Loe raamatut: «Fill-In Fiancee»

Chapter One

“Phillip, if it’s any consolation, you’ve always looked particularly good surrounded by a bevy of beautiful females,” Brett Hamilton told his brother. He cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder, and pushed back from his desk. He’d been so happy to hear from his brother, yet this bit of news surprised him. Another girl? Again? “At least you know the baby’s healthy,” he said. “It’s the luck of the draw whether it’s a boy or a girl.”

“It’s Mother and Father that are the problem. They dote on the girls, truly. But they want a grandson, Brett. An heir. They figure I haven’t been doing my job, and they’re looking to you now.”

Brett said nothing—he’d heard it often enough in the past few months. His entire family kept reminding him it was time to get married, to produce an heir, to strengthen family alliances. It was all a bunch of rubbish as far as he was concerned. Producing heirs to keep their titles and traditions was a thing of the past.

“By the way,” Phillip added, “they’ve struck up with Lady Harriet again, and Mother said she’s asking about you.”

“Phillip, must you ruin a perfectly good day, bringing that up again?”

“Well, it’s true. Anyway, you’re both getting to the place where you should think about settling down.”

“Perhaps. But not together.”

“Our families do complement each other,” Phillip reminded him.

“What you’re really suggesting, Phillip, is one of the greatest financial mergers England has seen in decades. Between their family business and ours we’d have a corner on the market.”

“And is there anything wrong with that?”

“A merger and a marriage are two different things.”

“And what about getting an heir in the process? Mother and Father would be ecstatic. I tell you, with the doctor promising us another girl, me and my swarm of females don’t offer the family lineage a lot of hope.”

“Four daughters and a wife do not create a swarm. Unless,” Brett chuckled, thinking of the chaos he’d witnessed last summer, “you are on an outing to the park. And as for the family lineage, I think we are in dire straits if the only concern is to produce a male heir. I’d like to think we’ve moved beyond that.”

“Huh.” His brother sighed audibly. “Not to hear Father. The first thing he asked when we told him the news was if it was a boy. And Mother? She went into a veritable depression for a week when she found out the doctor said we should start adding more pink to the wardrobe. Carolyn says this is absolutely the last baby…so, little brother, even though I have tried my best, truly, you are now responsible for the family title—or at least an heir for it.” He paused for emphasis. “What with their upcoming visit, I’d imagine Mother and Father will take the opportunity to remind you of your duties and obligations.”

Brett squeezed his eyes closed, grateful his brother couldn’t witness his exasperation. His parents had been nagging him for years to settle down and get married. “So you’re warning me?”

“No. I’m telling you what to expect.”

Brett said nothing, but the burden of it all hung like a dark cloud over his head. He’d been told since childhood to embrace his title, and he’d been well schooled in his responsibilities. It had been an unspoken understanding that he would marry and marry well. But for him, London had been a place of spectator events, charity balls and social finagling. He’d grown up as Lord Breton Hamilton, but inside he simply felt like “Brett.”

When the opportunity to move to America to work in Wintersoft’s Boston office as vice president of overseas sales came up, he’d jumped at it. In the past six months he’d led a useful, fulfilling life, and he loved the challenge—and the anonymity—of it. Perhaps the software company didn’t have the tradition of his father’s shipbuilding empire, but Brett was quite content to build his own dream, to create his own niche.

“Well?” Phillip prodded. “What about your love life? You’ve been suspiciously quiet about all of it since you moved to the other side of the ocean. It’s made Mother think that maybe you’ve had regrets, and with Lady Harriet, perhaps that absence has made the heart grow fonder. She even mentioned that Lady Harriet might consider joining them on their visit to Boston. She hinted to Mother that she’s never been there.”

The suggestion pulled Brett out of his reverie and caused him to sit erect in the leather desk chair. “What?” A second slipped away as he tried to assimilate what his brother was telling him. “No. Absolutely not.”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, I’ll not be forced into a marriage, and for another, we’re simply not compatible. We established that two years ago.”

“You grow to like your mate, Brett.”

Mate? Damn, he loathed the functional term. The woman he’d spend the rest of his life with would meet his expectations on every level, including the emotional and the spiritual. The last thing he needed was Lady Harriet tagging along on his parents’ visit. “But I’ve grown to like my girlfriend,” he said coyly, thinking that if he said he already had a woman in his life, they’d drop the whole thing. “Here. In Boston.”

