Taming the Tycoon

by Amy Andrews

  And that was fine—she’d known what she was getting herself into. But maybe, just maybe, she was making headway?

  “Okay,” she said, shrugging.

  His face broke into a broad grin and Addie’s belly flopped and she knew for her own sake there was no way she could just give in without trying to get a concession from him. If he knew how easy she was becoming, he would be ruthless.

  “But I want you to stop shaving on the weekend.”

  Nathaniel frowned. “What?”

  “You heard me. You shave that fabulous jaw of yours into strict compliance twice a day. Every day. It’s too much.”

  “Why?” he demanded.

  Addie suppressed her irritation at his petulant child act. She’d given up on finding her center—that had been lost a long time ago—but she still believed that you caught more flies with honey. She leaned in, her lips brushing his ear.

  “Because I like the way it scratches on your way down.”

  She smiled at his very distinct swallow.

  …

  Another week passed. The Indian summer ended, replaced with a fresh autumnal crispness as the nights started to draw in. Addie took Nathaniel to Madame Tussauds, to do a brass rubbing at St. Martin’s in the Field church, and dragged him out into the cold night air to watch the bascules being raised on Tower Bridge to allow a ship through.

  She was particularly happy with her choice for this chilly Friday lunchtime. She’d been planning on taking Nathaniel to St. Aggie’s rose garden for a while, but hadn’t wanted to do it straight up. To be so obvious. But she hadn’t been to the garden since the day of the protest and she usually visited once a week, often with Penny.

  It was another routine in her life that had fallen by the wayside since her campaign to tame the tycoon had begun.

  And now that Dave’s vision had been investigated and he’d finally admitted to being intoxicated at the time during a rather hilarious press conference, the unprecedented number of pilgrims had fallen off and it was once again peaceful green space instead of Wembley Stadium.

  Would it make him uncomfortable? Maybe, but too bad. If he was hell-bent on destroying something so amazing, the least he could do was experience it first.

  “Where are we going?” Nathaniel asked as they came out of the Tube station.

  “For a picnic.”

  But as they got closer to their destination, he looked at her and said, “Seriously?”

  She shrugged. “Best place in London for a picnic.”

  Nathaniel stopped mid-stride. “I’ve heard all the rhetoric, Addie, and I’ve spent all morning dealing with your cronies’ latest efforts to derail the development. I do not want you in my ear about it while I’m supposed to be relaxing.”

  Addie snorted. It was good to know he associated their sessions with relaxation, but he still had a way to go. “I won’t say a word,” she promised as she tugged on his hand.

  Penny was waiting outside the garden with a picnic basket in hand. She nodded politely at Nathaniel, but Addie could tell she still didn’t approve. From his forced smile, it was obvious Nathaniel could sense it. Hating to be so at odds with her best friend, she gave Penny a fierce thank-you hug before dragging Nathaniel into the garden.

  Instantly, Addie’s flagging spirits revived. Nathaniel could be hell on her generally upbeat mood, but this garden knew how to work magic.

  She took a deep breath, her eyes drinking in the neat rows of rose bushes penned in by the aged beauty of an ancient brick wall covered in ivy. The late summer heat had kept them mostly in bloom, but the cold snap this week had seen the flowers start to drop and the grassy paths between were strewn with rose petals.

  Old, gnarly trees at each corner provided ample shade for the bench seats that lined the perimeter of the garden, but Addie chose to wander along the rows with a silent Nathaniel until she was dead center. She passed him the blanket Penny had included and he looked at her for a moment before spreading it on the ground.

  She plastered a smile on her face and sat, conscious of him joining her as she pulled the feast out of the basket.

  “So we’re just going to sit here and look at the roses and eat?” he asked. “You’re not going to launch into an agenda?”

  She handed him his still-warm bacon sandwich. “Nope.”

  He looked at her skeptically, but accepted the offering and they munched in silence for a couple of minutes.

