Fortune's Valentine Bride. Marie Ferrarella

if her entire world was crumbling right beneath her feet. It had taken her a while to get over it and get her mind back on her studies.

      “Blake may have been ‘going together,’” Wendy corrected. At least she remembered things clearly, even if Blake didn’t. “Brittany apparently forgot. Besides, there’s absolutely no comparison between the two of you. You have a heart. I think Brittany has a mirror where her heart is supposed to be. While my idiot brother was recruiting you for this impossibly ridiculous mission, did he happen to tell you how he and the Magnolia Queen came to ‘break up’?” Wendy wanted to know.

      Katie shook her head. “He didn’t go into any details, no.”

      “Then allow me to fill you in,” Wendy offered, warming up to her subject. “They were at a graduation party and became separated. At some point in the evening, he started looking for her. He walked around, searching the immediate party area, and found her making out with another guy.”

      Oh, poor Blake, was all Katie could think. “He found Brittany actually kissing some other guy?” she asked incredulously. How could she have even looked at another guy if she knew that Blake was committed to her?

      Wendy shook her head, completely disgusted with her brother’s choice in women. “Personally, I don’t understand why Blake would even want to be in the same room with her, much less take her back.”

      Wendy was missing one very obvious point, Katie thought. “Maybe because Brittany’s pretty much drop-dead gorgeous.”

      Wendy raised her chin. “So are you,” she insisted loyally.

      It was Katie’s turn to roll her eyes. “Oh, come on, Wendy. I do own a mirror, you know. I know exactly what I look like.”

      Wendy shook her head. Katie was missing the obvious. She’d been such a dedicated soul and hard worker for so long, she didn’t even remember how to use her feminine wiles, but that was all right. Wendy was devious enough for both of them.

      “The only difference between you and that woman my brother thinks he wants is that she knows how to apply makeup to her best advantage.” Wendy’s eyes narrowed as she looked at Katie. “Nothing you can’t learn,” she told her emphatically.

      Maybe, Katie thought, but not easily. And not quickly enough. “And while I’m busy learning how to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, Blake and Brittany will be exchanging wedding vows,” she concluded unhappily.

      Wendy waved away the very notion. “Not in a million years, I guarantee it,” she promised with deadly certainty. She knew the Brittanys of the world. They took up space and looked attractive—as long as no one was looking closely. Because what they had was superficial. What Katie had ran deep. Clear down to the bone.

      The next moment, Wendy lapsed into silence as she paused, thinking the situation over—and seeing the potential that had been staring them in the face all along. It might just work.

      “You know …” Her voice trailed off as an idea began to take serious shape. And then Wendy smiled. Broadly.

      Katie was on her guard instantly. “Uh-oh, I know that look.” It was Wendy’s crafty expression.

      The woman was up to something.

      Katie held her breath as she asked, “What are you thinking?”

      Wendy beamed at her. “Just that my beloved big brother might have just given us the perfect opportunity to make him see just how desirable a woman you really are.”

      “Right!” Katie laughed, shrugging off the compliment. But Wendy was obviously not kidding, she realized. “All right, I’m listening. Just how does my helping Blake put together his campaign strategy to bag the elusive Brittany-bird make him suddenly see how supposedly desirable I am?”

      “Not supposedly,” Wendy insisted. “You have to start thinking positively, Katie, or this is never going to work.”

      “I can think downright unshakably, that still doesn’t mean that I—”

      Wendy dropped her bombshell. “He’ll have to practice on you.”

      Katie blinked. Had she missed something here? “Excuse me?”

      “All these moves he’s going to make on Brittany, he has to practice on someone, polish them up on someone.” To her it was a given. Rehearsals always helped attain the desired results. Wendy smiled at her. “That ‘someone’ is going to be you. Dinner—you, dancing—you, moonlight walks—you, seductive techniques—”

      This time, it was Katie who halted the conversation, holding up not just a finger but a whole hand.

      “I think I get it,” she said, fighting a very real blush that was swiftly advancing up along her neck and splaying across her cheeks with the force of the evening high tide.

      Wendy saw the blush and smiled with satisfaction. “Yes, I can see that you do. By the time we’re finished—by the time you’re finished,” she amended with a smile, “my brother is going to forget that Brittany Everett ever existed.”

      Katie had her doubts about that, but she had to admit that she really liked the way it sounded. For now, she allowed herself to savor what to her was tantamount to an impossible dream. She figured it was the least she could do after Wendy had gone to all that trouble to come up with said plan.

      Even if it wasn’t going to work.