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About the Author Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN Copyright
“I don’t want someone to marry me for my money.”
Cindy held her breath.
“That’s why I need your help,” Parker continued. would you...? I need you to make me into the kind of guy your sister could fall in love with.”
The life went out of her.
“I need you to turn me into a stud.”
He’d rendered her speechless. He was so intent, he didn’t even notice that his statement crushed all her hopes....
Val Daniels wrote her first romance in the sixth grade when her teacher told the class to transform a short story they’d read into a play. Val changed the bear attack story into a romance and should have seen the writing on the wall. She didn’t. An assortment of jobs, hobbies and businesses later, Val stumbled across a Writer’s Market in the public library and finally knew what she wanted to be when she grew up. She suspects it will take eighty or ninety years to become bored with this career.
Val lives in Kansas with her husband, two children and a Murphy dog. She welcomes correspondence—with a SASE—from readers at P.O. Box 113, Gardner KS 66030, U.S.A.
www.millsandboon.co.uk
CHAPTER ONE
CINDY’S brush stopped making soapy circles on the cement floor. The pair of battered running shoes that had stepped into her view gave Parker Chaney away, so she wasn’t surprised to see his devastating smile aimed at her when she looked up.
“What are you doing?” he asked as if he’d seen her only yesterday.
“Trying to get this stain out,” she said in the same nonchalant tone, though her heart was thumping in triple time. She wished he’d at least act thrilled. After six weeks with nothing but a few brief phone calls, couldn’t he at least pretend seeing her was noteworthy?
A mixture of irritation and the desire to make the occasion memorable got the best of her. She swiped the brush across the toes of his grungy shoes, careful not to spray the legs of his business suit with her sudsy water.
He jumped away. “What are you doing?” His tone was totally different this time.
“You already asked that,” she reminded him, pitching her scrub brush at the pail of cleaning water. Drying her wet hands on the legs of her jeans, she stood. “What are you doing?” Darn it. Only pride kept her from throwing her arms around him and revealing how delighted she was to see him. Finally.
Parker scratched the side of his head, leaving a sprig of dark hair standing on end. The gesture helped him think.
“I need your help,” he admitted, letting his meditative scowl deepen.
“Oh?” She crossed her arms to keep from pressing the hair standing on end back in place. What else was new? “Helping” Parker usually meant he needed a sounding board, someone to listen to one of his new ideas—not that she usually understood them.
He got right to the point, also as usual. “I think it’s time I got married.”
But usually, his point didn’t make Cindy’s heart stop. It jumped to her throat then sped to a pace that would have kept up with a freight train. What’d you say? The question ran through her head but she couldn’t have gotten her mouth around a word if her life depended on it.
“Don’t you?” he asked, continuing as if the subject of marriage was a normal conversation for him. “I’m thirty-three years old. I tend to get too wrapped up in things. I’ve been thinking that if I don’t get married soon, I’ll find myself old, no kids, no family, all my chances gone.”
Her mouth still hung open. She had to consciously force herself to close it. “Don’t worry, PC. If things get that desperate,” she finally managed, “you can always find someone who’ll marry you for your money.” No problem making the comment as dry as she wanted, either. Her mouth was imitating a desert.
“Funny.” The look he shot her said he thought she was amusing, despite the fact he didn’t like what she’d said. It was too true.
As if money was the only thing he had! He was brilliant. His name was uttered with reverence in computer circles. Financial experts raved about him and delightedly recommended buying stock in his company. But she’d said his name in the same worshipful way long before his “miraculous” rise to success. She loved him despite the money.
She’d loved him when he was dirt poor and living next door to her family in their old neighborhood. She’d still be there, if it wasn’t an industrial park now.
She considered the destruction of their neighborhood the worst thing that had ever happened to her. Blocks and blocks of it had been razed to make way for “progress.” They’d all had to move. Until that time, almost six years ago, she’d seen Parker on a daily basis. Now she had to rely on seeing him whenever he got the whim...as he seemed to have now. Pride kept her from calling him when he’d go a couple of months ignoring their friendship.
