The Boss's Baby Bargain Read online

  The door started to close; he reached out a hand to stop it. Her gaze fell from his as color rose in her cheeks. She moved past him out of the elevator. “Sorry,” she said, her low voice setting off new flares inside him.

  He stepped inside the elevator, keeping a hand on the door. “I’ll be over in R and D.”

  She seemed to want to look anywhere but at him. Good God, had she somehow picked up on his ridiculous middle-aged fantasies? That would be a disaster. At the least she’d want to transfer into another department. At the worst she might leave TaylorMade entirely, take a position at another firm.

  The elevator buzzed, cutting into his thoughts. He wished she’d look up at him, so he could try to read what might be on her mind. The elevator buzzed again, so he called out, “See you after lunch,” then let go of the door. Just before it shut, she did look up at him, but damned if he could interpret what he’d seen in that brief glimpse of her green gaze.

  As he rode the elevator down, his stomach roiled with an unfamiliar anxiety. The sudden fear that Allie might leave, that his own lack of control might have driven her away dug its claws into him. When he should have been planning for the meeting ahead of him, his mind wouldn’t leave that fear alone.

  Was that what she’d come to talk to him about this morning? That she planned to leave the company? Despite his every effort to keep his feelings hidden, had she somehow sensed his passion for her? Lord, no wonder she’d seemed so skittish. She was probably afraid he’d make a play for her at any moment.

  He was such a damned idiot. Striding through the downstairs lobby, he gave the glass door leading to the outside a savage push. As he followed the concrete pathway leading to the next building, he ran over and over every nuance of what Allie had said—and hadn’t said—this morning.

  As he did, snatches of his conversation with John interwove themselves in his mind with images of Allie, and a preposterous idea floated briefly into his consciousness. He didn’t allow himself even a moment’s consideration before abandoning the notion. Instead he concentrated on the points he would use to counter Allie’s intent to leave.

  He’d convince her that her impressions were wrong. That what she’d sensed from him had been merely his admiration for her abilities as his admin assistant. Because that was all that really mattered—her value to him as an employee. The rest was just his ill-timed lack of control, a weakness of approaching middle age.

  Tugging open the door to the research and development building, he forced his attention back to his scheduled meeting. For the next hour he kept his focus there, his mind straying to thoughts of Allie no more than a half dozen times during the meeting.

  When Allie returned to her desk after lunch, she found a yellow sticky note on her phone. She recognized the handwriting on it immediately as Lucas’s hasty scrawl.

  Problem in R and D.

  Have to postpone our meeting.

  —L.

  She stared at the brief message with Lucas’s extravagant looping L at the bottom. He’d taken the time to write her a note? Ordinarily he’d bark out a few words to whoever was nearby, leaving Allie to ask around to discover his whereabouts.

  She was even more surprised when he called twenty minutes later, launching into his explanation without even a hello. “The developers and marketing are at each other’s throat. This might take the rest of the day.”

  Even the sound of his voice set off a trembling inside her. Eyes shut, she held the phone to her ear and willed herself to be calm. “No rush,” she said, even though her father’s dilemma pressed in on her. “We can try again tomorrow.”

  He paused, piquing her curiosity further. “What about dinner? Are you free?”

  “Dinner? Tonight?” She had nothing planned, but dinner with Lucas seemed terribly…intimate. Part of her ached to say yes even as her mind warned that she would be treading into dangerous territory.

  “If you have a date…”

  “No,” Allie said quickly. “Dinner tonight would be fine. What time?”

  “Six? Gives me a deadline for this group.”

  A deadline. Of course. Dinner with her gave him an excuse to call an end to what would likely be an interminable meeting. There was nothing intimate about it.

  “Six is fine. I’ll meet you in the lobby.” She pulled his calendar toward her, determined to be businesslike. “What about your afternoon appointments?”

  “What have I got?”

  “Two meetings, another interview.” She read the details from the calendar.

  “Attend the meetings in my place. Get Randy Sato to do the interview. Got to go.”

  “See you—” But he hung up before she could get the words out.

  Allie sagged back in her chair, trying to quiet the clamor inside her. This couldn’t go on much longer, her feeling this way and working so closely with Lucas. She had to get over her silly schoolgirl crush. Before long, someone would notice. At the least, it would be terribly embarrassing. At the worst, she might well lose her job.

  She didn’t even want to think about that possibility, not with the situation with her father so dire. She had to keep a level head, for her father’s sake.

  Turning to her computer, she printed off the documents she needed for the two afternoon meetings, then caught up on some correspondence. When the time for the first meeting rolled around, she had her focus back, her mind on work. Yes, she had to return to her desk twice before she’d even reached the elevator—once to get her laptop, once to retrieve the papers she’d carefully printed for the meetings. And she did draw a blank on the names of two of the attendees—people she’d known for the entire two years she’d worked at TaylorMade. But her dinner with Lucas didn’t intrude on her thoughts at all.

  Not much, anyway.

