Blake caught the incredulous note in Katie"s voice when she asked her question and, while he was convinced he was finally going about winning Brittany in the right way, he did value Katie"s input. Over the past two years he had discovered that their onetime neighbor and his sister"s childhood friend had an uncanny gift for putting things together and homing in on what needed fine-tuning.
He looked at her for a moment, trying to gauge what Katie had really meant. "You make it sound like I"m not playing with a full deck."
Katie shook her head. There was no way she was going to ever say something disparaging about him, especially to his face. There were times, when she looked around at other would-be applicants for her job, that she saw nothing but nubile, eager young women willing to do whatever it took to land a position. There was no way she could begin to compete against them on any level-other than demonstrating extreme competence. She was not about to do or say anything that would make Blake look for another a.s.sistant to take her place.
"Oh, no, the deck"s full, all right-it"s just a little different," she allowed, her voice trailing off as she frantically cast about for just the tiniest drop of the courage that she lacked.
His sister had insisted this morning that Katie go through with the idea that Wendy had come up with last night. She wanted Katie to strongly suggest that Blake try out each "step" of the plan on her first.
Katie sincerely doubted that he"d agree to that.
Here goes nothin".
"You know," Katie began, feeling her way slowly around the words, trying her best to find the right ones, "since this plan of yours is such an unusual approach, maybe you should try it out first, you know, like a rehearsal or a dry run."
"Try it out?" Blake echoed. "I"m not sure I follow you."
Okay, she"d backtrack. "You want everything letter perfect, right?"
"Well, sure, that"s the whole idea behind putting this down on paper and going over it," he told her, tapping what he had written on the eight-by-ten sheet of paper in the center of his desk.
"Having it down on paper doesn"t give you a real feel for it," she told him, wondering at the same time where these words were coming from.
Was she somehow managing to channel Wendy? Because that would seem to be the only answer. She knew that, even under fire, she wasn"t capable of coming up with these words on her own, not when she had so very much at stake here.
Blake leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms before him as he studied her face closely. "And what would?"
"If you practice all this on someone else first," Katie said a tad too quickly. "If you took that person-that other person-to this play-" she tapped the name of the play that Blake had selected "-before you took Brittany." She could see he wasn"t on board with this yet. Katie pitched harder. "That way, you could see if it-the play-was the kind that she enjoyed seeing. It would be just awful if the show turned out to be something that she"d feel uncomfortable about seeing. You never know, Brittany might think you had intentionally dragged her to see it for some reason." Katie pressed her lips together, not knowing if she was getting through to him. Only one way to find out. "Do you understand what I"m trying to say?"
He smiled broadly and she felt her heart do a backflip. Seeing that smile on his face always had the same results.
"Yes, I do. You want to make sure this is all perfect for Brittany. You want me to succeed as much as I want to succeed." He took hold of her shoulders and pulled her to him, giving her what amounted to a fierce bear hug. "You really are something else, you know that, Katie? You"re absolutely one of a kind," he p.r.o.nounced.
When he released her, Katie had to concentrate in order to make the room stop spinning and settle back down on its foundation.
"Okay," Blake, won over, declared, "we"ll do it your way, Katie. We"ll put every piece of this plan to the acid test. Together. And we"ll start at the beginning and work our way down."
She tried to keep her excitement from surfacing in her voice. He was going to be taking her out and they were going to be doing things together. Fun things. Never mind that she was acting as a stand-in. She was going to be with Blake all this time. And maybe, just maybe, somewhere in all that time, he"d realize that she was the girl for him.
"That way," she said matter-of-factly, while cheering on the inside, "if something doesn"t work, you can subst.i.tute something else in its place and she"ll never know."
He nodded, pleased as the plan began to gel and come together in his head. "Like I said, you really are one of a kind, Katie Wallace."
Yes, I am, and you"re just too d.a.m.n thickheaded to realize that on your own, she thought, even as she kept her easygoing smile pasted on her lips. But you will, Blake Fortune, G.o.d willing, before it"s all too late, you will.
Chapter Five.
"Dancing?" Blake repeated.
His tone was less than happy as he looked at Katie uncertainly. In an attempt to snag a little of his father"s attention, he"d forged his way into his father"s business world at an early age. Some things, per force, had been sacrificed and certain rites of pa.s.sage never even approached. Consequently, learning to dance was one of those things that just had never happened for him. If he was completely honest with himself, he"d never felt that he"d missed anything by neglecting this tiny portion of his social education.
He nodded now at the list on his desk. At the time he"d printed it, he"d thought it was a final copy of his campaign strategy. Apparently, he"d thought wrong.
"Dancing never made my list," he pointed out. What with the play and other things, he felt that he had other ways to court the "Brittany Market" without having to resort to something that made him feel inadequate.
"I know," Katie replied simply. "But it should have."
She sounded pretty adamant, but Blake dug in his heels. He shrugged carelessly at the mere suggestion of being forced to move to a given beat. "It just seems so old-fashioned."
