The Tycoon's Proposal

by Leigh Michaels

  “What are we picking up?” Kurt asked.

  “Just my address book. I’ll only be a minute. You can wait outside if you like.” She pushed the sliding door open.

  She remembered perfectly well pulling boxes out from under the futon she used as a bed, and then pushing them back. Perhaps she hadn’t put them away as neatly as she’d thought. But as surely as the broken Christmas ornament had told her that someone had invaded her privacy before, the twinge in Lissa’s gut told her that it had happened again.

  “What’s the matter?” Kurt asked.

  “Somebody’s been in here, looking around. It’s not important.” She was talking to herself as much as to him. “There’s nothing left worth stealing.”

  “That doesn’t mean it’s not important to you.”

  “I guess when I come back I’ll put a padlock on the door for when I go out.” She dug through the pile of books on the end of the mantel and found her tattered address book. “Come on, let’s go. I’ll deal with this later.”

  But Kurt didn’t budge. “Get your stuff. All of it.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t leave anything behind.”

  “You’re being a little high-handed again, aren’t you? It’s really not your business—”

  “Is the furniture yours?”

  She glanced from the futon to the one worn chair. “No, thank heaven.”

  “Then we don’t have to have it put into storage. We’ll take the rest of your things today, so you don’t have to come back here.”

  “And where do you suggest I go in a couple of weeks, when the new semester starts? At least this place has a window.”

  He wandered over to look. “And such a view. An alley and a row of trash cans. Tell you what, Lissa—I’ll pay the rent on an apartment for you.”

  Lissa frowned at him, not quite sure what she was hearing. “Why?”

  “You’re graduating in the spring, right?”

  With a sudden flash of wry humor, Lissa said, “Well, I’ve learned the hard way not to count on anything. But that’s the plan, yes.”

  “Then I’ll pay your rent till you graduate.”

  Big as the offer looked to her, it was peanuts to him. So don’t go getting crazy, Lissa—it’s not like he’s offering to set you up in a love-nest. “So what’s the catch? I suppose in return you want me to play games for Mindy’s benefit.”

  “You really think that would be enough?” His voice was almost a drawl. “Six months’ rent is a tidy sum. What are you offering in exchange?”

  She noted that his dimple was showing, and she couldn’t decide whether to be relieved that he was teasing or annoyed that he was laughing at the idea of them being lovers—at least for anything more than a one-night stand. “I’m not interested in having an affair with you, that’s for sure.”

  His eyebrows raised slightly. “I don’t recall offering one. But if that’s what you’d like, Lissa….” His voice had gone low and soft, with a rough edge.

  This was how he’d sounded that night. She’d never forgotten, and when she heard that tone again quivers started to run through her body, reminding her of emotions and sensations that were far better left buried. She tried to ignore them. “Now if you’d forget about the apartment and hire me to do an internship at your store instead….”

  “What for?”

  At least now he was taking her seriously, she noted. The dimple had vanished. “Because in order to get a good job when I graduate I need to have experience in the field. But most internships are unpaid.”

  “And you can’t afford to give up the job you have now.”

  She held out both hands, her gesture encompassing the dingy little room. “It’s because I insist on being surrounded by such luxury, you see.”

  “Yeah, if you’d just cut back on your standard of living….”

  “And I can’t do both jobs and keep up with my classes, too. So—”

  “I’ve got it. If you share a place with someone….”

  “Like who? You?”

  “There you go again—tempting me. And you say you’re not interested in an affair.”

  “Kurt, the only way you’d be interested in a roommate is if there was a revolving door on your bedroom.”

  “Damn, you have good ideas.” He sobered. “All right, Lissa. Here’s the deal. Originally, you thought that within two weeks Gran would change her mind about clearing out the house. I’m raising the stakes. You get her to settle down to this project and get it over with, and I’ll fork over your rent for the next six months. And I’ll think about that internship.”