  His fingers wrapped around the steering wheel of his Mercedes, Lucas glanced again at the rearview mirror. Allie was still behind him in her ten-year-old Buick, her face barely visible through the sun-gilded windshield. When he’d first seen her rattletrap car, he’d nearly insisted she ride with him in the Benz, just to be certain she’d make it to the restaurant. But the Buick had started right up, its badly tuned engine rattling and knocking as it idled.

  The Mercedes’s engine purred as he took the turn onto Auburn-Folsom Road toward the American River. As Allie’s car lagged behind him, barely making the light, Lucas mentally included “company car” on the list of inducements he planned to present to her tonight. Added to the package he’d already put together, she couldn’t possibly say no.

  Nevertheless, anxiety dug away at his gut. He shouldn’t have taken that damn call from his attorney just before he left the office. It was only more bad news and it had thrown him off his stride, set him to second-guessing his strategy for handling Allie. The two had nothing to do with each other, no connection whatsoever. His failure to adopt had no bearing on his ability to retain the best admin assistant TaylorMade had ever hired.

  Turning into the Cliff House Restaurant parking lot, he maneuvered his silver sedan into a space, then quickly crossed to Allie’s car to open her door. She looked up at him, her startled green eyes a tantalizing enticement. Reaching across for her purse, she laid her fingers in his outstretched palm and rose from the car. She quickly pulled her hand free, turning to shut the car door.

  Keep your damn hands off her, Taylor! He followed her into the Cliff House, maintaining a good two feet of space between them. When he stepped around her to open the restaurant door for her, he made certain he didn’t rest a hand at the small of her back or brush his fingers along her arm. But his mind went wild imagining it.

  It was still fairly early and the restaurant was half empty. The maître d’ led them to a window table overlooking the American River. The setting sun glittered on the broad swath of water below, a nearly blinding display.

  Lucas waited until the maître d’ had finished fussing with menus and water glasses before he launched into his campaign. “Before you say anything, I want you to know I can
match any salary.”

  “What?” Her eyes widened, momentarily distracting him.

  He pushed on. “And I can accelerate your vesting. Four years instead of five.”

  Her brow furrowed. “Lucas, what are you talking about?”

  “I don’t intend to let you leave the company.”

  “What? Oh!” She smiled, and his body reacted immediately to that simple curving of her lips. “I’m sorry.”

  Thinking she was apologizing because she’d already made up her mind, he opened his mouth to offer another of the persuasions he’d devised. But then she reached across the table to lay her hand over the back of his and his good sense fragmented in that light touch.

  His teeth clenched, his jaw worked to keep himself from turning his hand on the table to clasp her fingers in his. He dug his fingertips into the white linen tablecloth until he thought he would tear holes in the sturdy fabric. His eyes on her small hand, he felt her warmth melting into his skin.

  He glanced up at her, her gaze tangling with his. One moment they seemed joined by an intangible but unbreakable cord, the next she was snatching her hand away, color rising in her face. Lucas forced himself to leave his hand where it was, ignoring the chill that seemed to brush against it now that her touch was gone.

  She dropped her hands to her lap, and her gaze fell to the white linen. “I’m not leaving the company, Lucas.” She tipped her chin up. “I need a loan.”

  He tried to understand what she was saying. “A loan?”

  She bobbed her head. “From you, Lucas. Twenty thousand dollars.” Her voice faltered slightly over the amount.

  She wasn’t leaving! A weight seemed to lift inside him at the news. Yet his relief made him feel somehow vulnerable. He hardened that softness inside him. “Why?”

  At first he thought she wouldn’t answer. “It’s personal. I’d rather leave it at that.”

  Her evasiveness made him feel justified in being harsh with her. “You expect me to give you twenty thousand dollars—”

  Her eyes burned with green fire. “Not give…loan.”

  “—loan you twenty thousand without any reason?”

  To her credit, she kept her gaze on him. “I’m not in trouble, Lucas. This isn’t to pay off a gambling debt run up in Tahoe or a stack of credit-card bills. But it is personal. I’d hoped that in the two years I’ve worked for you I’d proved myself—”

  “Yes.”

  Her mouth hung open a moment as she absorbed what he’d said. “Yes? You’ll loan me the money?”

  He gave her a clipped nod, the enormity of what was falling into place inside him nearly making him shake all over. It’s a business decision, nothing more, he told himself, but still it took a good long breath for him to continue.

  “I’ll give you the money,” he said. “On one condition.”

  She swallowed, the motion of her throat begging him to touch her there. “What condition?”

  “Marry me.”

  Chapter Two

  Allie couldn’t possibly have heard him right. She stared at his implacable face, waiting for him to continue, to clarify what he’d said. But he just stared back at her, his gray eyes unfathomable.

  “Marry?” She swallowed, shaking her head. “You?”

  For an instant, he seemed flustered, then he gathered his usual cloak of arrogance around him. “Hear me out.”

  He leaned back in his chair, his gaze falling a moment to the linen tablecloth. She knew that impenetrable expression, had seen it dozens of time during staff meetings or when he was in the midst of acquisition negotiations. It meant he felt fully in control of the proceedings and intended to turn circumstances exactly the way he desired.

