The Boss's Fake Fiancée

She said nothing, torn between agreeing simply because she was an employee who believed it was her job to do whatever her boss wanted, and recognizing this wasn’t a normal boss/assistant request. It was above and beyond her duties. And potentially heartbreaking for her.

“Isn’t there anything you want?”

She said nothing.

“Anything you need?”

That’s when it hit her. She did have something she needed. She could ask him to use his considerable resources to find her mom, but then she’d still be working for him. She’d spend two weeks pretending to be his fiancée and come home to being his assistant again. That was a heartbreak waiting to happen.

But a new job would not only provide money for a private investigator to locate her mom, it would get her away from Mitch and her pointless crush. She really would be getting a fresh start.

“I need a new job.”

He frowned. “What?”

“I want a new job.” Assistant jobs, though a dime a dozen, didn’t always pay well. With his connections he could find her one of those gems of a job that didn’t get advertised in any of the job search websites. Plus, if she handled this right, going to Spain could be the end of her association with him. She wouldn’t have to come home and pretend they hadn’t kissed—albeit for the benefit of his family. She would be gone. Off to start a new job. A new life. The life she wanted.

“You have lots of friends and connections. I’d need to get a job that would pay me more than this salary. And the job would have to lead to promotions.”

“You don’t like your job here?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I could raise your salary.”

“Mitch, if you want me to do this, today has to be my last day with Ochoa Online.”

He didn’t even blink. “Okay.”

CHAPTER TWO

LILA WALKED OUT of the office building that housed Ochoa Online and toward Mitch’s black limo, which awaited her on the busy New York City street.

Opening the back door, his driver, Pete, said, “Good morning, Lila.”

“Morning, Pete. We’ll be stopping two blocks up on the right to pick up my friend Sally.”

“Very good.”

She slid onto the seat. He closed the door, and she made herself comfortable as he took his position behind the wheel and eased into traffic. Two blocks up, he stopped, jumped out and opened the door for Sally.

When Pete pulled out into traffic again, pretty blonde Sally turned to Lila and said, “All right. Spill. What did you agree to?”

She sucked in a breath. “Two weeks of pretending to be my boss’s fiancée. In return, he’s going to find me a new job and I’m going to use the extra money I earn to find my mom.”

The expression on Sally’s face showed that she was trying to understand, but in the end she shook her head. “You are certifiable. Your motives are good, but pretending to be the fiancée of a man you actually like? That’s nothing but trouble.”

“That’s why I couldn’t just have him hire a PI to find my mom. Because then I’d still be working for him. I had to ask for a new job so that no matter what happens in Spain it wouldn’t follow me home. Once I leave Spain, I’ll never see him again. Plus, he assured me that most of the time I’d be on my own while he and his brother, father, uncle and cousin talked business.”

“On your own?”

“After I agreed to do this, he told me that I’d spend most of the two weeks with his nanna shopping or running errands, or helping his mom organize the house for a ball a few days after we get there that opens two weeks of celebrations, a second ball the following week to greet latecomers, a reception the night before his brother’s wedding and a party the day after.”

“You are going to have to be one hell of an actress.”

“Or I can just look at it as an extension of my job. I plan Mitch’s yearly Christmas party. I plan the business dinners he hosts at his penthouse.” She shrugged. “I’m just going to look at it like another Ochoa party.”

Sally sighed. “And the other?”

“What other?”

“When you have to be his date?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“You’ll be pee-your-pants nervous.”

Lila laughed. “Maybe at first. But I’ve also decided to look at that as an extension of my job.”

“Kissing your boss?”

“I’ll pigeonhole it somehow.”

“You’re crazy.”

“No. I’m getting a new job out of it. A new life.” She angled her thumb to point behind them. “Me walking out of that office building a few minutes ago was me walking out forever. I told him the two weeks we spend in Spain are my two-week notice and when we get back I will expect him to have gotten me a new job, one that pays more than what I make with him.”

“Wow. You’re really leaving.”

