Some Like It Charming (A Temporary Engagement) (6 page)

Ellen said, “He’s not nearly as smooth with you as he is with all those other bimbos he brings home. It’s good for him. And stop frowning, Christine. The wrinkle between your forehead hasn’t gone away since you met Mackenzie.”

Mackenzie nearly laughed at the speed his mother stopped frowning.

Mackenzie ran her hands through her hair, pulling at the roots. “I would have told you at the picnic that I wouldn’t really hurt your son, but he’s changed my mind since then.”

Christine’s frown came back.

Mackenzie said, “He won’t listen to a thing I say. Maybe you can talk some sense into him.”

Ellen shook her head. “That boy is notoriously hard-headed. I think you’re stuck with him.”

“Maybe you could have him committed. Just tell the press that he has obviously lost his mind.”

“I think he’s finally found it.”

Christine sighed. “You’re not helping, Ellen.”

“Someone’s got to be on his side. You two are going to be hatching all these plans against him. As his grandmother, I have a duty to protect his future and the future of the O’Connor name. This girl’s exactly right for him. We need new blood. And he needs someone he can’t schmooze all over.”

Mackenzie felt a little queasy thinking about future O’Connors. His mother didn’t look all that well herself.

Mackenzie sat down slowly on the couch, staring at Christine hopefully. “Maybe you could have both of them committed?”

Ellen sat next to her. “There are a lot of perks to being an O’Connor. I’m sure we could come to a mutually beneficial agreement in regards to grandbabies.”

Right about there, Mackenzie realized she wasn’t going to get anywhere with his mother. Maybe if Ellen had been against it, but between Ethan and his grandmother, her cause was lost. His grandmother had already told her she would bet for whatever she thought was best for Team O’Connor. Apparently she’d decided Mackenzie would make a great addition.

Mackenzie left as fast as she could and found herself at the batting cages. She changed into the sweats she kept in her car for just such emergencies and proceeded to knock the hell out of a ball that looked unsurprisingly like Ethan Howell O’Connor.

Ethan gave Mackenzie nearly an hour to calm down before he returned to try and sweet talk her again. He grinned to himself, thoroughly enjoying having to beg to get her to even pretend to marry him. After years of fending off women, he was enjoying the challenge. Although when he found her office empty, he started to enjoy it a little less. No one knew where she had gone, no one had her cell number, and she didn’t answer her home phone.

He frowned. He hadn’t expected her to run.

He ran through his voice messages, hoping she’d called, but even he realized how slim that chance was. His grandmother, though, had called to tell him that Mackenzie had arrived there very upset with him. His grandmother sounded pretty amused about it.

He called her back real quick.

“Is Mackenzie still there?”

“Nope. Came to see if we could get you to stop with this pretend engagement, then ran off in a huff after I started talking about babies and ways to keep the O’Connor men in line. She wants to have you and me committed.”

Ethan rubbed his forehead. “I should have told you it wasn’t real, but I wanted to talk Mother into it in person. Mackenzie is just doing me a favor.”

Ellen laughed outright at that. “She’s not doing you any favor if she can help it. But I’m hoping the engagement will stick. She’s the best one you’ve dated in years and I hope that brain of yours will start working and realize that before too long.”

His grandmother could be just as bad as his mother at trying to get him married off. She was just a bit more discerning.

“Did she leave a cell number or tell you where she was going?”

“No, but if I was you I’d just sit still. She’ll be back eventually to have it out with you.”

Ethan relaxed. She was right. Mackenzie would be back to give him hell, he just had to let her get over the shock.

“And Ethan. Get that girl a ring! An engagement’s not real until there’s a ring on her finger.”

He hung up. That wasn’t a bad idea, actually. He’d always found jewelry to have a calming effect on women.

He drove by her house on the way to the jewelry store, unsurprised to see a TV crew waiting already. Mackenzie would be surprised, but it was her fault for not giving her cell number out at work. Then he drove to a jeweler that he’d visited a number of times at the end of a relationship. He’d never needed jewelry at the beginning before and he wondered if Mackenzie would find that as funny as he did.

He doubted it. She would probably say it had something to do with the kind of woman he normally dated and he wouldn’t disagree with that. Mackenzie was a different breed altogether.

He found a diamond ring that would work until he could get her a custom one. It was probably better to save the nice one until she’d had time to cool down anyway.

Mackenzie parked at the end of her street and watched with growing disbelief. Multiple news vans blocked her driveway and neighbors stood out on the sidewalk watching. Some were even being interviewed. How could one single man wreak such havoc?

She slowly turned the car around and headed back to the nearest gas station. She was either going to have to fix this mess soon or break down and get a cell phone.

She called his mother again. “I have reporters at my house. How do I get ahold of your son?”

Christine was silent and Mackenzie tamped down her frustration. The woman wasn’t going to let Mackenzie anywhere near Ethan as long as she was afraid bodily harm was the order for the day.

It was; Mackenzie just needed to hide it better.

Mackenzie said, slightly more calmly, “No one can undo this but him. I need to talk to him. Could you give me his cell number? I don’t need, or want, to see him.”

She heard Ellen in the background and then a scuffle as the phone changed hands. “You two are going to fight this the whole way, aren’t you? Call Ethan; he’s looking for you.”

