Definitely Not Mr. Darcy

She unbuttoned her blouse, because she couldn’t imagine having Fiona do that for her, while her fingers skipped a few in the excitement. Maybe yesterday she’d been a stressed-out single working mom from the Midwest, almost middle-aged, and with a slightly expanding middle of her own, struggling just to get a decent dinner on the table after a long day of trying to drum up business, but today, on this June morning in England, her fantasy life unfolded before her.

The fantasy would have been even better if she’d been a few pounds lighter, but months of cheap pasta dinners had added seven pounds to her tiny frame.

“Curvy women were al the rage in the Regency era, right, Fiona?”

Fiona was smiling a lot more now and warming up to her, Chloe could tel .

One thing Chloe knew for sure: if the meals here were authentic, there wouldn’t be any pasta, thank goodness. She’d had her fil .

She wriggled her black skirt past her hips. Sure, she was doing this for the business, for Abigail, but the white confection of a gown hanging in front of her enchanted her. It wasn’t a froufrou Victorian with hoops, but a classic Regency with an Empire waist and—that neckline, promising escape from her modern woes or perhaps even a romp in the shrubbery.

Wait a minute, where did that come from? A lady would have to be engaged, if not married, to al ow for a romp in the shrubbery, and that meant there had to be a gentleman involved. She didn’t let her mind wander down that garden path, the path that led to proposals both decent and indecent, because after al , by 1812 standards, a woman her age would have one foot in the grave. No doubt her role on this show would be that of a widow in mourning. Although they didn’t have her wearing a black gown, there wasn’t a mourning veil in sight, and no sign of a chemisette insert or fichu to cover her cleavage either.

Regardless, any Mr. Darcy on the set would be twenty-eight years old, as he was in Pride and Prejudice, or twenty-three like Mr. Bingley, and both would fil their dance cards with the twenty-year-old Miss Bennets. Men just weren’t on her agenda. She wanted nothing more than to enjoy this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, answer questions about the novels, win the prize money, and get back home to Abigail.

Her new cel phone with international coverage rang, cutting into her reverie, and she sprang toward the sound of French horns echoing to the beamed ceiling. Abigail had downloaded a Regency ringtone for her. Chloe lunged for the phone, because she had told her daughter to cal only in case of an emergency, and she almost knocked the pitcher and bowl off the washstand.

Chloe dug for her phone in the vintage doctor bag she used as a purse. “Cel phones. You know, Fiona, two hundred years ago, we wrote letters with quil pens and sealed them with wax. Life was so much more—romantic.” She picked up without checking the cal er ID. “Hel o?”

Across the room, there was a knock on the door, it burst open, and three guys with spotlights on booms popped in. Chloe’s blouse was completely unbuttoned and her skirt lay in a crumple at her ankles. She shimmied behind the dressing screen, clenched her blouse closed at her cleavage, and swooped down to yank her skirt back up, covering her decidedly nonthong green cotton panties.

As she looked out from behind the dressing screen, a guy with a video cam bounded in, fol owed by another cameraman. Lights? Cameras!

What was going on here?

“Mommy? Are you there?”

Chloe forgot she was holding the phone to her ear.

“Uh—Abby? Sweetheart? Is everything okay?” Her chest thudded as she squinted into the spotlights.

“Yeah, I just have some real y good news.”

Chloe exhaled. “Oh, good. I want to hear al about it, but now’s not a good time, okay? I’l cal you right back.” Grabbing the white gown to shield herself, she clicked off the phone and tossed it on the washstand. She held her hand up toward the video cameras. “Stop the cameras! What the—”

Another guy materialized with a headset over one ear, an iPhone in one hand, and an iPad in the other. Al plugged in, just like her ex-husband.

“Great line,” the guy said in a juicy English accent. “What you said about letters. Romance. Could you say that again, please? On camera?”

Chloe stepped back, from the sheer panic of the moment, the intense spotlights, or possibly his manner of speaking. It couldn’t have been his cropped auburn hair topped with a pair of sunglasses or his snug-fitting jeans. She was, after al , a raging Anglophile who could crush on any guy with an English accent, and this was the first male one she’d heard since she arrived. Al this started with Disney’s Christopher Robin when she was what—six?