The C.E.O.'s Unplanned Proposal

by Karen Toller Whittenburg

  “Wow,” Holden said, his tone low and appreciative, his gaze appraising the long, bare length of her shapely legs. “She can tame my lion any day.”

  Adam’s fist clenched with a sudden intense desire to punch the clown in the car suit, but Holden turned away, beeping a lusty ah-oog-ga on his car horn as he followed the curves of a woman in a gold leotard. The Girl on the Flying Trapeze, no doubt. “Hey, Adam.” It was Peter, wearing a tux, which for some reason made the scene around them seem even more surreal. “When did you get home?”

  “Have you been gone?” Bryce asked, moving up next to Peter, his yellow plaid shirt coupled with Adam’s red tie making a strange compromise between the circus world and an ordinary, and normally very conservative, Braddock party.

  “I just got in,” Adam said shortly, his gaze seeking through the crowd for another glimpse of Katie.

  “Well, you’re not dressed for the party, that’s for sure,” Peter observed. “Katie got a costume for you, too. I put it in your room this afternoon myself.”

  Adam would have been happier not knowing that. “I’m not dressing up like Bozo for anyone.”

  “That would be redundant in your case,” Bryce said, a teasing glint in his eye. “Where have you been this week, if it’s not some big industry secret?”

  “California,” Adam answered. “Helping Lara locate her nephew.”

  “Where is she now?” Peter looked past Adam, as if he expected Lara to be there.

  “Please tell me you moved her lock, stock and portfolio to the West Coast,” Bryce suggested. “California deserves her.”

  Adam frowned at his middle brother. “She’s recovering from a nasty confrontation with her witless brother. He decided, after four years of ignoring the fact that he’s a father, he should spend some time with his son. Unfortunately, the courts tend to look on that as kidnapping.”

  “Wow,” Peter said. “He stole the kid?”

  “It’s a mess, legally and emotionally, although Calvin—that’s the little boy—seemed to take it all in stride.”

  “Jeez,” Peter said, his sympathies instantly with the child. “Lara doesn’t deserve the family she got stuck with.”

  “Does anyone?” But the fun had gone out of Bryce and he looked troubled, even concerned. “So is Lara okay?”

  Adam caught a flash of red and black over by the snow cone bar. “Sure,” he said. “Lara can handle anything. Excuse me.” And he started through the crowd, hoping to catch up to her and get some further explanation for this travesty of a party.

  But he was waylaid by his father halfway there and when he craned his neck to see around Uncle Sam’s wooden leg, the ringmaster had disappeared. “Adam,” James said in a voice lowered, so as not to be overheard. “Where have you been all week? Ilsa’s moved into the Hall and I’m very much afraid that your grandfather is involved with her.”

  Adam had figured out a few things about his grandfather’s special friend since reading the dossier Lara had put together for him before her family crisis occurred, but he didn’t think it was his place to share the information. “There’s no reason to worry, Dad, believe me. She and Grandfather are just friends.”

  James did not look convinced. “I don’t know, Adam. They slip off together, down to the solarium. I’ve seen them. No telling what they do there.”

  A smile tapped Adam, but only briefly. “They probably talk about gardening. I think her thumb is nearly as green as his.”

  “They seem awfully secretive about it.”

  Adam clapped a hand on his father’s tuxedo-clad shoulder—Monica probably wouldn’t allow him to wear a costume—and tried for a reassuring tone. “It’s nothing. They’ve just discovered a mutual interest, made a…connection that’s all.”

  “There you are, darling.” Monica, in classic black, came out of the colorful crowd to claim her man.

  “Adam, welcome home.” It was Ilsa Fairchild, looking gorgeous and glamorous in the glittery robes and headdress of a circus performer. Next to her, Monica’s black couture lost all its class, and her beauty looked merely youthful and untested. “Hello again, James. Monica.” Ilsa’s confident smile encompassed them all before she slipped her hand through Adam’s arm and led him away, leaving James looking longingly after them. “What do you think of the party?” she asked when they’d taken a few steps. “Isn’t she an original?”

  “I think that’s safe to say,” Adam agreed, committed to not discussing Katie with Mrs. Fairchild. “I’m sorry I haven’t been here this week for your visit. I hope you’ve enjoyed your stay.”

  She considered him and the slightly cool note in his voice with a curious gaze. “Yes,” she said. “I have, thanks.”

  “Any…connections…come up this week I should know about?”

  Her curiosity melted into understanding. “Ah, you’ve found me out, I see. Did Archer let it slip?”

  “No. I did a bit of investigating,” he said, liking her all the more for not pretending. “Discovered exactly what type of public relations IF Enterprises provides.”

  Her smile was easy and warm. “Then you probably are aware of my company’s success rate.” It was part statement, part question and Adam debated whether to answer.

