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  PILLOW TALK

  Hailey North

  She Dreamed of Finding Mr. Right

  Margaret "Call me Meg" McKenzie Cooper will do anything to make her children's dreams for a daddy come true—even if it means accepting a stranger's outrageous marriage proposal. Only she hadn't counted on the man's brother being the dangerously sexy Parker Ponthier—or that making her children's dreams come true would mean risking her heart.

  Could This Dream Come True?

  Any woman between eight and eighty would kill to flaunt Parker's heirloom diamond engagement ring. The New Orleans millionaire doesn't want someone who's after his bank account—he's looking for a lifetime of love. Meg is warm, passionate, and sets his soul on fire. But while his instincts warn him that she's nothing but trouble with a capital "T," Parker decides that for once in his life he's going to follow his heart.

  One

  "D-dead?" Margaret "Call me Meg, please!" McKenzie Cooper Ponthier heard her voice rise. The wool suit she'd grabbed to cover her camisole dropped to her lap as she stared open-mouthed at the dark-eyed stranger who had entered her hotel room, key in hand. "Jules is dead?"

  The man nodded, a grim turn to his lips.

  Meg fumbled for the hotel robe she'd dropped beside the bed when she'd started trying on the outfits Jules had insisted on having sent over from Saks. She knotted the sash firmly, then stepped from where she'd been sitting on the king-size bed in which she'd slept alone after Jules had settled her in the room the previous night, before he had disappeared.

  "Tell me two things," she said, drawing herself up to her full five feet four inches. "Who are you and how do you know he's dead?"

  A dark shadow passed over the man's face. He clenched his fists and Meg knew there was no sense in protesting. This man had seen the mask of death. She swallowed and tugged at the knot of her robe.

  He stepped forward. His dark eyes had a storm brewing in them. He took in the rumpled covers of the bed, the dress boxes from Saks, then raked her with his gaze. The piercing survey began at her bare toes, ran her up calves, swept over the white terry robe, noted the curly jumble of her long brown hair and fastened on her mouth.

  Meg felt as if he could see beneath her robe to the skimpy camisole and tap pants she'd tried on right before he'd opened the door. She opened her mouth to order him from her room, when he said, "Jules always did get his money's worth."

  "And just what do you mean by that?" Meg's reaction was more alarm than indignation. Had Jules told someone why he'd hired Meg? "I'm asking you again, who are you?"

  "Why? You always get your customer's identification before you take their cash?"

  "Excuse me?"

  The man shrugged and produced a smooth leather wallet. "Knowing Jules, he didn't pay you before he left. What's he owe you?" He fingered a hundred-dollar bill. "Two? Three?"

  Meg stared at the cash. This man thought she was a hooker! She started to laugh at the preposterous notion, an urge that grew as she thought about what his reaction would be if she answered, "Twenty thousand dollars."

  Instead of responding, she grabbed the phone. "If you don't leave this room in the next two seconds, I'm calling security."

  "Look, honey, the jig's up. Money train's gone bye-bye." Several bills fluttered from his hand and landed on the bed. "Put your clothes on and get out. Take the new ones with you for all I care." The man's shoulders slumped and sorrow softened his expression. "Sugar daddy is never coming back."

  Noting the sense of loss, Meg said once more but in a less demanding voice, "Who are you?"

  He had crossed to the sofa on the other side of the large room. Over his shoulder, he said, "If you must know, I am Jules's brother."

  His brother. Meg clasped a hand over her mouth to keep from responding. She wouldn't have reacted more strongly if he'd said the devil himself. Yet the resemblance was there. While Jules had been slimmer, almost effete, this man was solid, strength evident in his broad shoulders and a sense of purpose signaled by his bearing. Jules had worn polo shirts and slacks under his blazer; this man wore a white dress shirt and dark tie with his expensive suit.

  A knock sounded at the door and both Meg and the man called, "Come in."

  A uniformed hotel employee weighed down by a huge basket wrapped in purple and green cellophane walked in. "Excuse me, Miz Ponthier," the man said, "but the manager wanted to send these to you and Mr. Jules with his compliments."