“Say again?” Brett heard two sharp raps, most likely against the receiver. “I do say, there must be something wrong with the connection. You? Have a girlfriend?”

“More than that,” Brett continued boldly. “We’re engaged.”

A moment of dead silence followed his declaration.

“I beg your pardon, man? And you’ve been keeping it quiet? What a cagey old bloke you are!”

“I’m not trying to be cagey.” But Brett’s enthusiasm for the broad picture he’d painted grew. If his brother believed the tale, maybe Brett could get off the hook with his parents, as well. He’d had quite enough of their hints—and their ultimatums. “And there’s more,” he claimed, baiting his brother with one last delectable tidbit that had soared through his imagination. “We’re living together.”

“What? And you’ve stayed mum about all this?”

“I wasn’t quite prepared to tell everyone. Not yet.”

“You realize you have just poked a hole in our parents’ carefully laid plans?”

“Mmm. Maybe. But you can see that if Lady Harriet chose to surprise me with a visit—well, it would be most…uncomfortable.”

“For who? Mother and Father? Or you?”

“You will let them on to this delicate—or indelicate—situation, won’t you?” Brett suggested shrewdly. That was always the fun of it, getting Phillip to do his bidding and soften up his parents. Phillip, four years older, had always delighted in his baby brother’s teasing ploys and had spent a lifetime covering for him.

This time, however, Brett would admit the truth to his brother after his parents were safely back home and Lady Harriet had moved on to happier hunting grounds. He hated to deceive Phillip, but there really was no help for it.

As he was ruminating his way around this particularly tricky scenario, Sunny Robbins rapped on the frame of his open door. Seeing he was on the phone, she politely held up a file folder of contracts he’d requested an hour ago. He motioned for her to come in.

Sunny, who had the most mesmerizing gait of any woman who walked through Wintersoft’s legal department, crossed the threshold and entered his domain. She was wearing that same short skirt again. The one he’d noticed her in in the employees’ lounge last week. Huh. Short enough to play with a man’s imagination, long enough to be respectable.

She had coltish legs, and they matched her demeanor—a little unconventional and very unencumbered. He’d always wondered about her, and had recently struck up several conversations with her that stopped just short of him asking her out. She was the paralegal who worked for Grant Lawson, general counsel for the company.

“I’ve got the copies,” she whispered, preparing to put them on his desk.

“Wait,” he mouthed, lifting a finger and listening to his brother’s tirade.

She slid them onto the corner of his desk and took a step back.

“I don’t believe it! Someone has snared my little brother? The man who always said it would take one resourceful temptress to steal his bachelorhood? That was the most inviting thing about you and the girls, you know. You were unattainable.”

At that precise moment, Sunny threaded her fingers through her tawny locks and raked the chin-length riot of blunt-cut, windswept hair back from her temple. Her smile, patient and unaffected as she waited for him to get off the phone, accelerated his heartbeat. Their gazes collided and in that brief pause he saw something in Sunny Robbins that he’d never before recognized—a vision that coincided with the remark Phillip had made about his “resourceful temptress.”

“Yes, well, I’m one step closer to giving it up,” Brett confirmed, determined to stick to the charade but equally uneasy about the direction his wild ploy was taking him.

“Who is this woman?” his brother pressed. “What does she do? Where is she?”

“Actually, she’s right here,” Brett declared recklessly. “Sunny,” he said, “blow my brother a kiss, will you, luv?”

Sunny blinked and a frown popped onto her brow. “Excuse me?”

“Blow him a kiss. From your lovely lips to my only brother, half a world away.”

“Why?” Sunny slanted him a dubious look.

Brett grew magnanimous, as he always did when he carried a plot too far. This one was going to get him in big trouble, he knew. He could just feel it. “Because he wants to meet you! Tell my brother I love my job, I love my life. Blow him a kiss and assure him all is well with the world. That all is well with you.” He handed Sunny the phone.

She stared at it as if he’d taken complete leave of his senses. When she finally, reluctantly, accepted it, she put it to her ear and listened, as if she expected to hear something absurd.

Then, to Brett’s delight, she made a sloppy smacking noise into the receiver.

“Yes, I’m fine,” she said tentatively.

Brett’s smile grew, and his confidence multiplied. He couldn’t help it; he looked at the conference call button and popped it on.

“And I hear you’re living with my brother.”

“I’m what?” Sunny exclaimed, stiffening as she yanked the phone away from her ear.

Brett punched the button off, effectively silencing his brother, and quickly made a dive for the phone. “She didn’t want anyone to know. Not just yet,” he hastily explained to Phillip.