  “Lucas—” she began, but he forestalled her with a raised hand.

  “Hear me out,” he said again.

  He lowered his hands to the edge of the table, his fingers gripping so tightly, his knuckles whitened. Allie suddenly realized he wasn’t nearly as in control as she’d thought.

  He kept his eyes fixed on her as if it were an effort of will. “For the past several months, I’ve been attempting to adopt.”

  “A baby?” she asked, incredulous.

  “Or a young child.” He cleared his throat. “The county doesn’t want to approve a forty-year-old single man. My attorney tells me I could even the odds considerably if I married.”

  He made the process sound so cut-and-dried, she might have thought he considered a child one more step in the well-thought-out business plan of his life. Yet she detected the faintest tremor in his voice, a shadow of desperation in his eyes. This from a man who remained aloof when employees brought their children into the office.

  “Lucas, we hardly know one another. To marry—”

  “If it’s sex you’re worried about…”

  Sex! Good God, she hadn’t even considered the physical side of a marriage to Lucas. Despite herself, her mind raced, her heart rate keeping pace. All the fantasies she’d struggled to contain surged forward.

  “…I’m not proposing a conventional marriage,” Lucas continued, oblivious to her rampant thoughts. “It would be strictly platonic.”

  The sudden rush of disappointment unsettled her. Pushing it aside, she focused on rational discussion. “Why me? There must be other women, women you’ve dated who could play the role of wife.”

  “They have much more complex lives than you. They’ve been married before, have children, their own homes. You have no strings.”

  True enough, but she felt irritation at the dismissive way he summed up her life. Allie shook her head. “Strings or not, I’m not interested in marriage.”

  “Look,” Lucas said, reaching across the table to take her hand. She couldn’t suppress a shiver of reaction. “I need a wife, you need money. Agree to marry me and we both get what we want.”

  His large hand covered hers, his warm palm nestling against her fingers. The warmth, the power of him seemed to sap her strength, to dissolve her will. Like her autocratic father, this man could swallow her up, diminish her.

  Her own mother, a sweet and loving woman, had always seemed to shrink in stature when she was with her husband. French Dickenson barked out an order and Elizabeth complied, even if it turned her own plans upside down. Allie’s mother gave every ounce of her soul to the man she adored, tucking her own needs away time and again. When the cancer took hold, Elizabeth’s physical pain was nothing compared to the agony she had felt in defying French by dying.

  Allie was not her mother. She couldn’t live like that.

  “No.” She tugged her hand free. “I can’t marry you.”

  His jaw tightened and she recognized the hard light in his gray eyes. “Then I can’t loan you the money.”

  Allie sat there, stunned. Not that he would turn her down, but that he would coerce her this way. To back her into a corner went beyond arrogance, bordered on cruelty.

  “You can’t mean that.”

  “I can. It’s my money, Allie.”

  She looked around her at the half-full restaurant, at the waiter hovering nearby, out the window at the American River below them. She couldn’t say yes, couldn’t let herself be sucked into Lucas’s control. She faced him again. “Then I’ll get the money somewhere else.”

  A faint smile curved his lips. “If you could have borrowed it elsewhere, you wouldn’t have asked me. I’m your last resort.”

  Of course he was right, damn him. And he surely knew how desperately she needed the money. Still, the words were impossible to drag out. “If I agreed, how long would we have to stay married?”

  The tension in his face eased at her apparent capitulation. “One year, possibly two. However long it takes to finalize the adoption. I’ll have to consult my attorney.”

  She nodded, her head suddenly pounding. She felt as if she perched on the lip of a chasm, readying herself to leap it. Would she safely reach the other side? Or fall to be crushed on the rocks below? “Then yes,” she said, barely above a whisper. “I’ll mar
ry you.”

  Triumph lit his eyes—triumph and something else. Relief? “Good then. Fine.” He picked up his water glass to sip; she could swear his hand trembled slightly. “A month enough time for you? To pack up your apartment and move to my estate?”

  The enormity of what she’d agreed to swamped her. “Move? Why can’t I keep my own place?”

  “Social services performs home visitations for prospective parents. They’ll expect husband and wife to be living together.”

  She imagined herself standing in the river below, the swift currents below the surface taking her feet out from under her, sweeping her away. She tried to grasp for some measure of self-control. “When can you give me the money?”

  He gestured peremptorily to the waiter. “After we’re married.”

  “No,” she said, grateful for the opportunity to take a stand, no matter how weak. “I need the money now.”

  “That’s acceptable.” He opened the menu, effectively dismissing her now that he had her concession. “I’ll wire the money to your account tomorrow.”

  He ordered for them both, scarcely pausing to ask her approval of his choice. Shaken by what had transpired in the past several minutes, she realized she would have to strengthen her resolve if she hoped to survive this…this…agreement with Lucas with her self-esteem intact.

  When her salad arrived, she dove into it, suddenly ravenous. She’d been so anxious about her upcoming discussion with Lucas, she’d eaten almost nothing at lunch. Now, with a little food in her stomach, she could wrest some control back from Lucas.