He made it sound so easy. They’d hold hands, gaze into each other’s eyes, and fool the world. For another woman that might have been a piece of cake, but Summer’s experience with men was practically nil. Oh, she’d dated some when she was in college and medical school, but she’d never met a man who made her heart turn over, so there’d been little hand holding, let alone romantic evenings where she gazed into someone’s eyes over a candlelit table for two. She didn’t have a clue how she was going to pull it off.
She didn’t, however, tell Gavin that. She was the one who had come up with this idea in a moment of madness, and she’d find a way to hold up her end of the bargain. After all, how difficult could it be? They had a world of things in common—medicine, their Native American heritage, hospital politics. They could spend hours talking about those things and anyone who saw them together would think they were totally wrapped up in each other.
Telling herself she could do this, she faced him squarely, all business. “Then I guess tomorrow night is as good a time as any to start. I’m usually home from the clinic by six unless I have an emergency. Just to be on the safe side, why don’t you pick me up at seven?”
As pragmatic as she, he nodded. “Wear something nice. We’ll go to the Wild Boar. We should cause quite a splash.”
They would do that just by walking in the door, Summer thought privately. The Wild Boar had just opened and was one of the nicest places in town. She hadn’t been there herself, but she’d heard the decor was rich, the wine list extensive, and the clientele the upper crust of Whitehorn society. The second they stepped foot inside the place, they’d set tongues wagging.
Which was exactly what they wanted, Summer reminded herself. The sooner people noticed they were dating and started talking, the quicker the locals would hopefully change their opinion of Gavin and look at him in a different light. “Then I guess I’ll see you at seven,” she said simply, and prayed she wasn’t getting into something she couldn’t handle.
When Gavin rang her doorbell promptly at seven the following evening, Summer thought she was prepared for their “date.” She’d spent most of the day psyching herself up for the part she had to play, and she was sure she could get through it without making a fool of herself. After all, how difficult could it be? They were just going to share a meal together in public, and they’d already done that at the Hip Hop.
But the man she opened her door to looked nothing like the one she’d approached that day in the diner. Dressed in a navy-blue suit that emphasized his broad shoulders, he was incredibly handsome. Caught off guard, Summer let her gaze slowly travel from his shoes to his freshly shaven square jaw to his neatly trimmed black hair, and felt her breath catch in her lungs. She’d never seen him in a suit before. She had to admit, he was something to see.
Standing in front of him in a dress that was at least three years out of date, she felt decidedly frumpy and old-fashioned. And she had no one to blame but herself. Her aunts had been telling her for months that there was more to life than medicine and she needed to update her wardrobe and get out in the world more. She should have listened.
Smoothing the skirt of her red silk dress, she said self-consciously, “I hope I’m dressed all right. I don’t go out very often, so I didn’t have much to pick from.”
“You look fine,” he replied roughly. “Just fine.”
She did, in fact, look fantastic. He’d always thought that she was an attractive woman, but she did her best to hide it. She usually wore her black hair pulled back in a severe bun that wasn’t the least bit flattering and she wore glasses that were the wrong shape for her face and hid her eyes. Tonight, however, her glasses were nowhere in sight, and she’d left her hair loose so that it fell past her shoulders in a waterfall of black silk that his fingers itched to touch.
For the first time in recent memory she was wearing makeup, and he was amazed at the difference in her. He’d never noticed before how beautiful her brown eyes were or just how sexy her mouth was. Unable to drag his gaze away from her, all he could think of was that red was definitely her color. With the red silk sensuously draping her slender, lithe body, she looked as though she’d just walked out of a dream.
But she wasn’t his dream, he reminded himself grimly. Just the woman he was going to give a year of his life to, hopefully in exchange for a not-guilty verdict at his trial. Their arrangement was strictly a business one, and he’d do well to remember that.
“If you’re ready, we should be leaving,” he said coolly. “Our reservation is for seven-fifteen.”
“Of course,” she replied in a voice as cool as his. “Let me get my purse.”
They walked out of her house like two strangers who didn’t know what to say to each other, and without a word, Gavin opened the door of his Chevy sedan for her and helped her into the passenger seat. Moments later, he buckled in beside her and headed for the Wild Boar. The drive took all of ten minutes, but neither of them spoke the entire way.
Then, before Summer was quite ready to play the role of Gavin’s infatuated girlfriend, he braked to a stop under the restaurant’s portico. A valet was there to park the car for them, but before he could open Summer’s door for her, Gavin was there first. Taking her hand in his, he closed his fingers around hers and gave her a slow, intimate smile as he helped her from the car. Reeling from the kick of that smile, she’d hardly recovered when he linked his fingers with hers.
She’d known that they would hold hands, that he would touch her when the opportunity presented itself, and it was all for show. But it didn’t feel like much of a show when his hand squeezed hers as they stepped inside and the maître d’ showed them to their table. Heat climbing in her cheeks, Summer felt the touch of dozens of pairs of eyes on them and knew Gavin had to feel it, too. But he gave no sign of it. Not sparing a glance for anyone but her, he seated her at their table, then took the chair across from her. In the glow of the candle that burned between them on the table, he gave her a smile that was slow and intimate and should have been outlawed in all fifty states.
Hit with the full impact of his sex appeal, Summer forgot to breathe. All around them, people began to whisper, but she never noticed. Her heart pounding in her breast, all she saw was Gavin.
“Miss?” Standing at her side, the waiter cleared his throat. “Would you like a menu?”
Transfixed, Summer hardly heard him. Then Gavin smiled in amusement, and the spell that had fallen over her broke and she realized she’d been staring at Gavin like a star-struck teenager who’d just stumbled across her favorite rock star. That was, of course, exactly what she was supposed to be doing. The problem was, she’d completely forgotten it was the role she was playing when Gavin smiled at her. And that horrified her.
“Miss?” the waiter said again, this time with exaggerated patience. “Your menu?”
Jerking back to awareness, she blushed. “Yes, of course. Thank you.” Ignoring Gavin, she grabbed the oversize menu and quickly buried her hot cheeks behind it.
Chuckling, Gavin ordered champagne—to celebrate, he informed the waiter. When Summer finally lowered her menu, he was there waiting for her with a heart-stopping smile. “See anything you like?”
How was she supposed to answer that? she wondered wildly. When he forgot to brood and turned on the charm, he was a very attractive man—which every woman in the place had already noted, if the feminine glances he was getting were anything to go by. And that was exactly why they were there, she reminded herself. To have people look at him in a new light.
Remembering her role, she forced a smile that didn’t come nearly as easily as his did. “Actually, I do. How about you?”
“Oh, yeah,” he drawled, leering at her teasingly. “But it’s not on the