“I have to. He was surprised when I said I wanted a new job, but when I pushed he didn’t seem at all upset to see me go.” And that had hurt more than she cared to think about. But it also proved he absolutely had no feelings for her. “He might as well have come right out and said that he desperately needed this favor, or that he just doesn’t give a damn that I want another job. Either way, it sort of proves doing this was the right thing. If he needs a fiancée this badly, I have to help him. And if he doesn’t care that I want a new job, then it really is time for me to go. It’s win/win.”

“Are you sure you’re not going to be sorry?”

“I’ve had a crush on this man since the day I met him. He’s never noticed me. Only an idiot hangs around forever.”

“True.”

“And this way I don’t merely have a new job that pays enough that I can find my mom.” She waved two credit cards. “I get a new wardrobe out of it.”

Sally grabbed the cards. “Seriously?”

“Yep. That’s why I need your help this morning. I have a hundred-thousand-dollar credit limit on each. Riccardo said use it all. Get everything, including fancy luggage. He said the wedding is formal and I’ll also need a gown for the reception the night before. Not to mention the opening ball and a few cocktail parties. He said I’ll need enough jeans and shorts and dresses and bathing suits never to be seen in the same thing twice.”

Sally gaped at her. “You have hit the jackpot.”

“Nope. Believe it or not, Riccardo and Mitch see this as absolutely necessary. I have to look like somebody Mitch would want to marry. To them it’s like wardrobe for a play. So, all I have to do is endure two weeks of pretending to be in love with the man I actually do love, and I’ll walk away with my freedom, a new job that hopefully pays enough that I can find my mom and enough clothes to be a whole new person.”

She also had to not take any of it seriously, keep her wits about her and not end up with a broken heart.

But she didn’t tell Sally that. She’d had enough trouble convincing herself she could do it. Sally would never let her go if she thought there was even an inkling of a doubt—and she desperately wanted to find her mom. She wanted the life they’d missed out on.

Oddly, pretending to be in love with the man she actually loved was her ticket away from him and to that life.

* * *

Mitch paced the tarmac at ten o’clock the next morning, nervous about this plan. Yesterday, it had seemed like a good idea. Today, thinking about Lila’s unruly hair, glasses and frumpy clothes, he found it hard to believe he actually thought they could pull this off. He liked her as an assistant—No. He loved her as an assistant. She was smart and thorough and always at his side, ready to do whatever needed to be done. But in the entire time they’d worked together they’d never even had a good enough conversation to tip over into becoming friends.

How in the hell could he have been so desperate to imagine they could pretend to be lovers for two weeks?

His limo suddenly appeared around the corner of the hangar. He’d bought a cab to the airport, leaving Pete and the limo for Lila to make sure she got to the correct place. Seeing them pull up, though, only added to his apprehension. How was he going to pretend to love somebody he barely knew?

The limo stopped. Pete jumped out and opened the back door. One pale pink strappy sandal appeared, then a long length of leg, then the pink hem of a skirt, then Lila stepped out completely. Chestnut-brown hair had been thinned into a sleek, shoulder-length hairdo and now had blond highlights. Her lips were painted a shimmery pink. The little pink dress hugged her curves.

Holy hell.

Big black sunglasses covering half her face, she strolled up to him, a smile curving a lush mouth that he’d never noticed before.

“Do I pass?”

He fought the urge to stutter. “You look—” Unbelievable. Amazing. So different that his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. “Very good. Perfect.”

“I took you for the sunglasses and miniskirt type.”

And who knew her legs were so long, so shapely?

He covered his shock at her perception of his taste in women with a nervous laugh. “You maxed out Riccardo’s credit cards, didn’t you?”

She glanced back at Pete, who pulled suitcase after suitcase out of the car. “He told me to, but I didn’t. You don’t grow up a foster child without getting some mad skills with money. It would have killed me to pay full price for some of these things. Besides, clearance racks sometimes have the best clothes.”

She made a little motion with her fingers for Pete to bring her luggage to the plane, then she headed for the steps. Mitch watched her walk up the short stack and duck into the fuselage, vaguely aware when Pete walked up beside him.

“Who knew, huh?”

“Yeah.” Mitch didn’t have to ask what Pete was talking about. His Plain Jane assistant looked like she’d stepped off the cover of a magazine. Her high-heeled sandals added a sway to her hips. Sunglasses made her look like someone who summered in the Mediterranean.

