The Perfect Proposal (2 page)

Biting her lip, the angel shook her head.
“Look, I appreciate you helping me with Dick back there, and I
don’t mean to be ungrateful.” She gave him a little smile, one that
was somehow simultaneously apologetic and unrepentant. “But…I can’t
get in the car with you. I don’t even know you. For all I know, you
could be a serial killer. Maybe even have some plaster of Paris
stashed in the trunk. I’m sorry. I hope you understand.”

It took Mitch a second to make the plaster of
Paris connection—Ted Bundy—and then smiled at her. “I am not a
serial killer.”

“
Well, it’s not like you
would admit it to me, would you?”

“
You said she wanted to go
home, that today had ‘sucked hind tit’ —”

She gasped. “I said that out loud? I thought
I was talking to myself.” She pressed her palm to her forehead and
winced. “Damned tequila.”

“
I’m offering you a ride
home,” he said. “That’s all.”

She hesitated, seemed to
consider him for a moment. A second later her eyes rounded and she
darted for the nearest bush.
Shit
. He hurried over and held her
hair back while she deposited her own brand of fertilizer onto the
designer mulch. When she straightened, he silently handed her a
handkerchief.

She looked up, her gaze clearer and
speculative, as though she didn’t know quite what to make of him.
“All right then,” she said. “Thank you.”

He nodded, strangely relieved, and walked her
to the car. “What changed your mind?”

She settled into the seat and clipped the
belt into place. “The valet,” she sighed as she leaned back and
closed her eyes. “He wrote your tag number down and gave me the
thumb’s up. If you kill me you’ll be in big trouble. I might be
dead, but you’ll go to prison and end up as someone’s bitch. It’s
something to think about.”

Mitch chuckled under his breath and shook his
head. Indeed it was.

She’d swallowed cat fur, Annie thought
groggily, struggling to open her uncooperative eyes. But that
wasn’t possible, because some to think of it…she didn’t have a cat.
She groaned and pushed her tangled hair away from her face, then,
stomach lurching, rolled over and promptly hit the floor.

Annie stilled. That was her first clue
something was amiss. At this point she knew four things. One, her
career was on the brink of disaster. Two, Edward had dumped her.
Three, she’d had entirely too much tequila last night. And, four,
she was lying on her living room floor in nothing but her bra and
panties.

Annie squinted thoughtfully,
then stopped because her face hurt. She couldn’t remember taking
off her dress, and she never slept on the couch.
How on earth—

Then it hit her.

She remembered her hero from last night. The
gorgeous guy with the wavy black hair and clear blue eyes. And that
smile, a devastatingly sexy smile that had held her enthralled last
night. Annie paused. She had the vague impression of his lips
brushing against her forehead. Had he done that? She wondered. Or
had it been wishful thinking? Who knew? But she did know that he’d
scared Dick off, held her hair while she’d vomited, of all things,
and then driven her home.

Annie bit her lip. And apparently he’d
disrobed her as well. Any normal person would have been irate that
he’d taken such a liberty, but all Annie could manage was a brief
scowl followed by the overwhelming relief that she’d had on her
best Victoria Secret lace.

Groaning miserably, she pushed herself up to
check and see if by some chance he’d stuck around, but could tell
by the empty silence that she was alone. Her stained dress lay
folded neatly on an armchair. Maybe he left a note, she thought
hopefully. Her body rebelling with each movement, Annie struggled
into a vertical position and performed a quick search. Nope. No
note. Well, damn. She would have at least liked to thank him for
seeing her home safely.

She smiled again and a flush warmed her from
the inside out. A modern day knight, she thought dreamily.
Dreamily, hell, Annie thought, alarmed at her romantic train of
thought. Note to self, she decided—no more tequila. Still, it
wasn’t every day a woman ran across a generally nice guy. Annie
only remembered bits and pieces of the previous night and, while
she should have remembered her dumping session with Edward,
surprisingly that memory was quite indistinct. Oddly enough, she
could recall more about the helpful stranger who’d come to her
rescue.

Interesting, that.