“Sunny? What kind of name is Sunny?” his brother pressed.

“Hers. Solely, uniquely hers.” Brett shook his head and flapped a hand at Sunny. He didn’t want her to run out the door without an explanation. “I’ll be done in a moment,” he mouthed. “Look, explain to Mother and Father about this, will you, Phillip?” he said, raising his voice. “I mean, they’re going to find out anyway, and it would probably be best coming from you.”

Phillip chuckled. “I expect I’ll need to tell them to book a hotel, too. Under the circumstances.”

“Do that,” Brett agreed.

They said their goodbyes, but Brett’s gaze was fixed on Sunny the entire time. She was rooted to the spot, and her eyes were huge. There was barely any color in her face save for a spot of red staining each cheek. Her chin was raised at a defiant angle, and her shoulders straightened, stretching the sheer fabric of her blouse and making the tiny buttons between her breasts shift.

Uh-oh. He may have gotten away with it with his brother, but he wasn’t going to get away with it with her.

Brett carefully placed the phone back on the hook and set his hand on the file folders. He tapped them impatiently. “Thank you for dropping these off, Sunny—”

“It’s my job,” she emphasized.

“And about this other little thing…I’m in a bit of a fix.” He waited for her reaction. There was none. “So…since you were in here, I thought you could help me out.”

“Your brother said—if I heard him correctly—that we were living together?”

Brett rose up out of his chair slowly, so as not to alarm Sunny. “Now, there’s the thing. We could, actually. If you wanted to.”

Sunny’s curvaceous lips parted and her jaw slowly dropped.

Before she could protest, he quickly came around the desk and added, “My parents are pushing me to wed a woman I simply don’t love, you see. A nice woman, a nice family, nice connections, nice everything. Too nice, too convenient and too unfeeling. I made up this story about my girlfriend in Boston—and then, when that worked, I embellished it. To the part where we’re living together.”

“Embellished?” she repeated.

“I had to. No other choice, really.” He threw up his hands. “My parents are coming for a visit. And they’re threatening to bring Lady Harriet.”

“Oh, my.” One of Sunny’s exquisitely arched eyebrows rose slightly, as if she hadn’t heard him correctly.

Brett sighed heavily and glanced at the open door. He moved toward it. “There are some things you don’t know about me, Sunny.” He quietly closed the door. “None of them bad,” he assured her quickly. “Actually, I’ve had a great life, and my parents are good people. But they’re not…average people.”

Sunny’s gaze narrowed suspiciously. “Say it, Mr. Hamilton.”

“There. Right there. That’s the thing. In England, my friends know me as—” he cleared his throat before continuing “—Lord Breton Hamilton, son of Lord Arthur and Lady Miriam Hamilton. I regret to say it, but my family is titled.” He uttered the last four words as if they were an extraordinary burden.

Sunny didn’t move a muscle, not one. There was not so much as a wiggle of her lips or a flicker of an eyelash. “So you’re rich,” she said finally.

He shrugged. “I won’t be, not if I’m disinherited, as they threaten.”

“But I don’t understand what that has to do with me blowing your brother kisses, or why we’re living together.”

The way she said it gave him a glimmer of hope. She hadn’t dashed cold water on all his outlandish plans. And those plans were just beginning to take shape—with her help.

“Sunny, sit down. Please.” He pulled up an overstuffed chair for her, then sat in the one opposite it. “I’ll try to explain it all, but it’s complicated. And the truth is I’d rather just be me. Brett Hamilton. I haven’t told anyone over here about my heritage because I don’t really want anyone to know.”

“You’re asking me to keep your secret.”

“If you would.”

Sunny offered up a half laugh, as if the situation was beyond ludicrous. “I’m not going to go running up and down the halls, claiming to know that Brett Hamilton is an English lord. Who would believe me?”

“Thank you.” He impulsively reached for her hand, but just as quickly reined himself in. It would not do to become familiar with Sunny, not under the circumstances. “Along with my title comes some responsibilities. My brother called because he’s just learned that the doctor predicts they are having their fourth girl. It doesn’t matter to my brother and his wife, but my parents really wanted an heir. A child to inherit and carry on the family name.”

“Ah, one of those archaic, gender-oriented issues.”

A jolt of pleasure rose in Brett. Maybe this woman shared his beliefs. “Exactly. They are pressuring me to marry—and they’ve pretty much selected my future wife. Lady Harriet. The woman has it all—the family, the title, the connections. It would be a match—but one without any spark. And I really want that in a relationship.”

