On the Tycoon's Terms

by Sandra Field

  “I don’t care if you inherited a billion dollars—you had nothing to do with his death.”

  To his horror Luke saw tears flood Katrin’s eyes and tremble on her lashes. “Oh God,” she said, “I’ve got to get out of here.”

  With a huge effort Luke stayed sitting in his chair, his fingers wrapped like manacles around the arms. “I’m really sorry,” he said, and this time could hear the emotion in his voice. “Taking you by surprise like this was about the dumbest move I could have made.”

  She drew a long, shaky breath. “For once we’re in complete agreement.”

  “Well, that’s something. And now you’d better go back to the kitchen… Olaf’s glaring at me. He probably thinks we’re having a rip-roaring affair.”

  “There’s not a chance in the world of that,” she retorted with a trace of her usual spirit. Then she pivoted and hurried back to the kitchen, ignoring Olaf as if he were just one more oak chair.

  Hoping she didn’t mean it, Luke buttered a slice of crusty French bread and took the first mouthful of soup. It smelled like and tasted of spinach. Naturally. Trying to think of it as penance, he unfolded his newspaper.

  Why had Katrin been so shaken up by her first sight of him?

  The fish was excellent. He followed it with a maple syrup mousse that more than made up for the soup, and two cups of coffee. After she’d poured the second one, Katrin said politely, “Can I get you anything else, sir?”

  The four guests who’d had the roast beef had just left. Luke said forthrightly, “Can I meet you somewhere after work? Do you have your car here?”

  “My bike. Why do you want to meet me?”

  “I need to talk to you!”

  She looked at him coldly, rather as if he were a fly she’d just discovered in his spinach soup. “You came all this way to talk to me? You expect me to believe that?”

  “Yes, I did. And yes, I do.”

  “I’d have thought you had better things to do with your time. More profitable, anyway.”

  “I came here to see you, Katrin,” Luke repeated, his voice rising in spite of himself.

  “Short of hiring a bouncer, I’m not going to get rid of you, am I?”

  “Not before you and I sit down and discuss everything I found out.”

  “You’re boxing me in!”

  “I know I’m not doing this right,” Luke said in exasperation. “Please, Katrin, let me come to your place later on, will you do that much?”

  For a moment it hung in the balance. Then she snapped, “No earlier than ten-thirty.”

  Her eyes were now filled with a mixture of hostility and terror; Luke wasn’t sure which he disliked more. “I’ll be there,” he said. “Tell Olaf to jump in the lake if he gives you a hard time.”

  “My pay gets docked the price of four plates of roast beef,” she said. “C’est la vie.”

  “That’s disgraceful—the resort shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.”

  “I’m not a labor lawyer,” Katrin said sweetly, “I’m a stockbroker. See you later.”

  Somehow—once again—Luke was quite sure she was telling the truth. Guy had known her background; that’s why he’d goaded her with talk about investments. She’d be very good at her job, Luke would be willing to bet. Although most people might steer clear of a beautiful female broker who had a murder trial in her past.

  Had he really categorized her as deadly dull the first time he’d laid eyes on her? He couldn’t have been more off base if he’d tried.

  It was five to nine. He had an hour and a half to kill.

  He went for a stroll along the lakeshore, listening to the shrill chorus of frogs and the soft lap of waves on the sand, the hands on his watch moving with agonizing slowness. He should have been on a jet to Whitehorse today, to look after a contract dispute; instead he’d delegated the job. Early this morning he ought to have been talking to a foreman in Texas. But yesterday afternoon had put paid to all his plans and schedules. Yesterday afternoon he’d gone to the library.

  Against his better judgment Luke had spent a couple of hours there, reading through the accounts of the trial. The flash photos of Katrin had cut him to the heart. Her dark suit and silk shirt, her smooth, sophisticated chignon, her elegant pumps and gold jewellery: none of these were familiar to him, showing him another side to a woman who was still, in her essence, mysterious. But her air of reserve and her pride of bearing came across even in the grainy newsprint; these he knew all too well.

