Fiancé at Her Fingertips (5 page)

“He said he was happy to finally meet me. He said he’d
been anxious to do so well before now, but my lovely daughter had been dragging her feet.”

“Huh?” Debra’s head shot around. “What? Oomph!” Debra plowed into the wall. She put a hand to her head. “What? What was that? What did you say?”

“Oh, I just said, ‘That’s my daughter for you,’ or something to that effect.”

“No, no, no!” Debra rubbed her forehead. “What did you just say he said?”

Her father looked bewildered. “I said he said he was happy to meet me. At least, I think that’s what I said he said. You’re getting me all confused.”

Debra shook her head. “You are beyond confused if you believe he said he was happy to meet you. The man doesn’t even know you!”

“And whose fault is that, missy?” her mother interjected. “Who was it who kept putting us off when we wanted to meet this young man? Who was it, I ask you?”

Debra shook her head again. “You don’t understand, Mother. He doesn’t know anything about you. Anything at all.”

“Well, of course he doesn’t. You were dragging your feet about introducing us. Isn’t that what he said, Stuart? That Debra was dragging her feet? Why, the very idea.”

“He’s been trying to get ahold of you, Debra,” her father said. “He’s been out of town and hasn’t been able to reach you. Logan seems to think that’s been intentional on your part. He suspects you’re upset with him and avoiding him.”

Debra’s head was spinning again. She put out a hand and grabbed the nearest bar stool and plopped down on it. “I don’t know who you talked to today at the club, Dad,” Debra began, “but it wasn’t Logan Alexander.”

“Of course it was, Snickers. After he introduced himself, I remembered where I’d seen him before.”

“Seen him before?”

Her father nodded. “I’ve seen his photograph.”

“His photograph?”

“Yes, his photograph. You showed it to me yourself.”

“I showed it to you? Me?”

“Sure. You know, the picture you carry in your wallet.”

“My wallet? He looks like the picture in my wallet?”

Her father smiled. “Even handsomer,” he said. “Oh, and taller, of course.” He winked.

“Dad, you couldn’t have met Logan Alexander. You…you…you just couldn’t have!”

Her father patted her shoulder. “Oh, I know you don’t think you’re ready to bring him home to meet old Ma and Pa here, but I think he’s more than ready, Debra.”

“You don’t understand, Dad. He’s not who you think he is. He’s not real!”

“Oh, I don’t know. He seemed very genuine to me. Very sincere and straightforward. Especially about you. His voice and expression changed when he talked about you. I got the impression he cares for you very much, kiddo. At least, he would if you’d let him.”

“He talked about
me
?”

“Well, of course. Who else would we talk about? The Cubs? As I said, he was very concerned that you were unhappy with him. Something to do with his trip out of town. I’ll tell you one thing, young lady: You’ve got one hell of a golfing partner there. Say, don’t let me forget to do some arm-twisting when he gets here to get him to commit to the best-ball tourney at the club. With him as my partner, we’ll have the title locked up.”

Debra zeroed in on four small, yet significant words:
When he gets here
.

Her stomach cramped. She stood. Her legs felt like wet ramen noodles. “My God, Dad! What have you done?”

“I haven’t done anything. I extended an invitation for him to join us for lunch; that’s all. I knew you would be here. What better opportunity for us to get to know one another?”

“You invited him here? A total stranger?”

“He’s not a total stranger to you, Deb. Besides, he was
very anxious to track you down, so I thought this would be killing two birds with one stone.”

Debra clutched his arm. “You gave him your address?”

“Well, of course I did. But don’t worry; I also wrote down the directions for him.”

Debra felt like screaming. Her mother beat her to the punch.

“Stuart!” Alva Daniels yelled. “Did you say he was coming to lunch? Now? Today? Oh, my Lord, I’d better get started on another salad right away! Stuart, why didn’t you call ahead and warn me? You’re always springing something unexpected on me rather than having the common courtesy to call.”