Brett noticed Sunny’s eyes visibly soften. Apparently he’d said something that struck a nerve.

“I couldn’t help myself,” he continued. “I told my brother I had a girlfriend, and I then I made it worse by telling him that we lived together.” Sunny rolled her eyes, her eyelids fluttering in disbelief. “You came into the room, and I said your name without thinking. I didn’t mean to. You were just there, and it happened. Look, the stage is set. Unthinkingly on my part, but set just the same. Would you consider pretending to be my girlfriend, just while my parents visit?”

Sunny hesitated. “You want me to make nice with your parents for an evening or two.”

“Well…” He lifted a persuasive shoulder. “Maybe more than that. I told them we were engaged.”

She groaned. “Oh, Mr. Hamilton.”

“Brett,” he said quickly.

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am.”

“This is ridiculous.”

“I know, luv. It is. But the calendar won’t wait. They’re coming next week. Just pose as my girlfriend. We’ll say we’re engaged, and you can move in and we’ll make it look as if we’re living together.”

Sunny stared at him. Then she yanked her short skirt down to just above her knees and held it there with the heel of her hand. “Let me make this perfectly clear. I walked down the hall to drop off file folders, not move in with you.”

“Sunny, I’ve got a two-bedroom flat—I mean apartment. You’d have your own room. And while my parents are here, we’d have a grand time, I’d see to it. Granted, the idea is preposterous, but everything else would be aboveboard and innocent. I promise.”

Sunny looked at Brett and thought the man had lost his mind, but one phrase echoed in her head: two-bedroom apartment. Since her wandering, homeless parents had moved in with her, she was in a quandary. There wasn’t enough room for all of them and she didn’t have the heart to insist they find somewhere else to light. “Let me get this straight. You have a two-bedroom apartment?” she asked.

“I know it’s small,” Brett said apologetically. “The three bedroom wasn’t available.”

His response was so quick it had to be genuine. Brett had a reputation at Wintersoft of being easygoing and amicable. He typically looked like he didn’t have a care in the world—but now he looked worried, almost trapped. That bothered her, even as she guessed at the monthly rent on his apartment. “And this apartment of yours is located where?” Sunny asked. “Because if it’s all the way on the other side of Boston—”

“At that big complex Lloyd always recommends to all his new employees. The Liberty Tree Apartments.”

A ripple went through Sunny. If her mother were here, she’d say it was a sign, that it was preordained and that forces in the universe were aligning themselves for a “Sunny” moment. “That’s…where I live,” she mused.

Brett brightened. “Then you could commute,” he said hopefully. “Your apartment to mine. At your earliest convenience, of course.”

“You mean I could just move into your place, like a roommate?”

“Of course.”

“I wouldn’t ask, but I have family living with me now, and it’s…crowded.”

“Sunny, I have plenty of room. You’re welcome to it. Pose as my engaged roommate,” he wheedled. “I think we’d get on famously, or well enough for a couple of weeks, anyway. All you’d have to do is to dote on me and convince my parents we were meant to be together.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“It won’t be,” he warned. “My parents are being quite stubborn about this. They may not like you at all, but you’d be doing me a huge favor.”

Sunny could feel herself giving in. They did have something to offer each other, even though she had serious doubts about gazing into Brett Hamilton’s eyes for the next few weeks. The man exuded sex appeal—and she had no intentions of falling victim to it. He also had a reputation as a playboy.

“Sunny? What can I do to make you believe me?” he said earnestly. “I don’t want to be dishonest with my parents, but I am quite weary of being reminded I have a duty, one that includes marriage. I don’t want my nuptials to be used as a bargaining tool in the boardroom, and I don’t want to produce heirs merely to carry on the family name. I’d like to genuinely fall in love with the woman I choose to marry.”

“That was quite a speech,” she said, considering.

“It’s how I feel.” He reached over and covered her hand with his. “Really.”

“Oh, Brett…” She unconsciously used his first name. “How can you put me in this position? I’m not sure this is right, and I may live to regret it, but—” she looked at the concern in his eyes, the drawn expression of his features “—okay, I’ll do it.”

He broke into a relieved smile, and Sunny knew immediately that while it might be the right decision to help him out, living with him was definitely going to wreak havoc with her senses.

“When do you want me to move in?” she asked cautiously.

“We really ought to get to know each other. Is tomorrow too soon?”