She longed to touch him, smooth the unruly, needing-a-trim haircut back into place. She wanted to push into his space, lift her lips for a kiss, make him uncomfortably aware of her nearness. Unfortunately he probably wouldn’t notice. Or be uncomfortable. She settled for a friendly hug.
He hugged her back then sobered as his one-track mind got back to the reason for finally putting in an appearance in her life. “I don’t want someone to marry me for my money, Cindy.” His expression turned even more earnest, if that was possible.
Cindy held her breath.
“That’s why I need your help,” he continued. “Would you...I need you to make me into the kind of guy Mallory could fall in love with?”
The life went out of her.
“I need you to turn me into a stud.”
He’d rendered her speechless. He was so intent, he didn’t even notice that his statement crushed her. She looked down quickly in case he came out of his hazy little myopic world long enough to see that tears had sprung to her eyes. She couldn’t think of anything to say or do except return to scrubbing the floor.
She resumed her position on her hands and knees and dumped a splash of the warm, strong ammoniascented water on the cement floor.
Parker sprang out of the way again as the small wave surged toward his feet. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like,” she said irritably. “I’m washing the floor.”
“But why?”
“To get this oil spot out,” she said. “Out damn spot!” she mumbled at it. Quoting Shakespeare gave her an excuse to cuss, even though she almost choked over the huge lump that had taken residence in her throat.
Darn him, what did he want with Mallory? Surely in all this time, he’d gotten over her. He hadn’t seen her for almost twelve years. She’d been married twice. Why? Why? Wh—
“Since when have you worried about oil spots on the garage floor?” Parker asked. “You’ve never exactly been Miss Tidy.”
“Tidier than my sister,” she muttered and then cursed the floor under her breath.
“What?”
“I’m almost ready to put this house on the market,” she said loudly. “My car’s been leaking oil like there’s no tomorrow and an oil spot is the kind of thing that mars the image and subconsciously lessens the value for some people. If I take care of the little details,” she quoted by habit since it had almost become her motto, “I usually get my price.”
His smile broadened. “And that’s exactly why I need you. You’ll take care of all the little details. Just consider me your next fixer-upper. I know you can do it—even if you’re not going to get that spot out that way.”
“Oh?” She stood, hands on hips, her brush dripping smelly warm water down the leg of her jeans. She barely noticed. She didn’t care. “And how would you clean it, Mr. Expert,” she asked sweetly.
“You need cat litter and soda.”
“Baking soda?”
“Pop. The fizzy carbonated stuff.”
“Any particular brand?”
He scowled, thinking. “I don’t think so. I heard it on some do-it-yourself show on TV. I don’t remember them mentioning any particular brand.”
“Well, I have an idea. Why don’t you clean it if you know so much about it.” Actually she didn’t doubt he knew what he was talking about. Parker collected little tidbits of meaningless data and spouted them on demand, like one of his computers.
“Sounds like a fair trade.” He grinned his charming, boyish grin. The one that always disarmed her. “I’ll get the oil stain out of your garage floor, you change me from a frog into a prince.”
“For Mallory.” Her voice was flat. Skeptical.
The silly grin widened as he nodded.
“When is she going to behold this miraculous transformation,” she wondered aloud.
“Oh. I forgot.” He reached and checked several pockets before coming up with a piece of paper that had been stuffed in his pants pocket without the benefit of refolding.
She dropped her brush back into her pail, savoring a morbid sense of satisfaction as the ensuing splash reached him and left tiny dark dots on his gray suit pants. He was too absentminded to notice. He pushed his dark rimmed glasses up on his nose with the wrong finger and handed over the paper.
Taking it to the long workbench she’d built across the length of the garage, Cindy smoothed it out.
“A class reunion?” she said, reading the large bold print at the top of the page.
“Yeah.” Parker came to stand beside her.
She moved away, suddenly hating his nearness. “What makes you think Mallory will come?”
“Don’t you?” He stepped closer again.
