“Oh, God. I’m letting him pay me.”
Her chin hit her chest and she took a long, deep breath to try to steady the nerves jumping in the pit of her stomach. It didn’t help. Sighing, she flipped through the tops hanging in her closet and listened to the clatter of the hangers sliding on the wooden rod. She wasn’t finding anything. It had been so long since she’d been on an actual date—she stopped short at that thought.
This wasn’t a date. This was…
“I don’t even know what this is,” she muttered and grabbed a dark blue cable-knit sweater from the closet. Why she was worried about this was beyond her. What did it matter what she looked like? It wasn’t as if she was trying to impress Dave Firestone, for heaven’s sake.
“Exactly,” she told herself. “This is business. Pure and simple. He didn’t ask you to dinner because you swept him off his feet.”
Mia laughed at the very idea. She was so not the type of woman to catch Dave’s eye. No doubt he went for the shiny, polished women with nice hair, beautiful clothes and the IQ of a baked potato.
Potato.
“Oh, God, I hope he has potatoes at dinner.” She sighed again. “And steak. I bet there’s going to be steak. He’s a rancher, right, so he’s bound to like beef.”
Her mouth watered and her stomach rumbled so loudly it took her mind off the nerves still bouncing around in the pit of her belly. Shaking her head, she carried the sweater out of the closet and tossed it onto the edge of her bed.
Since taking the job with Alex Santiago as his housekeeper, Mia had been living in the private suite of rooms off the kitchen of the big house. Living room, bedroom and bath, her quarters were lavishly furnished and completely impersonal but for the few personal touches she had scattered around the place.
Mia had been travelling light most of her life, so she didn’t have a lot of things. There were a few photographs and a ratty stuffed bear she’d had since she was a child. But mostly, there were books. Textbooks, paperback thrillers and romances, biographies and sci-fi novels. Mia loved them all and hated to get rid of a book. She’d recently treated herself to an ebook reader, but as much as she loved the convenience, she preferred the feel of a book in her hands.
“And you’re stalling,” she told herself as she walked to the bathroom. Staring into the mirror, she looked into her own eyes and gave herself a stern talking-to. “You’re the one who agreed to this, so you’re going to suck it up and do what you have to do. It’s only temporary. One month and you’ll have enough money to pay the regular household bills and no school loans hanging over your head. Of course, if Alex isn’t found by the end of the month, then you’re right back where you started….” She stopped that thought as soon as it popped into her head. Alex would be found. And with the money from Dave she could pay pesky things like the water and gas and electric bills. Thank heaven Alex didn’t have a mortgage on the place because she didn’t know how she would have made the payment.
One month. She could do this. And get her life back on track.
Sounded good, she thought as she picked up the hair dryer and turned it on. She ran her fingers through her long, dark brown hair as the hot air pushed at it. Okay, she was nervous. But she could do this. How hard could it be to pretend to be crazy about Dave Firestone?
At that thought, she remembered the buzz of something…interesting she’d felt when he’d laid his hand on her arm. Thoughtful, she set the dryer down onto the pale cream granite counter and stared at her own image in the mirror. “Probably didn’t mean anything,” she assured her reflection. “I was probably just weak from hunger. Any man would have brought on the same reaction. It just happened to be Dave.”
The woman in the mirror looked like she didn’t believe her and Mia couldn’t blame her. It had sounded lame to her, too.
Shaking her head, she walked back to the bedroom, grabbed a pair of dark wash jeans from her dresser drawer and tugged them on over a pair of pale pink bikinis. When she had them zipped and snapped, she pulled on a white silk tank top, then covered it with the dark blue sweater. She stepped into a pair of black half boots, then walked back to the bathroom.
Her hair was still damp, so instead of the tight knot she usually wore it in, Mia quickly did up a single, thick braid that hung to the middle of her back. She didn’t bother with makeup. Why pretend to be something she wasn’t? There was going to be enough pretending for her over the next few weeks. Might as well hold on to some form of reality.