  The headlines were cheap and degrading; her privacy had been mercilessly invaded for months at a time. As for her dead husband, Luke loathed him on sight, with his heavy jowls and thin, rapacious mouth. Why on earth had Katrin married him?

  Even now, on the lakeshore, Luke couldn’t get those photos out of his mind.

  At ten twenty-four he was in the parking lot unlocking his car. At precisely ten twenty-nine he turned into Katrin’s driveway. The lights were on in the house. A bicycle was parked by the side door. He walked up the steps, wiped his damp palms down the sides of his trousers, and rang the doorbell.

  The door was pulled open immediately. Katrin ushered him in and shut the door with an aggressive snap. Then she stood a careful three feet away from him and said brusquely, “We can’t talk for long. I’m on the breakfast shift.”

  As an opener, thought Luke, this wasn’t encouraging. She looked as though she’d just gotten out of the shower, her hair still in its loose knot, damp strands curling by her ears. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes guarded; her jeans and loose sweater hadn’t been chosen with seduction in mind. He said, “I like your hair like that.”

  “You didn’t come here to talk about my hair.”

  He said calmly, “May I sit down?”

  She flushed. “Do you want something to drink?”

  “No, thanks.” He looked around, trying to get a sense of her surroundings. He was standing in an old-fashioned kitchen, panelled in pine, with colorful woven rugs on the softwood floor and plants on the wide sills. There were dishes in the sink, papers on the oak table, mail thrown on the counter. It was a room as different from his immaculately tidy stainless steel kitchen as could be imagined. He pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. With obvious reluctance, Katrin sat down across from him.

  As far away from him as she could get.

  Luke cleared his throat and said the first thing that came into his head. “Why did you drop the plates when you saw me?”

  “You were the last person I was expecting to see.”

  “Come on, Katrin, there was more to it than that.”

  “If you just came up here to interrogate me,” she said tautly, “you can turn right around and go back.”

  He leaned forward. “Yesterday I went through all the newspaper accounts of the trial… I can’t imagine how you survived such an ordeal.”

  She tilted her chin. “I knew I was innocent and I had the support of good friends.”

  This wasn’t going the way he’d hoped. Hadn’t he pictured her falling into his arms as soon as she opened the door? “Why did you marry him?” Luke asked quietly.

  “For his money, of course.”

  Luke held hard to his temper. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Then you’re one of the few.”

  “I never did like going along with the crowd,” he said with a crooked smile, trying to lighten the atmosphere.

  “I was young. Naive, if you’re feeling charitable. Stupid, if you’re not.”

  She was scowling down at the table, digging at the grain in the wood with one fingernail, the light from the Tiffany lamp shining on her wheat-gold hair. Wanting her so badly he could taste it, Luke said, “I don’t mean to be interrogating you—you’ve had more than enough of that. But after I saw those photos of you in the papers—your dignity and courage, the strain in your face—I can’t explain it. I booked a flight and here I am. I should have let you know, I guess. But I figured if I did, you might take off.”

  “You were rig
ht. I probably would have.”

  “Why?”

  “We’ve got nothing to say to each other.”

  He suddenly reached across the table and stilled her restless fingers. She snatched her hand back. “Don’t touch me!”

  Pain knifed him; followed by jealousy, hot and imperative, clawing at his entrails. “You’ve got me out of your system, haven’t you?” he snarled. “Who with, Katrin?”

  She glared at him. “There’s one thing you should know about me, Luke MacRae—I don’t have affairs.”

  Slowly his body relaxed. “I’ve dated three different women since I left here and they all bored me to tears.”

  “Hurray for you.”

  “Why did you marry him?” Luke repeated.

  For a long moment she gazed at him across the table. “If I tell you, will you go away?”

  His eyes met hers, refusing to drop. “I’m not making any promises.”

  “You only want me because I’m not falling into your arms!”