  But why equivocate now? She was a matchmaker of quite extraordinary talents and probably knew better than he did that she had put together yet another successful connection. “I would never want to argue with your record,” he said, letting the decision come to him just like that. “But I would like to know how you came to choose such an unlikely match this time.”

  “All I did was introduce the possibilities, Adam. You made the choice all on your own.”

  “With a little help from Katie.” A smile found him and he couldn’t have made it go away if he tried.

  “I love it when a plan comes together,” Ilsa said, giving his arm a conspiratorial squeeze. “I do hope you won’t blow my cover with your brothers. It could make the next connection—” she made a face “—difficult.”

  “It’ll be our secret,” Adam assured her. “I won’t even tell Dad.”

  She looked startled, but recovered nicely. “Oh, well, I’m sure he wouldn’t care one way or the other, but maybe it’s best if—”

  “There you are!” Archer approached, his cane tapping in his hurry. “What in hell did you say to Katie?” he asked Adam without preamble. “She was crying, blubbering out some bizarre apology to me, as if I hadn’t been telling her for weeks I wanted a real birthday party and not some squeaky-clean, boring affair with an obligatory cake and a million candles.”

  A wave of regret washed over Adam. He’d done it again. Hurt Katie by not giving her a chance to explain, by not listening when she’d tried to tell him the truth. “Where is she? I’ve got to talk to her.”

  Abbott, looking strangely out of character in his costume, appeared like magic. “Miss Katie has left, sir. Just now. I tried to get her to let Benson drive her, but she took Ruth’s bicycle instead and rode off with her duffel bag.”

  Archer’s frown swung straight to Adam. “I can’t believe I raised such an idiot.” He used his cane to tap Adam’s leg, suggesting action was urgently required. “Well, don’t just stand there. Go after her.”

  “Who?” Bryce ambled up in time to hear the last. “Is Lara in trouble again already?”

  “No,” Adam said, turning to go. “I am.”

  “You?” Bryce’s disbelieving laugh followed Adam as he headed for the house, Abbott at his heels.

  “I took the liberty of asking Benson to bring the Rolls around, sir,” the butler said when they reached the foyer. “He should be waiting for you outside.” In two long strides, Abbott moved ahead of Adam to open the door. “She’s headed in the direction of Sea Change.”

  “Thank you, Abbott.”

  “Bring her back, sir.”

  Adam didn’t reply as he ran down the steps to the Rolls. Ignoring Benson and the open back door, he got behind the wheel and reached for the key. “Benson!” he y
elled, frustrated and in a frenzy to find Katie. “I’ll drive myself.”

  A moment later, the key was in his hand and the chauffeur was stepping away from the car, calling a muffled, “Good luck, sir,” as the luxury engine purred to life and Adam headed for town.

  The bicycle caught the headlights, its reflectors glinting in the dark. It was leaning against the empty store front that once had been Willford’s Antiques and Treasures. Duncan Willford had come to Sea Change from Albuquerque and lasted two years before he closed up shop and returned to the West. He hadn’t been well-liked in Sea Change. Outsiders never were. But there, in front of his failed venture, stood a ringmaster, a woman who had come to Sea Change for adventure and turned Adam’s plans on their ear. He hadn’t known it was possible to love anyone, anything so much until the moment he saw her standing there in the beam of the headlights, looking like she’d lost her best friend.

  “Hi,” he said, getting out of the car.

  “I’ve got pepper spray,” she said, challenging him even in her obvious misery. “And I know how to use it, too.”

  “I don’t doubt it for a second.” He moved closer, forming an apology as he edged around the front of the Rolls. “I’ll be careful not to make any sudden moves.”

  “See that you don’t. I’m not in a very good mood and my finger might just accidentally slip.”

  “I’m sure whatever happens, I will have deserved it.”

  She perked up a little at that, squinted at him in the gold glow of the streetlights. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “Because if you came to get your money back, you can forget it. I don’t care what you think of the party, I earned every penny and I’m not giving it back.”

  “I came to get you, Katie.”

  “Well, I’m not going back either. I told your grandfather goodbye and you can tell the others whatever you want. I’m not making any apologies.”

  “Not even for your very unprofessional behavior?” He took another step, keeping an eye on her trigger finger…although it looked as if she were empty-handed.

  “If you’d ever listened to me, you’d know I wasn’t a professional to begin with.”

  “I need to learn how to listen better,” he agreed. “It might save us from having to have these kinds of confrontations in the future.”

  She cocked her head. “I can’t see that as a big problem since we aren’t likely to be within a hundred miles of each other in the future.”

  “It’s going to be hard to have a relationship at that distance.”

  “Relationship?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not saying it couldn’t be done, just that I think it would be much more enjoyable at closer range.”

  “What are you talking about, Adam?”

  “Love, marriage, happily ever after.”