Pete said, “Better get going.”

Realizing he was standing there gaping like an idiot, he walked to the steps and climbed into the plane. Lila sat on one of the four plush, white leather seats that swiveled and looked like recliners. He stopped.

She peered up at him over her sunglasses. “The pilot told me to sit anywhere and buckle in.”

“Pedro?” The good-looking one? Why did that make his chest feel like a rock?

She shrugged and pulled an e-reader out of her oversize purse. “I don’t know. The guy with the great smile.”

It was Pedro. He might not be a millionaire businessman who came from a family with a vineyard, but pilots made a tidy sum, especially private pilots. And the man was a flirt.

He told himself he only cared because Lila was supposed to be his fiancée, and she couldn’t use this trip to cruise for dates. “When we get to Spain, you can’t be noticing the great smiles of other men.”

She laughed. “Jealous?”

“No.” The rock from his chest fell to his stomach. He wasn’t jealous. This was a make-believe situation. Great hair, sexy body, flirty sunglasses or not, this was still Lila. “I’m saving myself a ton of grief with this ruse. Not to mention that I’m getting the focus off me and onto the happy couple where it belongs. I do not want to spoil my brother’s wedding.”

He sat on the seat across the aisle and buckled in. Pulling a sheet of paper from the breast pocket of his suit jacket, he swiveled his chair to face her and said, “Riccardo came up with this last night.”

She glanced around as if confused. “Where is Riccardo?”

“He took a commercial flight so he could get there ahead of us to pave the way for our story. He’s going to tell everyone I’m engaged. He’s going to pretend to have let it slip and tell my mom and Nanna they have to behave as if they don’t know because I wanted to surprise them.”

She frowned. “That’s weird.”

“No. It adds authenticity to the story. Makes it more believable.”

“Ah.”

That one syllable gave him a funny feeling that tightened his shoulders and made his eyes narrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She laughed. “It just meant I understood.” She laughed again. “You’re cranky in real life.”

“Yeah, well, you’re...” She was a knockout in real life. How had he not noticed this? He couldn’t remember a damned thing she’d worn to work, which meant it had to be nondescript—nothing worth remembering. Her hair had always been in those odd chopstick things. And her glasses? Thick as Coke bottles.

“You’re different too.” He finished his thought with a bunch of lame words that didn’t come out as much of a comeback.

And that was another thing. When had she gotten so sassy?

He opened the folded sheet of paper. “Riccardo decided that we should stick with the fact that you’re my assistant.” He glanced up and saw her watching him intently, clearly wanting to get her part down so she could play it. He relaxed a bit, though it did send an unexpected zing through him that she’d taken off the sunglasses. She must be wearing contacts on her smoke-gray eyes. Very sexy smoke-gray eyes that tilted up at the corners and gave her an exotic look.

He cleared his throat. “Anyway, the whole thing started with a long chat one night when we were working late.”

She caught his gaze. “We never chatted.”

“Yeah, I know.” And he suddenly felt sorry that they hadn’t. “But this is make-believe, remember?”

She smiled slightly and nodded.

He sucked in a breath, not liking the nervousness that had invaded him. If he couldn’t even read the facts off a sheet, how was he going to perpetuate this charade?

“After our long talk, we started eating dinners together on the nights we were working late.”

“Hey, we did do that!”

“But we talked about work.”

She bobbed her head. “Yeah, but because we actually did eat dinners together we have another bit of authenticity.”

Her answer softened some of the stiffness in his shoulders. “Sí. Good.” He pulled in a breath and read a little more of Riccardo’s story. “Then we started going out to dinner.”

She leaned her elbow on the armrest. “We certainly took our time.”

He looked up, met the gaze of her soft gray kitten eyes. “I think Riccardo is trying to show we didn’t act impulsively.”

“God forbid.”

He wasn’t sure why, but that made him laugh. “Stop. Riccardo’s already telling this story and we have to stick to it.”

“What if we came up with a totally different set of circumstances? What if we said that one day you ravaged me at work, and we started a passionate affair but we changed the story for Riccardo because we didn’t want him to know we couldn’t keep our hands off each other?”