“I guess I could call him and tell him lunch is off,” Debra’s father said. “He did give me his cell phone number.” He pulled out a business card and reached for the phone.

Her mother brandished a wicked-looking kitchen knife. “Touch that phone and you pull back a stub,” she threatened. “I’ll make do just fine for lunch. Nobody leaves my table hungry.”

Talk about your understatements
, Debra thought. She blinked.

“Now, let’s see, I still have some of that rhubarb pastry I made in the fridge,” Alva went on.

Debra made a no-sugar-lemonade face.

“That will do nicely for dessert,” her mother continued. “Debra, finish cleaning up that tea, would you, dear?”

“Did you say he gave you his cell phone number, Dad?” Debra asked.

“That’s right.”

“Could I please have a look?”

His eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t by any chance be considering calling him to tell him not to come, would you, daughter?” her father asked.

“The thought crossed my mind,” Debra admitted.

“Too late for that, I’m afraid. I believe that’s him I hear pulling into the driveway.” Stuart Daniels walked to the living
room and pulled the curtain back, Debra on his heels. “Hmm. Nice, clean vehicle, too. That looks like a—”

“Don’t tell me,” Debra said, and covered her eyes. “Don’t tell me. Let me guess. A dark blue 2005 Chevrolet Suburban.”

“Bingo,” her father replied. “And look at the shine on that vehicle. I like a man who knows how to take care of his automobile.”

“Don’t give him too much credit,” Debra mumbled. “His parents own a car dealership. Uh, Dad, I’d like to, uh, greet this, uh, Logan alone first, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Her father smiled. “I understand, daughter. You’ve got some making up to do—or is ‘making out’ more apt?”

Debra felt her face grow warm. She frowned.
Jeesch
. You’d think that at over thirty she’d be beyond blushing. “I just want to talk to him in private for a second, Dad,” she said.

Her father wagged a finger at her. “Don’t scare him off, young lady,” he instructed, heading for the kitchen. “Leave that to your mother.”

Debra took a deep breath and flew to the front door, yanking it open before their guest had a chance to ring the bell. She put a hand to her throat. She took a step back. Her legs quivered and went all Slinky on her. She stared in shock at the sight of the tall, striking man standing in the doorway. She steadied herself against the door frame, afraid she might actually pass out.

God in Heaven!
It was him. Her Fiancé at Your Fingertips!

Debra struggled to get air around the heart lodged in her throat. Her mouth felt as dry as her mother’s cake doughnuts. Absolutely nothing could have prepared her for such devastating good looks. Such overwhelming masculinity.

Such obvious signs of life!

“Snickers.” The living, breathing pinup on the front step spoke, his voice deep, husky, and incredibly appealing despite the fact that he couldn’t be talking at all. His eyes seemed to darken as they took a slow, seductive inventory of her, as if reacquainting themselves after a long absence. “You’re a sight
for sore eyes, babe. I don’t know how you did it, but you’ve gone and made yourself even more beautiful.” He reached for her and took her into his arms. Before she could react, his lips brushed her ear.

“Hello, gorgeous,” he whispered. “Wanna get lucky?”

All coherent thought in Debra’s head took a sudden hiatus. She focused on the first thing he’d said. “How…how do you know my nickname?” she managed. He stepped past her into the living room. She just stared.

“Your father told me, of course. I like it. I wonder why you’ve never mentioned it before.”

Her brain began to function again.
Because we’ve never had
a conversation. Because you’re not real. Because I’ve never laid eyes
on you before except in a five-
by-
seven photograph from a $19.95
novelty gift item
. She shook her head. She sounded nuttier by the minute.

Debra turned to stare at the great-looking but make-believe mister presently making himself at home in her parents’ living room. She crossed her arms over her chest. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “Did somebody put you up to this?”

“What? No welcome-home kiss?”

She blinked. “I asked what you’re doing here.”

“Your father invited me.”

“Look, I don’t know if this is your idea of some bad joke, or someone’s idea of payback, but you have to leave. Now!”

