Poor man. His body ravaged by parasites and bombarded by laser beams. In love for the first time in his life and doomed to lose that love. Stoically enduring the constant mental and physical pain. Hoping against hope that the bugs would give up and vacate.
And then, finally, being told that the treatments had been a success. Rushing here to tell C.J. it had been her love that had cured him. The love they were now free to shout to the world…
He didn’t tell the story quite that way, of course. In some peculiar way, he made it believable.
C.J. heard sniffs and admiring murmurs from her friends, and vaguely pondered the gullibility of women being charmed by a handsome lawyer/actor who had obviously never had a sick day in his life. But she kept her face hidden against his shoulder, needing no urging at all from him now,
The wide grin on her face would have ruined his story.
THREE
“CIVIL OR CRIMINAL?”
C.J. was sitting on her bed in her room, exactly where Fate had set her after carrying her all the way from the lounge—accompanied by her friends as far as the door. She was staring at the fiend who was leaning against her dresser and gazing at her with a gleam of unholy laughter in his purple eyes.
“I beg your pardon?” One slanted brow rose questioningly.
“Your profession. Law.” C.J. managed to hold on to her expressionless tone with a tremendous effort. “Civil or criminal?”
“Criminal,” he answered.
“That explains it.” She took a deep breath, and added in a refined scream, “You’ve been associating with degenerates too long!”
“I’m a defense attorney, pixie; I don’t consider my clients degenerates.”
C.J. ignored the information. “You’re not playing with a full deck, do you know that? Your pilot light’s gone out. All the sand’s sifted through your bucket. You don’t have both oars in the water.”
“Are you trying to say I’m crazy?”
“I’m not trying to say it, I’m saying it. Oh, I’ll bet the men in the little white coats are looking for you.”
“I gave them the slip in Denver,” he said.
“Laser beams? To treat parasites?”
“What will they think of next?”
C.J. buried her face in her hands, a muffled growl of frustration escaping from between her fingers. Then she started laughing. She laughed so long and hard that her throat hurt.
When she finally lifted her face, tears of laughter sparkled in her eyes. Not even her intense, growing awareness of this man could hold the amusement at bay. Realizing that she was still clutching his handkerchief, she waved it like a flag of surrender.
“I give up. Maestro, my compliments. I have no doubt that you sold my friends on your unbelievable, ridiculous, utterly absurd story.”
The fiend had turned into a mischievous little boy. A grin slashed across his dark face, revealing even white teeth. Modestly, he said, “Like I always say—if you’re going to tell a lie, make it a whopper.”
“Uh huh.” She choked on another laugh. “God, I thought I was going to die. And you, you monster, shoving my face into your sweater like that. I could barely breathe.”
“Sorry, pixie, but I had to do something fast. Your face was a dead giveaway.”
Suddenly aware that he’d carried her all the way from the lounge without even a token protest from her, C.J. felt her face growing hot. She told herself that she could hardly have protested with her friends dogging Fate’s heels, but that was small comfort. She had an awful feeling that, given an opportunity, she would have remained silent.
Hastily repairing the omission, she said severely, “You shouldn’t have carried me all that way. It was completely unnecessary.”
“Like I said, your expression would have given the show away,” he responded, unrepentant. He studied her flushing face with interest. “You look cute as hell when you’re embarrassed.”
“What makes you think I’m embarrassed?” she fired up immediately.
“You’re blushing.”
“I am not.”
“Then you’re running a fever. Your face is a very fetching shade of pink.”
C.J. fought an impulse to peer past him into the mirror. “I am not running a fever,” she gritted out. “And I’m not blushing, either. If my face is red, it’s only because I’m absolutely furious. How dare you tell such a story to my friends!”
“You thought it was funny a minute ago,” he pointed out.
“Well, it isn’t now.” She swallowed a last giggle and tried to keep the glare on her face. “They’ll have you drawn and quartered when they find out the truth, and I shudder to think what they’ll do to me.”
“There’s no reason why they have to find out the truth,” he said easily. “So we’re both safe.”
“Of course they’ll find out,” she retorted irritably. “When this never-to-be-sufficiently-regretted vacation is over and we go our separate ways, they’ll figure out it was all a sham.”
Very gently, he said, “You weren’t listening to my story very closely downstairs, pixie.”
“Stop calling me that,” she snapped and then added, as curiosity got the better of her, “What did you say to them?”
“I set the date.”
“The date?” C.J. ran a bewildered hand through her copper curls and stared at him. “The date for what?”
For all the world as though he were discussing the possibility of snow, Fate replied casually. “The date for our wedding.”
Assuming that he was joking, she exclaimed, “Did you have to add that little bit to the story, for heaven’s sake? I’ll look like an utter fool when I’m left at the altar!”
“But you won’t be left at the altar.”
The deep, gentle voice slowly sank into C.J.’s brain as she blinked at him a couple of times. There was no longer a trace of little-boy mischief in his dark eyes, she realized. He looked serious, grave.
He meant it.
For a split second, a surge of unfamiliar, unidentifiable emotion blocked her throat. But then the unreality of the situation came to her rescue. And the C.J. she knew, slightly cynical, not at all naïve, came rapidly to the fore.