  Meg stared at the basket, admiring the magnum of champagne nestled among chocolates and beautifully polished fruits. Compliments? For a marriage for hire entered into out of desperation on her part, desperation born out of trying to hold her family together after her husband's untimely death a year ago and the resulting discovery that his legacy to her had been a financial quagmire that threatened to overwhelm the lives of her three children and herself.

  He carried the basket in and settled it reverently on the low table in front of the sofa. As he lifted his head, he said, "Oh, Mr. Parker, sir, I didn't see you, what with the basket and all."

  "Clinton, isn't it?"

  The employee nodded.

  "How's your mother?"

  The man dropped his head and rubbed the raised seam along the outer leg of his uniform pants. "She's good some days, Mr. Parker, and not so good other days."

  Meg stared as the man produced his wallet a second time and pressed a bill into the employee's hand. Jules had described his brother as the most tight-fisted man in the world, yet here he was opening his own purse for the second time to cover expenses that properly belonged to Jules.

  When Jules had tried to persuade her to assist him in his plans, he had described his brother as ruthless, selfish, and utterly bent on having his own way in the management of the family's corporation, despite what was good for the family and the hundreds of employees. And that meant refusing to accept a buyout offer Jules had wooed from a multinational corporation, an offer that would leave everyone in the Ponthier family on easy street for the next several generations.

  The brother knew Jules was dead. Was he responsible?

  Meg shivered. The hotel employee was smiling and saying something in a low voice to Parker. She'd lost the thread of the conversation.

  "…the manager had it from the nighttime bartender who had it from Mr. Jules."

  The man called Parker said, "Thank you, Clinton, and thank Mr. Stibbs for the basket."

  Clearly dismissed, Clinton headed for the door.

  "Wait!" Meg hated to be outdone. This man had delivered the gift to her and her—well, her husband. Jules had drilled into her during their flight from Las Vegas that she had to convince the family she was well-bred and dignified enough for Jules to have married.

  She lifted one of the hundred-dollar bills Parker had tossed on the bed and pressed it into Clinton's hand. "My best to your mother," she said.

  "Bless you," he said. "I hope Mr. Jules appreciates what a nice lady you are."

  Meg glanced at Parker, who had one eyebrow raised in a cynical manner that really got her back up.

  Clinton left the room, shutting the door behind him.

  Meg and Parker faced one another from opposite sides of the celebratory basket.

  She waited for him to speak. What the heck. He had to be just as surprised to meet his new sister-in-law as she was to meet her brother-in-law.

  There was only one thing she really wanted him to say. She wanted to hear that Jules wasn't really dead.

  "Overdoing it a bit, aren't you?" His voice was rough-edged and drawled just a bit too much for Meg's comfort. The slow winding of his question made her think of one of the many rattlers that loved to sun in the rocks outside Las Vegas, in the wild of the desert the city hadn't etched its name on.

  "What do you mean?" She tried no
t to sound hostile; her situation was far from good right at this moment. She thought she'd been thrown for a loop when Ted died. But this!

  The difference was Ted had been her husband for eleven years.

  He gestured to the basket. "You and Jules. He told the bartender downstairs he'd decided to settle down. He never gave a thought about the reputation of the women he brought to this suite before. Certainly not enough to make up some bogus tale." Parker stroked his chin, eyes narrowing. "What's different about you?"

  Meg wanted to slap him for his arrogance, for his refusal to give credit to the story. Then she realized he was running a critical eye over her body, cataloguing her as she stood there in the white terrycloth robe with its Hotel Maurepas insignia her only accessory. Even her feet were bare. She thrust her chin in the air and dared him to comment.

  Which he did, being the arrogant jerk he was proving himself to be.

  "I can see why he tried for a degree of respectability," Parker said, reaching down and undoing the bow that held the cellophane covering the gift basket. "You're certainly a step above his usual floozies."

