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“Yes. But—”
“You’ve already proved you can be cool under pressure. When Scarlet gets here, just follow my lead. You’re okay with this, right?”
Oh, she was more than okay. The idea excited her. But there was a big problem. “Sure, I can deal with it, but who on earth is going to believe I’m your girlfriend?”
“Why wouldn’t they?”
“Because I’m just a mousy little banker from D.C. and you’re a … a …”
“I own a restaurant. That’s all anyone knows.” The phone rang and he picked it up. It didn’t escape Lucy’s attention that he didn’t argue about her self-assessment. Apparently he agreed with her description of “mousy.”
“Okay, thanks.” He hung up and turned back to Lucy. “That’s our dinner. I’ll be right back.”
While he was gone, Lucy tried to wrap her mind around the idea that she was going to be posing as Bryan’s girlfriend. Once upon a time she’d thought of herself as quite the hot chick. After all, she’d caught the eye of Cruz Tabor, drummer for In Tight, one of the hottest men in the country if the tabloids could be believed. She’d told herself when she took the job with In Tight that she wouldn’t behave like a groupie, that just being around the band was excitement enough for her.
Then Cruz had started flirting with her, and she was a goner. She’d believed every lie the bastard had told her. He’d said she was gorgeous, sexy, hot. He’d taken her on tour, letting her travel in first class with the band, buying her expensive presents.
But then she’d discovered he said all those things, did all those things, with every woman he slept with. And there were lots and lots of them. She’d been so naive, such a dumb bunny, to think she was anything special.
This was way different, though, she reminded herself. She wasn’t a hot chick, and she wasn’t deluding herself into believing she was. So how would anyone else believe she’d caught Bryan’s eye? Bryan was pretty hot himself. He could have any woman he wanted.
He knew the Hilton sisters. His trendy restaurant drew celebrities all the time. Did he sleep with any of them? How was she supposed to compete with that?
She found some dishes in the cabinets and set two place settings at the polished-granite bar. A few minutes later, the most wonderful aroma invaded her nose, followed by Bryan stepping off the elevator with two huge white bags.
Lucy’s stomach rumbled again. “What is that?”
“Shrimp and vegetable stir-fry Polonnaise. It’s not too spicy, and you can pick out anything you don’t like.”
“Stir-fry with a French sauce?”
“Right. That’s what Une Nuit is all about—Asian and French fusion dishes.” He set the bags on the counter, then gave her a quick once-over. She was wearing his pajama top with nothing on underneath. It was modest enough, covering all the important bits and hanging almost to her knees, so in deference to the fact it was summer in New York, she hadn’t bothered with the bottoms.
Now she wished she had. She felt suddenly vulnerable with her bare legs and a breeze from the air conditioner stirring around her private parts.
“Nice look,” he said with a wink. Then he turned and started unpacking the bags, stacking a mound of food on each plate and not even noticing that the hair on her forearms stood on end and her skin was flushed with awareness.
Oh, grow up, she scolded herself. He’d probably seen a hundred women wearing a lot less than a shapeless pajama top adorned with—yes, scenes from France.
He selected a bottle of chilled white wine from a climate-controlled wine safe as big as a refrigerator. “You like wine?”
“I don’t—Why, yes, I do.” She’d been about to say she didn’t drink. Alcohol was one of the things she’d given up when she’d made the decision to change her life, grow up, live like a conscientious adult instead of a wild, irresponsible teenager.
But after the day she’d had, a nice glass of Chardon-nay sounded really nice. And it wasn’t as if she’d ever been an excessive drinker. But copious alcohol consumption by the people around her had been a big part of the life she’d left behind.
Bryan filled two crystal glasses and handed her one. “A toast. To your new life as Lindsay Morgan.”
“To Lindsay.” She clinked her glass with his and took a sip of the crisp, dry wine. This whole thing was so surreal.
She hopped up on a bar stool and dived into the food, which was absolutely the most incredible meal she’d ever eaten. “Oh, my God, this is so good. No wonder your restaurant is so successful. Did you start it, or buy it as an ongoing concern?”
“It was a moderately profitable French bistro when I bought it. Merging French with Asian started out as a joke, really, one night when the manager, the chef and I had a little too much to drink. Then I thought, why not? We all started experimenting in the kitchen, adding one thing and then another to the menu, and it just exploded in popularity.”
