“All you have to do is say yes to my proposal.”
Sabrina winced. Bad choice of word. “Proposition,” she amended.
Jake rubbed his temples. “This is the kind of idea only you could come up with. Breaking up with you was like breaking out of Fairyland.”
Her eyes smarted, but she said airily, “And I’ll bet you miss the magic.”
His head jerked, but he held her gaze, staring her down for several long seconds.
“You’re overlooking one small fact,” he said. “Namely, you’re the last woman on earth I would marry.”
Her So-Called Fiancé
By
Abby Gaines
ABBY GAINES wrote her first romance novel as a teenager. She typed it up and sent it to Mills & Boon in London, who promptly rejected it. A flirtation with a science-fiction novel never really got off the ground, so Abby put aside her writing ambitions as she went to college, then began her working life at IBM. When she and her husband had their first baby, Abby worked from home as a freelance business journalist…and soon after that the urge to write romance resurfaced. It was another five long years before Abby sold her first novel.
Abby lives with her husband and children – and a labradoodle and a cat – in a house with enough stairs to keep her fit and a sun-filled office whose sea view provides inspiration for the funny, tender romances she loves to write. Visit her at www.abbygaines.com.
Available in August 2010from Mills & Boon®Special Moments™
Daddy on Demand by Helen R Myers & Déjà You by Lynda Sandoval
A Father for Danny by Janice Carter & Baby Be Mine by Eve Gaddy
The Mummy Makeover by Kristi Gold & Mummy for Hire by Cathy Gillen Thacker
The Pregnant Bride Wore White by Susan Crosby
Sophie’s Secret by Tara Taylor Quinn
Her So-Called Fiancé by Abby Gaines
Diagnosis: Daddy by Gina Wilkins
With love to Tessa Radley, one of the smartest, savviest and most generous women I know. Thanks, hon!
Chapter One
SABRINA MERRITT COUNTED at least a dozen photographers waiting for her to exit the gate area at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport. They all had their lenses trained on her legs, which two days ago had been labeled “chunky” by beauty pageant pundits.
Great. It had been humiliating enough seeing close-ups of her thighs on national television. Now the local media, the papers read by everyone who mattered to her, were about to jump on the bandwagon.
“Sabrina, this way,” one of the photographers called.
She ignored him, certain that if she so much as met anyone’s eyes, the smile she’d rehearsed in her compact mirror as the plane taxied to the gate would fall off her face. Seven months as Miss Georgia had made her thick-skinned about personal criticism. But to be slammed so publicly, just when she needed people to take her seriously, and over something so meaningless to anyone but herself as her legs…
Glassy-eyed, she scanned the crowd, in search of her good friend Tyler, who’d said he would meet her. Darn it, he’d promised.
Then she saw the lone man beyond the media group. Not Tyler.
Jake Warrington.
The way he leaned his tall frame against a pillar might appear nonchalant, but the rigidity of his shoulders and the thumbs hooked in the pockets of his jeans proclaimed I know what I want and no one’s going to stop me.
That was Jake, all right.
Was he here to gloat? Sabrina lifted her chin. She was strong and capable, even if nobody else had figured that out yet. She tapped a finger against her cheek and announced, “I’m up here, folks.”
A sheepish laugh rippled through the photographers. They tilted their cameras higher—but not before they’d snapped their shots of her thighs.
Concealing her legs beneath a long, filmy sunshine-yellow sundress didn’t seem to have lessened anyone’s interest in them. Sabrina quashed the urge to spread her hands protectively over the delicate fabric.
She’d flown home to Atlanta a day ahead of her official schedule, in the hope of eluding the media. How stupidly naive. If Jake had been the one facing a media meltdown, he’d have anticipated this hoo-ha and prepared a speech.
“Sabrina, you’re the first Miss Georgia in two decades to be eliminated from the Miss U.S.A. Pageant in the first round.” A female TV reporter oozed fake sympathy.
“Good grief, is that right?” That fact, along with every other mortifying detail of her failure, had been endlessly recycled in the media over the past few days.
Presumably for the benefit of the one person in some remote corner of Alaska who hadn’t yet heard about her chunky thighs.
A couple of the men caught the gleam in Sabrina’s eyes and laughed. Their reaction disconcerted their female colleague, who snapped, “How does that make you feel?” Then the woman recovered her TV manners and lowered her voice to radiate puzzled concern. “Do you think your thighs were the real problem, or are the rumors of interpersonal differences between you and another contestant true?”
In other words, was Sabrina’s body or her personality the bigger loser? Her insides quivered, an outright betrayal of her resolution to get tough on herself. Although she’d learned to handle snarky comments since she’d won the Miss Georgia crown, nothing in her existence to date—her pampered existence, as Jake called it—had equipped her to deal with the irrational hostility that insisted her legs had somehow let the state down.
She put a hand to the orchid she’d tucked behind her left ear as she left her dressing room in Vegas. The deep pink flower contrasted nicely with her blond hair and her yellow dress—but so much for the hope it would distract attention from her legs. Dammit, where was Tyler? She wanted to throw her jacket over her head and flee, even though she’d hate for Jake to see her running away.
Behind the reporters, Jake straightened and stepped forward. Sabrina frowned—then, as a camera flashed, hastily raised her eyebrows to smooth her forehead. With her luck, she’d end up in tomorrow’s Journal-Constitution looking like a bad-tempered shrew. With fat thighs.
Mentally, she continued to frown at Jake. No one should look that good under fluorescent lighting. His skin had a healthy tan, and when he smiled, his teeth gleamed white.
She did a double take. Jake, smiling at me?
Sure, it looked as if he was gritting his teeth—definitely smiling, and definitely at her. He was going to rescue her, she realized, which was even more bizarre.
“Sabrina.” Jake’s deep, commanding voice swung the crowd in his direction.
Just like that. A potential governor of Georgia obviously held sway over a dumped beauty queen. Now she understood why he was here—he’d seen the opportunity for some free publicity for his election campaign and was cashing in on her thighs.
She took advantage of the distraction to glare at him. Then he arrived at her side, and his presence sucked up all available oxygen, leaving her in a vacuum of awareness. Darn it, she hated that he could still do that to