  "What did you say?" Meg heard the frost in her voice. No one talked to her this way. Back in the old days of her youth when she'd had to fend for herself in the girls' home, then been bounced from foster home to foster home, she'd learned the value of toughness, of defending herself.

  "I said—" He looked up from the ribbon that he'd worked loose. "Look, whoever you are, there's no point in sparring. My brother is dead. I just identified him to the satisfaction of the New Orleans Police Department." His shoulders slumped and he let go of the ribbon. "I came here, to Jules's favorite place to hide from the world, for a few moments of peace to say good-bye to my brother, so why don't you get your things and run along and leave me in that peace?"

  Meg stepped forward and with one swift jerk unfastened the ribbon. The cellophane fell open. She'd been of a mind to do just what Parker had suggested—get out of that room as fast as she could and find her way back to Las Vegas. With the several hundred dollars the s.o.b had flung onto the bed, she could have done just that.

  But then she'd given Clinton a hundred dollars.

  Besides, taking that money would mean accepting the implication she'd earned it from spending the night with Jules.

  But this man needed to learn a lesson.

  And she, Margaret "Call me Meg, please!" McKenzie Cooper Ponthier, was going to give it to him.

  He sank onto the sofa and reached for the magnum of champagne. He turned it in his hands, hands that Meg saw held the heavy bottle without any show of effort. "He did like champagne," he said, rubbing a finger over the label.

  "Yes, he did," she murmured, knowing full well Jules preferred bourbon and water. At least that's what he'd consumed at the Pinnacle Casino the night he'd asked her to marry him.

  "And chocolate," Parker said, pulling out an orange-foil-covered chocolate delicacy.

  Meg murmured something that sounded like agreement. She had no idea what Jules liked. The only thing she'd seen him consume were the bourbon and waters she'd served him during her shifts at the Pinnacle's lobby bar. He'd skipped the peanuts offered on the flight to New Orleans, ordered dinner for her from room service and prowled about the room while she'd attempted to eat.

  Then he'd disappeared on that mysterious errand and she'd not seen him again.

  "And hazelnuts," Parker said, reaching for a handful of nuts in the basket. "I've got to hand it to Stibbs, he's got a great memory."

  Meg nodded, surprised to hear something that sounded like a choked-back sob coming from the man seated on the sofa. Perhaps he really had come here to mourn his brother. But everything Jules had told her warned her otherwise.

  "Nice show of sympathy," Meg said, thinking to feel him out.

  He raised his head and his eyes bored into hers. "Only a fool talks of what they do not know," he said, his voice so low she had to lean forward to catch his words.

  She felt as if he'd slapped her; then she realized the folly of him speaking those words.

  "Now ain't that the truth," she said, mimicking his own drawling speech.

  He cocked his brows.

  She smiled.

  "I'd like to be left alone," she said, walking to the door and holding it open. "With my memories of my husband."

  He didn't even budge. "Husband?" He fingered several of the hazelnuts and gazed at her beneath lowered lids. "Look, I went along with that story when Clinton was here to salvage whatever is left of the family's reputation. But if you think I believe my brother married you, you're nuts. Jules was a snob and even though he messed up both his marriages, he always married his own kind."

  This man was a snob, pure and simple. Meg bristled, forgetting that a stranger's opinion didn't matter a hill of beans to her. So what if he thought she was an expensive hooker. She should go home to Las Vegas and use the ten thousand dollars Jules had paid her in advance to bail out her family's finances.

  Yet she couldn't stand to let this man judge her as a one-night stand who'd meant nothing to his brother. In an icy tone, she said, "Perhaps you didn't know your brother as well as you think. Because we did marry and I have the papers to prove it."

  He rose from the sofa, his body uncoiling like a rattler changing position in the desert sun.

  Meg started to retreat, then curled her bare toes into the lush carpet to steady herself. She did have the documents that showed she was Mrs. Jules Ponthier III. Just let him dispute it.