"Old-fashioned is good," Katie countered with conviction. The only way she was going to get through this, she thought, would be to focus on the concept that she was helping her friend reach his goal. If she allowed herself to dwell on her actual "motivation," then all bets were off. "Romance is old-fashioned, yet this is what you"re really setting out to do, isn"t it?" she pressed. "Romance Brittany? Sweep her off her feet?"
It was a rhetorical question and she hated the taste of every single word she was uttering. How she managed to talk and keep a forced smile on her lips, rather than hit him upside his head, was a credit to her strength of will.
"Yeah, but..." Blake"s voice trailed off and he looked at her, one friend putting his trust in another. "You"re sure about this?" he asked uneasily.
"I"m sure," she answered with conviction. "Take her dancing."
Blake took in a breath. "But I can"t," he finally admitted.
Katie looked at him innocently over the desk that was between them. "Can"t take her?"
He shook his head. He hated admitting to any shortcoming, even something as trivial as dancing. "Can"t dance."
She knew that. Just as she made it a point to know everything else about him-except why in heaven"s name a man as intelligent as Blake Fortune seemed to be so obsessed with winning back an airhead like Brittany Everett. Everything about the woman was so shallow-were these the qualities he really wanted in a wife? Did he really only want eye candy to hang off his arm?
Katie refused to believe that. She knew Blake, and the Blake Fortune she knew liked having intelligent conversations on a broad spectrum of subjects. Brittany Everett could conduct an in-depth a.n.a.lysis on why the color mauve brought out the hint of violet in her eyes. Moreover, she could go on for hours about which of the newest Paris fashions were the most flattering to her figure and her porcelain complexion.
But neither were subjects she, Katie, could stretch out for more than thirty seconds-if that long-nor did she have any desire to do so.
Brittany just couldn"t be the kind of woman he was interested in.
And yet...
And yet here they were, laying out plans that rivaled the complexity of Allied maneuvers for the D-day invasion on Omaha Beach.
Make the most of this opportunity, remember? If you teach him how to dance, he"ll have to hold you in his arms in order to practice.
For a second, she could almost swear she heard Wendy"s voice in her head, urging her on. She had to stop thinking about Brittany and just concentrate on the positive aspect here-she was spending a great deal of time with Blake, strategizing.
"No problem," she responded to his negative input with a wide smile. "I can dance and I"ll be more than happy to teach you."
Blake continued to look at her with a doubtful expression. She obviously gave him too much credit, he thought. While he was a fairly decent athlete, he was convinced that he was in possession of two left feet when it came to being coordinated on the dance floor. There had been one attempt to teach him-he vaguely remembered one of his sisters trying to get him to master the tango when he was in middle school-and that had been quickly aborted.
"Why don"t we put dancing on the bottom of the list?" he suggested. Picking up a pen, he was about to do just that.
But Katie pulled the paper away from him and shook her head. "No. It"s always a good idea to tackle the hardest project first. Isn"t that what you always say?" she reminded him.
Blake nodded, none too happy about having his words used against him. "Yes, but I didn"t expect it to come back and bite me. You really do listen to everything I have to say, don"t you?" he marveled, impressed despite the situation.
She hung on his every word, but that wasn"t something she wanted him to be aware of. So instead, she used work as an excuse. "You"re the boss."
That he could use to his advantage, he thought. "Well, if I"m the boss-"
"Except for here," she quickly interjected before he could get rolling. Then, because she could see how frustrated he looked, she pointed out the obvious. "You did tell me you wanted my help, right?"
Part of him was beginning to have second thoughts about the wisdom of his having approached Katie with Project Brittany. "Right," he muttered.
"Well," she concluded brightly, "this is how I"m helping."
"By making me feel like an idiot?" he challenged, because that was how he was going to feel, tripping over his own feet and pretending it was called dancing.
She wasn"t even going to try to argue that point. Instead, she just forged ahead. "By making you see that you really can be light on your feet." She looked at him and said softly, but with certainty, "You can do anything you set your mind to." She could see that he was weakening. "When your father put you in charge of marketing, didn"t you tell me that you overheard him saying that he thought maybe you were in over your head?"
"Yes, he did," he recalled. He also recalled how good it had felt to prove the old man wrong-not that his father would ever admit it, of course. But it was enough that his father now knew Blake could handle it.
"And didn"t you tell me that you used his belief that you were going to fail to make you work twice as hard, just because you wanted to prove him wrong and show him that you could handle whatever he threw at you?"
"You listen to everything I tell you?" He"d already said it once, but now he was completely floored by the realization that there was someone who actually did take in what he was saying. Not once in a while, but apparently all the time. It made him feel good.
"Pretty much," Katie replied with a dismissive nod. It was time to get this portion of the program underway, she thought. A ripple of antic.i.p.ation undulated through her. "Okay, we"re going to begin your first lesson right now."
"Now? Here?" Blake looked around. "Don"t we need more room or at least to roll up the rug before we get started?" he asked. The makeshift office he"d set up was good enough to use temporarily, but it wasn"t exactly s.p.a.cious. Not like his office back in Atlanta. If they practiced here, they"d be b.u.mping into furniture constantly.