  “Give me a little more credit than that.”

  “I don’t know what makes you tick—how could I? You’re an enigma to me.”

  “You know you’re important enough that I flew all the way up here once I found out what your secret was,” Luke said forcefully. “And if you don’t have affairs, Katrin, I don’t chase women who don’t want me around. Neither do I indulge in bed-hopping, it’s not to my taste.” His throat tight, he asked the second crucial question. “Do you still want to go to bed with me? Because in New York and San Francisco I couldn’t forget you, day or night. Although the nights were worse. I should be in the Yukon right now dealing with contract negotiations—but I’m here instead.” He gave a wintry smile. “I don’t neglect business for anyone. You should be flattered.”

  “You frighten me,” she whispered. “You’re like a rockslide—nothing in your path will stop you. And that includes me.”

  He was losing, Luke thought, his mouth dry. And how could he push himself on a woman whose boundaries had been cruelly invaded by police, lawyers and the avaricious appetites of the public? Not to mention her husband. “Katrin, let’s get a couple of things straight,” he said in a clipped voice—a voice that belonged to a high-powered businessman rather than a man attempting seduction. “Yes, I want to go to bed with you. But I’m not the marrying kind. No commitments, no permanence. In other words, I won’t hang around pestering you.”

  “We already discussed that,” she said frostily. “I’m thinking of going to law school, so I don’t want any complications in my personal life.”

  Luke thoroughly disliked being seen as a complication. He said flatly, “Right now, if you tell me you really don’t want me anymore, I’ll leave and I won’t come back.”

  His words echoed in his ears. Did he mean them? Could he do it—simply leave, and never know exactly what Katrin meant to him? Surely she did still want him, just as badly as he wanted her? She couldn’t have changed that quickly, not in the few days that he’d been away. So he was now trusting her innate honesty; gambling that she’d tell him the truth.

  She said evenly, “You mean that, don’t you?”

  Luke nodded, reminded of that long ago day when he was negotiating for his first mine. When his whole life had lain in the balance.

  Ridiculous, he told himself. We’re talking bed here. Seduction. Nothing else.

  And waited for her reply.

  CHAPTER TEN

  KATRIN said without a trace of emotion in her voice, “Yes, Luke, I still want you. That’s why all that roast beef went flying. I hadn’t been able to get you out of my mind and then there you were. Sitting at one of my tables.”

  His breath hissed between his teeth. “I knew I could count on you to be truthful.”

  She said rapidly, “I’ll tell you why I married Donald…why I made the worst mistake in my whole life. If you still want to hear about it.”

  “Of course I do. That’s what I came here for.”

  “I was born in Toronto,” she said. “My father left when I was seven. I still don’t know why, my mother would never talk about it. She was heartbroken. A few months later she got very sick and she died. Young as I was, I knew she didn’t want to go on living without him. I was brought to Askja to live with Great-aunt Gudrun…other than Uncle Erik she was my only remaining relative, and he was hardly suitable as a surrogate parent for a little girl just turned seven.”

  So Katrin’s father had run away from his family responsibilities, just as Luke’s mother had from hers. Not that Luke was going to tell Katrin that. “Go on,” he said softly.

  “At first I hated it here. We’d lived in the heart of the city and all of a sudden I was living in a village where everyone knew everyone else and there wasn’t as much as a toy shop.” Her smile was rueful. “But my great-aunt was patient and kind, and gradually I came to love the place…she died when I was seventeen, and left me this house.”

  “You came back to your roots.”

  For the first time since he’d arrived, Katrin smiled. “Yes, I did. But I wanted more than my Icelandic heritage—I wanted to know about my father. He left here when he was young, after a fight with his father, who was Great-aunt Gudrun’s elder brother. He never got in touch with his parents again, and they knew nothing about where he’d gone. After my great-aunt died, I tried to trace him. Eventually I discovered he’d died just the year before, picking grapes in the Napa Valley in California.”

  “So you went there.”

