Billionaire for Valentine

“Oh, my God, I can’t do this, it’s hopeless! We’re not going to be able to pull it off.” Victoria Rauscher heard the panic in her partner’s voice and struggled to keep her own alarm under control. One of them had to stay calm. Otherwise they were both going to lose their minds…not to mention their fledgling graphic design business. “Calm down. We’re almost there.” Evelyn, her partner and more-than-slightly ditzy younger sister, thrust her hand into her spiked blond hair, sending it into even more crazy directions than it had been before. A highly sought-after graphic designer, Evelyn had no head for business, but wow, was the girl creative…and not just with her hair. Her graphics were incredible. Her drawings collectible. Her fashion sense wildly imaginative. Too bad she was pretty helpless in nearly every other aspect of her life. “I dropped the file. The last six photos went everywhere. Just shoot me now.” She looked utterly exhausted, with dark circles under her eyes and a haggard hollowness in her cheeks. Evelyn was usually very precise about her appearance, but right now her yellow T-shirt was stained with something that was either ketchup from today’s fries or tomato sauce from last night’s pizza. They hadn’t left their office in thirty-six hours. Not since Evelyn’s expensive, nearly brand-new computer had crashed, taking most of the files for the high-end, glossy brochure they were producing down with it. And almost taking down their company, too. Because if they lost this job—creating the programs for a ritzy charity bachelor auction scheduled for next week on the night of Valentine’s—they were finished. They wouldn’t make the already-late rent, or keep the power on, or cover the printing bill. They’d be out of business overnight, after only being in it for eight months. This was a  make or break situation and they needed to make it. “We can handle this,” Victoria insisted. “We’ve come this far, we’re almost there.” “Maybe we could contact Mrs. Baxter…” “No. Absolutely impossible.” They could not let the snooty Junior League socialite know they’d had yet another mishap in the design job. No way. They were already on probation, thanks to a few hiccups—like Evelyn’s case of the flu and a flood in the office. If they admitted to the computer crash, the woman would kick them to the curb for good. “I can’t even tell them apart anymore,” Evelyn wailed, waving toward the table laden with photographs and copy. “Looking at one gorgeous man after another, hour after hour…” “Tough job.” “It’s not funny. I thought we were in the clear when we found the backup set of hard copies. Why didn’t we put the bachelors’ info on the back when we made them?” The biographies of the bachelors being auctioned off to support Chicago’s needy children had been on the backs of the originals. But the originals had gone back to the Victoria-pinching auction organizer, Mrs. Baxter, once they’d been copied and scanned. Now they had the scans on disc, and they had the hard duplicates. They even had the printed biographies. They just didn’t have any of those things together. And they had no way of knowing who was who. If not for some easily identifiable, well-known bachelors, some handwritten notes, as well as Google, which they’d accessed on Victoria’s still-working laptop, they would have had to give up. But not now. We’re not giving up now. “We’re down to those last six men, Evelyn,” Victoria insisted, bending to pick over the spilled photos. She laid them out on the worktable, grabbing the small index cards with the bios. “And I just identified four of them.” Evelyn’s eyes widened in delight. “Really?” Victoria nodded, putting the correct bio cards with the correct faces, clipping them together in case there were any more spills. “I have spent the past five hours looking at archives in the Trib and I’ve found more of our boys. Eligible bachelors apparently get a lot of press coverage.” Evelyn threw her arms around Victoria and squeezed her. “So we’re down to these last two.” Yes. Just two. “But we’re out of time. We have less than an hour to get the whole package to the printer’s if we’re going to make the deadline.” No more time to research…no more hesitation. Victoria lifted the two photographs, studying the handsome faces carefully. Both were dark-haired, but that was where the resemblance ended. One had warm brown eyes, the other vivid blue. One’s hair was short and conservative, the other’s a little longer, almost brushing his collar. One had a dangerous glint in his eye, the other a sexy smile on his curved lips. “One is a paramedic, the other an international businessman,” Victoria whispered, knowing their bios by heart. “One of you is Jake and one of you is Seamus.” Evelyn came closer, looking over Victoria’s shoulder. Victoria could almost feel her sister’s heartbeat just inches from her arm. She could definitely hear her deep, quick inhalations. This was the moment—she had to choose. Suddenly remembering that old Lady or the Tiger story from her school days, she drew in a deep breath and pointed to the unsmiling one with the short hair and brown eyes. “He’s got to be the businessman.” Beside her, Evelyn immediately nodded, pointing toward the other picture with the smiling, longer-haired guy. “And that’s a strong rescue worker if I ever saw one.” “So we’re agreed?” “Agreed. Absolutely. No doubt about it.” Then it was done. Victoria clipped the bios to the back of each picture, glad her sister was just as confident as she was that they’d made the right choice. Then she sat down to finish up the program on her own, older computer. And as she typed away as fast as she could, incorporating the newly recreated graphics, she tried hard to pretend she didn’t hear her younger sister’s whisper. “I hope.”