"Scott and Christina are going to be out all morning," she told him. She"d already thought to check with Christina regarding their schedule for the day. "We can use the family room. It lets out onto the veranda." And she imagined them dancing across both.
"And music," Blake quickly pointed out, raising another obstacle, one that he hoped provided more of a deterrent than the cramped quarters. He really didn"t want to do this, even though he had to admit that she had a point. A lot of women did like to go dancing. "We need music, right?"
"Absolutely," she agreed.
He should have known that wouldn"t be the end of it. Katie was opening her briefcase and taking out her iPod. She paused to hook it up to a deceptively small, metallic blue speaker.
Sensing he was watching her every move, she flashed Blake a triumphant smile. "Luckily, I came prepared. I have ballroom music on here," she told him, holding the small device aloft. "Tango, waltz, it"s all here."
"You"re kidding," he cried incredulously. It wasn"t that he wasn"t familiar with the capabilities of the gadget she had in her hand-he hadn"t been living under a rock these last few years-it was just that he was surprised that her device contained something so tame, so cla.s.sic as ballroom music.
Rather than refute him, Katie merely turned on the iPod, now hooked up to the single round speaker. One of Strauss"s cla.s.sical waltzes filled the air. He looked from the player to Katie. The woman was an endless source of surprises, he concluded.
"You always carry that around?" he wanted to know.
"My iPod? Yes. The speaker? No," she told him casually. "But I had a hunch you might need to at least brush up on some of your dance steps, so I put together a playlist on here for you," she confessed, holding up the iPod.
He"d been right to ask her help, he thought. The woman was exceedingly thorough and always seemed to manage to be ten steps ahead of him. He had a tendency to hang back if he felt uncomfortable about something and obviously, Katie had no qualms about kicking him in his complacency.
This was exactly what he needed.
Still, he didn"t really like looking like a fool, even around an old friend who had never exhibited a judgmental moment in her life.
"Like I said," he murmured, "you really are one of a kind, Katie Wallace."
This time, Katie looked him squarely in the eye. "You"re stalling."
He laughed. There was just no putting anything over on her. "I was hoping you wouldn"t notice."
"I noticed," she informed him matter-of-factly. I notice everything you do, everything you say. I notice everything about you. "Let"s go to the family room," she urged, leading the way. Blake had taken her on a quick tour of the house when she"d gotten here yesterday. She retained things like a human DVR, he couldn"t help thinking.
Once she"d reached the family room, she quickly set up her iPod and hit the playlist she"d put together for him just last night.
"I thought we"d start out slow," she told him when the waltz filled the air. "All right, I"m sure you know this part," she said, positioning herself.
When Blake did as she told him to, Katie could have sworn she felt a warm shiver skittering up her spine, despite the fact that she was wearing very sensible clothes rather than the backless evening dress she imagined Brittany would be wearing for such an occasion.
She"d temporarily forgotten this part, Katie realized. That he would actually be touching her if they were going to get this dancing lesson underway. Every single time he touched her, she had the same reaction: a warmth would spontaneously ignite within her, sending out beams of light all through her like a winter bonfire on the beach.
Focus, Katie, focus, she ordered sternly. She couldn"t allow herself to dissolve into a puddle. She had to get through this, had to act as if she was seriously going through the motions of teaching him to dance.
So that he could "seduce" Brittany, an inner voice taunted her.
"That"s right," she said, as his hand slid around her waist, her mouth momentarily growing very dry. "Now take my left hand in your right one."
Though he was considered suave and charming, when he was out of his element as he as with these lessons, Blake felt that he bore a distinct resemblance to a lumbering bear.
"Like this?"
She smiled her approval. "Like that. Can"t really mess that part up, seeing as how we both come with only one set of left and right hands," she teased.
He noticed that she seemed s.p.u.n.kier somehow and thought to himself that he rather liked this version of her. But then, he knew, there was nothing about Katie to dislike, at least he"d never encountered anything that had set him off.
"No, this part"s easy," he contradicted, and then, in all fairness, he issued her a warning. "It"s when I start stepping all over your feet that things are going to get rough."
"You are not going to step on my feet," Katie said firmly.
He raised one dark eyebrow as he regarded her. "You know something I don"t?"
"Yes." She tilted her head up slightly, her eyes catching him. "I know that you"re Blake Fortune and you can do absolutely anything you set your mind to," she told him, repeating the mantra she"d professed to believe earlier. Blake could be exceedingly stubborn when he wanted to be.
He sighed, prepared to give it his all-and hope that it was enough. "I wish I had as much faith in me as you seem to."
"No "seem to" about it," she corrected with just the right touch of feeling. "I do." Well, now that he knew how to stand and what to do with his hands, it was time to let the games begin. She began to dance, but for the most part, Blake just stood there, his feet sealed in place. "All right," she urged, "now let the music talk to you."
He listened closer, but it was still the same. "There"re no words," he protested.
"There don"t have to be," she told him, then instructed, "Feel it." He looked at her a little blankly, so she elaborated. "Feel the rhythm, let it seep into your bones, into your system," she urged softly.