Hiring Mr. Darcy - Valerie Bowman Page 0,29

panicked. I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to hear what his interpretation of me was. But I couldn’t tell him not to say it. Not after I’d analyzed him last night. Turnabout was fair play, after all.

“Yep, do you want to know what else I can tell?” Jeremy asked.

“Okay,” I offered, wincing and mentally steeling myself for it.

He took a deep breath before launching into it. “You probably have a bunch of anti-bacterial hand sanitizer in your purse, you always take the truth and never the dare, and you’ve never called in sick to spend the day rolling around in bed with a man.”

Wow. It felt like the wind had been knocked from my body. He could tell all that from looking at me? It was the glasses. And the sensible shoes, no doubt. I pretended to be studying more fabric, but all I could think about was what sort of witty comeback I could possibly invent. I took a deep breath and shook my hair over my shoulders. “First of all, anti-bacterial hand sanitizer has probably saved my life more than once, and it’s hardly my fault if they sell them in convenient little sets.”

“Holy shit.” His eyes widened. “You really do, don’t you?”

“So what?” I put a hand on my hip, trying, and failing, at not sounding defensive.

Jeremy straightened to his full height, the ridiculous top hat still sitting on his head. “You know what else I think?”

I didn’t want to know, but I couldn’t very well not listen. “What?”

“I think you put on this semi-mean act to get people to stay away from you.”

What? What was he talking about? ‘Semi-mean act’? “That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?” He raised his brows.

“I’m not mean, and I don’t want people to stay away from me.”

“Okay.” He shrugged.

“I’m serious. I want to get married. Have kids.”

“Fine. What about the truth-or-dare?” he asked.

I narrowed my eyes on him. I could tell he still didn’t believe me about the mean thing, but I’d clearly have to fess up to my love of truth vs. dare. “Did we ever play in high school? You and me?”

“No.”

I secretly suspected he must have known because anyone who played me knew I always took the truth. The truth was preferable to whatever dangerous, messy, or potentially embarrassing dare some silly teenager would come up with. The truth allowed you to remain happily in your seat and not muss anything. Yes. Truth. Always.

“Then Luke told you?” I demanded.

Jeremy held up a hand, palm-first. “I swear on my life he never has.”

“Okay, fine. You’re right about that, too.” It disturbed me to think I was that predictable.

“Ha!” Jeremy clapped his hands together. Removing the top hat, he flipped it over in his hands and placed it back on the counter. “And playing hooky from work?” he asked in a deeper, huskier voice that made goosebumps rush up the back of my neck.

“Miss me, darlings?”

Oh, thank God. Saved by Mitchell and Ms. Julia. Because I’d have died from embarrassment if I’d have to admit Jeremy had been right about that last part, too.

Chapter 10

We spent three hours with Mitchell. Three long hours in which poor Jeremy Remington was measured from top to toe, poked, prodded, fitted, and futzed with, while all the while I held up a ridiculous variety of fabric swatches to see how well they would coordinate with his dark hair and swoon-worthy green eyes.

With Harrison, we’d had to use lighter colors, pastels that complemented his fair complexion, blond hair and crystal blue eyes. But with Jeremy, we used bold jewel tones like sapphire, and ruby, and my personal favorite, emerald, which made his eyes glow. To his credit, Jeremy didn’t complain even so much as one time, and he charmed both Mitchell with his jokes and his general dashingness, and Ms. Julia with his scratches behind her ears. I was convinced by the time it was over that Mitchell wanted Jeremy to scratch him behind his ears, too.

The entire experience had been quite a change, I noted, from Harrison’s stoicism during all of his fittings. Harrison hadn’t said a word unless it was to indicate his dislike of a particular fabric or to veto a certain look. Jeremy, on the other hand, talked and laughed and told jokes until Mitchell fanned himself and said, “I do declare!”

Jeremy was a very good sport, and I appreciated it enormously. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he was actually having a good time.

“So, what is it you do,