Unexpectedly His Page 6

  They stood there for a moment, his fingertips against her flushed cheeks, her breath shallow and soft, both seemingly surprised by the electricity between them.

  Another glimmer of curiosity surfaced at the back of those deep blue eyes, and Marianne felt her stomach flutter. If she kept kissing him, he’d figure her for the girl in the cake before midnight. Would he call off the deal? Or worse, be embarrassed for her? The New Girl who jumped out of his birthday cake and ran. She pressed her palms against her belly. The thought of Nick feeling sorry for her was unbearable. Not when all she wanted to do was keep kissing him.

  He took a step back, and a small smile broke out across his face, transforming him immediately from sexy-sexy to sexy-adorable. So much harder to resist. “Best guess—think your heart made it to one hundred beats?”

  She looked up at him as if coming out of a daze. One hundred? Try one thousand. Any faster and her heart would explode like one of the stars winking down from the darkening sky.

  He reached out and pulled the heavy frames away from her face. “Maybe we should try one more?”

  If she wanted to embrace her feminine mystique and declare her sexuality fully emancipated, or at least emancipated enough to hold her own with her ex’s new lover, now was the time to go for it. Forget resistance. Go for an uninhibited stunner of a kiss.

  “I think I could pencil one in,” she said, sounding more like an academic than a siren.

  Still smiling, he bent his head to kiss her a second time, but as he drew close, a tsunami of panic overtook her and she backed away, suddenly afraid of letting go, of being truly seen. She’d hidden for so long behind her cardigans and books, always safe and out of harm’s way, never really noticed or admired. She’d always been happy enough that way, content to tap away on her keyboard or read a novel. Another kiss might illuminate the truth that she was the runaway cake jumper, and despite her recent attempts to break out of her shell, Marianne avoided the spotlight. She wasn’t ready for the truth. Not tonight. Maybe not ever.

  She bit down hard on her bottom lip. If she was honest, some small part of her hoped he’d recognize her; wanted him to see her as more than the nerdy new girl with the glasses—see her, the essential her—but that was an impossible fantasy. Hiding was safer. She eased her glasses from his grip and settled them back on her nose, all traces of her inner siren a distant memory. “Next week. I’ll pencil it in next week.”

  “I’ll take the rain check,” he said, as easy as basic math.

  And then Nick Wright did something unexpected. A loose curl had fallen from her usual, pinned back style, and he reached out to brush it away from the curve of her cheek with his thumb. So gentle. So endearing.

  So charming that Marianne’s heart fell, just a little bit more, temporarily in crush with the unattainable man who was all wrong for her. Trouble was, what was she going to do about it?

  Chapter Six

  “The list of things women like is long and contradictory.”

  —mantelligence.com

  Last night was a close call.

  Nick slammed shut the leather cover of his tablet computer, wondering why the hell he’d kissed her on the rooftop. Chalk it up to habit—see an attractive woman, swoop in for the kiss. But she was off-limits. The deal was simple, six weeks of a platonic engagement in exchange for the partnership he’d always dreamed about. And then there was his sister’s warning and his own determination to keep things hands-off.

  The whole damned situation was playing tricks with his head. Marianne was pretty in an awkward, utensil-dropping way—and there was something else, too, something he couldn’t name, something familiar, that made him weigh the pros and cons of kissing her again. But if he were smart, he’d steer clear. He enjoyed being the guy with a new woman every other week. No commitment, no one to hurt.

  Besides, his fiancée was not his type. He’d been right to peg her as buttoned-up and uptight, even if she could be warm and intelligent, too. He tapped his fingers on top of the tablet. Yeah, something about her didn’t add up. And he liked things to add up.

  He liked straightforward answers based on fact, not suppositions and intuition, and he made sure every case that crossed his desk reached a clean resolution, albeit generally in his favor. He put in long hours at the office and dug deep into case law to get the job done. His workaholic ways and lack of interest in commitment left little time for mysteries or love—Nick was fine with that. Keep it forthright. Keep it light. He didn’t like puzzles. A challenge, yes. A conundrum, no.

