Hired Bride. Jackie Merritt

you ever done any escorting?”

      Her eyes widened, and she started to get up from her chair. “Mr. Fortune, if I’ve given you any reason to think—”

      Holding up a hand, Zane broke in. “I’m not suggesting anything immoral or illegal. Please don’t rush into an erroneous opinion before you give me a chance to explain my question.”

      Gwen slowly sank back to the chair. “All right,” she said flatly. “Explain.” And make it good, because if you don’t I’ll be crossing you off my client list! It wasn’t a pleasant thought. She needed every client she had worked so hard to obtain. Spent money to obtain, as a matter of fact. Advertising was costly, and she was always grateful when a potential new customer mentioned phoning Help-Mate because he or she had seen one of her little ads.

      “What I’m going to propose to you is a simple business arrangement. I need an attractive lady to escort to a wedding this weekend. I realize there are women for hire out there, but I wouldn’t insult my family and friends in that manner. Here’s the situation. The females in my family have decided that I should be married, or at least committed to one woman. They have taken it upon themselves to find me a wife, and I know that there’ll be at least a dozen unmarried women at that wedding just waiting to pounce on me.”

      “Why don’t you just tell the females in your family to leave you alone?” Gwen asked, suspicion and distrust in every syllable. She had never heard a more lame story in her life. If that was Zane Fortune’s favorite line, it was a wonder he got anywhere with decent women. The thing was, she enjoyed reading the society section of the newspaper and knew that Zane did attract decent women. So what, really, was this all about?

      Zane heaved a sigh. “I wish I could do that. Actually, I’ve tried to do that, but it never comes off the way I’d like it to. My sisters think I’m kidding around with them, they kid back and the whole thing falls apart.

      “Anyway, I came up with an idea to at least get me through the weekend relatively unscathed. Heather, my secretary, was going to attend the wedding with me, and we were going to lead everyone to believe that she and I had become an item. It’s not true, of course. Heather’s practically engaged. But she agreed to help me out, and then today she received a phone call from her sister in Fort Worth. Their mother is in the hospital, and naturally Heather had to go and see her.”

      “And you…you’d like me to take her place?” Gwen was still guarded, but she was beginning to believe that Zane wasn’t handing her a line.

      “Exactly. I’m not asking you to give up your weekend for nothing, Gwen. I’ll pay you a thousand dollars if you go to that wedding with me and act as though we are very good friends.”

      She managed not to gasp, but she couldn’t prevent a weakly parroted, “A thousand dollars?”

      “Make it two thousand,” Zane said quickly, reading her reaction as reluctance. “This is important to me, Gwen, and I’m willing to pay for two days of your time. Is two thousand enough?”

      “Uh…yes. Two thousand is, uh, sufficient.” Was accepting money for spending time with a man immoral, even though she would be committing no definitively immoral acts? Goodness knows, she could use the money. She lived from day to day, working herself into an early grave to make ends meet, always with that nagging worry about her children’s future. With a windfall of two thousand dollars…well, there was so much she could do with it, she really wouldn’t know where to start.

      But just what did Zane Fortune expect for so much money?

      She said what she’d been thinking, keeping her voice at an even pitch though her pulse was racing. “Before I give you an answer, Mr. Fortune, tell me exactly what you expect for your money.”

      Two

       R amona Garcia was two things to Gwen—a reliable, loving baby-sitter and a good friend. The baby-sitting had come first, and the friendship had developed because Ramona and Gwen had so much in common. Very close in age, they were both widows with small children—Ramona had two little ones and Gwen had three. In one way, however, Ramona was more fortunate than Gwen. Ramona’s husband had left her a sizable insurance policy, which, while it didn’t make her a wealthy woman, certainly made her life easier than Gwen’s. Ramona had invested the insurance money in an annuity with monthly draws, and she supplemented that income with childcare in her own home. When Gwen became a steady customer, Ramona stopped taking in other children. At that point her income had become satisfactory.

      Gwen had often asked herself why she had permitted her husband Paul to procrastinate on buying life insurance, but in her heart she knew the answer to that question as well as she knew anything: Paul simply had not been a worrier or a planner. Like many people with happy-go-lucky personalities, Paul had enjoyed today and rarely thought of tomorrow.

      At any rate, Gwen had been left with a mortgaged house, two cars and a boat with monthly payments, and no income beyond a modest monthly social security check. If her parents hadn’t helped her out financially after Paul’s fatal accident, Gwen would have lost the little she did have. Her father had stepped in and sold the boat and one of the cars, eliminating two of her debts, and he had made the payments on her mortgage and the other car for two months. By then Gwen had pulled herself together and faced her situation; she could not live off her folks indefinitely. It was time she shaped up and started supporting herself.

      Her biggest hurdle to finding a job that paid enough to support herself was her lack of training. Before meeting Paul, she had been in college to become an art teacher, and though she was talented in many art forms, there weren’t a lot of jobs for wannabe artists out there. She had wished many times that she had the abilities to work as a secretary, but wishes didn’t produce income. She had begun working two and three minimum-wage jobs at a time and still never made enough money to keep her head above water. Besides, with that kind of work schedule she’d rarely seen her kids, and she’d hated it that strangers were raising Mindy, Ashley and Donnie.

      Her next attempt to pay her own way had been to quit all of her jobs and start a home business. She had shopped yard and garage sales and bought things that she could fix up and sell for a higher price. She had a natural knack for spotting a good piece of furniture hiding beneath layers of old paint, and the best part of that business was that whenever she left the house, her kids could go with her. She made money too, but it wasn’t steady money, and after a few months she’d finally had to admit that what she was doing could only be a sideline venture. She had to come up with something that brought in money on a regular basis.

      By that time her garage was crammed with furniture that needed restoring, and she usually worked at night, after the kids were in bed, finishing pieces that could then be sold. During those quiet hours Gwen had racked her brain for a solution to her financial quandary, and gradually the concept of Help-Mate had taken shape. It had excited her.

      Getting the company started had taken time and money; the time she could provide herself, but not the money, and she had approached her parents for a loan. Jack and Lillian Lafferty had thought her idea a good one, and had agreed to loan her the money to get started. Gwen had vowed to pay back every cent her generous parents had ever given or loaned to her, and now, a year later, she was trying very hard to keep that vow. Some of the two thousand that she would receive from Zane Fortune was going to them.

      After completing her appointments on that fateful day, Gwen drove to Ramona’s house to pick up her kids.

      Ramona met her at the door, and her expressive dark eyes became concerned. “Gwen, you look so tired. Come in and sit down for a few minutes. The kids are playing in the backyard and are fine.”

      Gwen followed her friend to the kitchen, and Ramona brought two glasses of iced tea to the table before asking, “Gwen, is something wrong? You look a little pale around the gills.”

      Sighing, Gwen took a drink of her tea. “I agreed to do something today that’s been bothering me ever since.” She stared broodingly out the kitchen window and watched her kids and Ramona’s running and playing in the fenced yard. She was incredibly lucky to have found