The Substitute Wife Dallas Schulze

When Luke Quintain's fiancée dumped him, Catherine Lang understood

immediately that she was the perfect solution to his problem. Leggy, flame

haired and wise beyond her years, she decided that he should marry her

instead.

But even though Luke needed a wife by his thirty-sixth birthday or he

would lose his inheritance, he had to say "No!" Well, that was what he tried

to say, but somehow Cat left with a ring on her finger and a wedding date

on her calendar. And Luke could only curse his grandfather's positively

medieval blackmailing scheme...and count the seconds till the wedding

night.

Cat, of course, knows her own mind ― and her own heart ― and she

wants Luke. Meanwhile, Luke is wondering how long this will play out,

and hoping that it might be a little longer with each passing day. The

problem is, he's quite capable of doing something very stupid ― like falling

for Cat.

Because sometimes love just doesn't take no for an answer.

Chapter One

"Let me get this straight. You're eloping to Las Vegas

with an old lover and you're asking me to break the news to

your fiancé that you're dumping him?" Cat stared at her

stepsister in disbelief.

"Really, Cat, you don't have to make it sound so... sordid."

Devon Kowalski paused in her packing, her neatly plucked

brows drawn together in a distressed frown, her lower lip

hovering on the edge of a pout. With her big blue eyes and

delicate features, she made a heart-tugging picture of hurt

innocence. Cat, who knew for a fact that Devon had

practiced that particular expression in front of a mirror,

was unmoved. She arched her brows and waited, and after

a moment, Devon's expression shifted to a more genuine, if

less attractive, pout.

"You're the one who likes to read those trashy romance

novels," she snapped. "I'd think you'd understand me

wanting to marry for love."

"I understand wanting to marry for love," Cat said. "What

I don't understand is how you can break off your

engagement this way. You owe it to Luke to talk to him, tell

him what's going on. You can't just put news like that in a

note and ask me to hand it to the man."

"Well, I can't mail it. I mean, what if it doesn't get there

or something? And it would be tacky to just leave a

message on his answering machine," she said with a selfrighteous air, as if inviting Cat to congratulate her on her

sensitivity. What Cat really wanted to do was thump her on

the head to see if there was anyone home in there.

Devon folded a blue silk nightie and tucked it along the

side of the suitcase she was packing, then reached for a

handful of panties and bras, all pastels and lace, and began

tucking them into nooks and crannies.

Watching her, Cat racked her brain for what she could

say to make Devon change her mind. Oh, not about

breaking the engagement. Frankly, Luke Quintain should

drop to his knees and thank whatever gods he liked that

Devon's high school sweetheart had returned from the

wilds of Minnesota or Michigan or wherever he'd been just

in time to sweep Devon off her dainty size-four feet and out

of Luke's life. Not that Devon was the Wicked Witch of the

West, but she was spoiled and selfish and unlikely to make

anyone a particularly good wife. Luke was definitely better

off without her. Actually, the high school sweetheart would

probably be better off without her, too, but that was his

problem. No, it wasn't the engagement she wanted Devon

to change her mind about, it was the method of breaking

if.

Devon might think that leaving a message on the man's

answering machine was tacky, but this wasn't much better.

And Cat wasn't all that crazy about being the bearer of bad

tidings. It wasn't that she expected Luke to lop off her

head, but she hated the idea that whenever he thought of

her it would be as the person who'd given him the news

that his fiancée had run off with another man. Not that he

was likely to think of her at all, she admitted wistfully. Once

the engagement was broken, he would probably put Devon

Kowalski and everyone associated with her right out of his

mind. And even if he did think of her, it was clear that his

taste ran to fragile little blondes with big blue eyes, not tall,

leggy redheads with generous curves. Fragile was not a

word that ever applied to a woman who stood five feet nine

inches in her stocking feet, Cat admitted with a faint sigh

"Don't you think you owe it to Luke to talk to him, explain

about Rick coming back from Michigan and how you

realized you were still in love with him?"

"Luke will be upset. He might say mean things," Devon

said, as if that explained everything, and Cat supposed it

did. One of Devon's biggest talents was avoiding

unpleasantness of any kind. As far as she was concerned,

the thought that Luke might say something "mean" was

reason enough to avoid the encounter. It would never occur

to her that when a man found himself, dumped four weeks

before the wedding, he might be entitled to say one or two

mean things.(5)