  But he liked Marianne.

  He liked her bright blue eyes. Liked her citrusy scent and the impossibly familiar definition of her killer legs. Liked her unexpected vulnerability. And he liked the idea of seeping under her reserve and causing a total meltdown. Loved the idea, actually.

  Oddly enough, his gut told him she’d like that, too. But none of it made sense. Why had he never noticed her before? Certainly it wasn’t all about the Zumba gear. No, she didn’t add up. Blushing one second, negotiating the next. He’d figure it out. His fingers tapped a deliberate rhythm on his desk, trying to unravel the puzzle that was Marianne McBride.

  “You’ve got that lost-in-love look on your face there, partner.”

  Nick’s gaze slid in the direction of the sarcastic remark and sure enough, Drew Evans was at the other end of it. Prick. “Not a partner yet,” he said in an even, professional tone.

  Jesus, that guy was always around to cause trouble. Like Nick, he was a senior associate. But unlike Nick, he was a slacker, all play, no ethics, and zero hours burning the midnight oil. Destroying a colleague to get ahead was closer to his modus operandi. More than likely, he’d started the rumor that led Nick to need a fiancée. Son of a bitch was ruthless.

  Evans sauntered into the office, uninvited. “Word around the firm is your confirmation’s just a matter of time. Now that you’re engaged and Jeffers is satisfied you’re not banging his ex-wife. All so convenient and well-timed, if you ask me.”

  “Back off, Evans.”

  He offered a tight smile and tossed a research file on Nick’s desk as if he were the man in charge. “Consider me backed off, Nick,” he said, emphasizing his sarcasm with a set of air quotes. “But I can’t wait to get a look at your fiancée tonight.”

  “Tonight?” he asked. Not like they socialized regularly. Or, ever.

  “The partner event. Can’t wait to see if you can pass off this new fiancée of yours as the real deal. If you’ve even got a woman lined up.” He offered a casual shrug and turned to leave. “Either way, watching you go down in flames is going to be the highlight of my year.”

  Son of a bitch. Nick’s jaw tightened. The damned partner event. He’d assumed the event would be partners and senior associates only—as usual. He’d forgotten they included spouses. Hell, he’d never even considered it, but now that he was engaged, the invite extended to Marianne. He bit back a curse. Tonight could fast-forward his professional life to its friggin’ conclusion. Thank God they had some quality time together last night—they just might be able to pull this off. Either that, or his colleagues would take one look at Marianne’s starched cardigan and know she was a fraud. Strike that—he was the fraud.

  If Dan Morgan caught on, not only would he lose his shot at the partnership, he’d lose his job, his reputation, and the respect of the partners. Pretty much career suicide. He paced across the office. He needed a loophole. An escape clause. A get-out-of-the-partner-event-free card. Except there was no way of getting out of tonight, not since his engagement had become all the talk around the firm. Better to focus on getting the details right, making sure they had their act down well enough to fool everyone. Was there a detail he’d forgotten? All of a sudden, his tie felt like it was strangling him.

  Something like…a ring?

  Nick couldn’t breathe. He needed a ring to seal the deal, make it look official. He forced the thought from his mind and pulled at the collar of his pristine white shirt.

  A
ring? Was he really going to give her a ring to complete the illusion? Jesus, he’d lost his mind. Was he supposed to stop into a diamond mart on the way home and pick up some Neil Lane knock-off? This wasn’t an episode of The Bachelor, for Christ’s sake. This was Real Life. He paced to the other side. Well, Real Life for their little Liars Club of Two.

  Shit.

  No ring. It was too much. Besides, even if he decided to go with a ring, with the current state of his luck, his new fiancée would spend the night decrying the politics of blood diamonds, which would be worse than the damn cardigan. He scrubbed his face with his hands. A ring would definitely make his farce of an engagement seem real, and a real engagement was critical to winning the partnership. Nick couldn’t risk anything going wrong tonight. Evans wasn’t the only associate hoping he’d fail. Hell, there was probably an office pool.