She had the last time, Cindy remembered. Their ten-year reunion. Parker had been out of town and extremely disappointed when he’d discovered Mallory had been home while he was gone. He hadn’t said another thing about her sister in the intervening five years.
Geminy Christmas! How could he ask her to do this? “She did come the last time,” Cindy confirmed. “But I haven’t heard a thing from her about this. Surely if she was planning to attend, I would have heard—”
“I just got the invitation today. They were mailed from here. She may not even have hers yet.”
Raising both eyebrows, Cindy glanced at her watch, then tilted her head and stared at him. “How long have you been planning this, PC?”
He had the decency to look sheepish.
“For five years? Since the ten-year reunion?”
“What makes you think that?”
“You couldn’t have gotten your mail before eight o’clock this morning. You’ve known about this less than two hours. You didn’t decide to turn into Mr. Wonderful and marry my sister in two hours. Your mind doesn’t work that way,” she added.
He lifted one broad shoulder and tilted her one of his sensual half smiles. “See. You know me well. If anyone can do this, it’s you.”
“You are a nerd,” she said with the casual affection of their long-term friendship. “No one but a nerd would quietly obsess about his next high school reunion for five years. You are exactly the nerd everyone thought you were back then.”
“A successful, rich nerd,” he pointed out. “You said so yourself. Surely with my money and your flair for remodeling things, we can polish me up into something Mallory will find attractive.”
“You don’t have to do a thing,” she said dryly. “Mallory did notice you made the cover of Time magazine.”
“You didn’t tell me that.”
“I haven’t seen you.”
“True.” His mouth puckered thoughtfully. “She noticed? She said something?”
“The last time I talked to her.” Cindy compressed her lips and felt the ache build inside. She’d noticed. She’d called to congratulate him. He’d said an absentminded thanks and had to get off the phone. He didn’t even remember.
She suppressed the urge to tell him how many times Mallory had quoted and questioned his net worth. Her sister had definitely wanted Cindy to confirm that the figures in the article were accurate. Cindy was a little surprised Mallory hadn’t called him, too.
“I don’t want her to want me for the money,” he said, reading her mind. “I want her to fall in love with me.”
The vise around Cindy’s heart tightened painfully. Life was so unfair.
“So will you help me, Cindy? You know more than anyone what makes Mallory tick. You know exactly the kind of men she’s attracted to. And you know me,” he added. “Will you teach me?”
She inwardly groaned. In the twenty-eight years of her life—every one of those years she’d known and idolized and loved him—she’d never been able to tell him no. It would probably take her another billion years to find the strength to say it. She couldn’t now. Not even for this. Not even if it broke her heart and shredded every ounce of her pride and all of her dreams. “It ain’t going to be easy,” she said, struggling against the rasp in her throat to sound normal.
“Nothing worth doing is ever easy.” He tagged an optimistic sigh at the end of what had almost become his motto. Then he smiled, took off his jacket and started rolling up his sleeves. “Guess I’d better go buy some cat litter. Do you have the soda?”
“Hey, you aren’t getting off that easy.”
He gave her that frowning, out-of-it, what-are-you-talking-about look.
“You think getting an oil stain off the floor of this garage is even close to a fair exchange for transforming you into a...hunk?”
He laughed in that sheepish little boy way of his.
“Not remotely,” she said before he could protest. “You also have to help me...”
“What?”
She compressed her lips, her mind a total blank. “I’ll think of plenty. We have four months before the reunion. Four months worth of various to-be-named favors might be a fair exchange. Believe me, it’s going to take every second of that four months for my part of the task.”
“I’m not that bad, am I?”
She crossed her arms and studied him head to toe. His square jaw clenched uneasily and he shifted self-consciously. His thick brown hair usually needed a trim and now was no exception. The sprig he’d left standing on end a moment ago still jutted from beneath a smooth strand of straight brown and another sprig fanned out from behind one ear. His impressive blue eyes looked myopic behind the heavy dark framed glasses. With his jacket gone, his white shirt sort of swallowed him, camouflaging his wonderful broad shoulders. His slacks were also a smidge too long and the hem fell in a fold over the tops of his battered running shoes. From time to time, she itched to do exactly what he wanted her to do now. But why now? Why for Mallory?
