lady would be in deeper trouble than ever.
Mulling over his choices, he felt guilty, although he wasn’t sure why. After all, while Tim had been busy matchmaking, he was the one who had been taking care of the family business.
If his brains were functioning properly, he’d make his apologies for his brother and get back to work. And yet, as he studied the firebrand in front of him, he had the strong feeling she was clearly in need of his services.
What was one day out of his life?
