Married By Mistake

would be nice if Adam would allow just a tiny bit of clinging. Eloise’s relationship with him was the polar opposite of Anna May’s with Henry.
    “Just take me to see him. Please, Sam, you’re my friend.” Oh dear, she hadn’t meant to reach out and clasp his hand where it rested on the arm of his recliner. It was the sort of gesture she wouldn’t think twice about with one of her girlfriends, but with Sam... The feel of his fingers beneath hers distracted her, and for a moment she tightened her grip. How long had it been since she’d touched roughened male skin? Oh, James, James.
    Sam’s face was brick-red as he extricated his hand. He stood up. “James was one of my closest friends,” he said, and for a moment she thought he’d read her thoughts. “I count Adam a good friend, too. But you and I both know you don’t see me as a friend, Eloise.”
    She felt heat in her cheeks and was about to contradict him when he said fiercely, “And we both know I don’t think of you as just a friend.”
    Eloise scrambled off the couch, less elegantly than she’d have liked. She stared at Sam, uncertain.
    But the fire left him as suddenly as it had blazed. “If there’s anything else I can do...” he said mildly. “Maybe drive you to your dinner tonight? If you plan on drinking wine I could fetch you afterward....”
    It was the sort of offer he was always making, implying she was incompetent. “I am perfectly capable of driving myself.” Eloise drew herself up to her full five feet seven—which suddenly didn’t feel tall enough—and said with all the imperiousness she could summon, “You asked what you could do for me. I told you, and you refused. Don’t ever say those hollow words to me again.”
    As she swept from the room, she said over her shoulder, “You, Sam Magill, are no gentleman.”
    * * *
    “A DAM ,” Casey said on Sunday afternoon. “Are we rich and famous?”
    Adam looked up from the newspaper. Casey was sitting on the couch, along with...was that the hotel maid sitting next to her, face blotchy and eyes puffy?
    “We?” he said cautiously.
    “Mr. and Mrs. Adam Carmichael.”
    He flinched, and she grinned.
    “Why do you ask?” The maid was definitely crying, sniveling into a handkerchief that looked suspiciously like one of Adam’s. Casey was clasping the girl’s free hand.
    Whatever was going on, Adam knew he wasn’t going to like it.
    “I mean,” Casey said, “do people do as you tell them?”
    “Usually.” Everyone except his family.
    “Great.” Casey turned to the maid. “Don’t worry, Ria, we’ll help you.”
    The girl sobbed something incoherent in Spanish.
    “Casey...” Adam murmured. Her eyes met his, wide with innocent inquiry. He jerked his head meaningfully at the maid. Counting on the girl not understanding, or being too upset to listen, he said, “Emotional blackmail.”
    Casey bristled. “Poor Ria hasn’t seen her fiancé in six months. He doesn’t have a U.S. work permit, so he’s stuck in Mexico. I’d be crying, too.”
    “Did she ask you to help?” The girl had a nerve—Adam would complain to the hotel management.
    “Of course not,” Casey said, affronted on the maid’s behalf. “I offered.”
    That was even worse.
    “What happened to being selfish?” he demanded.
    “I can’t be that selfish.”
    “This—” he meant their plan “—won’t work if you don’t.”
    Before he could stop her, Casey phoned the manager and invited him up to the suite. When he arrived, she asked him to apply for a work permit for the maid’s boyfriend and give him a job. “My husband and I would be so grateful,” she said, with what Adam conceded was an impressively straight face. And when the manager appeared less than willing, she grasped his hands and pleaded with him.
    With Casey holding his hands and batting her eyelashes, what else could the guy do but agree?
    The maid was ecstatic, the manager thrilled to have earned Casey’s glowing smile. Adam found himself tipping the girl what he imagined would be half a week’s wages. Which totally went against his policy of giving generously through organized charities. He suspected his sole motivation was to earn the same kind of approval from Casey that the manager had.
    Why should I care what Casey thinks of me?
    “See how easy that was?” she said, when they had the suite to themselves again. She beamed that wide smile he was coming to associate with her, an open smile that drew people to her