All the blood in his veins caught fire. He could picture it. If she’d come to work looking like this he might have ravaged her.

He pulled his collar away from his throat. The plane’s engines whined to life.

“Let’s just stick with Riccardo’s story.”

* * *

Lila nodded quickly, wishing she hadn’t said anything about the passionate affair because with the way he’d been looking at her since she arrived, she could imagine it. If he’d ever, even once, looked at her like that, she might not have been able to resist the temptation to flirt with him—

She’d been flirting with him since he got on the plane. And that was wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. She didn’t want to like him any more than she already did. Worse, she didn’t want to become another one of his one-night stands. And that was the real danger in this. That they’d take this charade to the next level, with him thinking it was just a part of the game, and her heart toppling over the edge into something that would only hurt her.

So, no more flirting. She was smarter than this.

She drew in a cleansing breath, gave him what she hoped was a neutral smile and motioned for him to continue. “Go on.”

“Riccardo says our dating life was fairly normal. Shows, dinners, weekends in Vegas and the Hamptons.”

She nodded, liking the dispassionate direction the conversation had taken. “Your family’s house in the Hamptons is pretty.” When he gave her a puzzled look, she added, “Riccardo showed me pictures.”

“He goes there more than I do. But it’s good you know what the place looks like. That’ll probably come in handy.”

He sounded so nervous that she smiled again. “You don’t like this charade.”

“I don’t like lying to my family. But this is necessary. It isn’t just the fact that I don’t want to be hounded by Nanna. This is Alonzo and Julia’s big celebration. The focus shouldn’t be on me. Not in any way, shape or form.”

“You don’t think your engagement will be reason for them to make you the center of attention?”

“We’ll let them fawn one night. Tonight. Then after that when they get too happy or too focused on us, we remind them that it’s Julia and Alonzo’s celebration. Not ours.”

“Makes sense.” She cocked her head. “You really are over her.”

He sighed. “I’ve said it a million times. No one seems to believe me.”

“Maybe because everybody knows getting over your brother’s betrayal would be harder.”

He sniffed a laugh. “When’d you get so perceptive?”

“I’ve always been perceptive. That’s how I stay one step ahead of what you need.”

He nodded, as if just figuring that out, and sadness started in her stomach and expanded into her chest. He might think her pretty in the pink dress, showing off her legs and even being a little sassy with him, but in the end she was still the assistant he barely noticed.

But that was good. If she was going to start a new life when they returned, she didn’t want to do it with a broken heart. A woman who needed to find her mom and fix their damaged past couldn’t afford to make stupid mistakes. Though she’d always believed she was destined for something great, she also realized that that fairy tale had just been a vehicle to keep her sane, keep her working toward things like her high school diploma and eventually a degree. Lately the desire for “something great” was taking a back seat to the things she really wanted: her mom. A family. That’s why her crush on Mitch had seemed so pointless that she’d decided it was time to move on.

Mitch’s groan of disgust brought her out of her reverie. “That’s the stupidest engagement story I’ve ever heard.”

Oh, crap. He’d been reading Riccardo’s notes and she’d missed something important. “Read it again. Let me think it through.”

He gaped at her. “How would you possibly need to hear it again? It’s ridiculous. I wouldn’t rent a hot air balloon. I wouldn’t hire a skywriter to spell out the proposal at sunset so I could get down on one knee in a balloon.”

She laughed. Wow. That was bad. “Okay. So it’s a bit schmaltzy.”

“It’s pedestrian.”

“What would you have done in real life?”

He sighed. “What I’d planned for Julia was to come home early, pour two flutes of champagne, walk around the apartment until I found her, tell her she was beautiful and I wanted her in my life forever...then give her the ring.”

“Oh.” Her breath wobbled. His proposal idea was perfect. Elegant in its simplicity. “That would have been nice.”

“Yeah, if I hadn’t caught her with my brother.”

She laughed, then stopped herself. How was it that he could make her laugh over something that had probably broken his heart—even though he seemed to be over it?

“Well, it was a great proposal idea.”

“I thought so too. But apparently my brother did some grand gesture on the yacht.”