“It’s customary,” she informed him calmly, “to ask.”
“True.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose with a thoughtful frown. “The thing is, you see—if I ask, you’ll only turn me down. You haven’t known me long enough to appreciate my sterling qualities. And I can’t bear rejection.”
She smiled sweetly. “You’ll have to learn to.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. Your friends are no doubt already planning the wedding, pixie. We’re due to marry on Valentine’s Day.”
“How romantic,” she said evenly.
“I thought so.”
“It won’t happen.”
“Of course it will. You have a whole month to get used to the idea.”
“You’re being ridiculous, of course.”
He smiled. “No. Just going after what I want.”
“Meaning that you want me?”
“Of course.” He straightened, a gleam in his dark eyes. “I’ll be glad—more than happy—to show you just how much I want you.”
Rather hastily, she said, “I’ll take it as read.”
With unflattering speed, he resumed his lounging posture against the dresser. “Suit yourself.”
C.J. wondered why she suddenly wanted to throw something heavy at him. Determined to keep things as light as possible under the circumstances, she said dryly, “You’re going to look a little silly standing all alone at the altar.”
His grin was a charming, rueful thing to watch. “I’ve sized up your friends pretty well, I think. If I don’t manage to talk you into marrying me, they’ll deliver you to the church anyway—bound and gagged if necessary.”
Cynical C.J. decided to employ brutal tactics. “Why,” she asked starkly, “do you want to marry me?”
“Natural progression,” he answered solemnly. “With
this burning love affair behind us, marriage is obligatory.”
She chewed that one over for a moment or so, then lifted a wry brow at him. “You mean you gave my friends a date just to make your tale seem more convincing?”
“No,” he said gently, “I gave them a date because I intend to marry you. On Valentine’s Day.”
C.J. decided quite sanely that she was probably tired enough to be imagining things. Had to be. No man proposed to a woman after a mere six hours’ acquaintance. “I can’t deal with you tonight,” she said. “Go away.”
A gleam of laughter lit his eyes at the irritable dismissal, but he made no move to leave her. “I haven’t been here long enough. As a matter of fact, I shouldn’t leave here at all.”
“What?” She was so tired that her voice emerged almost mild.
He looked thoughtful. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t—Jan, is it?—have the room next to this one? The tall blonde?”
C.J. nodded. “Yes, Jan’s next door. Why?”
“Because as convincing as my whopper was”—he bowed modestly—“I don’t think that Jan quite believed it.”
“She sounded as if she did. What makes you think she didn’t?”
“Well…you certainly know her better than I do. But I’ve had a lot of practice watching the faces of a jury. Jan is suspicious. She said all the right words and made all the right noises…and she’s going to be watching us like a hawk.”
“So?” C.J. just didn’t see the point.
Dryly, he told her, “A man and woman having a passionate love affair don’t sleep in separate rooms. And Jan’s probably listening to find out when I leave.”
This time, the point sank in. “You are not spending the night in my room,” she managed at last.
“I have to,” he explained patiently. “To preserve the charade. But I’ll creep out by dawn’s light to keep your reputation intact.”
C.J. thought longingly of the not-so-distant past when she had been wrapped in abstraction and safe from situations like this. “No. You’re not staying here.” She took a deep breath. “If six hours of pretense does this to me, I’ll be a basket case by the end of next week. I’m telling the girls the truth in the morning. Goodbye.”
He chuckled softly. “As simple as that, huh?”
“That’s right.”
“You must be tired if you think it’s that simple. If you tell them the truth, we’ll both look like fools.”
“At this point, I don’t particularly care.”
In a coolly mocking tone, he said, “So you’re going to do the cowardly thing. You don’t believe that you have the ability to carry off a simple charade; you can’t act like a woman in love. So you’ll tell your friends it was all a lie, and be safely back in character.”
For some reason, his comments stung, and C.J. had an uneasy feeling that he’d planned it that way. Defensively she told him, “It’s the only sensible thing to do. I’ve never been a very good liar, and I don’t want to start now.”
“You’re a coward,” he insisted softly, flatly.
“It isn’t cowardly to tell the truth.”
“It’s cowardly to start something and not follow through.”
“Not if what you started was a deception.”
He was silent for a moment, studying her with the curiously veiled purple eyes. Then, calmly, he told her, “I threw down the gauntlet, pixie, and you picked it up. You’re not about to let me win by default.”
Instantly, C.J. knew that he meant the challenge she’d seen in his eyes hours before. Recklessness surged through her yet another time, but this time she managed to keep a tight rein on it. “You win,” she said lightly. “By default.”
Musingly he said, “And what if I tell the girls you’re lying?”
“They won’t believe you.”
