Married By Mistake!

“Wonderful!” Elissa cried. “Fight fire with fire! Make him think you’ve been as disloyal to him as he was to you, the bag of dirt!” She vaulted up, clearly deciding the plan was settled. “I can’t wait to see his face when he realizes you don’t care a crumb for him!”

Lucy frowned at her sister, her astonished glance skittering to Jack. She couldn’t even express what she was thinking. For instance, even if she agreed to this, just who would be her fake fiancé? The whole idea was impossible.

“I’d better clean up the mess I made.” Elissa began gingerly picking up broken shards of the teacup. “Then we’ll have to warn Helen and Damien and get our story straight. We don’t have long.”

Lucy’s ability to speak clicked on and she jumped up. “We?” She glared at Elissa and then at Jack. “We? I hope you don’t think I’ll agree to this. First of all, there aren’t that many men hanging around that I can ask to go along with such a crazy scheme. And secondly, I can’t lie. I’ve never been able to lie. It’s hopeless.” She headed for the parlor exit. “I’m going to pack. Elissa, call the Springfield bus station and get me a ticket on the first bus to Kansas City. I’ll hide out in the YWCA until he’s gone. The Smiths are leaving for Springfield in the morning. I can hitch a ride with them.”

She felt a hand take her wrist. “I’ll do it, Luce.”

Caught in Jack’s firm grasp, she spun toward him as Elissa scolded, “You certainly won’t do any such thing, Jack. Nobody’s giving her a ride anywhere.”

“I didn’t mean that.” He faced Lucy, towering there, all muscle and firelight. His bedroom eyes at half-mast, his features were unsmiling. “I meant, I’ll pretend to be your fiancé.” His voice was smoky soft, his glance strangely beguiling. She blinked, feeling out of breath as she focused all her senses on what he was saying. “You’ve known me a long time, Luce. We already care about each other. It wouldn’t be that hard to pretend you love me—would it?”

Elissa gasped. “Perfection! Absolute perfection.” Since her hands were full of broken pieces of china, she nudged Lucy in the ribs with her elbow. “And Jack’s a lot better looking than Stadler. Taller, richer, and he has a strong, square chin, not that excuse for a jaw of Stadler’s.”

Jack grinned wryly at the redhead. “Stop it before I blush.”

Elissa laughed. “Really, Jack. This is better than my ‘kick me’ sign idea. It’ll destroy Stadler right down to his scummy roots.” Elissa stretched up to kiss his cheek. “I’d better go throw this china away before I slash an artery. You two start planning Stadler’s downfall.”

When Elissa was gone, Lucy could only gawk at the man before her. “I—I won’t let you do this.”

He squeezed her wrist, his fingers lingering a second before he let her go. “Hey, if it weren’t for the influence of your family, I might have traveled a very different road in life.” He shrugged his hands into his trouser pockets. “Let me help, Luce. I want to.”

“But I’m not a vengeful person. I wouldn’t be able to carry it off. Besides—besides...” Her lower lip began to quiver in spite of her attempt to quell it. Suddenly overwhelmed, she dropped to the sofa, covering her eyes with her fists. “Oh, Jack—I waited so long for Stadler. You have no idea what it’s like to wait and wait for somebody you love—” A sob cut off her words.

The sofa dipped as he sat down, drawing her against him. His solicitude was so welcome that she could no longer hold in her gnawing heartache. He held her protectively, allowing her to cry herself dry against his chest. Somewhere in her anguish, as he stroked her back to calm her, she thought she heard him murmur, “Maybe I can imagine, Luce. Maybe I can....”

Lucy looked up from polishing their silver tea tray at the kitchen table as Elissa swept into the kitchen through the pantry. Bella and her assistant had been scraping food from the breakfast dishes and filling the dishwasher. “Bella,” Elissa called, “could you and Ramona excuse us for a minute?”