  In the ensuing quiet, he could hear the hum of electricity in the old-fashioned pole lights and the heavy thud-thud-thud of his heartbeat. “Have you been drinking?” she asked finally. “Because it sounds like you’ve had one too many snow cones tonight.”

  “I only returned from helping my friend resolve a sticky family crisis in time to make a complete fool of myself at my grandfather’s birthday party. There hasn’t been time for snow cones or even to change into my clown costume.” He took his heart in his hands and reached for her. “I’m so sorry, Katie. I was exhausted from the trip and so eager to see you and, well, I wasn’t expecting to find a three-ring circus going on in my backyard.”

  “If you’d asked, I would have told you exactly what I had planned.”

  He hated that he’d caused that wounded note in her voice, hated that he’d caused her any pain at all. “I’m willing to sit still while you dump a whole tub of ice water in my lap if it will help make amends.”

  “Oh, it would take more ice than I could find in Rhode Island to do that,” she said, sounding slightly more sassy. “But you know what? I’ll just forgive you and you can go on back home with a clear conscience. Consider it my gift to you on the occasion of your grandfather’s seventy-ninth birthday.”

  “I love you, Katie,” he said simply.

  She didn’t seem surprised. “Despite my unprofessional behavior? That’s a bit difficult to believe.”

  “I think I told you very recently that it would be most unprofessional of you to break my heart, but you seem quite eager to do it, anyway.”

  That stopped her. “I didn’t, couldn’t break your heart, Adam. You’ve got it very carefully wrapped around Braddock Industries. Mine, I’m afraid, wasn’t so well protected.”

  Hope surged through him with unrestrained eagerness. “Give me a chance, Katie. Marry me. Take me on your next adventure and the next one after that. Save me from myself.”

  She closed the distance between them, placed her hand lovingly on his chest. “That’s not fair, Adam, and it’s too much responsibility for anyone to take on. You have to make your own choices, make the life you want. And admit it, you love being Adam Braddock, CEO. It’s who you are.”

  “No, it’s who I became because I thought it was my birthright, the duty I inherited because I was born and abandoned by my parents. I thought I owed it to my grandparents to become the man my father wasn’t. I thought it was my responsibility to take care of my brothers, because they were abandoned, too. I want to be different, Katie. I want to be the man I am when I’m with you—happy, not always knowing what’s next, but putting up my chin and heading bravely into the unknown. You’ve given me a glimpse of the free spirit I’ve kept caged inside me, given me a taste of the adventure real love can be. It’s too late to run away from that, now.”

  “I’m not running away,” she said, too quickly.

  “Aren’t you, Katie? Aren’t you running from the possibility that you’ve stumbled into a place that feels like home, into the arms of a man who needs you and whom, I believe, you need, too.” He stopped, decided honesty was the best policy. “In my briefcase at the Hall, I have a report on you, Katie. A background check. A list of all your jobs, where you’ve lived, what schools you attended. There’s an accounting of the fire that started when your father fell asleep with a cigarette in his hands and robbed you of your mother and your baby sister. It states that your father committed suicide and that you were raised by your paternal grandparents. What it doesn’t say is how brave you were to go on living. It can’t reveal the courage you’ve shown in becoming not a bitter and vengeful person, but one who brings joy and laughter into every moment that you’re alive. I don’t know how you came to be so free, Katie, but wherever you go and whatever you do, I want to be there with you. To protect you, if it’s ever necessary, but mainly to learn a little of how you do it and maybe to give you back just a little of the love you’ve denied yourself for so long.” He reached out and wiped away the solitary teardrop that glistened on her cheek. “I’ve been waiting all my life to love you, Katie. If it takes the rest of my life, I’ll prove that to you.”

  She nestled into his arms like a runaway child who finally has come home. “This won’t be easy,” she said at last, her voice shaken, but steady.

  “Maybe,” he said, tipping her face up to his. “But I’m a very fast learner.”

  “It’ll mean no cell phones, no faxes—no shoes.”

  His smile was slow, but infinitely grateful. “I’ll adjust. On the other hand, you may someday get tired of traveling light and want to invest in a bigger suitcase, maybe a diaper bag or two.”

  Uncertainty lined her Mona Lisa smile. “That sounds suspiciously like a real proposal. You should probably quit while you’re ahead.”

  So he kissed her, thinking ahead to the experiences they’d collect together, the life they’d build one precious moment at a time. Someday he’d tell her that they’d had a little help from a matchmaker of distinction, but not now.

  Now, was this single moment, when holding Katie and loving Katie was the only thing that mattered. Come to think of it, he couldn’t imagine anything would ever be more important than that.
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br />   ISBN: 978-1-4603-6821-3

  THE C.E.O.’S UNPLANNED PROPOSAL

  Copyright © 2002 by Karen Whittenburg Crane.

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