“You’re not so bad that a wad of money and a lot of hard work won’t fix you,” she finally declared with only a tiny spark of malicious intent.
It missed its mark. “I’m not hopeless then,” he deduced cheerfully.
No, he wasn’t hopeless. She was. She was hopelessly in love with him. And it was time to get over him and get a life. She had four months to do it... if her slowly cracking heart didn’t kill her before then.
“Come for lunch Saturday,” he’d said when he’d finally left on Thursday after getting the oil stain off her garage floor. “We’ll plan strategy.”
Cindy looked down at the directions he’d written out for her and back up at the heavy black wroughtiron gates. The numbers matched. This had to be it. But this couldn’t be the house he’d called to say he was moving to a few weeks ago. This wasn’t a house, it was a...a...mansion?
She couldn’t actually see the house so she didn’t know if it was a mansion or not. But if the gates, the beautiful fountain just outside them and the grounds she glimpsed on the other side were any indication, it had to be something pretty spectacular.
But how did she get in?
By thinking about it, obviously. The gates slowly started to swing open. When she got even with the native stone columns holding the heavy gates, she saw a speaker phone imbedded there. Complete with camera, she noted as Parker’s voice came through as clearly as if he was sitting beside her.
“Just follow the drive, Cindy,” he said. “I’ll be waiting for you out front.”
A minute and a half later, Cindy saw him. Even the amazing glass and stone “castle” behind him couldn’t hold her attention. Today he had on snug jeans and a bedraggled T-shirt. The jeans fit him nicely except they looked like he was expecting a flood. The shirt looked like a Salvation Army reject.
That’s right, she told herself. Find every tiny thing wrong with him. Pick him apart, piece by piece. That was the only way to fix him. And each piece she picked, she was determined to turn over and examine for the slightest imperfection underneath. Aversion therapy. By the time she put him back together again for Mallory, she would see—really see—scads of stuff that would make him unappealing to her. They’d gloss over the top for Mallory, but Cindy would know it was just gloss. And she’d be over him.
“We have to take you shopping, PC,” she said as soon as she stepped from the car. “You wear really pathetic clothes.”
“That’s the best you can do for a greeting?” His smile tilted.
“You asked for my expertise, not polite platitudes.”
The slight lift of his shoulders said “Okay, you made your point.” “What do you think?” He cast a glance at the house rising naturally from the landscape behind him. “Pretty impressive, isn’t it?”
“Pretty impressive.” He’d probably bought it to impress Mallory. It was the biggest house she’d ever seen in real life. Castle size and even castlelike in appearance with its native stone exterior. But masses of windows and glass modernized it. The rough golden beige slabs of stone curved around arches at the massive windows and pillared at the entryways. “Did you buy this with the reunion in mind?” The words stuck on the sore spot that had hovered in her chest since he’d walked into her garage and announced his intention to marry Mallory.
“No.” It was small comfort that he looked at her as if she’d lost her mind.
She’d joined him on the stone walkway and he turned with her to admire the house.
“My accountant said it was a good investment and I needed one. I got it for less than it’s worth since the sellers were anxious to get rid of it.” He looked pleased with himself.
She pounced on the chink in his armor. Two chinks in his armor, she amended. He considered his house an investment, not a home and the Parker she’d always loved wouldn’t be proud of taking advantage of someone else’s misfortune. If she could focus on things like that—
“They built it ten years ago for a third of what it was appraised for,” he added. “So we both ended up with a good deal.”
Okay. Down to one chink. But it was a big one. Who would want a man who looked at his home only as an investment? Her sister, of course. She’d consider him very wise and savvy. “It can’t hurt your chances with Mallory,” she muttered.
