Speed Dating (3 page)

“Kendall?” Marvin sounded like a man who couldn’t believe his eyes. Jerk.

“You know that guy?” Dylan asked as the fire door shut them into the stairwell.

“No,” she said. It was true. She’d never known Marvin, not all the time she’d dated him, helped him get ahead in the company. He’d seemed as dull as she was,
which made him a safe risk. Or so she’d thought. As it had turned out, he was a bad risk, one she’d have to write off. As though her life were an insurance policy.

Her heels clicked defiantly as she ran down the stairs, echoing like hail while Dylan’s heavier tread sounded like a drum.

By the time they’d clicked and drummed their way past the reception floor, she had to admit she had completely lost her mind. She wasn’t getting off to go and pick up her dress and her room key, and she wasn’t going to the awards banquet to sit meekly with the other onesies.

She was blowing off the banquet.

Predictable and safe hadn’t worked out so well.

She wondered what wild would feel like.

She had a feeling she was about to find out.

D
YLAN WAS SURPRISED
at the woman Bryce had set him up with. Bryce’s female friends were a fairly predictable type. Gorgeous, friendly, long-legged and big-bosomed. This one was different.

Sure, she was sexy in a quirky-looking way. Generous mouth, straight nose, pretty gray eyes. Medium-brown hair that curled softly round her shoulders. Nice, trim body. Not much shape, but then he’d never known an actress who didn’t diet off her curves.

Oh, well. All she had to do was act happy to be in his company for a couple of hours, then they’d be on their way. How hard was that?

Truth was, it was a lot tougher than he’d thought being named one of
People
magazine’s 50 Hottest Bachelors. That had been great for publicity, and he sure sold a lot of junk with his picture on it. He also signed a lot of autographs to girls who looked as though they should be home studying for their algebra tests and not at a racetrack hyperventilating over guys who made a life’s work out of driving too fast.

A lot of drivers took their wives and girlfriends around the racing circuit with them. Dylan had never done that. He’d come up in racing right when it
suddenly became a sexy sport. His marketing guy liked him to have a different girl on his arm at every track. It was a part of his “brand,” whatever that meant. His marketers wanted to portray Dylan as a fun guy who loved women. Dy had no problem with that. He
was
a fun guy who loved women.

He met some great gals: cheerleaders, actresses, models, party girls. They got publicity from being seen with him, and he got the sexy rep without any effort on his part. Seemed to him that everybody went home happy.

For tonight, however, he needed something more. Anyone who’d already been seen with him on TV or mentioned on one of the fan sites wasn’t going to cut it. Ashlee would know the relationship was casual. And he needed her to believe, for both their sakes, that he was in love. He hoped Kendall was a hell of an actress, because they were appearing before a tough audience.

K
ENDALL HAD
her first major pang of regret when she saw the car.

Low-slung, red and topless. The man was a race car driver—he was bound to go over the speed limit, and excessive speed accounted for a high percentage of motor-vehicle accidents.

She paused. In the fluorescent lighting bouncing off gray pavement, that red car looked like blood in the desert. She scented danger.

She halted. There was still time to go back.

You’re not exciting enough.
Marvin’s words floated into her head as though he were standing beside her repeating his obviously rehearsed goodbye speech.

Not exciting enough, huh? She’d show him exciting.

Dylan unlocked her door and opened it and she slid into that car as though she rode in sports cars every day of her life instead of her four-year-old Volvo.

The engine roared to life in an aggressively loud fashion, and she wasn’t pleased to note that Dylan pulled out of the parking space before she’d found her seat belt and clicked it into place.

The car purred as he steered out of the parking garage, but it was a menacing purr, as if to say, “Just you wait until I’m out on the road, baby, then you’ll know fear.”

They pulled out of the garage and she swallowed a cry as he merged into heavy traffic with hardly a glance. She’d never realized a topless car would be so noisy. And what it was doing to her careful hairdo she didn’t even want to think about.

“So,” he yelled over the wind rushing through the convertible, “I know you’re an actress and you’re here in town shooting a commercial, but where are you from?”

“Portland.”

“How long are you in town for?”

