Christmas Fantasy

Keeping in mind that he was her boss, she summoned a pleasant smile she was certain didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Contrary to what you might have heard, my sight and mind are sound.”

“That’s good to know,” he replied with calculated mildness. “I wouldn’t want anything to impair your chances of getting that promotion.”

“The only thing that could hurt my chances is if someone more qualified than myself come along.” After all, they both knew she had the experience, along with a degree that gave her a distinct advantage over Fred Williams, the colleague she was up against.

Louden merely smiled. Rounding her desk, he propped his hip on the corner nearest her, unmindful of the papers resting on the edge. Bracing his left forearm on his thigh, he leaned toward her, though his gaze was busy taking in the project laid out in front of her. “How is the preliminary sketch coming on the World Wide Travel logo?”

“Just fine.” Louden liked to feel superior, and she had no doubt that his position on her desk had been chosen for such a purpose. She forced herself to look up at him, determined to meet his gaze. “It’ll be on your desk first thing in the morning, two days before deadline.”

“My, aren’t you efficient.” Using a slim finger, he turned the sketch she was working on toward him, taking in the rough draft of a globe with connecting W’s, the initials the travel agency had requested. “And so talented, too. It would be a shame to see all this creativity go to waste.”

His mocking tone chafed her nerves, but she didn’t let it show. “Since you weren’t expecting the project on your desk until Friday, is there some other reason you stopped by?”

He stared at her for a long moment, obviously not caring for the way she was trying to dismiss him. “According to my secretary, you haven’t RSVP’d for the Christmas party, which is this Saturday. Certainly you weren’t going to miss the biggest bash of the year?”

She resented the sanctimonious way he chastised her. She hadn’t planned on attending the party, mainly because she didn’t relish the thought of having any outside-of-the-office contact with Louden, but he was making it difficult to refuse.

“I’ve been so busy, I forgot to respond.” The excuse was handy, and served its purpose. “Consider this my confirmation.”

“For one or two?”

Uncomfortable with the direction of their conversation, her mind grappled for another convenient excuse…and came up blank.

His pale gaze slid pointedly to the ring on her finger. “Two,” she said quickly. “There’ll be two of us attending the Christmas party.”

Surprise registered in his eyes, and was quickly replaced by skepticism. “Ah, we finally get to meet the elusive boyfriend.”

What had been an innocent white lie to keep Louden at bay was now becoming a tangled mess. He hadn’t pressed her, accepting the fact that she had a boyfriend in the beginning, but as the months wore on, she suspected he had his doubts. This was the first time he’d made any direct reference to his suspicions.

“What’s his name?” he asked casually.

She stared at Louden, her mind freezing. “Uh, excuse me?” The phrase bought her some time, but not much, she knew. She hadn’t thought to create a name for her fictitious boyfriend.

“Your boyfriend,” he repeated slowly. “He does have a name, doesn’t he?”

“Well, yes, of course he does.” A name, Teddy. Pick a name! At the moment she couldn’t even think of one of her three older brother’s names!

“Then what is it?” he persisted. “My secretary needs it for the place settings. We can’t have just anybody finagling their way into the party.”

Teddy’s chest hurt and her head swam. When she finally realized that she was holding her breath, she let it out in a rush. “Well, maybe I should check with…him. We’d talked about the Christmas party, but quite honestly, he didn’t actually say yes, so we probably should discuss it further.” She offered Louden a placating smile.

Louden’s eyes narrowed slightly, and a smile curled the corner of his mouth.

Very casually, he picked up her hand, the one with the diamond and ruby band, and ran his finger over the embedded jewels. She tried not to visibly shudder at his touch.

“You know, Theodora,” he said, deliberately using her full name as a way of maintaining his superiority. “For a woman who claims she’s committed, you sure do have a hard time remembering the simplest things about your beau. Maybe he’s not as important as you’d like everyone to believe.”

She yanked her hand from his grasp. “That’s ridiculous.”

A pale eyebrow lifted, expressing those doubts.

Desperation coiled within her, and she seized the only name in her mind. “Austin,” she blurted.

He looked taken aback by her outburst, and somewhat confused. “Pardon?”

She summoned as much confidence as she could and injected it into her voice. “My boyfriend, his name is Austin.” The threads of her white lie were taking on a decidedly black cast. Hell, since she’d incriminated Austin this much, she decided to go all the way and worry about the consequences later. “Austin McBride.”

