yours will start working and realize that before too long.”
His grandmother could be just as bad as his mother at trying to get him married off. She was just a bit more discerning.
“Did she leave a cell number or tell you where she was going?”
“No, but if I was you I’d just sit still. She’ll be back eventually to have it out with you.”
Ethan relaxed. She was right. Mackenzie would be back to give him hell, he just had to let her get over the shock.
“And Ethan. Get that girl a ring! An engagement’s not real until there’s a ring on her finger.”
He hung up. That wasn’t a bad idea, actually. He’d always found jewelry to have a calming effect on women.
He drove by her house on the way to the jewelry store, unsurprised to see a TV crew waiting already. Mackenzie would be surprised, but it was her fault for not giving her cell number out at work. Then he drove to a jeweler that he’d visited a number of times at the end of a relationship. He’d never needed jewelry at the beginning before and he wondered if Mackenzie would find that as funny as he did.
He doubted it. She would probably say it had something to do with the kind of woman he normally dated and he wouldn’t disagree with that. Mackenzie was a different breed altogether.
He found a diamond ring that would work until he could get her a custom one. It was probably better to save the nice one until she’d had time to cool down anyway.
Three
Mackenzie parked at the end of her street and watched with growing disbelief. Multiple news vans blocked her driveway and neighbors stood out on the sidewalk watching. Some were even being interviewed. How could one single man wreak such havoc?
She slowly turned the car around and headed back to the nearest gas station. She was either going to have to fix this mess soon or break down and get a cell phone.
She called his mother again. “I have reporters at my house. How do I get ahold of your son?”
Christine was silent and Mackenzie tamped down her frustration. The woman wasn’t going to let Mackenzie anywhere near Ethan as long as she was afraid bodily harm was the order for the day.
It was; Mackenzie just needed to hide it better.
Mackenzie said, slightly more calmly, “No one can undo this but him. I need to talk to him. Could you give me his cell number? I don’t need, or want, to see him.”
She heard Ellen in the background and then a scuffle as the phone changed hands. “You two are going to fight this the whole way, aren’t you? Call Ethan; he’s looking for you.”
Ellen read off his number and the suite he was staying in and Mackenzie hung up, rethinking whether she really wanted to talk to him or not.
She was going to fight it the whole way. But she knew better than anyone that Ethan got what he wanted as long as it was worth the cost. He wasn’t going to just change his mind about their pretend engagement; he thought it fixed all his problems. He would pay a lot for that, and considering that she was the one paying, not him, there wasn’t much hope convincing him it wasn’t going to work.
And she certainly wasn’t going to win this battle by appealing to his better nature; he’d known before he started the ball rolling that it would disrupt her life and give her a heart attack.
She needed to either make him see that it wouldn’t help him like he thought or make her terms too damn expensive to be worth it.
She dialed his number slowly, wondering if he would even pick up an unknown number, but it barely rang before his voice came on the line. “Mackenzie?”
She let out a pent up breath. “My house is inundated with reporters.”
“I know. I drove by trying to find you after you ran away.”
She ignored his dig. “What are you going to do about it?”
“I think we should let them take some pictures. That’s all they want.”
“They want pictures of your fiancé. I am not, nor will I ever be, your fiancé.”
He sighed heavily. “Mackenzie, I know you normally wouldn’t help me out for any reason, but I need you. I really do.”
There was silence on the line as they both digested that. He didn’t seem to like saying it anymore than she liked hearing it.
He sounded desperate. How