DeAnna Talcott - Fill-In Fiancee

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.