The plump cook looked a little startled, but nodded. “Sure, Miss Elissa. Ramona and I were just going into town to do some shopping for supper anyway.” She indicated the kitchen door with a nod of her gray curls, and her gaunt, plain-faced assistant scurried out ahead of her without a word. Seconds later, the door closed, leaving the sisters alone.

The guests had already scattered for the day, heading off for sight-seeing in Branson and Silver Dollar City. But Lucy’s mind was on anything but the bounty of things to do in their unique community, with its many theaters and gala shows, nestled in the unspoiled Ozark Mountains of Missouri. Her mind was raging, Why am I still here? Why hadn’t she packed her bags and left for Springfield the first thing this morning with the departing Smiths? She couldn’t possibly have decided to go along with the plan to pretend to be engaged to Jack—could she? She took an extra hard swipe at the silver tray, a family heirloom, and gritted her teeth. Why, oh why, couldn’t she act! Leave! Why did she have to be such a wimp? Why was she even listening to Jack and Elissa?

“Well!” her big sister interrupted the mutinous train of thought with a loud sigh. “I don’t know what’s the matter with our baby sister and her husband.”

Lucy looked up, a tremor of alarm slithering through her. “Is something wrong? Are they okay? Are the twins—”

“Hold it.” Elissa put a reassuring hand on her sister’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. They’re fine. I meant, when I told them about our plan, Helen started laughing. When she couldn’t stop, she got after me for making her stitches hurt. Then she told Damien, and I could hear him laughing in the background.” Elissa shook her head. “They have a strange sense of humor, those two. Do you think they’ve been snorting laughing gas?”

Lucy could feel heat creep up her face. She knew what Helen and Damien were thinking—the myth! That was foolish, of course. She had no intention of getting involved with another man, not now, maybe never. And Jack was merely a friend offering his assistance because he owed John Crosby, and he cared enough about her to want to help her save face. There was nothing more to it than that.

Swallowing, she set down the tray and eyed her sister as directly as she could. “How could you have told them such a thing? I’m not sure I’ll agree to do it. As a matter of fact, I still think packing and getting—”

“Lucille Violet Crosby, you will not disgrace yourself by turning tail and running. Is that clear?” Elissa took up the polishing cloth and furiously began to buff the intricate pattern that banded the square tray, apparently trying to channel her fit of temper. “Jack is willing. He cares for you. He cares for us all. Now you stiffen your upper lip and get with the program. Stadler Tinsley needs to be taken down a peg for his egotistical scheme, and you’re going to find the backbone to do it.” She plunked the tray onto the table and eyed her younger sister for a few seconds before her expression relaxed. ”Besides, once old Stad’s hit in the face with the fact that you don’t care about him, I bet he drags that unfortunate new fiancée of his onto the first plane out of Missouri.” Elissa brushed a hand through Lucy’s white blond, shoulder-length hair, more as a sisterly caress than a gesture of grooming, though the stuff was so fine and flyaway it always needed a good finger combing. ”You’ll have to pretend to be engaged for five minutes, tops.”

“You think so?” Lucy wondered how it was that Elissa managed to make ideas that were completely insane seem perfectly reasonable. Probably some class she’d taken in law school.

“I know so.” Elissa grinned, putting her arm around her sister and gathering her close for a peck on the cheek. “Now that that’s settled, I have an inn to run.”

As the redhead set off for the hallway, Lucy had a horrible thought. “What about the help, Elissa? Bella, her assistant, Ramona, and the housekeeper, Jule?”

Elissa’s features grew momentarily pinched, then she shrugged and grinned. “Okay, so for five minutes they’ll think you’re engaged, too. No big deal.”

Elissa was gone before Lucy could come up with the obvious arguments. Like, what if Stadler saw through the lie? What if he stayed longer than five minutes? What if—what if...? She couldn’t think of the other things. And even if she could have thought of any, she didn’t want to dwell on them.