  “Plan on coming to the event tonight?” Standing in the doorway, his boss fired off the question, phrasing it in a way that was really a statement. Amazing. Like some kind of Jedi mind trick. Nick definitely needed to develop that skill.

  Dan continued. “I want to introduce you to a few of the senior partners, start garnering some goodwill. Put the business with Jeffers’s wife in the rearview.”

  Nick stood, grateful for his boss’s support. “Absolutely.”

  “And bring your fiancée. I’m looking forward to meeting the woman who stole your heart, not to mention saved your ass,” he joked in his deep baritone. “Bet she’s impressive as hell.”

  He nodded his agreement. “Like a high-yield portfolio, sir.”

  Not exactly romantic, but better than nothing.

  Maybe. A vague look of misgiving crossed Dan’s face. Maybe not. His boss wasn’t the top dog at one of Manhattan’s leading firms for no reason. He knew bullshit when he smelled it.

  If Nick planned to survive the situation, he needed to step up his game. “We’ll see you tonight, sir.”

  “See you tonight,” Dan agreed, turning to leave Nick with his thoughts.

  Not for the first time, Nick wondered what he’d been thinking when he’d come up with this plan. A six-week engagement to a woman who was practically a stranger? He tore both hands through his hair. Arrogant and reckless, just like his old man. This was why he played love cool. No entanglements. No issues.

  Now he could potentially lose everything.

  He whipped around, turning his back to the door, and landed a right hook into his open palm. His simple engagement deal was edging closer to a DEFCON One situation, and if he planned to satisfy some of the more traditional partners, not to mention his skeptics, Nick needed proof of love. He needed a ring and a proposal. He linked his fingers behind the back of his neck and stared up at the ceiling. How the hell was he going to manage that?

  …

  Marianne stared at the calculation on her computer screen. She’d run the numbers nineteen times and the result was still the same. But it couldn’t be. The kiss she shared with him last night could not be statistically significant; it was just a close call, an experiment, baby steps on her journey toward sexual freedom. If it meant anything more, he would’ve recognized her.

  She stabbed at the keys and reentered the data—the number of minutes she’d spend engaged to Nick—a figure totaling roughly 59,040—and its correlation to the likelihood that she’d kiss him again. Oh, hells bells, she already wanted to kiss him again.

  Finished, she sat back in the office chair and pressed the keys to run the algorithm one more time…and…yes, the same result appeared on the screen. According to the love matrix she’d designed, she and Nick were a perfect match, which was, of course, totally impossible.

  If they were a perfect match, he wouldn’t haven’t sounded so panicked when he’d called about his firm’s event tonight. Okay, maybe it was her panic echoing through the line. Nick had sounded cool and casual, his usual Bond-like self. Shaken, not stirred. She drew in a breath. He might be chill, but her nerves were definitely shaken. Tonight would be their first real test, a chance to prove they were happily engaged, in love…

  A perfect match. Well, technically there was no such thing as perfect, but anything in the 97th percentile or higher was as close to perfect as statistically possible. They scored a 98.7.

  How could she live up to that? With a score that high, if she continued to test her sexy skills by kissing him, her feelings could catch fire, and with Nick sure to bolt after the six weeks—could she handle it? She’d already been hurt, and badly; another dose of pain might crush her. Her fingers flew across the inset keyboard, adjusting the chemistry aspect of the dating algorithm. There had to be a fix.

  Yes, she needed a date, and if she was honest, another baby step toward emancipating her inner seductress sounded good, too. But why didn’t he recognize her? He’d kissed her twice now, if there was more between them than a one-sided fascination, he ought to be able to see her. Really see her.

  Typical. She wrinkled her nose at the screen. Blind and arrogant.

  But sweet, too. Dagnabbit.