He sighed. “Still upset with me, I see. I’d hoped you’d taken the time to think things through and understood why I went to St. Louis.”

Debra tried to control the shaking that suddenly racked
her body. “Listen, mister. I could care less why you went to St. Louis. I’m more concerned with what has brought you here. Now. Today.”

“I told you. Your father asked me to lunch.”

She uncrossed her arms, watching him closely for any sudden moves, her weight balanced in a defensive stance. “Okay, so where are the hidden cameras? I’d like to know so I can show my most flattering profile.”

He gave her an inscrutable look.

“Come on! Lay the surprise on me! Bring it on!” she challenged.

“Okay, Debra, I’ll level with you. I wanted to see you. To talk to you. To kiss that sour-apple look off your face.” He inched closer.

“What? Are you for real?” She pushed past him to the relative safety of the other side of the room. “Why on earth would you want to talk to me? You don’t even know me!”

He took a step toward her and stopped. “Look, Debra, I know you’re hurt. I do understand.”

“Did Kendra Kelley put you up to this? She must want that promotion bad.”

“Kendra Kelley from your office? What’s she got to do with us?”

“Oh, so you admit you do know her?”

“Of course I know her. Or should say know of her. You complain about her enough.” He put a hand through his thick dark hair. “Listen, Debra. We need to talk. There are things I want to say to you. Need to say to you.”

“Why are you doing this?” Debra tried to keep her voice low, so as not to attract her parents’ attention. “You know you don’t know me, and I sure as hell don’t know you.”

He shook his head. “I’m the same man I’ve always been, Debra. Maybe you’re the one who’s changed. Maybe this glamorous new look of yours has gone to your head.” He sighed again. “This is still all about Catrina, isn’t it?”

Debra was fast reaching the end of her tether. “Catrina? Who’s Catrina? Oh, and by the way, who are
you
?”

“Very funny, Debra.”

She clenched her teeth. “Stop calling me that! I’m trying to get through to you!”

“I’m getting the message loud and clear. You’re bent because I went off to help out an ex-girlfriend. Case closed.”

“You sound just like a blasted attorney.”

“I am an attorney, for God’s sake!”

Debra gulped, fighting hysteria. “Well, of course you are,” she said. “Of course you are. You would have to be, wouldn’t you? It says so right in your profile: Lawyer Logan.”

“An occupation you rank alongside the porn industry and paid lobbyists,” Lawyer Logan remarked. “I’m amazed we got together in the first place.”

“Together? Together! Who’s together?”

“Ah, Logan.” Debra’s father entered the room, his wife close on his heels. “So nice to see you again. I was telling my wife and daughter here how I planned to coerce you into pairing up for a golf tourney this summer. Your tee shots are very impressive.”

Lawyer Logan shook her father’s hand, and Debra looked on with growing concern. “Now, if I could just putt like you, I’d be all set,” he said. “I watched you on the practice green. You’re good. Darn good!”

Debra’s father looked pleased. “Years of practice,” he said with a wink.

“Years and years of practice,” her mother corrected, joining the conversation. “And since no one in the room seems inclined to introduce me, I suppose I’ll have to do the honors myself. I’m Alva Daniels, Debra’s mother.”

Logan took her hand. “It’s nice to finally meet you,” he said.

“I notice you didn’t say, ‘Debra’s told me all about you,’” Alva pointed out. “She hasn’t told you a thing about us, has she? Debra seemed to think it was too early in your relationship for you to meet her parents. She said she didn’t want to scare you off.”

“You’d be doing me a huge favor if you’d do just that,
Mother,” Debra muttered, her anxiety reaching a peak. “Go ahead, Mother. Scare him off!”

Her mother rolled her eyes. “Isn’t she just full of spit and vinegar? She gets that from my husband’s side of the family.”

“She’s certainly full of something,” Lawyer Logan agreed, his eyes gleaming. “Thank you for the invitation to lunch, Mr. Daniels,” he added a moment later.