“Oh, I get what Riccardo’s doing. He’s making sure our proposal keeps up with Alonzo and Julia’s. But maybe he’s making things suspicious by thinking you need to compete with Alonzo.”

“I’m not like my brother.”

“Plus, simple is better sometimes.”

He met her gaze. “Exactly. He should have said something more me. Like I gave you the ring, then stripped you naked and we spent the weekend in bed.”

This time her breath froze. If Riccardo had come up with that scenario for their engagement story, she wouldn’t be able to breathe anytime anyone told it. Better to stick with the fake one.

“So maybe the hot air balloon idea is a good one.”

“It’s not me.”

“We’ll try not to tell it too often. We’ll use the ‘this is Julia and Alonzo’s celebration’ excuse.”

He nodded. “Good idea.”

He focused his attention on the sheet of facts Riccardo had written up, but stopped reading out loud. Her gaze swept the five o’clock shadow growing on his chin and cheeks, then rose to his nearly black eyes and up to his shiny black hair. Her fingers itched to run through the thick locks, and it suddenly struck her that maybe sometime in the next two weeks she could.

Just as her heart stumbled in her chest, his gaze rose and he smiled at her. “Riccardo also says this flight would be a good time for us to exchange stories.”

“Exchange stories?”

“He thinks I should tell you about things like the time I jumped off the roof of one of the winery’s outbuildings, thinking I could fly.”

She didn’t know whether to laugh or gape at him. “Why would you think you could fly?”

“I was eight and I had a cape.”

A laugh burst from her. “That’s hysterical.”

“Didn’t you ever do anything stupid?”

Her earliest memories were of her mom sleeping on the couch. She’d sit on the floor in front of the sofa and watch her mother’s chest rise and fall, being scared silly because technically she was alone. Four years old and all alone. She was six or seven before she realized her mom kept sleeping because she drank too much alcohol. And it wasn’t until she was ten that she understood what a hangover was.

The only stupid thing she’d done was mention that to a social worker.

CHAPTER THREE

“I LED A very quiet life.”

Even as that statement came out of Lila’s mouth, Mitch remembered her answer when he’d asked if she’d maxed out the company credit cards Riccardo had given her. “Weren’t you a foster child?”

She brushed at her dress, as if trying to smooth out nonexistent wrinkles. “Yes. But that doesn’t mean my life was exciting.”

He knew little about the American foster care system, but he did understand the basics. A child was taken in by a family who was paid by the state to care for him or her. He supposed that left little room for being silly or stupid or even experimental, if you wanted to keep your home. Because if you didn’t keep your home—

The picture that brought to mind tightened his chest. Not wanting to think of Lila as a child on the street, alone and scared, and not wanting to examine his motives for the emptiness that invaded his soul just considering that she might have been alone or scared, he changed the subject.

“How were your grades?”

She grinned. “I was a star.”

He knew that, of course. They’d checked into her when they’d hired her. She’d been top of her class everywhere from elementary school to university.

“Anything I should know about your love life?”

She glanced across the aisle at him, caught his gaze. “No.”

“At least tell me the story of your first date.”

She smoothed her hair off her forehead. “Oh. Well, I guess that depends on what you consider a date. I had a huge crush on my next-door neighbor when I was five.”

He laughed. “Not that far back.”

“Okay. I went to the prom in high school.”

“Seriously? That was your first date?”

She shrugged. “I was busy getting those good grades, remember?”

He sighed. “All right. If we really were engaged, I probably wouldn’t know every corner of your love life. But give me something I can take to Nanna that will convince her we’re...” He paused, grappling for words, because now that he was getting to know her everything felt funny. He’d already pictured himself ravaging her. Her fault. She’d brought it up. But, because he’d already seen it in his head, he couldn’t quite say lovers out loud.

Finally he just sucked it up and said, “To help her believe we’re intimate.”

“Oh, my gosh. Seriously? Did you just say that? You couldn’t say lovers...or that we’re having sex or even knocking boots?” She laughed heartily. “Mitch, you have got to lighten up. You’ll do more to convince your grandmother we’re engaged with your actions than you will remembering a bunch of useless information about my life.”