  “Hmm, that was good,” Nathaniel said as he wiped his hands and face on a napkin.

  Addie had to agree. She’d started eating bacon again recently. Her vegetarianism had been a health choice rather than a philosophical one, and it had been too damn hard to smell it cooking that first Sunday morning in his apartment and not succumb to its lure.

  Going without the last few years had been easy enough when it was never in her fridge to entice her, but having it cooked for you by a gorgeous man in his underwear who could tempt the devil—and she just hadn’t been that strong.

  Even now, he’d missed some bacon grease on his upper lip and Addie had to stomp down hard on the urge to lick it off him. She shook her head and just looked at him. The man was sitting on a picnic rug in a suit.

  “What?” he asked warily.

  She shook her head. “Here.” And she reached for his tie, pulling at the knot.

  He quirked an eyebrow. “Addie, Addie, Addie, you’ll wear me out.”

  Addie snorted. “Like that would ever be possible.”

  Nathaniel frowned. He placed his hand on hers. “Leave it.”

  Addie glared at him as a tangle of irrational emotion rose in her chest. “You’re at a picnic, Nate. At least try and look the part.”

  He dropped his hand and she undid his tie, zipping it out from his collar. Her fingers went for his buttons next, undoing the top three.

  “Now at least you look like you know how to relax,” she said, satisfied with his more casual appearance.

  He was framed by rose bushes, and that irrational feeling returned as she realized that she was looking at the current stakes in her life and didn’t like the choices. Nor did she like or even understand how he could make her so damn mad and yet still want to push him down on the ground and have her way with him.

  Addie flopped back onto the blanket and shut her eyes. It blocked out both problems and stopped her from reaching for him. She concentrated on finding her center somewhere in the swirling abyss of emotion.

  Slowly, the numbers came, trickling in at first, the prime numbers she knew so well seemingly lost in her turmoil but gradually they came, faster and faster, and she mentally grabbed hold, uttering them silently, desperate for their comfort.

  Nathaniel looked down at her. Beneath her bubble jacket, she was in low-slung jeans and a button-up skivvy. She’d stuffed her hair into a funky woolen cap that he recognized as one of Grandy’s creations and pulled it down over her ears.

  She was also obviously wearing her cranky pants.

  He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do now, but he knew what he wanted to do with her all stretched-out horizontal beside him, and it definitely involved getting her out of those cranky pants.

  He lay back instead, pretty sure she would not be receptive to his advances. The deep purple petals in his peripheral vision seemed to mock him. He drummed his fingers on the blanket, conscious of the seconds, the minutes ticking by.

  Remembering the report waiting on his desk about a new property he was looking at acquiring. Going over the briefing notes in his head that Margaret had handed him this morning for his two p.m. meeting.

  “Stop thinking.”

  He rolled his head to the side at the grouchy command. “I’m not good at being idle.”

  “Look at that,” she said and his gaze followed her finger as she pointed at a plane flying overhead. “Don’t you ever wonder where they’re going?”

  Nathaniel frowned. “No.”

  Addie’s arm dropped to the ground as she muttered, “Of course not.”


  “It’s just a plane, Addie,” he said to her closed-eyed demeanor. He didn’t have time in his life to daydream about flight destinations. “A machine that gets you from A to B.”

  She opened her eyes and shook her head at him. “It transports people’s dreams. People coming and going to holidays or weddings or reunions, or moving to other countries, or just coming home again. I love how palpable the anticipation is on planes.”

  Nathaniel was usually head down in work on a plane, so he couldn’t say he’d ever noticed, but she was in a strange mood and he wasn’t going to poke a stick at her in this garden of all places, because he had a feeling it was the surroundings that were making her moody.

  He looked back to the sky. After a moment or two, he said tentatively, “So…I’ve gone through your books.”

  He sensed rather than saw her eyes open. “Oh?”

  “I have some suggestions, if you want to hear them.”