Ellen read off his number and the suite he was staying in and Mackenzie hung up, rethinking whether she really wanted to talk to him or not.

She
was
going to fight it the whole way. But she knew better than anyone that Ethan got what he wanted as long as it was worth the cost. He wasn’t going to just change his mind about their pretend engagement; he thought it fixed all his problems. He would pay a lot for that, and considering that she was the one paying, not him, there wasn’t much hope convincing him it wasn’t going to work.

And she certainly wasn’t going to win this battle by appealing to his better nature; he’d known before he started the ball rolling that it would disrupt her life and give her a heart attack.

She needed to either make him see that it wouldn’t help him like he thought or make her terms too damn expensive to be worth it.

She dialed his number slowly, wondering if he would even pick up an unknown number, but it barely rang before his voice came on the line. “Mackenzie?”

She let out a pent up breath. “My house is inundated with reporters.”

“I know. I drove by trying to find you after you ran away.”

She ignored his dig. “What are you going to do about it?”

“I think we should let them take some pictures. That’s all they want.”

“They want pictures of your fiancé. I am not, nor will I ever be, your fiancé.”

He sighed heavily. “Mackenzie, I know you normally wouldn’t help me out for any reason, but I need you. I really do.”

There was silence on the line as they both digested that. He didn’t seem to like saying it anymore than she liked hearing it.

He sounded desperate. How in the world was she to fight a desperate Ethan O’Connor?

He cleared his throat. “Come to my hotel. Or tell me where you are and I’ll meet you. We can work out a mutually beneficial agreement, okay?”

She shuddered as he inadvertently mimicked his grandmother, then gave herself a shake. He didn’t want kids, he wanted a fake fiancé. No need to make this worse than it already was.

She sighed heavily, leaning her forehead against the payphone box.

She was still trying to figure a way out when he said, “What number are you calling from? Is this your cell?”

“It’s a payphone. I don’t have a cell.”

There was a long, confused pause. “You don’t have a cell? Kindergartners have cellphones.”

She hung up on him.

She was just getting into her car when the payphone rang. She stared at it, then stomped back to answer it.

“What?”

“We could meet at your place but you’ve seen the vans. At least the hotel will keep the paparazzi away.”

She closed her eyes, sealing her fate. “Fine. I’ll come to you.”

“I’ll have some dinner waiting. What do you like?”

She looked at the phone in frustration. “This isn’t a date, Ethan.”

“No. It’s a business meeting in my hotel room at a time most people have dinner. We’ll eat and hammer out the terms.”

Her stomach squished at the thought of being alone with him in his hotel room.

“Don’t they have a restaurant at that fancy hotel of yours? Make a reservation.”

She could practically hear him shaking his head. “You know that’s not going to work. We can’t have someone overhearing this particular negotiation, can we? Besides, I get the impression you’re going to need to yell at me some more.”

She almost smiled. “You got that right.”

He said, “I’ll order something chocolate. That’ll help.”

She hung up on him again. He’d better have a
lot
of chocolate.

And back downtown she went. His suite was on the top floor of the hotel, of course. Nothing but the best for Mr. O’Connor.

She stood in front of the panoramic windows, staring out over the city. Lights glittered in the night and she watched the red and white stream of cars on the freeway below them.

Ethan walked up beside her. “It would’ve just gotten worse and worse with the tabloids. I have a lot of ex-girlfriends.”

She couldn’t help but laugh at the understatement and he flashed a wry grin at her before looking back over the city.

She said, “Have you ever thought of taking a break? Do you always need a girl on your arm?”

“I know this sounds conceited but a girlfriend is sometimes the only defense I have. Women just. . .”

“Throw themselves at you?”

He nodded and she rolled her eyes. “Have you ever considered just saying no?”

He turned toward her. “I don’t think you understand what it means to have someone throw themselves at you. Every time I step in an elevator, there’s a woman waiting for me. Every time I sit down at a restaurant, a woman slides in next to me. Numbers in pockets, whispered invitations. A simple ‘I’m a one-woman man’ saves face and ends the confrontation quickly.”

“Along with a smile and a ‘honey’.”

He smiled slightly. “I only call you honey.”

She didn’t know what to say to that and he laughed.

“Honey comes from bees and bees have stingers. No one has a bigger stinger than you.” He shrugged, still smiling. “It makes me laugh. And you don’t like it, which makes it even better.”

“Yeah, I can see how everyone is going to believe we’re madly in love.”

He took her hand. “We have something together. Heat. It may be antagonistic heat, but it’s there. Any idiot can see it. We were in the National Enquirer.”

She took her hand back and put it in her pocket. “My claim to fame.”

He looked out at the city and she silently watched him for a moment. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

He met her eyes and shook his head. “I know your weakness, Mackenzie. If I have to, I’ll pay the price.”

She raised an eyebrow. “And just what is my weakness?”

He grinned. “You like to win.”

“I thought you were going to say money.”

He shook his head. “Money is the trophy. But winning is what you want.”

“How in the world am I going to be a winner engaged to you? Do you know how many sales I’ve made since your little fiasco of a press conference? None. Do you know how many times I’ve heard ‘sleeping with the boss’ whispered? Twice.”