Sliding off the edge of her desk, Louden straightened and glanced down with enough arrogance to make her uneasy. “Well, I suggest you give him a call and find out for certain if he’ll be attending the Christmas party with you. My secretary needs a firm head count by the end of today.”

Teddy watched Louden leave the office, and knew she’d backed herself into a corner. What she needed was her own personal fantasy man, a fake boyfriend who would establish territorial rights so Louden Avery would back off and see her as a professional, someone well qualified for that promotion. Austin McBride, fantasy for hire, was the man to help her accomplish that goal.

Drawing a deep breath, and hoping Austin could be persuaded to be her date for an evening, she reached for the phone and dialed the number she’d memorized from his business card. The line connected and rang, then a recorder clicked on.

“You’ve reached Fantasy for Hire,” Austin’s voice came over the line, just as deep and rich as she remembered. The sexy, masculine tones spread warmly through her, touching places that had been untouched for too long. “Leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.” A long beep followed.

“Hi, Austin,” she said, just as Louden walked back into her office, a file folder in his hand. Their gazes met from across the room, the interest in his eyes enough to tell her he’d heard her greeting. She had no choice but to finish her message to Austin.

She hadn’t counted on having an audience, and had only planned to leave a brief, impersonal message for Austin to return her call. Louden’s unexpected presence changed all that, forcing her to make up a believable monologue as she spoke.

“It’s, uh, Teddy,” she continued, while her mind latched on to an idea. “I’m calling about the Christmas party this Saturday. Have you decided to go? Since you’re not home, I guess we’ll talk about it tonight. We’re still on for drinks, right? I’ll see you at seven at the Frisco Bay.” She dropped her voice to a husky pitch, lowered her lashes coyly for Louden’s benefit and added, “And later on tonight I’ll wear that adorable Stetson you gave me for my birthday, as long as you promise to wear your chaps.”

She hoped that last intimate reference would serve a dual purpose—to give Louden the impression that she and Austin were, indeed, intimately involved, and to leave no doubt in Austin’s mind who, exactly, the caller was. Austin didn’t seem the type to forget a woman’s name, but she wasn’t taking any chances. The Stetson would identify her, if her name failed to spark his memory.

Whether or not he showed up to meet her was a whole other issue.

Her face burning at her brazenness, she hung up the phone, hoping Louden would mistake the heat scoring her cheeks as a lover’s glow.

Setting the file in her in-box on the corner of her desk, he stared at her for a long moment, making her uncomfortable. Even after hearing her one-sided conversation, he still didn’t believe her. She could see the doubt in his expression, could detect his skepticism in the set of his rigid posture.

Wanting to deflect his suspicion, she pasted on a smile. “He wasn’t home, but go ahead and tell Janet to add two more to the guest list.”

“Are you sure about that?” he asked, too quietly for her peace of mind.

She suspected his question went much deeper than her certainty about the party. “I’m sure. Go ahead and put Austin’s name down as my date. He’ll be there. I can be very…determined when it comes to something I want.” She shot one of his double-edged comments right back at him.

“Sometimes, determination isn’t enough,” he retorted meaningfully.

“He’ll be there.” She wished she felt as confident as she sounded. Truth was, she feared Austin would hear the message on his answering machine and write her off as a nutcase.

“Very well, then. I look forward to meeting the elusive Austin McBride.”

She folded her hands on top of her desk and met his gaze levelly. “He’s looking forward to meeting you, too.”

“W HERE HAVE YOU BEEN ? You were supposed to be home an hour ago.”

With a large, flat box tucked under one arm and his other wrapped securely around a green plastic container holding a small, wilting Douglas fir tree, Austin maneuvered his way through the front door of the old Victorian home he and his older brother, Jordan, had inherited when their parents died fourteen years ago. For the past eight years he’d occupied the house by himself, ever since Jordan had moved to Los Angeles to pursue his architectural career. Eight years of coming and going as he pleased, without worrying about accounting for his whereabouts.

Some habits, especially Jordan’s protective instincts toward his little brother, died hard. Jordan had always been the dependable, levelheaded one of them, but then he’d had the responsibility of raising a sixteen-year-old hellion thrust upon him when he, himself, should have been tasting freedom at the tender young age of eighteen. A huge obligation like that tended to make a man out of a child fairly quickly, and Jordan had taken the role of guardianship very seriously. Too seriously, Austin thought, refraining from the urge to remind his brother that he was a big boy and had proven that he could take care of himself.