The Corporate Marriage Campaign

“This is wonderful,” Caroline bubbled. “It’s all working out better than anyone could have hoped. Just a couple of hours ago I thought I’d ruined everything, but now it’s going to be even better than I thought was possible.”

Trey was looking at his watch. “Caroline, about the district attorney—what have you decided to do?”

Caroline’s glee vanished. She took a deep breath. “I’ll talk to him. And I’ll file charges.”

“Good.” Trey squeezed her shoulder. “I’ll be right there with you all the way.”

There was a soft note in his voice that was unlike anything Darcy had heard before. She was still trying to sort out whether it was approval, support, warmth, love, or something else entirely, when he turned to her.

“Darcy, I’ll pick you up at six, and we can spend the evening going over the necessary details so you’ll be prepared for the shoot tomorrow.” Every hint of softness was gone.

“How considerate of you to ask whether that fits into my calendar,” she murmured, making no attempt to keep the sarcasm out of her tone. “And here I expected maybe you’d be dictatorial about your plans.”

“I suppose we could go in without any preparation and just let the crew think we were too busy making love to bother to talk,” Trey said.

Darcy noticed her brother biting back a grin, and glared at him. “Six will be fine.”

“I thought it would,” Trey murmured.

Irritated, Darcy struck back. “Now you must run along and get busy, darling,” she said sweetly, “because you’ll need to make all the money you possibly can, in order to provide for me.”

When Trey arrived at the cottage on the dot of six o’clock, Darcy was still struggling to make the computer print out a will she’d been working on most of the afternoon. “Have a seat while I finish,” she told him. “Dave needs this first thing in the morning.”

He sat on the corner of the desk, right next to her, rather than in the chair she indicated. “Word processing isn’t exactly your top skill?”

“If you’re trying to make the point that I’d be happier doing graphic arts instead of wills, don’t bother. We all know that already.” She pushed a key and the printer wheezed, sucked in a sheet of paper and stopped dead.

“What’s the rush with the will?” Trey said.

“Since it’s not your will, that information is confidential.” Darcy tried the print command again, but the printer refused to budge. “Okay, I get the message. Maybe it just needs to pout for a while. I want to be home early anyway because it’s been a very long day. So I’ll come back and finish this up later.” She closed the file and turned off the computer. “Let’s go.”

“Aren’t you going to change clothes?”

Darcy glanced at her slacks and sweater. “Why? Where are we going? Because if you’re planning to take me someplace swanky, I’d suggest you think again.”

“There will be some formal events along the way, you know,” Trey warned. “If you’re not comfortable with that, we’ve got a problem.”

“Oh, I can handle swank—as long as you provide the clothes. I just meant that you surely don’t want to talk about all this at one of your regular hangouts and risk being overheard by your friends.”

“Good point. Where do you suggest?”

She looked him over thoughtfully. “There’s a little bar a few blocks down. It’s noisy enough that nobody can be overheard, and dark enough not to be noticed—that is, if you lose the tie and borrow one of Dave’s windbreakers to replace the suit coat. Try the back of his office door.”

When he came back, he was shrugging himself into an oversized black jacket emblazoned in huge yellow letters with the name of the college where Dave had gotten his law degree. “This isn’t exactly what I’d call anonymous. I bet it glows in the dark.”

“It’ll fit into the crowd at Tanner’s better than that suit would.”

“You’re sure Dave won’t mind me borrowing it? Where is he, anyway?”

“I don’t know. He left an hour or so ago and said something vague about having an appointment.”

He helped her into her raincoat. Darcy checked her pockets for keys and emergency funds and locked the door of the cottage behind them.

His car was parked directly in front. It was—of course—a fire-engine-red sports car that Darcy’s gut said had cost at least twice as much as her entire college education. Men are so predictable… “Oh, boy,” she said. “How many miles does this baby get per gallon of testosterone?”

“I have no idea,” Trey said coolly. “It belongs to Caroline.”

“All right,” she admitted cheerfully. “I leaped to conclusions there and missed the pier entirely. So what do you drive—a Rolls-Royce that matches your suit?”

“Depends on the day.”

Darcy had to admit that despite herself she was impressed—certainly not by the fact that he owned multiple cars, but because he didn’t seem to want to brag about it. “How did you and Dave become friends, anyway? Somehow the two of you just don’t seem the type to be bosom buddies.”

“Because he has a motorcycle and I don’t?”

Darcy chalked that up as a fact to remember. “I’ve never heard him mention your name.”

“We met in the frat house in college. Lost track of each other after that, and we didn’t run into each other again until a college reunion a year or two ago.”

“When I’d already gone to San Francisco.”

“I guess it must have been. What were you doing out there, anyway?”

“Graphic arts,” she said crisply. “How long have you been with the stores?”

“About two years. I stayed out East after grad school and worked for a couple of different firms, but then my dad had a heart attack and had to retire, so I came home to take over.”

“How does he feel about you being in charge?”

“He died six months ago,” Trey said.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“No reason you should.”

That, Darcy thought, was not quite true, even though the name probably wouldn’t have had personal meaning for her. But six months ago she’d been living in a fog where nothing much had made an impression. Six months ago, she might not even have noticed Trey Kent if he’d crossed her path.

No, she thought. No matter what else was going on in her life, it would be impossible for any woman to ignore Mr. Elegance.

“Where are we going, again?”

Darcy had gotten so sidetracked into thinking about Trey that she had to stop to think. “Tanner’s—it’s a couple more blocks down. There’s parking out front.” Belatedly she remembered what he was driving. “Unless you’d rather leave the car with a valet at the hotel down the street.”

“No, it’ll be fine. This car has such an elaborate alarm system it’ll slap handcuffs on anybody who tries to touch it, long before the cops have a chance to show up.”

Just inside the front door of the bar, she paused to look around. “There’s a free booth—I’ll grab it, if you want to go get the drinks. Just an iced tea for me, please.”

The booth was in a corner, well away from both the door and the bar, and she had to work her way through a fair-sized crowd to get there. Halfway there, she heard someone calling her name and turned to see a friend of Dave’s leaning against the pool table.