  She nodded. “I found out very little. He was a wanderer, never stayed long at any job. He had no friends and no money. So I guess he’ll always remain a stranger to me…it was while I was searching through some old records in San Francisco that I met Donald.”

  Wishing he’d accepted her offer of a drink, Luke waited for her to continue. She said in a rush, “It’s such a trite story. Donald was years older than me, and I was, of course, looking for a father figure. Classic, isn’t it? Besides, I was alone in a strange country, and he could be very charming when he chose. I fell in love. Or thought I did. We were married, I trained to be a broker, and for a while everything was more or less okay. I was very busy, first as a junior in a big firm, then moving to a better position in another firm, you know how it goes. But busy as I was, I couldn’t be oblivious forever. Gradually I realized Donald was being unfaithful to me. Not just once, but on a regular basis. But even worse than that were the people he’d bring into the house. His friends and business associates. Men I didn’t want to be in the same room with.”

  Again she dug at the table with her nail. “Well, you know the rest. Things went from bad to worse, especially after he informed me he had no intention of changing his ways. Then one night we had this blazing row. I told him I was leaving him, he threatened to cut me out of his will, and I left.”

  “So he still wanted you as his wife.”

  “I guess so. I was good cover, being so trustworthy and respectable.”

  “Don’t be bitter, Katrin,” Luke said gently.

  “You don’t know how angry I’ve been at myself for being so trusting for so long. Anyway, after I left the house I went straight to Susan and Robert’s. Thank goodness I did that. I still shudder to think what might have happened if I hadn’t had that alibi.”

  So did he. “It’s a tribute to you that you had such good friends…are you still in touch with them?”

  “We write regularly. They moved to Maryland last year.”

  So he couldn’t suggest she come to San Francisco to visit her friends Susan and Robert. “I can’t believe I didn’t meet you somewhere in the city during those years,” Luke said.

  “I kept a very low profile. First I was studying like a fiend, then I started dissociating myself from Donald and his friends.” She shrugged restlessly. “I should have left him months before I did. But one of my great-aunt’s precepts was to believe the best of everyone until you had evidence to the contrary. I guess I kept looking for the best in Donald. He wasn’t altogether ba
d—he could be very witty, and not unkind, as long as I didn’t interfere with his plans.”

  “Not much of an endorsement,” Luke said dryly. He wanted to ask what sex had been like for her; and found he couldn’t get his tongue around the words. He was jealous, he thought incredulously. Jealous of a dead man.

  She said in a low voice, “I finally found out about his ventures on the wrong side of the law, and that was the end of it. I should never have married him! But even now, I hate to think of the way he died. That someone hated him enough to kill him.”

  “You’re a good woman, Katrin,” Luke said.

  “Not really,” she muttered. “When I came back here, I felt so battered and ashamed. I couldn’t tell people about the trial, I just wanted to put it behind me. So all I said was that I was widowed. Only Anna knows the real truth.” She ducked her head. “I lied, in effect.”

  “You looked after yourself,” Luke said strongly. “The trial was no one else’s business.”

  “I suppose.” Picking at a loose thread in the sleeve of her sweater, her eyes downcast, Katrin said in a strangled voice, “So now what do we do, Luke?”

  The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. “Have you made love with anyone other than Donald?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve been wary of men ever since I left San Francisco. And on Askja, there’s not a whole lot of choice.”

  Knowing he was ridiculously pleased by her answer, making no move to touch her, Luke said, “I’ve got a suggestion. Hear me out and think about it before you reply.”

  She nodded, looking very wary. Luke said evenly, “Let’s spend the night together. Here. Then in the morning I’ll drive back to the airport and we’ll go our separate ways.”

  Her lashes flickered. “And what will that accomplish?”

  “There’s something going on between us, we both know that. This way we can have the best of two worlds…find out what it is without any messy complications.”

  “Without any emotions, is that what you mean?”

  “Without us getting entangled in a relationship neither of us wants!”