A/N

Thanx for the wonderful reviews and responses guys...you guys are awesome..enjoy..I will update this story almost daily.. I wrote 5 chapters for this today..anyway let me know what you guys think:)..

Santana came out from around the car, dressed only in black sweats, a tight white tanktop and incredibly old white sneakers. Her body was beautifully proportioned, but it didn't matter. Brittany knew about proportion from art class, but she knew about Santana from life. Yes, she's pretty, but forget it, she told herself. She kicks cats. She drives an evil black car. And Quinn says she has track lighting. Definitely not somebody she wanted to spend time with. Still, she did need to be nice to keep her cat. She hit the latina with her megawatt smile again. Santana grinned back, immune. Oh, well. "Thank you so much for saving my kitten, Dr. Lopez. If there's ever anything I can do in return…"

"There is. I have a business proposition for you." Santana's smile disappeared. "Strictly business."

Brittany snorted mentally. It would be strictly business. the latina probably didn't have the imagination to make a pass.

Which was a relief, because when she turned her down, she'd probably kick her cat. "Business, Dr. Lopez?"

"Santana." She stepped closer and took Brittany's elbow. "Why don't we go in and talk about it?"

Oh, great. She was an elbow taker. A steerer of people. Brittany removed her elbow from Santana's grasp. "How about my place? Herbal tea?"

Santana closed her eyes, said "Wonderful," and followed Brittany into the house.

Santana stopped inside the apartment door. The place looked as though it had been ransacked. There were drawers open, papers everywhere, lampshades askew, books on the floor, and a huge black cat sprawled out in the middle of the mess, doing an excellent impression of death. Santana waited for Brittany to scream and call the police, but she just dropped the little calico cat into an overstuffed chair full of yarn and clothes and stepped over the black cat to move toward the kitchen.

It must always look like this. How could she stand it?

Brittany pulled her bright blue velvet hat from her head, and her long hair fell down in tangled little kinks, blonde curls with deep glints of red clips against the bright, bright blue of her loose hip-length sweater. Under the sweater she wore an ankle-length skirt checked in hot rose and electric blue. Santana winced at all the color.

Then she opened the refrigerator and got the latina a bottle of beer, and her approval rating rose.

Santana took it gratefully. "No herbal tea?"

Brittany grinned at her, a nice, cheerful grin with none of the dazzle of her earlier beam. "I thought you'd prefer this."

"I do. Do you have an opener?"

Brittany took the bottle back and looked around absently for an opener. Not finding one, she hooked the cap on the edge of the counter and smacked it with her hand to pop it. Then she handed the bottle back.

Santana checked to see if there were glass chips on the top. Remember, you need her. Be polite Lopez.

"That was very efficient Brittany. Thank you."

Santana sat opposite Brittany at the big round oak table. Brittany turned on the stained glass lamp that stood to one side, and it cast a Technicolor kaleidoscope on the wall and ceiling. More color. Everywhere the latina looked, color and clash. How did Brittany sleep in this place?

"So a business proposition." Brittany tilted her head at Santana. "But I'm not a businesswoman Santana."

Santana studied her in the lamplight: mass of blonde hair, piercing blue eyes spaced over a thin long nose sprinkled with freckles, a thin, rosy lipped mouth. Under all her bright and weird clothes Santana saw a beautiful woman who could stop anyone's heart with just a smile. If she put her in a real dress instead of clothes three sizes too big for her, she could pass for a super model. She wasn't santana's type—she liked lethally elegant blondes, the tinier the better—but she was definitely beautiful and capable of making the old proffesors at Prescott fawn over her. Santana cheered up considerably.

"I need a favor." Santana leaned forward, exerting all her charm. "A practical, extremely confidential business favor." Santana saw Brittany draw her eyebrows together at the word "confidential," and added, "It's not illegal. And I'll pay your back rent."

The blonde eyebrows flew up. "That's three hundred dollars."

Santana nodded. "I know. I'm desperate. I need a fiance for twenty-four hours." That sounded a little odd, so Santana clarified it. "Only a fiance. A platonic fiance."

"I understand that you're not proposing to me Santana." Brittany folded her hands on the table like a polite child. "You can stop making that clear."

Santana relaxed a little. "Good." She took a swig of her beer, amazed at how much more difficult this whole thing was than she'd imagined. It wasn't just the embarrassment of admitting what she'd done. It was also Brittany Pierce. There was something about dealing with this woman that reminded her of the way she'd felt messing around with the chemistry set she'd had when she was a kid. Volatile and Unpredictable.

Her voice broke Santana's train of thought. "Why do you need a fiance?"

Santana took a deep breath and told her, haltingly at first but then becoming more confident as she explained, and Brittany didn't throw her out or go off into fits of laughter.

"Well you're in a mess," she agreed when the latina was finished. "But I don't see how you think I could help you. I'm hardly the wifely type."

"No, but you could be for twenty-four hours. I'll pay for a new dress. All you have to do is pretend to be the wifely type for the space of a speech and a cocktail party. I'll have you out of there by Friday at midnight and back home by Saturday afternoon."

Her laughter spurted, something between a giggle and a snort. "So you pick me up out of the gutter, and I get a new dress, and I pretend to be something I'm not, and then at midnight I run away and turn back into a pumpkin." Her grin widened. "It's a Cinderella story."

"I guess so." Whimsy was not Santana's strong suit.

"And you get the job of your dreams and the time to finish your book." She tilted her head. "I like this story. Everybody wins."

"Even Schuester," Santana said. "He'll get your back rent."

"And I get to keep Annie." Brittany smiled at the latina, warm with gratitude. "That was nice of you to tell Schuester you didn't mind, since you didn't know whether I'd do this or not, and you hate cats."

Santana looked at her, puzzled. "I don't hate cats."

Brittany's smile cooled. "I saw you kick Liz once."

Santana frowned at her. "Liz?"

Brittany nodded to the black cat curled up among the debris on the floor. It hadn't moved at all since the latina had been there. Maybe it was dead. Santana fought back an urge to poke it with her foot to see if it was breathing, and that brought back her earlier encounter. "Oh, yeah. I didn't kick it, I just nudged it out of the way with my foot. It walked on my car."

Her smile disappeared completely. "The nerve of her."

Oh, great. Now she was off on a tangent, mad at her for something she hadn't even done. "Forget the cat. Will you do it?"

She thought about it, setting her jaw, and Santana had a sinking insight into how stubborn the blonde could probably be. Then she said "Yes," nodding sharply. "For a thousand dollars."

Santana jerked back. "A thousand?"

"That's what I need." Brittany smiled at the tiny latina, the smile that had probably sunk a thousand ships in her lifetime. "I'm not really going to be Cinderella unless you rescue me completely, you know."

When Brittany smiled at her like that, it was hard to think. Imagine what that smile could do in Prescott. Make a note to have her smile a lot in Prescott, Santana told herself, and gave in. "All right. A thousand dollars."

She stuck her hand across the table, and Brittany took it. Her grip was firm and warm. "It's a deal, then," she said. "Ooh a Cinderella deal."

"Great," Santana said through clenched teeth. Just what she needed, a child bride who still believed in fairy tales. "Are you free tomorrow afternoon about one so we can rehearse this story?"

Brittany nodded. "For a thousand dollars, I can be very free."

"Good." Santana stood up and patted her on the head. "I'll see you tomorrow, then."

Brittany was still glaring at the door when Santana closed it behind her.

A cat kicker. An elbow grabber. A head patter.

"This may be a Cinderella deal," Brittany told the cats, "but trust me, she's no prince or princess or whatever."