His grin slipped. “That’s not what I want, Cindy,” he warned. His shoulders slumped as he led her through double doors of elegant etched glass and into a dramatic, vaulted foyer. Beyond them soaring columns divided the entry from a step down into a gigantic living room. Her own living room would have fit into the stone fireplace that lined one wall of the open room. The other side of the room was glass, taking full advantage of the view of wooded acreage beyond. There was absolutely nothing to block the view between where they were standing by the front door and the windows that seemed miles away. Absolutely nothing. No furniture. No pictures—well, except for a hand-painted mural on the wall behind them and a beautiful stairway that gracefully curved upward.
He led her through several empty rooms that echoed hollowly then through an opened door into a cozier room. “This is the master suite,” he said. “Suite” was an understatement. It was a full apartment and the room they entered was the normal-size living room. Pointing out the bedroom, the bedroomsize closet, his smile tilted as he opened the door to a garage-size bathroom several cars would fit in. “Can you believe this?” His expression reminded her of the one he used to wear when he’d find a new gadget or gimmick or game for his “‘puter” when he was first getting into them.
Mallory would love it. Dual everything. Mirrors and very expensive marble everywhere. It had a sauna and a steam room and a hot-tub-size whirlpool bath beside a wall of windows that overlooked the wooded property again.
“You could live in your bathroom—or the closet,” Cindy commented as Parker led her back to the sitting room.
“I know.” He grinned.
“This ‘suite’ is bigger than the house I’m working on.”
He nodded and pointed to the kitchenette to one side of the room. It was separated from the sitting area by a countertop breakfast bar. “The kitchen’s small.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’re suddenly going to take up cooking.” Cindy could picture herself there, moving around in her robe, making coffee; maybe popcorn in the evening so they could cuddle in front of the wallsize TV and watch a movie. She didn’t even have to close her eyes. She did now to block the vision. Fantasyland. If she was going to picture someone in his cute little black-and-white gleaming kitchen, it had to be Mallory.
He was explaining the set of stairs on the other side of his sitting room. They led down to an exercise room, he explained, and gave him private access to the basement beyond.
The master suite was furnished. The worn but comfortable furniture he’d had in his apartment looked out of place in the perfect room.
He’d put a pot of coffee on. Since he rarely drank it himself, he must have noticed at some point over the years that she was an addict. Her spirits lifted momentarily until she forced them to settle again. So he’d noticed one thing about her in their twenty-oddyear history. He should know her front to back, inside, outside and upside down. He finally remembered she drank coffee. So what? She kept a six-pack of cola on hand at all times—just in case he came around.
He grabbed a cola from the refrigerator after he’d placed a cup of coffee in front of her and settled beside her at the table set neatly in one end of the room.
They’d barely sat down when someone else breezed into the room. Cindy blinked twice, then rose from her chair. “Flo.”
The familiar, round, little woman explained the coffee, Cindy thought with a flash of disappointment that evaporated quickly in her delight at seeing her very favorite neighbor again.
Flo set a plate of homemade cinnamon rolls in the middle of the small table and then took Cindy in her arms. “You’re looking fine. child,” she said as she folded Cindy against her plush frame.
“Oh, you, too, Flo. You, too. Where have you been? I thought you were still living with your daughter in Cleveland.”
“I could have told you,” Parker said from behind them.
“I was,” Flo Kincaid answered Cindy’s question, “until PC called me and talked me into coming to work for him.” Flo held Cindy an arm’s length away.
“I keep track of everyone from the old neighborhood,” Parker said.
“You do?” Cindy asked blankly.
“That was the incentive for the new address book features in my most popular program.” Parker launched into an explanation of the convenient way it worked in computerese.
Flo rolled her eyes and Cindy finally stopped him with an amused, “We don’t have to understand your programs to make them work. That’s why they’re so popular, PC.”
Flo laughed and for a few moments updates on her kids and various old neighbors dominated the conversation. “I’d better git so you two can plan your makeover strategy,” Flo said finally.
The woman obviously knew what they were up to. “You think this is possible?” Cindy asked.