The Cinderella Mission by Catherine Mann Read Free Book Online

think we’re a couple and we can use the practice.”
    A couple? How had she gone from getting over him to pretending to be his girlfriend for two weeks? “What have they been told?”
    “That you work for an embassy as a translator. I met you through a friend. We fell for each other, and you’re taking an extended vacation to meet my family.”
    The sense of having been maneuvered washed over her and she didn’t like it. If he’d told her this the night before, she would have shot down his plan.
    And he probably knew it. “When were you going to tell me?”
    “I’m telling you now.”
    Kelly stared out the window and counted passing houses to calm her temper. Of course she didn’t get to count very many since the yards were so darned big. No snowmen littered these lawns like in her Nebraska hometown.
    She’d realized he was wealthy. But this neighborhood wasn’t just rich. It was filthy rich. Beyond-her-comprehension rich.
    He obviously didn’t have to work. She recognized his thrill-seeking need, but he could have channeled that into any number of expensive hobbies. Instead of swimming with sharks in Aruba, he dodged bullets to make others safe.
    Damn. He grew more admirable with each passing Mercedes.
    “This didn’t have to be so complicated.”
    “It isn’t,” Ethan insisted. “If anything, there will be fewer questions and more acceptance than if I’d just shown up at the summit ball with you. People would have been curious about you, which would attract too much attention. This gives everyone two weeks to become accustomed to the idea.”
    “And afterward?”
    “We break up.”
    Breaking up with a guy she’d never gotten to enjoy. That depressed her as much as the loss of his longer hair, the lost chance to test the length and texture with her fingers.
    Ethan turned off the road, pausing at a security gate to punch in a code. Kelly peered through the metal bars.
    This wasn’t just a big house. It was a mansion.
    A white-columned palatial home sprawled before her. Towering evergreens with snowcapped branches proclaimed age and heritage. An iced-over fountain bigger than most pools perched in the middle of a horseshoe driveway.
    All of Ethan’s altruistic qualities aside, he came from a different world. He might as well reside on a different planet. She’d harbored dreams and fantasies about this man for two years, and yet she didn’t know the first thing about him.
    No doubt, their break up would be completely believable.
     
    Steering up the drive, Ethan thought through the round of introductions he would have to make—housekeeper, chauffeur, cook. Thought of all the times he would touch Kelly like an attentive boyfriend. Like a lover.
    His great plan had a serious flaw.
    Too late now. Bottom line, this would protect Kelly on a number of levels. Not only would she be better prepared by his aunt, but Ethan also fully intended to follow through on the plan to teach her self-defense. Who knew what their digging into foreign embassy workings might stir? All the more reason to have her close by where he could guard her.
    At least her voice wasn’t tormenting him anymore since she’d started clamming up four blocks ago. The tension emanating from her had increased with the size of the houses. He dreaded the moment she would turn and look at him differently, when she wouldn’t be able to see past the stacks of money to the man anymore.
    The house might be his but it wasn’t him, and for some reason it became important that Kelly understand that.
    Forget front-door welcomes. He didn’t want her first impression of his home to be some three-story winding staircase and a cathedral ceiling. He sped past the horseshoe driveway and circled around to the back. Pulling into the five-car garage, he parked between his aunt’s Mercedes and the housekeeper’s VW Beetle.
    Ethan shut off the engine as the door slid closed behind them. “Leave your luggage. I’ll bring it up later when I take you to the