Shaking her head, Lucy slowly stood. Pack. That’s what she had to do. She could always catch a ride to Springfield in Branson on one of the big hotel shuttles. There was no way she could carry off this charade even if Jack was willing to help. She wouldn’t put him through it. It was too much to ask, even of him.

She must leave. Now.

Lucy checked her watch. Ten o’clock. Her cab should be arriving any minute. Snapping shut her suitcase, she headed out of her basement bedroom and hurried up the steps as quickly as her heavy bag would allow. She knew that Elissa would be in her office at this hour working on the inn’s books, and Jack... Well, hopefully he was in his room or taking a nature walk in the woods—anywhere but in her direct escape route. She didn’t want either of them to see her and try to persuade her to go through with their insane plan. At the top of the stairs, she hastened right into the little hallway that led to the staircase vestibule, then to the reception hall.

She could hear the crunch of tires on gravel as she reached the front door. Perfect timing. Peering through the beveled glass, she recognized the vehicle as a cab.

Taking a long, relieved breath, she knew she was about to make a clean getaway. Let Stadler think she ran away. Let him believe she was too hurt to see him. She didn’t dare look into his two-timing, plum-colored eyes, eyes that she feared could still make her melt. She didn’t dare let him see her pain.

Besides, Elissa had too much family pride to admit Lucy had run off. She would deny the truth with all her strength and make up some plausible story. This was the best way. If she stayed, there was no way she could hide her anguish. Stadler was not a stupid man.

Just as she turned the door handle, she heard the slam of a car door, then another. Two slams? Two car doors? For one cabdriver? Alarm constricted her stomach, and she peeked through the glass again, only to gasp out loud.

Stadler!

He and—and his woman were here.

“Luce?” The query came from somewhere in the vicinity of the staircase. She spun around. “What is it?” Jack came down the remainder of the steps and made quick work of the distance between them. “What’s wrong?”

She shook her head, pointing disjointedly over her shoulder. Words wouldn’t form.

He leaned close, his night-woodsy scent clean and pleasantly familiar as he looked through the frosted and cut glass. “The bastard?”

Though she was unsettled by his word choice, she knew whom he was talking about and nodded.

When he stepped back and looked at her again, he noticed the suitcase beside her and frowned. His glance flicked back to hers as realization struck. His look of disappointment almost made her cry. “Luce, you weren’t.” The words of disbelief came out in a husky whisper.

She swallowed hard several times. “I—I can’t go through with it, Jack.”

The flare of his nostrils was his only comment as he grabbed her bag and sprinted with it to the staircase hall. Throwing open the storage door below the stairs, he shoved it inside.

Lucy started to object, but jumped when she heard heavy footfalls on the front porch. As though it were a pack of rabid wolves bent on gnawing through the door, she leaped away. Even in her stumbling retreat, she couldn’t keep from staring in hypnotized fascination at the crystal knob, twinkling as it turned.

There was a click and a low-pitched creak when the door began to open. It happened in a crazy slow motion, seeming to take forever. But after an eternity of ponderously ticking seconds, there he was.

Stadler Tinsley—the man Lucy had thought she would spend her life with. The drama teacher at the University of Kansas, who got a lucky break, being chosen for the lead in an off-Broadway production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Naturally, for an aspiring thespian, it had been an opportunity he couldn’t resist, even though he and Lucy were to have been married in only two months.

So he’d asked her to wait for him—a wait that had become two long years while he toured Australia—and apparently romanced and won another woman along the way.

Lucy was unsettled to note that he was still as disarmingly attractive as she remembered. Tall, lithe, he stood there, impeccably dressed, somewhat on the dramatic side. Not a hair on his sandy blond head was out of place. His dazzling plum eyes were bright in contrast to his milky skin. And as usual, his prominent, aristocratic nose was lifted a bit high for him to claim a shred of humility.

Lucy knew the second Stadler recognized the woman he’d so recently and heartlessly dumped. His lips lifted in a jaunty smile, and her heart twisted. How dare he smile like that, without a hint of remorse?