Leanne Banks: Trouble in High Heels

She gave a nervous-sounding laugh. “I guess you could say that.”

Jackson felt an itchy irritation climb the back of his neck. “What kind of agreement?”

“Well, Allan had a little problem, and we’re just not going to be able to live together.”

“What could be wrong with him? The guy is perfect. No record, no bad habits.”

“He’s allergic to dogs.”

Jackson groaned.

“It’s a problem. It doesn’t seem like it should be that big a deal, but I keep Kenny with me all the time, and Allan is very allergic. I couldn’t put him through six years of asthmatic reactions. That would be too cruel.”

“Have you considered confining Kenny to part of the house so Allan could have a dog-free zone?”

Silence followed. “Kenny is going to be around a lot longer than any husband.”

Bachelor number two was Ian Thompson. He seemed nice and sufficiently bland. Although a college dropout, Ian was brilliant. He wanted money to fund his inventions. During the dinner she shared with Ian, Lori had difficulty following Ian’s thought patterns, but that wasn’t the major problem, and Lori dreaded telling Jackson why Ian wouldn’t work.

“He smells funny?” Jackson echoed, staring at her in disbelief the morning after the date. He set his cup of coffee and bagel aside. Darn, the food wasn’t going to be a good enough distraction. “You won’t marry him because he smells funny?”

Lori folded her hands in her lap and sat up straighter in the parlor chair. It might sound nuts to Jackson, but it was more important than he thought. “It’s an issue. Think about it. I’ll be smelling this man for six years.”

“He could change his soap,” Jackson said.

“It wasn’t soap or cologne. It was just him.”

“How did you get that close to notice?” he asked, lifting his dark eyebrow. Lori would swear Jackson ’s eyebrows could scold her and he wouldn’t even need to say a word.

“We sat next to each other in the same vehicle,” she explained. “It was easy to smell him.”

Jackson looked at her as if he would rather chew nails than the lovely spread her housekeeper had prepared.

“You shouldn’t underestimate the importance of smell. My sister Delilah chose her husband partly because she loved the way he smelled.”

“But you don’t want to love this man. You just want to marry him.”

“Yes, but I don’t like the way he smells, so I’m not marrying him.” He made it sound ridiculous. Lori frowned. He made nearly everything she said sound ridiculous.

He rubbed his hand over his face in exasperation. “How am I supposed to screen a guy for smell?”

“You can’t,” she said. “You’re probably not very sensitive to smell, anyway. You don’t know what works for me and what doesn’t, so I’ll do the scent test.”

“If you keep finding reasons not to marry the candidates I bring to you, I’m going to start thinking that you really don’t want to get married, after all,” he said, his gaze entirely too sharp.

“It would have been nice if one of your first two candidates had worked out, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to need to see more than two men before I feel comfortable getting married.”

“It’s going to be impossible for me to help you find a husband if you keep adding requirements to your list that can’t be quantified, such as smell,” he said as if it were the most ridiculous thing in the world. As if she were the most ridiculous person in the world. “You’re creating a moving target and…”

Distracted by noises coming from the foyer, Lori didn’t catch the rest of Jackson ’s lecture. Hearing a voice that sounded familiar, she tilted her head and listened to a woman’s laughter. Shock and pleasure raced through her.

“Delilah,” she whispered, rising to her feet.

“What?” Jackson said, also rising.

Lori heard more voices. “She brought the kids!” Two seconds later, her sister Katie, also known as Priss, and Delilah burst into the room with their children.

“Sorry for the lack of notice,” Priss said, opening one of her arms for an embrace. With her other arm, she held a toddler on her hip. Lori immediately gave her oldest sister a hug and kissed the baby.

“Speak for yourself,” Delilah said. “The surprise was my idea. You’ve been holed up in your fortress too long,” she scolded, pulling Lori into her arms while her small children tugged at her legs.

Lori’s heart swelled and her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, you two have no idea how great it is to see you.”

“Hold that thought,” Delilah said, eyeing the table of food. “Do you mind sharing your picnic with my little monsters?”

Lori smiled. Amazing how Delilah could infuse so much affection into the word monsters. Delilah, with the reputation of man-eater and flirt, had become supermom, and from the glow in her eyes, her sister was loving every minute of it.

Delilah tore off pieces of pastry and motioned for her small children to sit on the floor. She gave them plates with bits of pastry and fruit.

“And who is this?” Delilah asked in her best man-eater voice.

Lori whipped around to look at Jackson as he offered a grape to Katie’s daughter. Her gaze locked with his, and she felt a kick of panic and something else she couldn’t name. How could she explain Jackson? She refused to tell her sisters about her marriage plan. They would try to talk her out of it. Delilah and Katie were too sharp not to ask questions if she told them he was her accountant.

“I’m sorry. I should have introduced you, Jackson. These are my sisters and their children. Delilah,” she said, pointing to her middle sister. “And Priss-” She corrected herself. “Katie. This is Jackson James. He’s my, uh, my-new assistant,” she invented.

Glowering at her, Jackson didn’t appear to like her invention. He gave a curt nod of his head. “Hi,” he said simply.

Delilah gave a throaty laugh. “Is he your personal assistant? What kind of duties does he perform?”

Biting her lip at Delilah’s suggestive tone and Jackson ’s growing scowl, Lori stepped toward the door. “He’s the most efficient assistant I’ve had. He keeps me from double booking and double spending all the time,” she said. “Speaking of booking, Jackson, there was something I wanted to tell you before you left. Excuse us just for a moment,” she said to her sisters and urged Jackson out the door with her.

Reaching out, she grabbed his arm and led him down the hallway into the butler’s pantry and closed the door behind them.

“Assistant?” he echoed.

“I didn’t know what else to call you,” she said. “I don’t want my sisters to know about the marriage thing. They won’t understand.”

“Good to know someone in the family is rational,” he said in a dry tone. “Assistant,” he repeated, lifting the dark eyebrow again.

Lori resisted the urge to force the eyebrow back down. “I don’t want them to know about my finances, either,” she whispered. “They’ll feel like they have to rescue me, and I absolutely don’t want that. I want to handle this myself.”

“By pretending you’re not planning to marry for money and telling them your accountant is your assistant.”

Lori frowned at him. “It’s just for a couple of days. We’ll visit a children’s fun palace, eat out, then they’ll go home. You don’t even need to come over very often for the next couple of days. Just maybe once or twice. I’ll tell them you’re taking care of some errands or I let you have some time off.”