“My name is Rose McKinney, and I’d like to suggest my grandson as the perfect husband for Lori Granger. He’ll be eighteen years old next May-”
Starting to sweat, he punched the delete key again.
His home phone rang and he snatched up the receiver. “Jackson James.”
“ Houston, we have a problem,” Lori said.
His stomach twisted. “What do you mean?”
“I mean my phone has been ringing since six a.m. Six men asking for my hand in marriage have already been turned away.”
He cringed as her voice rose.
“And ten more are on my front porch. What did you do? Take out an ad in the newspaper? This was supposed to be confidential.”
“There’s obviously been a leak,” he said, his mind clicking into emergency mode. He’d known all along the news would get out sometime. He’d just hoped to get Lori safely engaged and married by then. He would alert Mr. Hollingsworth so that his boss could take care of the source.
“What am I supposed to do with all these men on my front porch?”
“Sit tight,” he said, pulling underwear out of a drawer. “Pack a suitcase with just the essentials. I’m taking you away.”
“Where?”
The strong note of distrust he heard in her voice irritated him. “Where no one will look for you. Get packed. We need to move fast.”
“I need to know where I’m going so I know how to pack.”
Jackson rolled his eyes. This woman didn’t know what essentials were. “Pack underwear, jeans, and shirts. And any medication you’re taking.”
“I’m not taking any medication,” she said, her voice dripping with ice.
“I keep hoping,” he muttered. “Trust me. You won’t need your tennis bracelet where we’re going.”
“This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“Maybe it wouldn’t have if you had told me your husband needs to pass the sniff test and the Kenny test.”
“Oh, no. You’re not pinning this on me. I haven’t told anyone what I planned to do. Not anyone but you.”
Jackson eyed a box of bullets in the back of his closet. This woman could make him chew the whole box. “You want to waste time arguing whose fault this is? That line of men is just going to get longer. Every loser in Dallas is going to be knocking on your door.”
“I was so stupid,” she said. “You’re so committed to being ethical that I was sure I could trust you.”
Jackson felt an unwelcome bitter taste in the back of his throat. “Looks like you’ve got a choice, then. I can bow out, and you can handle this on your own or with some other sap.”
Silence followed. “It’s an impossible choice, but I’m not letting you off that easily.”
Thirty minutes later, after asking his neighbor to take care of Sadie, Jackson wove his way through snarling rush-hour traffic to the back entrance of Lori’s home. He dashed out of his vehicle and inside her house, expecting Lori to be ready to go. Instead, she stood gaping out one of the front windows.
“Where’s your luggage?” he asked.
She tore her gaze from the window for a second and pointed her finger upward. “Upstairs in my bedroom.” She turned her head to look out the window again, shaking her head in a combination of horror and wonder. “I’m shocked that this many men would be interested in marrying me.”
“For your money,” Jackson emphasized, glancing outside to see a line of men standing on her front lawn.
She threw him a look of irritation. “You say that as if I couldn’t find someone to marry me for love. Or at least intense like,” she added.
“I didn’t say anything about you finding someone to marry you for love. You’re the one who decided it should be a business proposition. This is like one of those reality TV shows where people agree to marry for a million bucks, except in your case, the guy gets a lot more than a million bucks.” His exasperation at the turn of the situation soared. “C’mon, let’s get going.”
“I need to take Kenny out to tinkle before we leave.”
“Can’t your housekeeper do that, since you’re leaving him here?”
She looked at him as if he’d sprouted an extra head. “I’m not leaving him anywhere. Kenny goes where I go.”
Jackson groaned. “Well, you better hope Kenny can hold it, because we’ll be on the road for a long time. And I’m not stopping every fifteen minutes for your dog.” As he stomped up the stairs to get her luggage, he heard her mutter.
“Crab.”
“I heard that,” he tossed over his shoulder.
“Good,” she tossed back.
Jackson growled under his breath. This trip was going to be hell. Neither of them was starting out with a great attitude. He pushed the door open to her bedroom to find five suitcases stacked beside each other. Shaking his head in disbelief, he called down to her, “You’re not seriously planning to take all this luggage, are you?”
“Serious as a heart attack. I don’t know how long we’ll be gone; therefore, I don’t know what I’ll need.”
“So she just packed everything,” he said to himself and juggled the suitcases downstairs. He loaded them into the car and waited impatiently for Kenny to do his business.
He hustled her and the dog in the car, then got in the driver’s seat. Starting the ignition, he glanced at her as she arranged herself and Kenny in the seat. “You need to duck until we’re out of your neighborhood.”
“Duck?” she echoed in disbelief.
“Hide,” he repeated. “Put your head down.”
She looked at him for a long moment. “I can’t believe that anyone will notice me in-”
“This has gotten out of control. We’re not taking any chances,” he said. “Either lie down in the back seat, or duck.”
In order to keep her head out of Jackson ’s lap, Lori had to smash her rear end against the door of the vehicle, and Kenny didn’t like being on the floor at all. Although she found herself staring at the dash, she was still entirely too aware of Jackson ’s proximity. He might be cranky, but he’d responded to her crisis with gratifying speed. Despite the fact that someone had leaked her secret, she still felt safe with him.
Because she represented the most important account he’d ever been assigned, she told herself. It had nothing to do with integrity or the kind of man he was, she tried to tell herself, but something inside her disagreed. She would think about that later, she brooded, stroking Kenny to comfort him and herself.
“So the whole world knows I’m willing to buy a husband,” she said, her stomach twisting at the thought. It was bad enough that she’d privately concluded that love wasn’t in her future. Knowing that everyone else knew she was so desperate she had to pay a man to marry her was mortifying. “How are we going to pull this off now?” she asked. It sure looked futile to her.
“The whole world doesn’t know,” he said. “Just Dallas,” he added, his words offering little comfort. “This will blow over. It’s the gossip of the week. The important thing is to take you out of the public eye for a while. We still have four prospects, five if you include the broke duke.”
Craning to look at him, she lifted her head. “But how am I going to meet with them if I’m staying out of the public eye? And for that matter, where are you taking me?”
Jackson pushed her head down. “Stay down,” he said. “I’ve put the word out that you’ve taken a trip to Europe.”
Lori Jean brightened. “ Paris? Tell me it’s Paris.”
“It can be wherever you want it to be, because you’re not really going there. I’m taking you to Miracles in Motion. It’s perfect. It’s in the middle of nowhere, and no one will expect you to be there.”
She automatically lifted her head. “But I don’t ri-” -de horses anymore. Lori barely managed to swallow the entire confession. She felt a sinking sensation in her stomach. She didn’t want Jackson to know she didn’t ride anymore. The last thing she wanted was to admit any frailty or insecurity to him. It would only give him another reason to think less of her.