Worth the Risk_ A Contemporary - Megan Hart Page 0,8

with her mouth pursed upward, so the fringe of her dark brown bangs blew up from her forehead. "Where should I start?"

"What's my name?"

She shot another quick glance at him. "David Mulder."

Hal wrote down the name. "Interesting."

Laila's full mouth turned down in a frown. "My mother asked me when I was watching a rerun of The X-Files. I was caught off guard."

"Do I look like a David?"

Traffic had slowed to a stop at a bottleneck, and Laila took the moment to look at him fully. Her gaze was frank and assessing, her expression serious. Now he could see that the eyes he'd so admired were not brown as he'd first thought, but a deep, rich caramel. Why was everything about her reminding him of food?

"No," she said finally. "You look like a Hal. But for this week you'll be a David anyway."

"And how did we meet?"

"Six months ago, you came to a meeting at my office and asked me out to dinner. We've been together ever since."

He knew, from the information sheet she'd filled out for LoveMatch, that she worked for Concentric Health Care. "So I'm an insurance agent?"

"Oh, no." Laila shook her head, making her sleek hair bounce around her shoulders. "You're a doctor."

How was he going to pull that off? "As in MD?"

"Of course. You think I'd marry anything less?" Her tone was light and self-mocking, but he detected an undertone of sadness to it.

"Okay. What kind of doctor am I?" Hal's hand was getting a cramp from writing all this down.

"Proctologist."

"What?" He paused in his writing. "Never mind."

"I've given them the idea you're a nice, upstanding citizen, but not much more information than that." Laila sighed.

I can show them my bar mitzvah picture if they want."

"Your--" She stopped and gave him a glance. "You're Jewish?"

"Is that a problem?"

"No. It's perfect. When you see my family, you'll understand. So what's a nice Jewish boy like you doing as a male escort anyway?" Laila asked as they took the highway out of the city.

"I wanted the chance to bring some joy into the hearts of lovely ladies like yourself," he said, giving the patent LoveMatch answer.

Laila snorted. "And your real reason is?"

"I need the money," Hal admitted. "But don't tell Muriel I told you."

"Your secret is safe with me."

He liked her sense of humor. "And I do like meeting women like you."

He could tell by the way her hands tightened on the steering wheel that he'd touched a nerve. "You mean desperate ones?"

"You don't look desperate to me."

Laila sighed. "Well, I am. I love my family, God knows, but I'm just tired of The Question."

He could hear the words capitalized in her tone. "The Question?"

"'When are you going to settle down, give us some more grandchildren?'" Laila sighed again, irritably, tapping her fingers on the wheel. "Don't they know it's not that easy?"

"But you want to get married," Hal offered.

"Sure," Laila said. "Who doesn't?"

"Lots of people don't."

"Don't you?"

He shrugged. "I'd have to give up LoveMatch."

Now she laughed out loud again. "Heaven forbid."

"I was married once," Hal said. The admission surprised him. His marriage to Cassie wasn't something he usually talked about.

Laila wasn't laughing any more. She cleared her throat. "Oh?"

"It--it didn't work out," Hal said stiffly.

Laila knew when to back off. They drove in silence for a few minutes. Hal wrapped up his sandwich. Suddenly he didn't feel like eating any more.

By the time they'd pulled into the long driveway of the lodge where the family celebration was taking place, Laila's shoulders and neck ached from the long drive. They were two hours late. She never should have let Hal play navigator. Men were notoriously bad at admitting they were lost. Hal, apparently, was all male.

She parked at the main building, a lovely Victorian mansion hung with twinkling icicle lights. Now her entire body was tense with the thought of actually trying to make this work. She might be able to fool her brothers, and maybe her sister. Possibly even her mother, who was just so glad to hear she had found someone. But fool Bubbe Esther? The woman was eighty years old and still as sharp as a tack.

"Are you going to be all right?"

Hal squeezed her hand. The unexpected warmth of his fingers against hers sent a tingling shock all the way to her toes. The kindness in his question made her throat feel thick with teary gratitude.

She shook it off and extricated her hand. "We might as well get it over with. Are you ready?"

He nodded.