  Was he serious about giving her a job? Lissa shook her head in disbelief. “You want me to have the whole house cleared in two weeks? I don’t think it can be done.”

  “Nope. I want her to make that decision you’re so sure she’ll reach—either to keep the house and leave everything right where it is or call an auctioneer. I really don’t care which she ends up doing.”

  “Because either way she’ll be done with it?”

  “Yes. All I care about is that she not kill herself by trying to clear out all the debris she’s collected in sixty-odd years.”

  “Isn’t there anything in all that so-called debris that you care about, Kurt? Souvenirs? Mementoes?” She was honestly curious. “You spent every summer in that house when you were growing up—isn’t there a single thing there you want?”

  “Now that you mention it….”

  Suddenly she realized that he was standing closer to her than she’d expected. He was right behind her at the mantel, so close that she could feel the warmth of his chest against her spine. His hands skimmed her shoulders and moved down her arms, and he turned her to face him.

  “One thing does come to mind,” he said softly.

  He was so close that there was barely room to take a breath. So close that she couldn’t even smell the sausage drifting in from the hallway anymore, only the light scent of his aftershave. She couldn’t stop herself from looking at his mouth. She couldn’t quite suppress her quick intake of breath as she looked. And she couldn’t prevent the very tip of her tongue from running along her upper lip.

  His eyes narrowed. Slowly, and very deliberately, he lowered his head.

  She felt like bacon being held over a hot griddle—feeling the heat, knowing that very soon she would be sizzling out of control. A little shiver ran through her.

  “What was that?” he whispered. “Not revulsion, I’m sure. Are you scared? Or eager?”

  She opened her mouth, not quite knowing what she’d say. But before she could try to form words he took advantage of what must have looked like willingness and kissed her.

  His caress was soft, almost tender. The very gentleness of it fed her hunger, made her want more—and, as if he tasted her desire, his kiss grew more demanding. His hands slipped to her back and drew her closer, until she was melting against him, meeting him kiss for kiss.

  What are you doing? Lissa asked herself.

  She’d been so certain that she could handle him now, that their single night together had been an anomaly, that she’d only been so vulnerable to him back then because she was young and inexperienced. Even that stolen kiss on the stairway didn’t really count in the equation, she’d told herself, because it had taken her by surprise. But once warned she had been on her guard. He shouldn’t be affecting her like this.

  But all he had to do was touch her, and she went to pieces like a tarpaper shack in a hurricane. Obviously she wasn’t as experienced as she’d thought she was.

  And, just as obviously, he was even more so. But the most terrifying part about that, she realized, was that when he was kissing her she didn’t care that Kurt’s women came and went with about the same frequency as the daily newspaper. She only cared that right at this moment his attention was entirely focused on her.

  Maybe the moment is enough….

  Hardly aware of what she was saying, she murmured, “We’re not in college anymore, Kurt.”
/>   “And that’s the real beauty of it,” he whispered against her lips. “No more confusion. No more games.”

  No more bets….

  “Just two people who know what they want.”

  With the last of her strength Lissa managed to break free. “Yes—and I also know what I don’t want. I don’t want this.”

  Kurt smiled. “Sure, Lissa,” he said softly. “You just keep telling yourself you don’t—and maybe someday you’ll make yourself believe it. Now, let’s get your stuff gathered up.”

  She didn’t have the energy to battle him, and in any case, taking a few more of her belongings didn’t mean she wasn’t ever coming back. So, almost meekly, Lissa helped to load the rest of her possessions into the SUV. Then she dropped Kurt off to pick up his car and went straight back to Hannah’s house, hoping to have all her things unloaded and safely tucked away in the guestroom before Hannah returned from her shopping trip. There was no sense in upsetting her hostess—which the news that Lissa was all but officially homeless was quite sure to do.

  It took seven trips for Lissa to transfer all the stuff from the SUV upstairs. By the time she’d finished, the guestroom, with its solid furniture and luxurious drapes, looked like a warehouse.