“I can see why.” Her taste buds were cheering over the subtle blend of exotic spices and the delicate textures, while the beautiful blend of colors and shapes and aromas engaged her other senses. She ate it all and didn’t regret it a bit, even when she was stuffed. If Bryan was going to feed her like this every day, she was going to have to use the home gym she’d seen tucked away in another bedroom.
When they finished, Lucy hand washed the dishes and put them away—no sense running the dishwasher for two people. A buzzer alerted them to Scarlet’s arrival, and Bryan went down to greet her and help her carry up her things.
Lucy was nervous about meeting Bryan’s cousin. She hadn’t had to deal with a boyfriend’s family since high school. She tried to tell herself it didn’t matter whether Scarlet liked her. Bryan wasn’t her real boyfriend, and this situation was temporary. When they caught the embezzler, she would start a new life away from here and she’d probably never lay eyes on Bryan or Scarlet again.
But it did matter. She still wanted Scarlet to like her. But she figured she would be found sadly lacking. The woman was an assistant fashion editor for one of the hottest women’s magazines in the country, after all. Scarlet was used to dressing supermodels and movie stars, not frumpy little bankers wearing oversize men’s pajamas.
The elevator opened, and Bryan returned carrying an enormous armload of clothing. Following him was one of the most beautiful, exotic creatures Lucy had ever seen. She was almost as tall as Bryan, reed slim, with a gorgeous head of light-auburn hair that fell in abundant, bright waves around her shoulders and down her back. She wore a bright-green, gauzy off-the-shoulder shirt and snug pants in a coordinating print, all of which set off her pale-green eyes—eyes that zeroed in on Lucy and missed nothing.
“So you’re my victim,” she said cheerfully, dropping her own armload of clothing, a shopping bag and a cosmetic case the size of an industrial tool chest. She came forward, hand outstretched. “Hi, I’m Scarlet. You must be Lindsay.”
Lucy uttered some pleasantry, but inside she was trembling. What had she gotten herself into? She was living a lie, starting right now. What if she couldn’t pull this off? Bryan had been very clear about how important it was to keep his secret agent life separate from his family, and she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she messed that up for him.
“Stand up,” Scarlet said. “Let’s see what we have to work with.”
Bryan leaned one elbow on the bar and watched, obviously interested in the proceedings, and Lucy felt her face heating again. This was going to be embarrassing enough without him watching, seeing her every physical flaw pointed out.
Scarlet apparently sensed Lucy’s unease, because she turned to her cousin. “Don’t you have something to do? A restaurant to run? Stash was complaining to me that you’re piling too much work on him with all your gallivanting around Europe and Asia.”
“I want to see what you’re going to do with her.”
“No,” she said firmly. “Lindsay’s makeover is about her, not your fantasies of the perfect woman. Now go away. And stay gone at least until midnight.”
Bryan grumbled, but he turned and headed for the elevator. Then he abruptly changed direction and walked up to Lucy. “Have fun, okay? I’ll see you in a while.” And then he touched her cheek, gently angling her face toward him, and kissed her lightly on the mouth.
The kiss lasted maybe half a second, but it electrified everything inside Lucy from her toes to her scalp, and she had to grip the back of the bar stool she’d just vacated to keep from keeling over.
Oh, Lord, she was in trouble. She knew deep down that it was all an act, that Bryan had been working undercover for years and that the ruse of a girlfriend came as easily as breathing to him. But it was all new to her. The casual possessiveness he’d treated her to had felt awfully damn real.
Scarlet, apparently oblivious to the tidal wave of feelings coursing through Lucy, was testing the weight and texture of Lucy’s still-damp hair.
“You’ve got great hair,” she said. “Thick and healthy. It’ll do just about anything you want. I assume you’ll want to keep most of the length, but we can do some layers—”
“No. I want it short. I want it to look as different as possible. And blond.”
“You want highlights?”
“Oh, no. I want to be radically blond.”
Scarlet grinned. “I’m so glad you said that. I was prepared to be cautious, but if you’ll trust me—let me go crazy on you—you’ll be ready for a Charisma cover shoot when I’m done.”
Lucy laughed self-consciously. “Well, I hardly think that.”