  There was movement beside him and Addie sat up, hugging her knees, her back to him. “Or I can just give you the report I prepared when we get back to the office.”

  Addie’s head turned and she blinked down at him. “You prepared a report?”

  “I thought it would be easier for you to have a hard copy for easy reference.”

  Addie looked away and said, “Just give me the dot points.”

  Nathaniel sat, too, his arm brushing hers. “I think there are some very easy places you could make some savings. You could have a bigger markup on your products. The Docks has a reputation for expensive quality goods, so you have a lot of leeway. You could run the shop yourself, negating the expense of a staff member with the added advantage of being more in touch with what’s happening there. And you could stay open later and consider opening on Sundays as well. You also buy your crystals from UK suppliers who charge like wounded bulls. There are cheaper options you could explore.”

  She didn’t say anything for a while and she was so still he started to wonder if she was stroking out at his very sensible suggestions.

  “Addie?” he prompted.

  She turned her head. “You think I should sack Tiffany?”

  “It’s one of the options you have.”

  “She helps supports her family because Burt, her dad, is out of work due to a back injury.”

  “There are other jobs,” he said gently.

  “She’s dyslexic.”

  Addie’s big gray eyes bored into his. She had a way of making him feel lower than a snake’s belly, and he hated feeling like a criminal just because he’d pointed out where she could be more efficient with her business.

  He especially hated that she looked so wretched he wanted to pull her into his arms and take it all back. But he was making sound business sense—any manager would tell her the same—and he wouldn’t apologize for that.

  Even if she was looking at him like he’d ripped every rose bush in this garden out by the roots.

  He scanned his surroundings. He couldn’t hope to be given a fair hearing with them sitting in the middle of their metaphorical battleground. “I think I should go,” he said, standing.

  “You’re going to do it, aren’t you? You’re really going to knock this all down. Pave paradise.”

  Her bleak words cut deeper than any screeched insult from a megaphone. “I know that you were hoping to change my mind, but I need the garden, Addie.”

  Addie hugged her knees. “You don’t need it. You want it. I need it.”

  “Addie—”

  “Don’t come tonight.” She cut him off without even bothering to looking at him.

  Nathaniel steeled himself against the quiet rejection. The thought of not sharing her bed for the first night in weeks hit him like a sledgehammer, but he wasn’t going to grovel. And he wasn’t going to ditch a deal that would cost him precious time and money and derail a goal sixteen years in the making. This thing, whatever this thing was, had obviously just run its course.

  And that was good.

  It had taken up way too much of his time. He could get back to concentrating on the things that were important in his life.

  Sex he could get anywhere. Uncomplicated sex, to boot. With women who didn’t get in his head.

  He didn’t need Addie in his head.

  And he didn’t need her anywhere near his heart, either.

  Chapter Eleven

  Addie kept herself busy over the next couple of days with futile letter box drops for the Save St. Aggie’s garden campaign. She went out Friday and Saturday evenings to even more futile strategy meetings that went long into the night. She’d spent today at Soul Food going through the inventory and doing all those other things she’d been neglecting so badly this last month.

  But now she was sitting on the Ida May, every square inch reminding her of Nathaniel and how he’d dominated her little home, and even though she was watching the television, she couldn’t stop the analysis going on in her head.

  Telling Nate good-bye had been gut-wrenching. But sitting there in the garden, in her garden, as he’d talked to her as if she was some client who’d paid him for a business analysis rather than the woman whose mattress practically had scorch marks from their marathon sessions, it had become so clear.

  She hadn’t changed his mind.

  And no amount of time, of broaching the subject, of showing him how much it meant to her, how much life and living meant to her or how many letter box drops and strategy meetings she attended, was going to make an iota of difference.

  All she’d done was buy some time.

  The two-hundred-year-old walled rose garden was doomed. And Nate was going to be its executioner.

  But it was worse than that. To add insult to injury, she’d gone and fallen in love with him.