And there’d been something about him that had
seemed vaguely familiar last night, but Annie knew she’d never met
him. Had she met him, she knew she would have remembered. Those
eyes, in particular, would have been impossible to forget. Then
another thought struck her.

She didn’t know his name.

He’d saved her from Dick,
taken her home, held her hair back—which had somehow been the most
chivalrous thing he’d done for her—and she’d never even gotten his
name. An unwarranted sadness washed over her, leaving her feeling
as though she’d just lost something that could have been incredibly
important. Feeling ridiculous, Annie harrumphed under her breath.
Hell, he was just a guy. Just another potential heartbreaker. So
why the melancholy? Why the dismay? Enough, Annie told herself.
Hadn’t she learned anything?
Dependable
Edward
had dumped her. Sheesh. She should
give up on men and get a cat.

Contemplating the latest plot twist in her
own personal soap opera, Annie sat on the sofa and drew her knees
to her chest. The light of a new day had put an entirely new
perspective on Edward’s defection. After all, she’d planned to
sever the dead-end relationship herself. A small smile curled her
lips. Shallow though it may be, her only regret was that she hadn’t
beaten him to the punch.

Just as quickly, her smile fell. Given the
state of her career, she didn’t have the time or the energy to be
thinking about Edward—or, for that matter, the handsome stranger
who’d driven her home.

Besides, thinking about William’s impending
retirement only worsened her headache. Once her boss was no longer
at Hightower on a day-to-day basis, Annie knew she would miss him
terribly. He was more than a dear friend, he’d become her family
and she’d been under the impression that he’d felt the same way
about her. She really couldn’t think about that right now. It was
too depressing. She’d take the Scarlett O’Hara approach and think
about it tomorrow.

Determined to salvage her Saturday, Annie
shoved her hair out of her eyes and wobbled to the bathroom.
Necessary business finished, she showered and tried to make herself
semi-presentable. She should have taken painkillers before combing
her hair, she decided, wincing with each rake of the brush. Good
grief, how much had she had to drink last night?

Too much, obviously. Hair
secured in a clip and minimal makeup applied, Annie pulled on a
T-shirt, slipped into a pair of shorts, then went and retrieved the
paper. Coffee and paper in hand, she padded back to the living room
and curled into the recliner. She unfurled the
Journal
, flipped to the Lifestyle
section and…froze.

It was her!

And him!

Them!

The picture was grainy and
at a bad angle, particularly for her, Annie noted, scrutinizing it
more closely. Nevertheless, it was them. In the picture, the
striking man was helping her into his car. Vaguely she remembered
that. Her brow puckered. But why would anyone want a picture of
them? The thought had no sooner flitted through her mind when she
read the caption
. Hightower Nabs a Southern
Belle.

Hightower? Annie’s heart began to race. Her
palms slickened. Nausea welled in her throat and tickled her
tonsils. Mitch Hightower? The soon-to-be bane of her existence?

“
Oh, no,” Annie groaned even
as a sickening wave of adrenaline pounded through her veins. She
simply couldn’t believe it. Was she ever going to have any good
luck? Of all the men who might have driven her home, she had to
climb into
his
car?

Shock triggered another surge of panic. Heat
climbed her neck. This morning she’d fancied herself being saved by
a knight in shining armor, when in reality she’d let the devil
drive her home! And to top it off, he’d seen her naked! Oh, Lord,
what had she done? How could she have let something like this
happen? she wondered morosely.

Annie felt like kicking herself. Were it
physically possible she might have tried. No wonder he’d looked
familiar. Though they’d never met, she’d seen enough pictures of
him—usually accompanied by a gorgeous model—in different celebrity
magazines that she should have recognized him. If she hadn’t had so
much to drink, she probably would have.

Then a worse thought occurred to her. Annie
stilled. Mitch would tell William. He’d have to explain the picture
to his uncle. While it was true that Williams’ hearing had suffered
over the past year, his eyesight was still quite good. He’d
undoubtedly recognize her. Annie bit her bottom lip, worrying. Oh,
that was not good. Not good at all, she thought as all the possible
ramifications darted through her mind. A mental picture of her life
being flushed down a giant commode flashed through her frenzied
thoughts. A hysterical burst of laughter bubbled of her throat.