“No, they won’t. But they won’t be able to understand the situation. Here’s a total stranger playing the lover and insisting that you and he have been having a passionate love affair for two months. He’s bewildered and dejected because the woman he loves is claiming they don’t even know one another. And after she greeted him so happily, too! Of course, he’ll ask her friends what’s wrong, and enlist their aid to straighten out everything. And of course—”
“They will,” C.J. finished bitterly, glaring at him. Jan may not have totally believed his story, she thought despairingly, but the others had. And they would think it just like their C.J. to panic and deny everything. The romance of a love affair would have fascinated C.J., and her friends knew it. But if Fate had truly “set the date,” her friends would also believe that the thought of marriage had panicked her.
She could see the whole vacation before her like a nightmare. Whether or not her friends believed her denials, they’d still do everything in their collective power to shove her down the aisle.
“Let the play begin,” Fate murmured in a satisfied tone, obviously seeing her thoughts written on her face. “You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t, pixie. Might as well take the easy way out and enjoy your courtship.”
“And get married on Valentine’s Day,” she finished dryly.
“Sure.”
C.J. wasn’t the slightest bit worried about an actual wedding taking place. In two weeks, she’d be safely back in Boston, working for her doctorate. All this would seem like a bad dream.
“Well? Do you agree that my way is best?”
She wondered dimly if she were imagining the tension she sensed within him. Why was he so determined to carry through with this ridiculous charade? Pushing the useless speculation away, she said evenly, “I’ll agree to the charade. But it stops when the vacation stops.”
For a moment, he seemed about to protest, but then he seemed to see the utter determination on her face. A peculiar smile creased his lean face, and something mischievous stirred in the purple eyes. “All right. The…charade…ends in two weeks.”
C.J. gave a little sigh of relief. No more talk of marriage, then. But she wondered at his hesitation before and after the word “charade.” Her victory had an oddly hollow feeling.
“So I have to spend the night here,” he pointed out.
Determined not to act like this was the first time she’d ever entertained a man in her bedroom—even though it was—C.J. managed an unconcerned smile. “Fine.” She gestured to the two uncomfortably modern chairs flanking the window. “Hope you’ll be comfortable.”
He sighed. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”
“It’s your choice—the chairs, the floor, or your own room.” She got up. “Excuse me.”
Bowing to her polite words, he moved aside so that she could get her sleeping gear from the dresser. “I don’t suppose,” he murmured in a wistful tone, “that I could convince you to share the bed? With a pillow between us?”
“Not even with the Great Wall of China between us,” she said, and was startled at the grimness of her own voice.
A sudden laugh escaped him, as though in surprise. “Is the courtship getting to you already?” he demanded with a theatrical leer.
Not rising to the bait, she said, “I sleep alone,” and felt faintly uncomfortable at the primness she heard. Before he could say anything else, she hastily unearthed the oversized green football jersey she slept in, and added, “I’m taking a shower and going to bed. It’s been a long day. You’re on your own.”
He didn’t say another word, but watched with veiled eyes as she headed for the bathroom. C.J. took her shower in a weary state of semiconsciousness. She didn’t think because she didn’t want to think. Tomorrow, when her mind was fresh, she’d sit down and figure out what was going on. And then she’d probably call somebody and have this lunatic hauled away. But tonight, she seemed to be stuck with him.
The stranger C.J. had seen in the mirror earlier—and felt within herself—had apparently gone back into hiding. But she surfaced with bewildering suddenness when C.J. came out of the bathroom to confront the “lover” in her be
droom.
He had slid the two chairs together near the foot of the bed with the folding luggage rack between them, making a peculiar-looking sort of lounge-cum-bed. His sweater had been discarded and lay over the back of the chair his feet were propped on, his shoes were neatly by the dresser. A blanket and pillow had been abstracted from the bed. He was looking perfectly comfortable, hands linked together behind his neck and white shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest.
The room was suddenly shrinking around C.J.
Tugging at the white piping at the bottom of the thigh-length football jersey, she found her eyes skittering away from his steady gaze as she approached the bed. She could feel his sweeping look, and tugged again at the jersey. She became aware of her heart thudding again, and silently cursed the stranger who occupied her body in this bewildering way.
“Goodnight, pixie.”
She jumped at the husky sound of his voice and, finding that there was no graceful way to slide into bed wearing a jersey, opted for speed over grace. “Goodnight,” she muttered, reaching swiftly to turn out the lamp on the nightstand.
Lying still in bed with the covers pulled up to her chin, she listened to her heart pound and stared into darkness.
“Cynthia Jean,” he murmured suddenly.
Baffled, she frowned at the darkness. “Having sweet dreams?” she asked him quizzically.
“Trying to figure out what the C.J. stands for,” he responded in a musing voice. “Cynthia Jean?”
“No.” She couldn’t help but smile, feeling wide awake and amused by the guessing game that so many others had played.
“Carly Jo?”
“Sorry.”
“Catherine Joanna?”
“Wrong again.”
“Constance Julia?”
“Nope.”
His sigh reached her easily. “I’ll ask your friends in the morning. They’ll take pity on me.”
“Want to bet?”
“I’ve never met a woman yet who could keep a secret.”
“You shouldn’t make blanket statements.” She giggled softly. “My friends and I have known each other for twenty years, but they’ve only known my name for eight years. It was my graduation present to them when we all finished high school. And since their own husbands haven’t gotten it out of them, I doubt that you will.”