GINA WILKINS - The Best Man's Plan

“No good-night kiss?”

She threw a shoe at him.

Catching the strappy sandal in one hand, he grinned. “Sleep well, Grace.”

Sleep well? Fat chance.

More as a defiant gesture than a belief that the precaution was necessary, she locked her bedroom door after closing it in Bryan’s face.

Only after changing into an oversized T-shirt and plaid pajama pants, her face scrubbed clean and every trace of hairspray brushed from her hair, did Grace feel more like herself. Now if only she were home…

Glancing at the clock on the nightstand, she noted that it was past midnight. Yet it was an hour earlier back home. Maybe Chloe would still be awake. She was suddenly almost overcome with the urge to hear her sister’s voice—if for no other reason than to remind herself why she was here.

Sounding wide-awake, Chloe answered on the second ring. “Hello?”

“Hi, it’s Grace. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“No, I’ve been going over some paperwork from the store. Donovan’s helping me.”

Grace imagined that Donovan’s “help” had only made the task take twice as long, but she kept that opinion to herself. “We’ve just gotten back from that charity opera thing.”

“How was it?”

Dozens of complaints hovered on her tongue, but she settled for just one. “People kept staring at us.”

“Get used to it. Whenever you’re with Bryan Falcon, people will stare. Even when you’re in a place where no one recognizes him—rare as those places are—there’s something about him that somehow commands attention.”

Grace was well aware of that, of course. She’d often wondered if people stared at Bryan because of his extraordinary good looks, or that air of quiet power that surrounded him like a royal mantle. Whatever the reason, it was still unnerving.

“How was the evening other than that? Did you see lots of celebrities in beautiful dresses? Did you enjoy the program?”

Because the whole point of this charade was to make Chloe happy, Grace had vowed not to complain to her sister. She would save all her gripes for Bryan, who deserved them because this whole crazy scheme had been his idea—and just because he was Bryan. “It was fine. And yes, I saw tons of celebrities. I’m sure you would have enjoyed the evening—though I’m not so certain Donovan would have.”

“Probably not. Though he would have gone if he thought I really wanted to be there.”

Grace had no doubt of that. Donovan Chance spoiled her sister shamelessly. A battered warrior who didn’t express his feelings easily, Donovan seemed determined to make a success of this relationship—the first that had truly mattered to him, apparently. Donovan was almost fanatically loyal to those he cared most about—a very short list topped by Chloe and Bryan, his employer and best friend since high school.

Since Chloe’s happiness was paramount to her, too, Grace fully approved of her sister’s choice of a mate. This time, at least. She hadn’t felt at all the same way when Chloe had been considering marriage to Bryan Falcon.

The sisters talked a few more minutes and then Grace brought the call to an end. Wandering to a window to gaze out at the colorfully lit city so far and so different from her hometown, she thought about the quiet contentment that was always present in Chloe’s voice these days. Knowing that she was contributing to that happiness, if only in a minor way, gave her mixed feelings. She was glad to be able to help, but now she felt even more trapped in this ridiculous scam.

“Trapped” was a feeling she had grown to know all too well during the past couple of years.

So maybe it hadn’t been the brightest idea he’d ever had. Convincing Grace to pretend to be romantically involved with him had been difficult enough—following through with the improbable scheme was proving to be even more complicated. It didn’t help, of course, that Grace couldn’t stand him.

Sprawled on his hotel-room bed with the TV remote in one hand and a glass of orange juice in the other, Bryan mentally replayed the number of close calls he had averted that evening—most notably, the moment when he’d narrowly avoided being drilled in the stomach by her fist. She’d packed quite a punch, too. If he hadn’t managed to catch her hand and pull it away, she’d have doubled him over. And wouldn’t that have caught some attention in tomorrow’s gossip columns?

He probably shouldn’t have given in to that impulse to kiss her. But he hadn’t tried very hard to resist. Kissing Grace Pennington was something he’d been tempted to do for several weeks now, to his own surprise and her obvious dismay.

After knowing her for nearly six months, he still wasn’t quite sure what it was about him that aroused so much antagonism in her. Her twin had liked him from the moment of their chance meeting last winter when he’d wandered into Mirror Images, the decorating shop Chloe and Grace owned and operated in Little Rock’s River Market district. He and Chloe had struck up a conversation that had continued over coffee and then into several dinner dates.

Less than a month into their friendship, he’d brought up the subject of marriage.

He hadn’t even pretended to be in love with Chloe. He had liked her very much, admired and respected her a great deal. He’d found her attractive, but he knew the difference between simple affection and the passionate love hyped in literature and song. But after carefully observing and studying the few successful marriages among his many acquaintances, he had come to the conclusion that the most enduring basis for a lifelong partnership was genuine friendship.

He’d tried the more popular methods of courtship, letting himself be led by his heart—and other, more primitive body parts. He’d ended up involved in several volatile relationships with beautiful, talented, famous—and usually completely self-centered—actresses and models. He’d thought women already accustomed to fame and fortune would have been more likely to value him for himself rather than what he could give them. He’d been wrong.

Those high-profile disasters had led to embarrassment, disillusion, and the unwelcome attentions of the tabloid writers, who had been as intrigued by his dating adventures as they were fascinated by his innate flair for making fortunes.

“I’ve been going about this courtship thing the wrong way,” he had concluded to Donovan during the last Thanksgiving holidays. “I’d never invest in a business venture on impulse or emotion. I choose my investments based on rational and carefully determined criteria, all focused on the probability of success. That’s the way I need to select a wife. Someone I like and respect and who feels the same way about me. Someone with similar values and interests, with compatible goals and dreams. Someone who wants a family as much as I do, and who’ll put the welfare of the family ahead of everything else—as I plan to do.”

“What about love?” Donovan had asked doubtfully. “Passion? All those other things the romantics say should be part of getting married? Not that I ever intend to try it myself, but…”

That, of course, had been before Donovan met Chloe—back when he’d been convinced that he would remain a bachelor for the rest of his life. Bryan was the one who, facing his thirty-ninth birthday, had decided he wanted to get married. Who had wanted a family. A home. And when he’d met Chloe, he believed he’d found a perfect potential mate.

Chloe met nearly every qualification on his carefully thought-out list—and she had admitted that she, too, had been disappointed with traditional dating rituals. Though nearly ten years younger than Bryan, she had begun to wonder if she would ever have the children she’d always wanted.