Hiring Mr. Darcy - Valerie Bowman Page 0,34

as if I haven’t thought about it. Of course I have. We’ve been together over two years now, and...” He trailed off.

I swallowed the lump of bread. “And?” It was obviously my turn to prompt.

“And I have thought about it. More than once.”

Was that supposed to be promising? “And?”

“It’s just that with the Lacey thing happening, and all the hub-bub in the department right now…and trying to get tenure, I...”

I could hear Luke’s voice in my head telling me that I shouldn’t even consider marrying a man who used the word ‘hub-bub’ in a conversation so casually, but there was something else Harrison had said that distracted me more. First of all, we were both trying to get tenure and always had been. That was nothing new. And secondly... “Are you telling me that Lacey Lewis is what’s kept you from proposing?”

“No, of course not.” He pursed his lips and frowned at me again. “Why do you always have to be so dramatic? I’m merely saying that there’s been a lot going on. When I propose to you, I want the time to be right.”

When I propose to you, he’d said, not if. That was something.

“So, you are going to propose?” I asked, eyeing him carefully.

“I’d planned on it.” He blinked at me, smiled, then reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “Because I think we’re pretty perfect for each other, don’t you?”

Thank God. I expelled my breath. The last nearly three years of planning weren’t all for nothing after all. I could still make my self-imposed life deadlines. “Yes,” I said, returning his smile with one of my own. “I do.”

“There, it’s settled. Let me get through this competition with Lacey and somewhere closer to the holidays, perhaps, we’ll discuss our future together. I promise.”

“Fantastic,” I said, taking a big bite of salad and smiling inwardly. Things weren’t so bad. I might not be Harrison’s partner for the competition, but we would be getting married. Besides, Lacey Lewis would soon be off to film her role as Lydia, and we’d be back to normal. Everything would work out okay.

Harrison arched a brow at me and smiled. “You know, it’s not too late for you to reconsider and be our coach.”

We might be back to normal, but I’d already put a big down payment on Jeremy’s Mr. Darcy wardrobe, and I’d already committed to finding out whether I had it in me to pull off the feat of the year: training a construction worker to become Mr. Darcy in two weeks. It was a challenge my competitive little self could not pass up.

“Oh, no, that’s all right,” I said, wiping away a glob of salad dressing near my lip with another brown paper napkin. “I actually found another partner. I’m going to be your competition.”

Chapter 12

Thursday

“All right,” I said the next night, shuffling cards at my small kitchen table, a purposefully catlike grin perched on my face. “The game is called ‘whist.’”

Jeremy sat across from me, my best friend, Ellie, sat to my right, and Luke sat to my left. I had begged/bribed both Ellie and Luke to play. Jeremy was there for his first lesson. Luke and Ellie had never gotten along. Like me, Ellie was a feminist and a semi-nerd. She’d been my best friend since high school. She was less nerdy than me, but that wasn’t saying much.

She was a nurse practitioner at Froedtert Hospital, and scrubs and comfortable clean white tennis shoes were her jam. She was as responsible and dependable as I was and she disliked Luke after years of having to listen to my stories about his flaky exploits with the model-like women he dated. For his part, Luke thought Ellie was uptight, which was pretty much his go-to accusation for anyone who had a mortgage, and say, a regular job.

Ellie had just returned from her work conference in Chicago. She had on skinny jeans and a black, cable-knit, short-sleeved sweater. Her long blonde hair was pulled up in a ponytail and her tilted gray eyes were watching Luke with ill-concealed distaste.

Luke was wearing wrinkled canvas shorts and a Bob Dylan T-shirt. He was shoeless as usual and steadfastly ignoring Ellie’s glare. Meanwhile, Jeremy was wearing dark jeans and a gray pullover, and I had on jeans and my Wellesley sweatshirt. We sat around my cozy four-seater kitchen table where I had placed two decks of cards in the center.

After dropping the I’m-going-to-be-your-competition bomb on Harrison at lunch yesterday, I’d asked him to