old weird newspapers and can never find anything. Of course he was a hoarder. Anyone as gorgeous as he was clearly had to have something wrong with him. The genetic lottery wasn’t that kind. Crazy had to be lurking nearby.
“It’s not difficult to be organized,” I said, nudging at my list with the tip of my matching pen.
“What’s first?” he asked, leaning forward to read the list upside-down. “Explanation?”
I cleared my throat. “Um, yes, I thought I’d start with an explanation of what the festival is and what would be expected of you.”
He nodded and took a sip of his beer. “Sounds good.” He sat back in his seat, a half-smile on his lips, watching me intently.
I couldn’t concentrate with him staring at me that way, so I twirled the end of my ponytail with my fingers and grabbed my pen to check off each item as I mentioned it. I cleared my throat and tried to sound professional and with-it. “The Jane Austen Festival and Games in Bath happens annually, usually in September. There are several days of lectures, workshops, and discussions. This year there’s a competition, too.”
“A who-can-be-the-most-Jane-Austeny competition?” he asked.
“Something like that,” I replied, deciding ‘Jane-Austeny’ should definitely be an adjective in the English language. “Which is why I need you.”
“I’m supposed to be like Mr. Austen?” he asked, taking another sip of beer. The residual foam on his lip was so unexpectedly sexy it made me momentarily forget that he’d just said “Mr. Austen.”
“There is no Mr. Austen. Jane never married, she— Well, I mean Jane’s father was Mr. Austen, but—”
Jeremy reached out and put a hand on mine. Sparks rushed up my arm and I swallowed. He was touching me. What? Why? I couldn’t think. “I know,” he said, in a slow easy voice. “I was teasing you.”
“Oh.” I raised my brows and pulled my hand out from under his and placed it in my lap, rubbing the spot he’d touched. “Oh, okay, I—”
He winced a little. “You don’t joke about Jane Austen, do you?”
Did anyone? I tapped the end of my pen against the page and slowly shook my head back and forth. “Not really.” Oh, great, my crazy flag was flying.
“I can tell. Okay, so you’re going as Elizabeth Bennet and I’ll be Mr. Darcy, right?”
That made me smile. “Yes, exactly.”
“From Pride and Prejudice,” he continued.
More enthusiastic nodding from me, while I tried to squelch the ridic smile that popped to my lips.
“Which was written in 1813 before Emma and after Sense and Sensibility,” he said.
My eyes opened as wide as tea saucers. P&P was technically written in the late seventeen hundreds, and published in 1813, but only a pedantic nerd would point that out. I was simply impressed he’d gotten his general facts right. “Yes, how did you...?”
“I Googled it last night and read the Cliffs notes,” he admitted with a knee-weakening grin, his glass arrested halfway to his firmly molded lips.
Uh-oh. I was in trouble. Thinking of his lips as “firmly molded” spelled such big trouble. “You Googled it? To learn about it?” That surprised me—surprised me and pleased me an absurd amount.
“Of course I did,” he said.
“Why?”
“Are you joking? You have a freakin’ Ph.D. on the subject. I didn’t want to come off like a complete dumbass—sorry—idiot.”
Was there anything cuter than the words freakin’ and Ph.D. being used together?
“Besides,” he continued. “I’m not sure I’ve got this job. I want you to know I take it seriously.”
There was that word again. Job. Another reminder that sexy smiles and shirts that smell like cologne I wanted to slowly lick off his warm neck were not why we were here.
“I see,” I forced myself to say, sitting up straighter and clearing my throat. I needed to start acting more like an employer and less like a hormoned-up teenager. The man was here for a job interview, and I was leering at him like some bad cliché from the fifties, only a weird, inverted, female version. “So, the competition portion spans the course of the weekend,” I said. “We’d arrive in Bath on Wednesday. The competition is Thursday through Sunday. We’d leave on Monday.”
“Yep, Luke told me that part. My schedule is clear after this Friday.”
I nodded. That’s right. Jeremy was unemployed. Definitely not on my Future Husband Checklist. I redirected my gaze back to my other list, the one I was reading from. “During the next two weeks we need to have your wardrobe made, teach you how to speak and act