Well, Annie thought, she couldn’t allow Mitch
to unwittingly sabotage her case before she’d even been given the
opportunity to present it. She wasn’t supposed to see William until
their customary Sunday dinner tomorrow, but this was an emergency.
He wouldn’t mind.

Furthermore, she had to get to him before
Mitch did.

With that in mind, Annie fortified herself
with three aspirin, changed clothes, then returned to the bathroom
to give her hair and face another shot.

It wouldn’t do to look hung-over when she
planned to refute being drunk.

“
So glad you finally made it, Mitch,” Uncle Will
told him, slapping his nephew on the back as they adjourned to the
study. “What happened to you last night?” A mysterious twinkle lit
the elder man’s eye, giving Mitch a brief pause.

“
Oh, I got sidetracked,” he
said evasively, then moved to change the subject. A vision of an
angelic woman with deep brown eyes, wild curly hair, and red lace
flashed through his mind. He cleared his throat and pushed the
image away. “How have you been feeling?”

“
Oh, well enough, I
suppose.” Will strolled to the bar and began to put ice into a
glass. “Care for anything to drink?

Mitch shook his head. “Actually, I didn’t
think you…” he trailed off, uncertain as how to reprimand his uncle
for drinking liquor.

William grinned. “It’s apple juice. Hardest
thing I drink these days.”

Mitch smiled, chagrined. “Oh. Sorry.”

“
No apology necessary,”
William assured. A broad grin wreathed his wrinkled face. “Now, if
you hadn’t said something, then I would have been offended.” His
uncle gestured to a chair. “Sit down, sit down. You and I have a
lot to discuss. But before we get into all of that I want to tell
you how sorry I was to hear about Nick.” His uncle shook his gray
head regretfully. “I know you boys were close. So sad when one dies
young. The papers didn’t elaborate and the obit didn’t help. What
happened?”

“
An aneurysm,” Mitch
confided. One minute, Nick had been playing racquetball, the
next…he was gone. Though Mitch had been with his friend at the
time, it was still hard to believe that life’s flame could be
extinguished so easily, especially for a man in the prime of
health. Nick’s death had prompted a lot of introspection and was no
small part of the reason Mitch had decided it was time to come
home.

William tsked. “So sad,” he repeated.

Mitch drew in a deep breath. “Yes, well, it
is. I don’t think that I’ve mentioned it, but that’s part of the
reason I sold my half of Micronet to Alicia, Nick’s widow.” Mitch
looked up just in time to catch a perplexed look on his uncle’s
face. “It was just too hard to work there,” he explained. “Nick and
I had an understanding. I designed the software, he handled the
business end of things.” Mitch exhaled a long breath and reclined
back in his chair. “I could have stuck it out, I suppose, but it
would have never felt like my company. Does that make sense?”

Looking little ill-at-ease, William cleared
his throat. “Um, yes, I suppose it does.”

“
Well, at any rate,
Hightower Advertising will never feel that way.” Mitch sighed, then
smiled. “I’ll be great to be home.”

“
Uh, Mitch,” his uncle
remarked hesitantly. “There’s something I have to tell you. And I
don’t know quite how to begin.”

Dread curdled in his stomach. “We’re broke,”
Mitch stated flatly.

William started. “God, no, boy! It’s not
that.”

Relieved, Mitch released a pent-up breath.
“Then do we need capital? Don’t worry, I have enough to-“

William shook his head. “No, no, um, nothing
like that.” The elder man scratched his balding pate.

Puzzled, Mitch frowned. “Well, what
then?”

William hesitated, then glanced at Mitch.
“I’m not giving you the CEO position, Mitch. You’re going to have
to earn it. I have another person in mind who is every bit as
entitled as you are.”

Mitch blinked. “Earn it?”

His uncle nodded. “You’ve been gone a long
time, boy. I can’t just hand it over to you. Surely you didn’t
think that after five years you could walk in and claim a position
that you didn’t want in the first place.”

Actually, Mitch had thought just that. He
frowned thoughtfully. “But why did you call me?”