  As she came down the stairs the doorbell rang. Hannah was standing on the front porch, her eyes bright and her arms full of gift-wrapped boxes. “I couldn’t reach my key,” she said cheerfully. “In fact, I couldn’t get to my wallet to pay the driver, so the poor man’s still waiting out there for me to come back. Put these under the tree, will you?”

  Lissa juggled the boxes into the living room, where the lights were gleaming on the Christmas tree. By the time she had them neatly stacked Hannah had come back from paying the taxi, dusting her hands together. “Did you and Kurt have a nice brunch?”

  “You scared us to death, you know, disappearing like that.”

  “But not for long, I hope. I just asked Henry to wait until I was safely out the door before he delivered my note.”

  “I think he gave you an extra-long headstart. It looks as if you finished up your shopping list.”

  “Don’t you want to know which ones are yours?”

  “Which ones? Plural? Hannah—”

  “And now I’m ready for tea.” Hannah smiled and dived into the pile of packages. “I got Janet a gadget that’s just too good to save for her stocking. She can use it while she’s cooking the Christmas turkey.”

  Just what we need. One more gadget to clear out when it comes time to tackle the kitchen. “I’m sure she’ll be thrilled,” Lissa said.

  There were two voices in the kitchen, pitched softly but still quite audible. One was Janet, of course; the other was deeper. Lissa hadn’t seen the Jaguar outside, so Kurt must have come in while she was making the last trip upstairs and settling her belongings.

  Lissa paused for an instant just outside the swinging door. It had been difficult enough to work with Kurt after that kiss this afternoon, loading up the SUV and then taking him back to the hotel. To face him in front of an audience….

  Well, there was no help for it. She put her hand on the door just as Janet spoke.

  “She brought in a lot more stuff today,” the housekeeper said. “Strange-looking stuff.”

  “I know.” Kurt’s voice was casual. “There was a problem with the place she lives in.”

  “Kurt’s home already,” Hannah said, and the voices in the kitchen stopped abruptly.

  Hannah greeted Kurt with a kiss on the cheek and handed Janet a long thin box. “It’s a special fork,” she said. “It reads the temperature instantly when you stick it into a roast or a turkey.”

  “The old-fashioned way is good enough for me,” Janet muttered. “Sit down. I’ll get you some tea.”

  Hannah pulled out a chair at the kitchen table, opposite Kurt. Between them, stacked on the gleaming oak surface of the table, were a dented stockpot, a rusty cookie sheet, and a glass cake pan with a big chip out of the corner. “What are these for, Janet?”

  “They’re things we don’t need anymore,” the housekeeper said.

  “And neither does anyone else, I’d say.” Hannah sounded quite cheerful about it. “Isn’t that cake pan likely to explode if it’s heated again, with that crack in it? Put them in the garbage, Janet, not the donation pile.”

  Lissa was just concluding with relief that Hannah’s hearing hadn’t been quite good enough for her to distinguish the words they’d overheard, when Hannah went on, “What’s the problem with your apartment, Lissa?”

  It was Kurt who answered. “The thieves hit again.”

  “Oh, no, my dear! What did they take this time?”

  “Nothing,” Lissa said.

  “But of course you don’t feel secure leaving your possessions there.” Hannah pushed the stockpot aside so Janet could set a cup of tea in front of her. “You brought all your things, of course? Good. You can stay here just as long as you like.”

  Kurt shifted in his chair. “You won’t be here, Gran.”

  “Oh, Kurt, I won’t be ready to move anytime soon. I’ve been just too busy with other things. Lissa can drive the sieve to her classes when they start up again, and then we can take our time with the cleaning.” She sounded delighted.

  Kurt’s gaze met Lissa’s. The message in his eyes was quite clear—Remember our deal.

