Marriage by Mistake

put his hand on the knob and swung the door wide.
    It was not room service. His wife stood in the hall, her nose in the air and an array of mismatched suitcases laid around her feet.
    Dean's heart did a staggered double-beat.
    "Two months," she said crisply. "We'll give it a two month trial period. I keep my apartment and take a leave of absence from my job. I can manage that—barely."
    Dean could hardly hear her for the blood rushing through his ears. Black pants hugged her hips like a second skin. A stretchy top did the same for her ripe, perky breasts. "Two months," he croaked.
    "You were right," she said. "A promise is a promise." She rolled her shoulders. "At least, it's a promise if you're the man I made it to."
    The words brought Dean's gaze up from her body. "Who else would I be?"
    "I don't know." She shrugged again. " That fellow loved me."
    The blood, so hot, went cold in Dean's veins. "Pardon me?"
    "You don't." Her eyes averted. "So I'll give it two months, two months to figure out who you are, to see if there could be love."
    Dean felt a growl, low in his throat. "I never said I loved you."
    She looked over at him, surprised. "Sure you did."
    "When?" Dean challenged.
    She looked down her lashes. "Well, for one time, right there in our wedding vows."
    He stared at her.
    "So what do you say?" She hitched her purse higher over her shoulder. "Two months, that's my offer. Take it or leave it."
    Dean was still staring. She was right. He had uttered the words. He must have, but—he couldn't have meant them.
    "So?" She narrowed her eyes. "Are you taking or leaving?"
    Just looking at her, even now, Dean could feel the lust pull, low down in his gut. Lust, not love. It was never going to be love , not in a million years.
    The fierceness of her expression began to wilt. "You could say something."
    He looked at her. Yes, he could say something. I lied to you. I would have said anything to get you into bed. To get what I wanted.
    "I'll call a bellhop." Dean turned. "We'll need help if we hope to make that flight."

    CHAPTER FOUR

    As Kelly walked up the jetway, faux tiger-skin purse clutched in one hand, she reminded herself this was only going to be two short months of her life. She'd fly to Boston with the guy, cohabit with him in some safe fashion, and then be done with the whole moral quagmire. She started down the aisle of the plane.
    A dark voice rumbled behind her. "We're here."
    Kelly suppressed a shiver at the timbre of that voice, and its false familiarity. "Here? Oh, you mean the row." She stopped to glance at the number above the seats. "Four?" They were barely inside the plane.
    "That's right," Dean said. "Would you like the window or the aisle seat?"
    Kelly looked down at the spacious upholstered seats and the little table between them. Oh, she realized, first class.
    "Um, I like to look out the window," she answered. Hugging her purse to her chest, Kelly shouldered her way to the seat. She didn't check to see what Dean was doing. So far she'd managed to get by without looking him square in the face since their conversation outside his hotel room door. It was all too bizarre. He shared Dean's name, he owned Dean's body—but he wasn't really Dean.
    She wasn't really married to him.
    At least, that's what she planned to prove. There was no connection between this man and the one to whom she'd made holy vows. She'd satisfy her conscience, the voice in her head that had been shouting she was a hypocrite, that she couldn't live up to her own standards.
    A promise was a promise.
    Kelly sank into her seat. Dean—or whoever he was—lowered into the seat beside her. Little shivers ran up and down Kelly's arms. All right, she responded to the guy's body, but they weren't properly married. In fact, she didn't think it would take as long as two whole months to prove it. That's what she'd told her boss, Rudy, in persuading him to hire a temp to fill her job on the chorus line. She'd also reminded Rudy that she'd pulled him out of more than one hole of his own. Now it was her turn to get pulled out of a hole. And she would get out of it. A mere two months and she'd be back in her own life, no worse for wear.
    Kelly sniffed, pretending she didn't notice every single thing the man beside her was doing. He did not appear to be at all aware of her. As more passengers filed past them, he settled his briefcase on his knees and drew from it a thick sheaf of papers. He immediately began paging through them.
    Kelly wished