Debra shook her head at her father and made slashing motions at her throat. He ignored her. What was she, invisible?

“Call me Stu,” her father said. “And she’s Alva.”

Logan nodded. “Are you feeling better, Stu? I was a little concerned at the golf course. You looked pretty gray there for a while.”

Debra’s focus immediately shifted to her father. “Have you been feeling ill, Dad?” she asked, concerned that he might be experiencing a reccurrence of his heart ailment. “You should see the doctor.”

Her father shook his head. “For indigestion?” he said. “No, it’s that acid reflux again. It’s hell getting old, Logan.”

“You’re hardly old, Stu. My father probably has close to ten years on you. He’ll be sixty-six next month.”

“And that would be one Warren Alexander, owner of a St. Louis Chevy dealership. Right, Lawyer Logan?” Debra challenged.

One dark eyebrow rose skyward. “That’s right, Debra. See, you do know me.”

“Not at all. I’m just really, really good at memorization.”

“Shall we go in and eat?” her mother suggested. “I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry enough to eat sushi.”

Lawyer Logan put a hand on Alva Daniel’s waist. “You look like a woman who knows her way around a kitchen,” he said. “Lead on, Alva.”

“He’s sure something, your Logan,” Debra’s father exclaimed, putting an arm around Debra’s shoulders.

Debra kept her eyes on the profile of the stranger smiling down at her mother, and gritted her teeth. “He isn’t ‘my’
Logan, Dad. If I could just figure out what the devil he’s trying to pull here with this little stunt…”

Her father laughed. “Ah, I remember those bygone days of breaking up to make up. That spontaneity, that thrill of reconciling after a disagreement. Memories to cherish.”

Debra stopped and put her hands to her ears. “Dad, please, I do not want to hear about Mom’s and your sex life!”

He grinned at her. “Who said anything about your mother?” he asked with a wink.

Debra groaned and followed her father into the dining room. She was now thoroughly convinced everyone besides her had been replaced by aliens from the old TV show
The
X-Files
. She grimaced. Where the heck were Scully and Mulder when you needed them?

“Debra tells us you’re an attorney, Logan,” her mother was saying when Debra entered the kitchen. “I’ve got to tell you, when Stuart and I heard that, well, frankly, we were shocked. I remember Debra saying once that the only difference between a lawyer and a prostitute was that at least with the prostitute you got a kiss before you were schtupped.”

“Mother!” Debra exclaimed, and hovered near the telephone—just in case a speedy 911 call became necessary— while her mother busied herself serving lunch.

“Well, it’s true,” Alva said. “There’s no love lost between you and the legal profession.”

The Casanova at their dining table sighed. “My profession has been somewhat of an obstacle to our relationship, Alva, but I believe I’m making some headway in convincing your stubborn daughter that blood, not ice water, flows through my veins.”

Debra snorted. “Vampires have blood flowing through their veins, too,” she said. “Unfortunately, it’s from the latest victim they’ve sucked dry before moving on to the next one.”

“Debra,” her mother scolded. “Do you have to be quite so graphic?”

Lawyer Logan raised his eyebrows in feigned helplessness. “See what I put up with, Alva?”

Debra put her head in her hands, fearing for her sanity.

“Debra tells us you met at the mall,” her mother commented, and Debra snapped to attention in time to see Lawyer Logan nod.

“At a novelty shop?”

He nodded again.

“In the aisle between the bogus barf and the novelty poop. Remember, Logan?” Debra broke in, snaring his compelling blue eyes with a challenging look.

“Oh, do tell us all about your first meeting!” Debra’s mother encouraged.

Debra smiled for the first time since her father informed them he’d met Logan and invited him home. “Oh, yes, Logan. Do tell Mother all about our first meeting,” she urged with a smile. She pulled out a chair, sat down, propped her elbows on the table, and rested her chin in her hands. “We’re all just dying to hear your version.”