  Lissa smothered a sigh. Suddenly the next couple of weeks didn’t look quite so much like a holiday. And as for the chance of an internship—she might as well kiss that goodbye right now.

  Maximum Sports was not nearly as busy on Monday afternoon as it had been over the weekend, though the crowd was still respectable. Lissa couldn’t believe the sheer size of the place; she and Hannah had obviously covered only a fraction of it on Saturday. But then, she recalled, almost the first thing which had caught her eye that day was Kurt hanging off the ridiculous wall—and after that she’d barely seen anything else until he was safely down.

  Only because it would have been too awful if he’d fallen and gotten hurt in front of his grandmother, she told herself.

  Again this time her gaze went straight to the wall, but since it was apparent that neither of the climbers was Kurt—one seemed to be no more than a child, the other was very blond—she relaxed and went looking for him.

  Twice she had to stop a salesclerk to ask for directions, and she felt as if she’d walked a mile or two before she finally found Kurt at a kiosk toward the back of the store, flicking through pages on a computer screen. Figures and code numbers scrolled by at a pace almost too fast for her to see.

  “Hey,” she said. “Figuring out how good the grand opening sales were?”

  He looked up. “It’s hard to tell, with Christmas mixed in.”

  “Well, math never was your strong suit. Want me to take a look?”

  He surveyed her for a long moment without answering.

  It had been a careless offer, and not one she had expected him to take up. But the long stare made Lissa feel defensive. “I am almost an accountant, after all,” she pointed out. “And I’m not some corporate spy. Even if I saw something valuable in your data I wouldn’t know who to sell it to.”

  Kurt pushed his tall stool back from the computer. “Be my guest.”

  It took Lissa a couple of minutes to untangle the details—things like how sales were reported and compared with the remaining inventory, and how the thirty-seven locations were coded. “It looks as if this store took in the most cash over the last seven days, but the Denver one is the most profitable.”

  “It’s the oldest.” His eyebrows had gone up. “You could tell that in just a few minutes?”

  “It shouldn’t have taken that long. I could simplify your reporting system.”

  “That’s what you want to do for an internship?”

  Lissa’s nerves were thrumming—was he actually considering it? She forced a careless-looking shrug. “Depends on what you need.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. How did the batt
le end this morning?”

  “The one over the breakfast table, about the pots and pans? I’d call it a draw. Janet insisted she needs to keep every item in the kitchen in order to cook a holiday dinner, and Hannah told her that after Christmas either Janet will clean out the cupboards properly or Hannah will send me in to do it.”

  “Good. Gran’s getting serious about the cleaning out.”

  “Well, I couldn’t say that, exactly. I offered to start on the attic this morning and she gave me a shopping list instead. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Too bad. It doesn’t sound like you’re going to get your internship, does it?” He didn’t sound sorry at all. “Unless—”

  “Not interested.”

  “But you didn’t even listen,” he complained.

  Lissa took a deep breath. This was going to be even tougher than she’d imagined. “Kurt, would you loan me some money?”

  “Gran gave you a list of things to buy and no funds to do it with?”

  “Of course not. But I’d like to get her something nice for Christmas, and until she pays me I don’t have enough cash.”

  “Then ask her for an advance on your wages.”

  “So I can buy her a present? That would be tacky, Kurt.”

  “What’s the difference between asking her for an advance against your first paycheck and asking me for a loan till you get paid? It’s the same money.”

  She had to admit it was an excellent question.

  “And you’re supposed to be the accounting whiz.” Kurt shook his head, almost sadly.

  Lissa bit her lip and looked straight at him. “All right, I confess—no matter what I do, it’s tacky. The trouble is, I don’t have any more family heirlooms to pawn.”

  His gaze drifted over her. “I wouldn’t be so certain of that.”

  Lissa glared at him.

  “You still have that quilt.”

  The sudden change of direction left her speechless for an instant. “I’m surprised you remember the quilt. What’s it worth to you?”