  She had no clue what would happen to Jules's plans for his family's company now that he was dead. He'd gone into a lengthy explanation of the complicated setup of the family corporation, but all Meg knew for sure was that by being married, Jules's voting power doubled. Whether she inherited that with his death, she had no idea.

  Should she remain in New Orleans and do what she could for him? Meg was too stunned by the news of his death to process her decision. For the ten thousand dollars Jules had already paid her, did she owe him loyalty? He'd been kind to her, too, and kept his word about not jumping her body.

  For that alone, Meg would carry out her end of the bargain. She held out her hand, every inch the grand lady Jules had wanted her to play. "Forgive me," she said, letting her words catch in her throat, "my distress over the news of Jules's death has kept me from remembering my manners. I'm Margaret Cooper—er, Ponthier. But call me Meg, please."

  "Well, I'll be damned." The drawl had disappeared. Parker towered over her, his hands on the hips of his expensive wool suit pants. "I do believe you're serious."

  Meg gave him what she hoped was an imperious stare. Hard to do garbed in a bathrobe, but determination helped. A lot.

  Ever so slowly, he extended his right hand.

  "Parker Ponthier," he said, staring at her hand as she accepted his overture.

  She nodded. "The—er, younger—brother." Darn, but she'd almost said the words "evil." She flushed and observed that he seemed to notice. He retained her hand in his.

  Without saying anything, he just kept holding her hand, his dark eyes studying, assessing, then he released his hold.

  For a second, she wished he hadn't let go. She'd sensed in his touch a gentleness his words and his body language hadn't even hinted at. She'd felt, too, a connection with another person—face it, Meg—a man, she hadn't experienced in a long, long time.

  "I see you were already busy spending his money," he said, jarring her with a scathing glance at the Saks boxes scattered across the bed. "At least you won't need to shop for the funeral."

  Funeral. That word rang in Meg's mind. She still found it impossible to conceive of Jules as dead. She also didn't know how he'd met his end. As the grieving widow, she'd certainly be expected to ask. And as a caring human being who'd known the man only for a short time, she sincerely wanted to know. "How did Jules—die?"

  Parker's response was a strangled sound that ended in a harsh laugh. He shook his head, then studied her with his head tilted to one side. "Just
how well did you know your late husband, Miz Ponthier?"

  He drew out the Miz so that it sounded about eight syllables long. Meg tried not to squirm and said, "Well enough. Why?"

  "Then you should know he didn't go out fighting the worst demon of his life."

  She licked her lips and wondered what in the world he meant. Having known Jules for less than three days, she was definitely at a disadvantage in this conversational parrying. So she waited, fingering the lapels on the bathrobe as she observed Parker warily, waiting for him to reveal enough information for her to form a response.

  As she watched, Meg noticed the curve of his lips, the restrained power of his broad shoulders. She followed the line of his arm, admiring the graceful strength that Jules had lacked. Her eyes rested on his hand that had touched her own and she felt again the warmth of his skin.

  Meg, Meg, you're in enough trouble! She hastily tucked her hand into the pocket of her robe. After what she'd done, she had no business responding to Parker Ponthier as a woman to a man, no matter how compelling she might find him.

  Even though she'd sent Jules Ponthier packing when he'd first proposed what he termed a cut-and-dried business proposition, Meg had acquiesced when he persisted. It seemed to her to be an answer to her prayers on salvaging her family from financial ruin and she'd never been one to turn away from an opportunity.

  But now, with Jules dead, this masquerade had reached a whole different level of complications than she'd imagined when she'd leapt feet first into the role of Miz Jules Ponthier the Third.

  "Since you're obviously going to pretend you don't know what I'm talking about, I'll get to the point." He slammed one fist against the palm of the other hand. "He died trying to buy a few lousy grains of cocaine. But you wouldn't know anything about that demon or any other one, for that matter, would you?" He was practically shouting and Meg kept from flinching by telling herself he was understandably upset. He'd just lost his brother.

  She licked her lips and let him rave on.

  "He'd been clean for almost a year. Then—" he pointed to her "—off to Las Vegas for the weekend and he's hooked again."