The sexy shyster pinned her with an intense look of his own. Her heart began to pitter-patter. Perspiration beaded on her upper lip. And then he smiled. No ordinary smile, this was the smile of a politician leading the polls by twenty points the day before an election; the smile of a defense attorney about to rip into the prosecution’s star witness on cross. It was a slam-dunk smile.

“Well, to be quite honest, Alva,” Debra’s faux fellow drawled, “your daughter picked me up.”

Her mother gasped. “My Lord, Debra! You told us you were just kidding about that. What on earth got into you?”

Debra jumped to her feet, feeling as if she’d just entered a parallel dimension. Or reality TV. She looked around once again for the hidden cameras. “I
was
kidding!” she yelled. “It was a joke!” She circled the table. “It was all just a bad joke!” She looked at her father. He was preoccupied with pushing onions to one side of his plate with a fork. Her mother was twisting her dainty lace napkin into knots.

“Tell them!” she ordered the dinner guest brazenly chewing
his chicken salad and sipping her mother’s if-it-had-legs-it-would-walk iced tea. “Please tell them.”

Logan Alexander set his fork down, wiped his mouth with a napkin, and nodded. Debra let out a soft sigh of relief.

“Debra’s not to blame,” he said.

Thank goodness
, Debra thought. This hunky hoaxster had come to his senses.

“Debra couldn’t help picking me up,” he continued. “I’m one of a kind, you see.”

“What?” Debra couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She flew around the table in the direction of the absurd attorney—if he was even an attorney at all—hands outstretched and aiming for that impossibly thick neck of his. If she could just get her hands on him, maybe he would disappear—poof!—like magic into thin air.

He stood as she raced toward him, and caught her hands before they gained purchase. She gasped as electric awareness rippled through her, as potent as it was magnetic.
This
can’t be happening
, she told herself again. He was supposed to disappear.
Poof!
She shut her eyes.

“Poof!” she said. “Poof! Poof! Poof!”

She opened one eye. He was still there—still very much alive and well and looking way too fine for a barrister with a retail sideline. She looked up and caught the profile of a strong, jutting chin and a thickly corded neck. And for some inexplicable reason, she had an impulse to run her hand along that hard, smooth jaw.

She found herself staring at his mouth, its compelling combination of sensuality and softness. She felt his hands gently loosen their hold on her wrists as he slid long, lean, tanned fingers down her arms to cup her elbows and pull her toward him. She couldn’t for the life of her drag her gaze from his. The look in his eyes was hypnotic, new and exciting, yet strangely as comfortable and familiar to her as her fuzzy peach slippers and the Garfield nightshirt she donned each evening. Confused, Debra could merely stand in the
circle of his arms and fervently pray that she’d awaken from this bizarre dream, lying on her living room sofa, her arms around a hairy hound with dog-bone breath.

“Don’t they make a lovely couple, Stuart?” Debra heard her mother say. “They’ll give us such beautiful grandbabies!”

The lips above Debra twitched. “Sounds like your mother’s already knitting baby booties.” Logan laughed.

Her mother’s words, coupled with the very large, very nice-smelling, very real-yet-unreal figment of her imagination, broke through Debra’s dream state.

Baby booties? Grandbabies? With a cardboard-
cutout dada?

She pulled out of his arms, and their connection cooled like a campfire doused with dish water. She hightailed it to the other side of the table, a safe distance away from the guy who, she’d just discovered, could turn her mind to cornmeal with a mere touch.

“Okay, this little joke has gone on long enough,” Debra said. “It’s time to come clean.’ Fess up. Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” she said.

“What on earth are you talking about now, Debra?” her mother asked. “We’re trying to get acquainted here. You’ve had Logan to yourself for months. It’s time for your father and me to get to know him.”

“Get to know him? Fine. Be my guest. Get to know him. For all the good it’ll do you,” she said.

“So, Debra’s told you all about me?” Lawyer Logan inquired.