“Not plan, exactly,” he muttered.
She frowned. “Excuse me?”
“I need more than a party planner,” he said, running a finger beneath his collar. “I need a hostess.”
“I see.”
From the confused look in her eyes, Greg knew she didn’t see. Hell, he didn’t even understand why he’d sought out her services. But instinct told him she was the only one who could help him. He might not trust Cassie, but he always trusted his instincts.
He took a deep breath. “Look, the thing is, I want you to host the party. Only I’d rather not have anyone know I hired you for the job.”
Cassie didn’t say a word. She simply stared at him, as an uncomfortable silence stretched between them. With each passing second, Greg felt the tension build inside him.
“Let me get this straight,” she said finally, leaning back in her chair. “You want me to plan your party, organize it and host it, but not tell anyone I’m being paid for my services.”
Second thoughts gripped him. It had sounded good in the planning stage. But now, spelled out in Cassie’s disbelieving tone, it sounded like an insane idea. His throat tightened, closing up on him. Not trusting himself to speak, he nodded his reply.
She looked puzzled. “Why?”
“Why not?”
She shook her head. “Word of mouth has been one of my best sources of advertisement. Do you realize how much business I could be missing out on with this one party? We’re talking about doctors and their wives, Greg. They’d make great clients.”
Irritation flared in his chest. He didn’t appreciate his profession being lumped into a category solely on the basis of its spending potential. “I don’t care if you tell my guests what you do for a living. I just don’t want you to tell them you’re doing it for me.”
Her frown deepened. “It doesn’t make sense, Greg. Nobody’s going to believe that a mere acquaintance would host your party.”
“I don’t want you to be an acquaintance,” he mumbled, averting his gaze. “I want you to be my date.”
Silence greeted his announcement. One second, two seconds, three, then—the worst happened. She burst out laughing. Great big, tummy-shaking guffaws of amusement, all directed at him.
Greg’s temper simmered beneath the abuse.
“I’m sorry, Greg,” she said, wiping a tear of mirth from her eye. Her voice trembled with lingering amusement. “For a minute there, I thought you were serious.”
“I am serious,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Look, Greg,” she said, sobering slightly. “Obviously you need help. A great deal of help. But to be honest, there isn’t enough money in the world to make me pretend to be your girlfriend.”
“You owe me, Cassie,” he said quietly, his tone dark and forbidding.
The bemused expression faded. Emotion glinted in her eyes. This time her voice shook with outrage. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. I don’t owe you a dime.”
Greg surged to his feet. “I’m not talking about money. I’m talking about my life.”
The words boomed across the tiny office.
Cassie stared at him, her eyes wide, her mouth agape.
In the room next door, her secretary stopped typing.
Heat suffused his face. Common sense told him to walk away, to let go of his anger and the past. But pride wouldn’t allow him to forget. He leaned closer, lowering his voice. “If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be in this mess. If you hadn’t interfered, Niki and I would be married and planning this party together.”
“You still blame me for Niki’s breaking off your engagement?”
“Damn right, I do. You’re Niki’s best friend. Your opinions have always had a strong influence on her.”
“Not that strong,” she snapped. “When are you going to get it through that thick head of yours, Lawton? Niki’s a grown woman who’s more than capable of making her own decisions. She never was the breakable china doll you always assumed her to be.”
The words cut him to the quick, wounding his male pride. He lashed out at her in kind. “Are you telling me you didn’t try to discourage Niki from marrying me?”
She didn’t respond. Her wordless answer spoke volumes.
He gave a bitter smile. “That’s what I thought.”
She folded her hands primly on top of her desk and met his gaze head-on. “This whole conversation is pointless. Your engagement to Niki is over. Why do you insist on dwelling on the past?”
“Because the past has a way of grabbing you by the throat and not letting go,” he hollered. “Do you have any idea what my life’s been like these past few months?”
She frowned, opening her mouth to answer.
Only he didn’t give her the chance. “It’s been a living hell. Speculation over my broken heart has been the grist that’s kept this town’s gossip mills churning. I’ve endured the pitying looks, the sympathetic words. I’ve even tolerated the old ladies from the neighborhood who want to mother me. They ply me with cookies and cakes one minute, and try to fix me up with their granddaughters the next.”
The anger level of his voice rose with each word he spoke. But, once vented, nothing could stop the flow of frustration. “And now my colleagues at the clinic are encouraging me to get on with my life. They have some insane notion that my patients and their parents would feel more comfortable with a pediatrician who’s happily married with a family of his own.”
He paused to draw in a ragged breath. He felt winded, without having exerted himself. The strength seemed to have gone out of his legs. His exhaustion was an emotional state, he realized, not a physical one. He’d just revealed his innermost feelings to Cassie Andrews, a woman he barely trusted, let alone cared enough about to confide in.
Greg sat down hard in the chair he’d recently abandoned. Oddly enough, despite the weariness that seemed to have crept over his extremities, he felt as though a weight had been lifted from his heart. Purging himself of months of pent-up anger had had an emancipating effect.
“Is that what you want?” she asked, breaking into his troubled thoughts. “To be happily married?”
“Hell, no,” he bit out. “I want to be left alone. I want to get all these helpful people off my back.”
“And you think you’ll accomplish that by hiring me to be your ’girlfriend’?”
He averted his gaze, refusing to look at her. “It would be a start.”
Silence strained between them. Cassie’s tone was quieter, gentler when she spoke again. “Greg, I know you don’t want to believe me, but I truly am sorry for what happened between you and Niki.”
He’d heard the same words said a hundred times in the past eight months. Somehow, hearing them from Cassie only made him feel worse. “I don’t need your pity.”
“No, but you need my help. That is, if you still want it.”
In one way or another, women had caused him nothing but trouble these past few months. He’d just as soon give up on the entire gender. Unfortunately, at the moment, he didn’t have much of a choice but to accept Cassie’s offer.
He sighed. “I still want your help.”
“Fine,