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“Your place. Like an engaged couple.” She didn’t trust herself to smile. “I didn’t pack for a sleepover.” She hated the uncertainty in her voice, hated the vulnerable feeling in her gut even more. “Or did you guess my size on clothes too?”
“No guessing. I raided your closet this morning while you were at work.”
“What?” That was flat-out wrong. He’d taken this whole mess too far. She could just imagine what he thought as he rifled through her wardrobe from jeans to lingerie. “You didn’t disrupt anything.” It freaked her out that she hadn’t noticed anything missing. She had been in a rush to get ready… maybe she’d just overlooked the signs.
“Relax. I checked your sizes and then went shopping this afternoon.”
“Oh my God. That’s absolutely creepy.” She wanted to get out, to run far away from Mr. FBI and his perfectly tailored suit. “What did my cat do?”
“It, ah, stared at me. And purred.”
“He does that.” She shook her head. “Tell me it made you uncomfortable.”
“A little, yeah.”
“Good.” Her lips twitched. “My family will have a fit when I get home.”
“You aren’t going home. Not for the next forty-eight hours at least.”
She glared at him. “Tell me right now how that helps us throw a net around a conspiracy case.”
“As my fiancée, we’re taking a romantic weekend together. No one will expect us to be thinking about business or tracking down the next dog fight.”
Suddenly a piece of this bizarre puzzle snapped into place. She blamed the delay on the shiny thing dragging down her hand. “What did you do?”
He checked his watch. “We have to get to the restaurant.”
She laced her fingers together and rested her hands in her lap. Her mom and dad hadn’t raised a fool. He needed her to be seen. In Columbia. With him.
“You will tell me what you did,” she said in the steel-infused tone she applied to her most challenging customers. It was a shade too polite to be scary, but no one ever argued with it.
“Right after dinner.”
Apparently her tone remained effective. “I have your word?”
“Yes.”
“Fine.” Why she felt that mattered after he’d manipulated so many details was beyond her ability to analyze right now.
Through his deliberate actions he’d made it clear what he thought of her and her modest small-town upbringing. But she was valuable to the case. Probably as bait.
Now all she had to do was get through dinner while making everyone around them believe they were in love. Well, he wasn’t the only one capable of performing on cue.
Chapter 3
Dale held her hand as they entered the restaurant. Taking her coat, he pulled out her chair when they reached their table. He was the epitome of a devoted future spouse.
He thought he might choke on it.
Not because it was such a hardship. Heather was lovely, despite that open, fresh approach that was so different from other women he’d dated. While the ease of playing this role bothered him more than a little, it was the natural way she responded to him that made things particularly difficult.
He wondered at her ability to smile constantly. Who did that? People with mental issues or people too naïve to know better. Heather was mentally sound, so he had to pin this weird habit on her youth and sheltered upbringing.
The smile she wore from the moment they left the car was dreamy. Lovestruck. And it bothered him more than it should. This was an act and it had been his idea.
She changed up her expression once in a while, letting it lean toward giddy when the waitress complimented her sparkling diamond. It looked good on her finger, better than the last finger he’d put it on. With a ruthless mental shake, he pulled himself back to the situation, only half-listening to Heather’s constant chatter about wedding ideas. She worked her way from potential guest lists over appetizers and was entertaining some wild reception ideas by the time dessert arrived.
He kept up his end of the conversation, naming off fictional aunts and cousins who would need an invitation but likely wouldn’t travel. He held Heather’s warm hand between courses, stunned when his body responded to those lingering, enamored looks she gave him. Did other men have this much trouble focusing when women were around?