“Three days. I leave tomorrow.” And then she’d be back to her regularly scheduled life, in the job she’d done now for eight years, the apartment that she’d be deMarvinizing when she got home. When she thought about it, there wasn’t even much of Marvin there. An extra toothbrush and razor, the shampoo for thinning hair, a couple of pairs of socks and underwear. An asthma puffer. So little. Some fiancé. Had there been signs all along that she was temporary and she’d simply ignored them?

They turned onto a freeway and her date hit the accelerator. The noise increased; wind rushed at her so fast she felt breathless. Her hair whipped across her face.

There wasn’t much more conversation; it was too difficult to be heard. Besides, she was busy holding on to her hair so she didn’t end up with lacerations on her face. She tried not to calculate their speed and turned her mind instead to cataloging ways she might fool people that she was: a) an actress; b) sexy and c) wearing actual clothes.

The sun was a low, heavy ball of dark orange. Dylan had slipped on dark sunglasses, but she, of course, had none. Between driving into the sun and the air whooshing at her, her eyes began to water.

They drove maybe half an hour and then they drew up at a big, old mansion decked with twinkle lights. Jay Gatsby would have felt right at home. Perhaps, as her first effort as an actress, she should channel Daisy.

Dylan roared toward the front of the house, and a white-coated valet immediately came forward to open the car door. She stepped gratefully onto solid ground, resisting the urge to drop to her knees and kiss the pavement. She put a hand to her hair to try and smooth it. The young man parking cars seemed more interested in her chest than in her hair, however, and when Dylan walked around to join her, leaving the car running, she noticed his gaze headed in the same direction. She glanced down.

The cold, rushing air hadn’t merely unhinged her hair and made her eyes tear. She didn’t know whether to put her hands to her hair or her chest, or simply to dive back in the car and refuse to come out.

Before she’d made up her mind, her attention—everyone’s attention—was caught by a sylphlike young woman in a long, white off-the-shoulder dress, who cried “Dylan!” and ran down the stone steps as though a murderer were after her. She carried a bouquet of flowers in one hand, a lit cigarette in the other, and there was a coronet of tiny roses in her bright blond hair.

Kendall saw that her eyes were large, her lips pouty in a way that would have looked sullen on Kendall but looked sexy on this woman. She had a lost-child look about her, combined with a blatant sexuality. In fact, Kendall didn’t have a hope of channeling Daisy. This woman had the channel all to herself as she threw her arms around Dylan and clung like a climbing rose to a garden stake.

“Hey, Ashlee,” Dylan said in a voice that was soft and comforting, “it’s good to see you.” He ran a large hand up and down the woman’s delicate spine. “You got some great weather for the big day,” he said in an overly loud voice.

The bride shook her head so violently that her curls bounced and one pink rosette slid from its crown. “I can’t go through with it. I’m making a terrible mistake. I never should have left you. Never. My astrologer said I’d end up with a man from my past. You’ve got to stop the wedding so we can get back together.”

Kendall felt as though she’d been kicked somewhere in the region of her belly button. He’d brought her as a date to his ex’s wedding? Was she forever going to be the one standing on the sidewalk of life while the parade passed her by?
She
wanted drama and astrologers and
a man like Dylan letting her cling like superstrength sandwich wrap.

Instead, she felt exactly like what she was: a half-dressed actuary at the wrong party.

Mentally calculating how long it would take her to get back to the hotel in a taxi, she idly watched as Dylan patted Daisy with one hand and managed to pinch her cigarette out of her fingers with the other. “And it broke my heart into a million pieces when you did leave me. But Harrison’s a fine man. He can give you all the things I never could. You know that.”

“No.” Another rosebud tumbled as the curls were tossed again. “No. I know it was you she meant. I know it. Let’s get back together again.” She glanced up with misty eyes.

Over the blond head, Dylan stared at Kendall and opened his eyes wide in a do-something plea. She’d been frozen in place by the spectacle—as had all the parking valets and a couple of guys in aprons who looked like catering staff on a smoke break.

Dylan wanted to be rescued from this lovely woman? By her? She felt better by the second.

Right, she reminded herself. Actress. Sexy. Pretend she and Dylan were in love. Well, if she wanted to take part in life’s drama, it looked as if this was a perfect opportunity to step onstage.