“Why not? You’ve got excellent bone structure, regular features, good teeth. The glasses, though, have got to go.”
“I want contacts,” she said, remembering Bryan’s instructions. “I want green eyes. Bright green. But I’m afraid there’s not much you can do about my figure.”
“Hey, most of our models have even less in the chest department than you do. You’d be surprised what good foundation garments can do. You’re slender, which means the clothes will fit you. Help me carry all this stuff into the bedroom and we can get started.”
“I’m staying—” Lucy almost blew it in the first five minutes. If she was Bryan’s girlfriend, she wouldn’t be in the guest room; she would be sharing the master bedroom with him. “I’ll be staying here for quite awhile, I guess, and I don’t have any clothes at all. I’ll need everything.” There. She congratulated herself on a skillful recovery.
“What happened to your clothes?” Scarlet wanted to know, obviously sensing a juicy story. “And don’t worry, nothing you could say would shock me. My twin sister is marrying a rock star.”
“Really? Which one?” Please, dear God, don’t let it be anyone she knew, anyone with In Tight.
“Zeke Woodlow.”
Lucy was infinitely relieved—until she put it all together. She’d read about Zeke’s engagement in The Buzz. “Your sister is Summer Elliott. You’re the Elliott family, the ones who own all those magazines.” One of the richest families on the Eastern Seaboard.
Scarlet looked startled. “You didn’t know that?”
Maybe she’d just better shut up. “I didn’t know Bryan was one of the Elliotts. I’m a little slow—just putting it together now. We haven’t been dating for long,” she added, hoping that would explain away her cluelessness. “As for my clothes, I, uh, burned them. I need a fresh start.”
“Burned them? Where?”
Belatedly Lucy remembered you couldn’t burn anything in New York—it was against the law.
“Back home.”
“Where’s home?”
“Kansas. On a farm.” That much, at least, was true. She’d grown up in a small, conservative Kansas farming town, and her parents were still there.
“What was Bryan doing in Kansas? I thought he was in Europe.”
“Oh, he was. We met in Paris.”
“Then you went home to the farm, burned your clothes and came back here? Naked?”
Lucy smiled as if this wasn’t the most ridiculous story anyone had ever tried to pass off as the truth. “Right.”
“Girlfriend, I like your style.”
Bryan was still trying to recover his equilibrium as he headed down to the restaurant. He’d realized he was going to have to make it look good if his family was ever going to believe Lucy was his girlfriend. He’d never had a serious relationship before. Well, he’d tried once, but he’d quickly found out that women didn’t like it when he disappeared for weeks at a time. He’d decided that as long as he was in the spy business, it wasn’t fair to any woman to try to have a relationship. Not only would they have to put up with frequent absences, but there was always the chance he wouldn’t come home.
If that ever happened, the poor woman would probably never find out his fate.
So he dated casually. He occasionally slept with a woman if she was hot, willing and understood the ground rules. He’d seldom brought a woman into his loft, and he’d certainly never installed one as a live-in mistress. For his family to buy “Lindsay’s” sudden presence in his life, he was going to have to claim he was utterly smitten. And that meant acting the adoring boyfriend, with public displays of affection, longing glances, the whole nine yards.
He probably should have prepared Lucy better for the role she was playing. They hadn’t even gone over a cover story—where Lucy was from, where they’d met.
Oh, well, Lucy was smart enough to wing it. As long as she reported back to him any details she’d given Scarlet, so they could keep the story consistent, it would be okay.
As for that kiss, Lucy had looked like the proverbial deer in the headlights when he’d swooped in for the light smooch. But he was the one who’d been surprised. Her lips had been soft and warm, and her vulnerability had somehow transmitted itself straight from her soul to his, all in the half second of contact between their mouths.
It had been the merest brushing of lips, so innocent, yet it had shaken him to his shoes. No kiss had ever done that.
He’d mostly composed himself by the time he entered the restaurant kitchen, but the memory of the kiss remained in the back of his mind.
“Hey, boss, you’re back!” one of the sous-chefs greeted him.
“Monsieur Bryan!” called out another. “Hey, those Florentine eggrolls are going like hotcakes.”
The head chef, Kim Chin, who ran the kitchen like a marine bootcamp, looked up from his sauté pan and grunted a greeting. “’Bout time.”