  She’d been telling herself every day that she was here for purely altruistic reasons—for the garden’s sake, for Nathaniel’s sake. Giving him experiences and showing him things in the hopes that he’d come to understand there was more to life than work.

  Paying her debt to the universe.

  But the truth was, she was in it for herself. Because she’d fallen in love with him.

  Day by day, he’d wormed under her skin, and each night as he rocked her world, she’d fallen for him a bit more. Every time he’d smiled or laughed or seemed to be enjoying her little outings, she’d been ridiculously thrilled. Every time he’d looked into her eyes when he was deep inside her, she’d lost her breath.

  Every time he’d left in the morning, he’d taken her heart with him.

  And now, without even having a clue because, despite their time together he really just didn’t know her at all, he’d stomped all over it.

  How could she have been so wrong about him? She’d been an idiot to think they were some kind of kindred spirits because she’d recognized a bit of herself in him. Even back in her rat-race days, she’d never been this out of touch with her humanity.

  She looked around at her cozy home, the fire going, the walls a lovely warm honey color, vibrant throws, colorful rugs, lacy curtains, the remnants of Nathaniel’s last flower delivery.

  His place was like a bloody mausoleum—all black and white. She’d only been there a few times and had been pleased when his self-imposed grueling schedule meant that he came to her. There’d been something so sexy about him oozing testosterone all over her girly environment. Seeing his big, naked body covered in her floral sheets or wrapped in her pink bath towels.

  Addie blinked hard. She would not cry. She’d seen more than her fair share of tragic things in her twenty-seven years—people dying of cancer, grieving families, bald kids with old, old eyes.

  Things worth crying over.

  She would not cry over a man. She had her health, a roof over her head, food in her belly, and people who loved her.

  She was lucky.

  Luckier than Nathaniel by far, because he didn’t realize that was all you really needed in life.

  She blew her runny nose and turned the television up really loud.
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  Nathaniel stood where the Ida May was moored, looking down at the longboat, the night lights of the docks twinkling in the water. The last two nights had been the longest of his life. He hadn’t slept. He’d barely eaten. He hadn’t been able to concentrate on work.

  He ran a frustrated hand through his hair and along his jaw. Hell, he hadn’t even shaved.

  And he had absolutely no idea how he’d gotten here. Or why he’d come. It certainly hadn’t been a conscious decision, but—here he was.

  His gaze followed the black wisps coming out of the stack on the roof and he breathed the wood smoke deep into his lungs.

  It was crazy that he was here. Addie wasn’t like anyone he knew. She had no concrete goals, she didn’t care about money or clothes or jewelry or even expensive flowers. She meditated, for crying out loud, and believed in the power of crystals. And if all that wasn’t bad enough, she had a pathological attachment to a garden.

  A garden that belonged to him.

  A garden that had to go to achieve his goals. Goals that he’d been working hard to achieve since he was nineteen and were so very close.

  Nathaniel had goals—that didn’t make him a bad person.

  He turned to leave, then stopped, fisting his hands as his body demanded that he go to her.

  Goddamn it!

  There was nothing about her that should appeal at all. Yet he wanted to belt down her door, stride inside, and make her come all night.

  But it was more than that.

  That was lust. Lust he understood. Lust was something he could control. Something he could take or leave. This didn’t feel like that. This was different.

  Nathaniel stepped onto the boat, his hand delving in his pocket for the key she’d given him. But he knew after the way they’d left it, he couldn’t use it. So he knocked.

  The door was open in ten seconds and she was standing before him in track pants and a T-shirt with no bra and some fluffy boot things and his heart was thudding so frenetically he thought for a crazy second he was having a heart attack.

  “Nate,” she whispered, and then she was throwing herself into his arms, slamming her mouth against his and he was lifting her up and she was wrapping her legs around his waist and he was striding inside, kicking the door shut while her hands were undoing his belt buckle and her tongue was stroking inside his mouth and he could feel it deep inside his gut as if she was licking him there.