She barely knew what she was doing when she licked her lips, thrust her hips forward and walked—no, strutted—forward into the fray.

Daisy didn’t notice her. All her attention seemed to be given over to clinging to Dylan.

The parking attendant’s attention was all hers,
though, or her still-chilled chest’s. “You might want to park that car before it runs out of gas,” she said in a throaty voice she barely recognized.

A reflex apology for her curtness popped into her mouth like a hiccup when she realized that the parking attendant had blushed to the roots of his red hair and was jogging to the driver’s side of the sports car. Emboldened, she turned to do her best to free Dylan.

She’d succeeded in getting Daisy’s attention. She had Dylan’s attention, too. He still patted Daisy, but his gaze was fully on Kendall. She wasn’t sure what to do next but she’d agreed to come with him and play her part and she was a woman who stood by her word.

“Who is this?” Daisy asked sharply, sounding a lot less fragile.

“This is Kendall, my—”

“Lover,” Kendall said—or her inner vamp did, and she just mouthed the word. “And if you’d take your hands off Dylan, I’d appreciate it.”

“This is your new girlfriend?” Daisy stared at Dylan as though she could not believe it.

“I’m crazy about her,” he said, sending Kendall a glance so warm she tingled all over. For a second, she felt the thrill of those words run through her system. No man had ever said he was crazy about her, and even though she knew Dylan was pretending, she still felt as though she’d become someone new and sexy and powerful.

“But she’s so…slutty.”

Kendall blinked. In high school, she’d been voted least likely to go skinny-dipping. Now she was being called slutty? The sensible part of her knew she should
be insulted, but her inner rebel, who’d never before appeared to exist, cheered.

“Ashlee, I am crazy in love with this woman. I want you to be happy for us. Like I’m happy for you and Harrison.” There it was again. Not only crazy, but crazy in love. She wasn’t the only one who seemed to have hidden acting talent. Mr. Dylan Life-In-The-Fast-Lane Hargreave wasn’t bad in the acting department himself. When he looked at her with sizzle in his gaze, she felt as though he could not wait to get her alone. When he looked at her like that, she saw how easy it would be to respond.

With incredible dexterity he somehow unwound himself from the clinging bride and took Kendall’s hand in his. His palm felt warm and large. Nice. He squeezed her hand in what she knew was gratitude. “Kendall’s an important woman in my life so I want you to behave.”

“Hi,” Ashlee said, then glanced up under her lashes at Dylan and gave that sexy pout again. “Sorry I said you were slutty.”

“Hi,” Kendall replied. “Sorry I thought you were a bitch.”

Dylan made a choking sound and quickly faked a cough. Then he spoke to Ashlee. “Now let’s get you married.”

Kendall could not imagine who was going to marry this woman who was so blatantly throwing herself at another man, but she’d already realized that the rules of Dylan’s world were vastly different from her own. Then she thought about Marvin and realized that wasn’t true at all.

Ashlee looked as though she was going to argue or, worse, cling some more, when thankfully another car
drove down the avenue toward them. The bride-to-be squeaked and ran for a side entrance to the mansion.

She stopped halfway, turned to Kendall and yelled, “I’m Dylan’s first wife. You know the first marriage is the only true one.”

Dylan held on to Kendall’s hand as they walked up the stone steps to an imposing oak doorway. “Thanks for that. You’re a better actress than I guessed.”

“Better than I would have guessed, too,” she admitted. None of this was her business, but she had to ask, “Will there be many more scenes like that?”

“I hope not,” he said, and she was sure she felt him shudder.

“Are you sure it’s a good idea for you to attend your ex-wife’s wedding?”

“It would hurt her feelings if I didn’t show. Besides, me coming to her weddings is kind of a tradition.”

“Weddings?”

“This is number four.”

Dylan kept hold of her hand as they ascended the main staircase leading to the house. To an onlooker it would have appeared they were inseparable, but Kendall suspected he was afraid she’d bolt if he didn’t hang on tight.

He needn’t have worried. She was enjoying more excitement tonight than she’d experienced in her entire life. She wasn’t going to miss this crazy wedding for anything. Her gorgeous, sexy date didn’t, however, have to know that.

“You didn’t mention that our date was to your ex-wife’s wedding,” she said sweetly.