All right, so he’d been neglecting his business lately. No one said it was easy working two jobs, and the Alliance Trust case had been occupying every waking hour these days. While Lucy had worked it from her end, Bryan had been tracking down the people receiving the embezzled funds, working with two French agents to prevent any of the illicit funds from reaching terrorists in Iraq while not tipping off the bad guys on the American side. Not until he had them all rounded up could he assemble the evidence needed to put them away for a good long time.
“Where’s Stash?” he asked Kim.
“Out schmoozing the beautiful people, of course, the worthless Frenchie.” Which was pretty funny, since Stash practically lived at the restaurant, keeping everything running, paying the bills, meeting payroll, handling all the hundreds of details that kept Une Nuit at the top of everyone’s list.
“Bryan, you’re back!” Stash greeted him with a hearty hug and a double air-kiss. Stash Martin was an energetic Frenchman in his thirties. With equal parts stubbornness and optimism, he was the perfect manager for an often absent owner. “What keeps you away for so long, eh?” he asked with a French accent. “The place could have been turned into a hot-dog stand while you were gone.”
Bryan had prepared a long, shaggy-dog story about his exploits in Europe. Instead he said, “I met someone.” He had to set up Lucy’s cover story, he reasoned. Lying came easily to him, given the number of years he’d worked undercover. But the scary thing was, he didn’t have to manufacture the edge in his voice when he talked about Lucy. What had started as a fairly routine job had turned into something exciting and challenging—and for all the wrong reasons.
Lucy stared at herself in the mirror, then stared some more. Scarlet hadn’t allowed her to watch the transformation, so her own image was a complete surprise. No, a shock. Her mother wouldn’t recognize her—which was the point, of course.
Her brown hair lay in piles on the floor. Scarlet had cut it to chin length, dyed it to a pale blond, then blow-dried it straight so that it fell in a shimmering fringe that bounced with her every move. Her eyebrows had been plucked and reshaped, and the artfully applied cosmetics had sculpted her face and redefined the shape of her mouth. She now had cheekbones.
Then there were the clothes. After sorting through the piles and piles of glamorous outfits, Scarlet had decided that Lucy needed a look, and had chosen an array of clingy knits in a palette of soft colors—mossy green, plum, cantaloupe, tawny gold. The outfit she wore now was a pair of green low-rider pants and a cropped tank top that clung to all her curves. A second shirt in a paler green, with a front zipper and short sleeves, went over the tank. Wedge-heeled sandals and bold jewelry completed the look.
The most amazing thing, though, was the fact that she had cleavage. Scarlet had found her a really clever push-up bra that made her A cups look like Cs.
Lucy kept putting her glasses on to look at herself from far away, then taking them off and peering at her face from close up. She just couldn’t believe it. She did look like someone who could be Bryan Elliott’s girlfriend. Someone who belonged in New York. When she’d lived here before, she’d never felt quite at home, never really shed her Kansas persona.
“This is just amazing,” she said for about the third time.
“The models you see in magazines don’t have anything we don’t have,” Scarlet said. “Hairstylists, makeup artists, good lighting and a skilled photographer can turn the plainest-looking woman into a knockout.”
Lucy was convinced. But she wasn’t sure the Lucy Miller on the inside matched the one on the outside. Beautiful women—like Scarlet—had an inner confidence, a way of moving and talking that Lucy lacked.
“What if I can’t carry it off?” she asked in a small voice.
“You’ll manage. Listen, I can’t imagine Bryan hooking up with a woman who isn’t really, really special. He saw something in you, something inside. Just remember that, and you’ll be fine.”
Oh, yeah. What Scarlet didn’t know was that Bryan didn’t pick her at all. She’d dropped into his lap, and now he was stuck with her.
“So are you close to Bryan?” Lucy asked, figuring this was a golden opportunity to find out more about her supposed boyfriend.
“All the Elliott cousins are close. Here, stand up on the bed and let me shorten those pants. You’re as slim as a model, but not quite as tall as one.”
“Do most of you work for the magazines?” Lucy asked, trying not to think about the fact she was standing on Bryan’s bed, trying not to think of him sleeping there. Or doing something else.
“We all work for Elliott Publication Holdings in one capacity or another. Except Bryan. He’s the only one to escape that fate.”
