"You are important to me. I will make time."
He'd surprised her, he could tell. For the first time, he was seeing how much he'd let her down in recent years, focused solely on his own goals. His own friend was surprised to hear how valuable she was to him.
"That's kind of you, but I know you're busy." She frowned. "It's no trouble to simply enjoy the comfort of my own home."
He made an exaggerated effort to look around the room.
"Is this place lacking? Hell, Addy. Upgrade my sheets if they're not to your liking."
"I'm sure your sheets are fine." She set aside her plate and made a grab for her water, taking a long swallow.
He watched the narrow column of her throat and wondered how he'd ever look at her in a purely friendly way again. Just thinking about her under his sheets was enough to spike the temperature in the room. To distract himself from thoughts of her wrapped in Egyptian cotton, he stood, stalking around the table to sit on the ottoman right in front of her, turning his back on the game.
"But?" he prompted, an edge in his voice from the pent-up frustration of this day with her.
"But no matter how lovely your home is, I'd rather be close to my own things. I don't see the benefit of being here."
"The benefit is the complete privacy as well as safety, since the family compound is absolutely secure. No media gets through the front gate." He knew she valued privacy as much as he did. This angle would be more effective than telling her the truth-that he wanted her close at all times so that he would never miss an opportunity to push his agenda over the next four weeks. "You know as well as I do that public interest in our engagement will be high, especially after how thoroughly the press covered my split with Valentina."
"So I hide out here because of a manipulative ex-lover?" Her expression went stony. "I have business to conduct."
"Use my office," he offered, hitting the button to mute the sound on the television. "The facilities are excellent."
She frowned. "I do not like being put in this position."
He hoped that meant she was done arguing. He couldn't remember ever arguing with Adelaide before today-or at least not since she'd worked for him. "I don't like you leaving, but I'm trying to find a workable solution."
She opened her mouth to speak and then closed it again.
"What?" he prodded her, wanting to know what was going on in her head.
"I'm not looking forward to being in the public spotlight with you."
"You've been there a million times." He knew because he usually met her gaze a few times during his press conferences, her hazel eyes wordlessly communicating to him if he was staying on track or not.
"Not in a romantic way." She shook her head, a few tendrils of dark hair sliding loose from the haphazard knot she'd created. "We've got the Brighter NOLA fund-raiser coming up, and no matter what you say about how convincing I'll be as your fiancée, I definitely don't look the part."
"Because of all the hair tossing and slinky gowns." That comment of hers still burned. He didn't care for that view of himself. "I believe we've covered that. And if you're correct that I've become too predictable in my dating choices, I'm glad for the chance to shake up public perceptions."
"I didn't mean to suggest you only dated women for their looks." She bit her lip. "The sad truth of the matter is a far more practical concern. I have the wardrobe of an assistant. Not a fiancée."
He tried to hide his grin and failed. "So you're saying we actually need the slinky gowns to pull this off?"
"You don't have to look so damn smug about it," she fired back, making him realize how much he'd missed their friendship.
He held up both hands to show his surrender. "No smugness intended. But I sure don't have time to dress shop this week, Addy, what with our first opponent being the defending National Conference champions and all."
"Wiseass," she chided, shaking her head so that the pencil holding the knot in her hair slipped. She reached up to grab it as the dark mass fell around her shoulders.
He'd seen that move before in private moments with her. Never had it made his mouth water. Or kicked his lust into a full-throttle roar.
Some of what he was feeling must have shown on his face because the hint of a smile she'd been wearing suddenly fled. Pupils dilating, she stood up fast, letting go of her hair and setting aside the pencil.
"I'll figure something out." She stared down at him, her face bathed in the blue glow from the television playing silently in the background, her delicate curves visible through the thin fabric of his too-big T-shirt. "With the wardrobe and with my business. I'll use your office and stay here. It's just for four weeks anyway."
She'd just conceded to everything he'd been angling for, but the reminder of the four-week time limit on their arrangement sure stole any sense of victory he might have felt. Slowly, he got to his feet before she bolted.
"Thank you." He wanted to seal the deal with a handshake. A kiss. A night in his bed. But putting his hands on her now might shatter the tenuous agreement they'd come to in the past few hours.
She deserved so much better from him.
She nodded, the big T-shirt slipping off one shoulder to reveal her golden skin. "I'm going to let you watch your film now."
Edging back a step, she moved away from him, and it took all his willpower not to haul her back.
"For whatever it's worth-I'm proud to call you my fiancée. To my family, the media. The whole damn world." He thought she deserved to know that much. Today had shown him that he'd taken her friendship for granted too often.
He hadn't paid attention to her-really paid attention-in far too long.
He paid attention now, though. Enough to see the mix of emotions he couldn't read cross her face in quick succession.
"Good night," she said softly, her cheeks pink with confusion.
Watching her retreat, Dempsey turned on the television even as he knew the game film wasn't going to come close to holding his attention the way Adelaide did.
Four
"Sweetheart, stop fidgeting," Adelaide's mother rebuked her, a mouthful of pins muffling the words.
"I'm just nervous." Adelaide stood on a worn vinyl hassock in the one-bedroom apartment on St. Roch Avenue where she'd grown up.
With less than an hour before her first official public appearance with Dempsey, she had realized the gown she'd chosen for the Brighter NOLA foundation fund-raiser was too long despite her four-and-a-half-inch heels. She could have phoned the exclusive shop where Dempsey had given her carte blanche, but the price tag had nearly given her heart failure the first time around. She couldn't bring herself to request an emergency tailor visit simply because she'd forgotten her shoes the day she'd chosen the dress.
So instead, she brought the pink lace designer confection to her mother's apartment for a last-minute fix. And perhaps she also craved seeing her mom when she was incredibly nervous. She hadn't been home since her "engagement" had become front-page news in the New Orleans paper and she hated that she couldn't confide the truth to her mother. But she could at least soak up some of her mom's love while she got the hem adjusted-with Evan waiting for her out front in the Land Rover.
"Addy." Her mother straightened, tugging the pins out of her mouth and setting them in the upside-down top of the plastic candy dish on the coffee table. "You're engaged to one of the richest, most powerful men in the state. You could have a dozen seamstresses fixing this gorgeous dress instead of your half-blind mama. You know better than to trust a woman who needs bifocals to do this job."
Guilt pinched Adelaide more than her silver-and-pink stilettos.
"You're not half-blind," she argued, leaning down to kiss her mother's cheek and breathing in the scent of lemon verbena. "And you could sew stitches around anyone working on Magazine Street. But I'm sorry to foist off the job on you last minute. I just missed you and I didn't want a snippy tailor frowning at my choice of shoes or thinking how my breasts don't suit the elegant lines of the gown."
Her mother gave her a narrow look. Taller than Adelaide, her mother was a commanding woman who had worked hard to raise Adelaide after her father died in a boating accident when she was just a toddler. Della Thibodeaux had given Adelaide her backbone, but there were days when Addy wished she'd gotten more of that particular trait. Her creativity and her dreamy nature were qualities she'd inherited from her father, apparently. But it was her mother's unflinching work ethic that had helped Adelaide excel at being Dempsey's assistant.