  The tapping of a pair of high heels and the bitter aroma of coffee alerted Marianne to the fact that her boss was cruising over to her desk. Like most days now, Jane sported a smile on her face and a coffee carrier in her hand, but unlike most days, she had a hot pink cocktail dress flung over her shoulder.

  “For your inner siren.” Jane set down the carrier and presented the dress as if she were delivering the Holy Grail. “In case you happen to have a sexy date night—with your fiancé.”

  Marianne took one look at the strapless little number, swiveled away from her desk, plucked the dress from her friend’s hand, and walked over to the closet. The one on the far side of the office. No way was she falling for the dress gambit a second time. She’d have to get through tonight in her best cardigan and skirt combination.

  Jane followed. “Are you excited about tonight? Do you need anything? Shoes, maybe? A trip to the lingerie store?”

  A trip to the lingerie store? Marianne whirled around to face her. “So you know about his big work event?”

  “Nick might have texted me…”

  She rested her hands on her hips. “And does he know about the cake jumping?”

  Jane held up her hands in surrender. “Absolutely not. Not from me. Or Charlie.”

  Marianne spun around and marched straight back to the desk. She needed to put some distance between herself and the little pink dress calling to her from the closet. She was a serious person. Not a woman tempted by a dress or a field trip to buy underwear. “I can’t believe he doesn’t know…doesn’t recognize me.”

  A perceptive smile on her face, Jane lifted a grande herbal tea from the carrier and handed it to her. “Love is blind.”

  “Love?” Her brows snapped together in annoyance. “Who said anything about love?”

  Jane parked her denim-clad behind on the edge of the desk. “Hate to break it to you, especially now that you’re engaged, but despite his miserable track record, Nick is more than a one-night-only kind of guy. He’s got more substance than he’ll admit.”

  Marianne sipped at the tea. Images flashed through her mind like a Technicolor filmstrip. Nick’s hands framing her face…his lips on hers…his thumb against her cheek.

  Jane leaned over and peeked at the open database window. “Wondering just how hot a compatibility score can get?”

  She flipped the tablet cover shut in one quick motion, her face flaming. The overheated matrix score she shared with Nick was a mistake. She was certain. The man couldn’t count his past relationships on two hands…and two feet. Conversely, she’d only had one relationship, a total disaster of Titanic-sized proportions. On a groan, she sank down into the chair.

  How could she convince her ex, not to mention her family, she’d moved from Jilted Lover to Hot Fiancée of a man like Nick? Yes, he absolutely turned her inside out, but despite what the matrix said, despite last night’s kiss, when he looked at her, all he saw, all he could possibly see, was a woman
in an unadventurous navy skirt and ivory cardigan. She set the tea down on the desk and yanked hard on the bottom of the sweater.

  Her whole life she’d been nerdy and tentative with her thick glasses and quiet resolve. While her classmates had indulged in Seven Minutes in Heaven, she’d been hiding away with her books and writing computer code. Always the good girl. An image she’d allowed, or maybe, even one she’d created. A small pain stabbed at her heart.

  Inside, she’d always been more than that quiet, cautious girl, so why had she never tossed the cardigans? Fear? A need to always do the right thing? Maybe. But what had chasing that standard gotten her? A pink slip and a scandalous ex-engagement written up on Page Six—thankfully they’d neglected to add a postscript, Jilted for former dominatrix. For these small miracles, she owed the tabloid gods a kiss. Or a gift basket.

  But she hadn’t rallied her nerves and climbed into that cake for nothing. To heck with page six. Maybe it was time to stop living up to expectations and simply start living.

  She wrinkled her nose and glared at the closet. That darned dress was calling to her.

  Jane tapped her fingers on top of the closed tablet. “Know what your inner siren needs?

  “A lobotomy,” she joked, thinking it was as good a place to start as any.

  “No.” Jane laughed and shot her a look of excited anticipation. “A makeover.”

  “A makeover?” Marianne sat up in her chair. Serious women—even ones reconsidering their inflexible standards—did not get makeovers. She shook her head, but her friend was prepared for objections.