“Why is that, do you think?”
“Oh, he had other ideas from the time he was young. His heart problem kept him somewhat separated from the rest of us, I think. Until he had his operation, he couldn’t run and play with us, and we were an extremely active bunch. Turn.”
Lucy obediently turned, but her mind was reeling. Heart problem? Bryan?
“By the time they fixed his heart, his interest in food and cooking had already developed. Then he got into sports, bigtime—had to outdo his brother and all his cousins, as if he was making up for lost time. The magazines just didn’t hold any appeal for him, I guess. Oh, he studied finance in school with some vague notion of going to work for the company, but that didn’t last long. He wanted to do his own thing. He may have been the smartest one in the bunch.”
“Why would you say that? Working for Charisma must be like a dream.”
“Ordinarily, yes. But with the competition going on—Oh, Bryan probably didn’t tell you about that, and why would he?”
Lucy was intrigued. “What competition? Tell me.”
“My grandfather has decided to retire and make one of his children the CEO of the corporation. Each is currently head of one of the magazines—Pulse, Snap, The Buzz and Charisma. So the one whose magazine shows the biggest profit growth by the end of the year wins the top spot. Needless to say, everyone is at each other’s throats. My boss, Aunt Fin, practically lives at the magazine, she’s so obsessed with winning. And Uncle Michael—Well, his wife, my Aunt Karen, is recovering from breast cancer and he should be focusing on that, not worrying about a stupid contest.”
Scarlet had gotten a bit worked up, and she stopped suddenly. “I’m sorry. Bryan would skewer me like a shish-kebab if he knew I was airing family laundry to his new girl.”
“I won’t say anything,” Lucy assured her.
Lucy glanced at her new watch—a big, copper-colored bracelet thing—and was surprised to see it was after 1 a.m. Bryan wasn’t home yet. What was he doing, she wondered. He obviously wasn’t anxious to get back to her. It was probably a relief to be free of her for a while.
“Well, I hate to undo your hard work, but I think I’ll take off all this makeup and turn in,” Lucy said. “It’s been a long day. Thank you so much, Scarlet. It was really nice of you to spend your evening this way.”
“My pleasure, believe me. It was nice to get away from family and work pressure for a while.” The two women embraced, and Lucy felt a rush of warmth and gratitude to Scarlet. She hadn’t had any close girlfriends the last couple of years since moving to D.C. A few women at work had invited her occasionally to join them for dinner or drinks or a movie, but she’d kept her distance. She’d told herself it was because she wanted to keep her focus on work and not get distracted until her career was better established. But she could see now she’d been punishing herself. Having fun had gotten her into a lot of trouble. Therefore, fun was bad and it had to be eliminated from her life.
She imagined Scarlet already had a full complement of friends, though. Anyway, Lucy probably wouldn’t have time for socializing. She had to go through all the data she’d downloaded from the bank and figure out who the embezzler was.
She helped Scarlet pack up her things and walked her to the elevator. “I’d walk you down and help you carry all this, but I don’t know how to get back in.”
Scarlet rolled her eyes. “Bryan’s silly elevator. He does have some pretty valuable artwork he doesn’t want stolen, but he so overdid it with the security.”
Maybe, but Lucy was grateful for it. They said goodbye. Then Lucy headed back up to the loft’s upper level, which housed the master suite and Bryan’s study. She wanted to move all of her things back down to her own bedroom before Bryan returned.
No such luck. She heard the elevator as she was heading down the stairs with an armload of clothing, her new wardrobe.
“Lucy?” he called out as he strode into the living room. “Oh, there you are. It took longer than I thought to go through the—” He stopped midstride and stared at her. “What have you done to your hair?”
“You … you don’t like it?” Lucy squeaked. Scarlet had pointed out that men liked long hair, and Bryan might not be too keen on the short ‘do. Her hair barely skimmed her jawline. Lucy had hesitated only briefly. The point was to look different, not to please Bryan.
But now she realized how badly she wanted him to like the new Lucy. Or rather, Lindsay.
“You just look so—Come down here. Put those clothes down and let me have a look at you.”
Lucy did as asked, laying the beautiful new clothes on a chair and standing there, feeling enormously self-conscious as Bryan looked her up and down, then walked behind her and all around her, his expression unreadable.