His Pretend Fiancee. Victoria Pade

he’d been sitting in the audience. A face that had riveted her right from the start and kept her enraptured during the three days that had followed. As enraptured as the body that went with it.

      The body that was six feet of broad-shouldered, hard-packed muscle that left no doubt that the firefighter was capable of carrying even a full-grown man from a burning building. Six feet of broad-shouldered, hard-packed muscle encased in a pair of tan dress slacks, a hunter green polo shirt, and a sport coat that made Josie suddenly wonder if, when he’d begun this evening, he’d dressed for a date.

      “So where are you coming from?” she asked as her curiosity got the better of her.

      “A date with my mother’s podiatrist,” he said without hesitation, a heavy dose of disgust in his tone.

      “Another setup?” she asked. One of the few things she knew about him was that his mother was desperate for him to get married and was in relentless pursuit of finding him a wife.

      “The fifth setup since I saw you last,” he confirmed.

      “She’s arranged five blind dates for you in two weeks?” Josie said in amazement.

      He’d finally finished with the photographs and turned to face her. The full bore of striking green eyes as vibrant as the leaves of summer was almost enough to take her breath away.

      But he didn’t seem to notice as he answered her question with a complete list. “There was dinner with Mom’s hairdresser, lunch with the receptionist from her dentist’s office, brunch with the woman who delivered a package to her, coffee with the niece of a friend of her bridge partner, and dinner tonight with the podiatrist.”

      Josie couldn’t help smiling. “You can say one thing—you’re eating well.”

      “Actually, tonight it was tofu cuisine and I hardly ate anything.”

      And if his tone was any indication, there was more than the food that he hadn’t had a taste for.

      “So something about tofu cuisine gave you a crazy thought that brought you here,” she said, using the segue to maybe finally find out why he’d come when they’d both agreed at the end of that Labor Day weekend that they didn’t want any big involvement and to go their separate ways.

      Michael Dunnigan smiled at her a bit sheepishly. “It wasn’t the tofu, it was the fact that I was sitting across the table from this woman whose company I was not enjoying in the least, thinking that if I had to do one more blind date I would scream, and wondering how the hell I was going to get my mother to stop.”

      “And that gave you a crazy idea.”

      “A really crazy idea.”

      But still he didn’t tell her what that crazy idea was.

      He took another look around the apartment, shook his head and said, “I can’t believe four people and a dog are crammed in here.”

      Josie clenched her teeth and shrieked to let her frustration be known. “What was the crazy idea?” she said, slowly enunciating each word.

      Michael Dunnigan smiled again, obviously enjoying this. “It occurred to me that my mother is never going to cease and desist until she actually believes I’ve found someone.”

      And that made him think of me?

      A hopeful little flutter in the pit of her stomach gave Josie pause.

      Yes, she had liked Michael Dunnigan. A lot. Yes, she’d been attracted to him. A lot. But she hadn’t been kidding Labor Day weekend—she was strictly against getting involved with anyone, so she’d nixed any idea of a relationship developing between them. Which, for his own reasons, he’d been in favor of. So why was she feeling flattered and hopeful that he’d connected finding someone with her?

      She tamped down the very notion.

      “Okay,” she said to prompt him. “Your mother is never going to cease and desist until she believes you’ve found someone. That seems logical.”

      “It does, doesn’t it? I don’t know why it took me so long to realize it. Anyway,” he went on, “that was when I started to think about the bind you said you were in to find another place to live and I thought that if you hadn’t already done that, what if we solved each other’s problems?”

      “You’ve lost me,” she confessed.

      “Well…” He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was about to say. “Remember, I warned you that it was crazy.”

      “Uh-huh.”

      “Well, I thought, what if I sort of hire you to move in with me and pretend to be my fiancée?”

      That just made Josie laugh.

      “Okay, so it’s a crazy and funny idea,” he said. But he wasn’t laughing along with her. He was just waiting for her to stop.

      So she did. And that was when she said, “You want me to move in with you?” as if it just had to be a joke.

      “On a purely platonic basis,” he was quick to add. “Of course my mother wouldn’t know it, but you’d have your own room—rent free—plus use of the rest of the place. Which includes a small yard the dog could go out into. You’d have to play the part of my fiancée when my mother came around or if I needed your attendance at something, but the reality would be that we’d just be roommates. And the beauty of it is that if my mother believes I’m engaged to you, I could get her off my back.”

      “That really is a crazy idea,” Josie said.

      He smiled sheepishly again and she wished he would stop it. Smiling put lines at the corners of each of his eyes and deep grooves bracketing his supple mouth, and only made him more attractive.

      “We could tell my mother that since we really just met we’re going to have an extended engagement,” he continued as if this were actually a possibility. “And who knows how long we could draw it out? No matter how long it is, it’ll give me a break.”

      He sounded like he needed one.

      Certainly she needed a place to move to…

      Josie could hardly believe that last thought had gone through her head.

      Was she honestly considering this?

      “It’s crazy,” she repeated. Only now what seemed even crazier than his idea was the fact that she might be thinking about doing it.

      “I thought being a little crazy was right up your alley,” he commented then, as if he liked that about her.

      She’d never considered herself crazy. Spontaneous. Free-spirited. Adventurous. Those were all things she remembered of her parents. Things she liked to keep alive in herself. And even if some people—like Mr. Bartholomew—considered what she did on the spur of the moment or on a whim crazy, what was important to her was that she found her actions reasonable. Or enjoyable. Or beneficial to someone.

      Moving in with Michael Dunnigan, pretending to be engaged to him, would be beneficial to him, a little voice in the back of her mind pointed out. It would also be beneficial to her….

      “Have you been drinking?” she asked suddenly, wanting to make sure this wasn’t some inebriated lark that he would regret when he sobered up.

      “Drinking with Miss Tofu? Are you kidding? She ordered me a shot of some thick green stuff—wheat grass juice of something—but there was definitely no liquor in it. It might have tasted better if there had been.”

      She purposely hadn’t invited him to sit down. Or sat herself for that matter. But now he perched a casual hip on the arm of an easy chair as if he were right at home anyway.

      Then he said, “It wouldn’t be all that complicated. An occasional meal with my family. Holidays. A wedding or a reunion or a birthday here and there. And you wouldn’t always have to go to everything with me. Sometimes I could just say you had to work