of lame words that didn’t come out as much of a comeback.
And that was another thing. When had she gotten so sassy?
He opened the folded sheet of paper. “Riccardo decided that we should stick with the fact that you’re my assistant.” He glanced up and saw her watching him intently, clearly wanting to get her part down so she could play it. He relaxed a bit, though it did send an unexpected zing through him that she’d taken off the sunglasses. She must be wearing contacts on her smoke-gray eyes. Very sexy smoke-gray eyes that tilted up at the corners and gave her an exotic look.
He cleared his throat. “Anyway, the whole thing started with a long chat one night when we were working late.”
She caught his gaze. “We never chatted.”
“Yeah, I know.” And he suddenly felt sorry that they hadn’t. “But this is make-believe, remember?”
She smiled slightly and nodded.
He sucked in a breath, not liking the nervousness that had invaded him. If he couldn’t even read the facts off a sheet, how was he going to perpetuate this charade?
“After our long talk, we started eating dinners together on the nights we were working late.”
“Hey, we did do that!”
“But we talked about work.”
She bobbed her head. “Yeah, but because we actually did eat dinners together we have another bit of authenticity.”
Her answer softened some of the stiffness in his shoulders. “Sí. Good.” He pulled in a breath and read a little more of Riccardo’s story. “Then we started going out to dinner.”
She leaned her elbow on the armrest. “We certainly took our time.”
He looked up, met the gaze of her soft gray kitten eyes. “I think Riccardo is trying to show we didn’t act impulsively.”
“God forbid.”
He wasn’t sure why, but that made him laugh. “Stop. Riccardo’s already telling this story and we have to stick to it.”
“What if we came up with a totally different set of circumstances? What if we said that one day you ravaged me at work, and we started a passionate affair but we changed the story for Riccardo because we didn’t want him to know we couldn’t keep our hands off each other?”
All the blood in his veins caught fire. He could picture it. If she’d come to work looking like this he might have ravaged her.
He pulled his collar away from his throat. The plane’s engines whined to life.
“Let’s just stick with Riccardo’s story.”
* * *
Lila nodded quickly, wishing she hadn’t said anything about the passionate affair because with the way he’d been looking at her since she arrived, she could imagine it. If he’d ever, even once, looked at her like that, she might not have been able to resist the temptation to flirt with him—
She’d been flirting with him since he got on the plane. And that was wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. She didn’t want to like him any more than she already did. Worse, she didn’t want to become another one of his one-night stands. And that was the real danger in this. That they’d take this charade to the next level, with him thinking it was just a part of the game, and her heart toppling over the edge into something that would only hurt her.
So, no more flirting. She was smarter than this.
She drew in a cleansing breath, gave him what she hoped was a neutral smile and motioned for him to continue. “Go on.”
“Riccardo says our dating life was fairly normal. Shows, dinners, weekends in Vegas and the Hamptons.”
She nodded, liking the dispassionate direction the conversation had taken. “Your family’s house in the Hamptons is pretty.” When he gave her a puzzled look, she added, “Riccardo showed me pictures.”
“He goes there more than I do. But it’s good you know what the place looks like. That’ll probably come in handy.”
He sounded so nervous that she smiled again. “You don’t like this charade.”
“I don’t like lying to my family. But this is necessary. It isn’t just the fact that I don’t want to be hounded by Nanna. This is Alonzo and Julia’s big celebration. The focus shouldn’t be on me. Not in any way, shape or form.”
“You don’t think your engagement will be reason for them to make you the center of attention?”
“We’ll let them fawn one night. Tonight. Then after that when they get too happy or too focused on us, we remind them that it’s Julia and Alonzo’s celebration. Not ours.”
“Makes sense.” She cocked her head. “You really are over her.”
He sighed. “I’ve said it a million times. No one seems to believe me.”
“Maybe because everybody knows getting over your brother’s betrayal would be harder.”
He sniffed a laugh. “When’d you get so perceptive?”
“I’ve always been perceptive. That’s how I stay one step ahead of what you need.”
He nodded, as if just figuring that out, and sadness started in her stomach and expanded into her chest. He might think her pretty in the pink dress, showing off her legs and even being a little sassy with him, but in the end she was still the assistant he barely noticed.
But that was good. If she was going to start a new life when they returned, she didn’t want to do it with a broken heart. A woman who needed to find her mom and fix their damaged past couldn’t afford to make stupid mistakes. Though she’d always believed she was destined for something great, she also realized that that fairy tale had just been a vehicle to keep her sane, keep her working toward things like her high school diploma and eventually a degree. Lately the desire for “something great” was taking a back seat to the things she really wanted: her mom. A family. That’s why her crush on Mitch had seemed so pointless that she’d decided it was time to move on.
Mitch’s groan of disgust brought her out of her reverie. “That’s the stupidest engagement story I’ve ever heard.”
Oh, crap. He’d been reading Riccardo’s notes and she’d missed something important. “Read it again. Let me think it through.”
He gaped at her. “How would you possibly need to hear it again? It’s ridiculous. I wouldn’t rent a hot air balloon. I wouldn’t hire a skywriter to spell out the proposal at sunset so I could get down on one knee in a balloon.”
She laughed. Wow. That was bad. “Okay. So it’s a bit schmaltzy.”
“It’s pedestrian.”
“What would you have done in real life?”
He sighed. “What I’d planned for Julia was to come home early, pour two flutes of champagne, walk around the apartment until I found her, tell her she was beautiful and I wanted her in my life forever...then give her the ring.”
“Oh.” Her breath wobbled. His proposal idea was perfect. Elegant in its simplicity. “That would have been nice.”
“Yeah, if I hadn’t caught her with my brother.”
She laughed, then stopped herself. How was it that he could make her laugh over something that had probably broken his heart—even though he seemed to be over it?
“Well, it was a great proposal idea.”
“I thought so too. But apparently my brother did some grand gesture on the yacht.”
“Oh, I get what Riccardo’s doing. He’s making sure our proposal keeps up with Alonzo and Julia’s. But maybe he’s making things suspicious by thinking you