The Texas Billionaire’s Bride

by Crystal Green

  Yet, when he came back downstairs to hear his daughter and her nanny laughing about something or another on TV, he found himself walking toward them.

  But then he changed direction, moving toward the sanctuary of his study.

  But he could still hear them.

  And weirdly enough, he kind of liked the sound.

  Chapter Five

  That night, Melanie couldn’t sleep. Not with Zane Foley in the same townhouse.

  She lay in the guest bedroom with the sheets tangled around her legs, trying to find a position that worked.

  But she was restless, unable to stop thinking about him. And when she paired the stimulation of just being in the same pheromonal range as Zane Foley with the fact that she hadn’t been intimate with a man for a long time, this resulted in one wide-awake woman.

  For a while, she’d dated a Vegas bartender who nursed ambitions to open his own place, and the relationship had gotten serious enough, so that she’d developed what she’d believed could become serious feelings—at least until he dumped her. Otherwise, over the years, she spent her emotions wisely, knowing that sex didn’t feel right unless there were fireworks during kisses, and dreams of being with that man for the rest of her life.

  But thoughts of intimacy with a certain nearby boss weren’t the only thing keeping her eyes wide-open tonight: it was also hard to wait until morning, when Father’s Day would really arrive.

  Boy, she hated having to plot and scheme like this, but she’d seen Zane Foley’s eyes go gentle when Livie had given him that tie, and it had justified the chance Melanie had taken of losing her job altogether. However, if there’d been any sign of his closing himself entirely to Livie, Melanie would’ve cut the plan short and taken the little girl back home.

  Yet, that hadn’t been the case.

  It was clear that Zane Foley loved his daughter and he didn’t know how to show it. But Melanie wasn’t so simple as to think that the situation could be changed in the course of one holiday, because Danielle’s death had left too many scars.

  As the grandfather clock downstairs struck twelve, Melanie sat up in bed. No use trying to sleep at all. Her mind and emotions were all over the place.

  Maybe she could dig through his cupboard to see if he had any soothing tea?

  Yeah. Right. Like he’d have tea. Yet, maybe he’d have some milk. Soothing, good old milk worked every time.

  Melanie crawled out of her guest bed, then adjusted her above-the-knee, rose-sprigged linen nightgown and headed for the door.

  The clock stopped chiming as she crept down the hall past Livie’s room, where Melanie peeked in to find the girl sprawled over the mattress, all relaxed knees and elbows.

  Sleeping like a rock, as always, Melanie thought.

  Warmth lodging in her upper chest, she shut the door and continued on her way. Down the circular stairs, quietly, slowly. Toward the kitchen.

  But before she got there, she heard something in the living room. A wall blocked her view, but that didn’t stop her from wondering if it was Zane.

  Her heart butted against her chest.

  Was he up, too?

  She peered around the wall, but she must’ve already made some noise, because she saw him under the light of a dim Tiffany lamp, shoving some object into a small chest, his shoulders hunched.

  Heart in her throat, she pulled back around the corner. Maybe she should go back to her bedroom and leave him alone.

  Yet that was the last thing she really wanted—her body was very clear about that, too, as it began a sultry melt—hot, liquid, weak.

  “Livie?” she heard him ask gruffly from the other room.

  Shoot! No escaping now.

  “No.” Melanie realized she was wearing a nightgown. Conservative by most standards, but…a nightgown. Her breasts pressed against the linen, her nipples hardening at the sound of his voice alone.

  But she couldn’t hide here like a kid playing games.

  Exhaling, she pulled her gown away from her chest, hoping that would do as she walked around the corner.

  “It’s me,” she said. “I was going to the kitchen for something to drink, and I…”

  He was staring at her, and it ratcheted her pulse up to high speed, enough so that she could feel the tiny, propulsive rhythm of it in her neck veins.

  Just the two of us, she thought—after midnight.

  While she’d been behind the wall, he’d clearly placed the wooden chest on a shelf to the side of his massive TV, but her mind wasn’t so much on that, or even what might be inside of it.

  One hundred percent of her was concentrated on him.

  As he put his hands on his hips, making the muscles in his arms that much more obvious, making him seem like that noble, Western everyman, she corrected herself.

  She was paying one hundred and ten percent attention to him now.

  Those shoulders under his T-shirt, she thought. And that broad chest…

  She bet that he had corrugated abs under his shirt, and she could just about feel them under her fingertips right now—ridges, muscle, flesh.

  Hot and smooth…

  “Sorry I bothered you,” he said in a low voice that shook her, even over the quiet hum of everything else.

  “No bother.” What to say now? Hi, yes, I’m sporting a nightgown, but you must admit it’s prettier than that business suit you saw me wearing at our interviews.

  “You want me to…?” He motioned toward the kitchen, as if asking if he should fetch her something to drink.

  My, how polite they suddenly were with each other.

  “No, no, I’ve got it.” She started to leave, thinking she would skip the beverage and just scram.

  “Wait.”

  It was as if he had a pull on her, and she didn’t go anywhere.

  “Yes?” she said.

  During his pause, she looked at him again, to find him running a slow gaze over her. When he saw that she noticed, he crossed his arms over his chest.

  She was tingling all over. How could just a look do that?

  “About earlier tonight…” he said, business as usual.

  Great—did they have to talk about this now? “If you’re going to fire me, could you do it tomorrow? I’d like to at least say goodbye to Livie—”

  “I’m not going to fire you.”

  She stared at him as he leveled a firm gaze at her.

  “Not yet, anyway,” he added.

  This man. Dear God, she couldn’t make heads or tails of him. Was he angry because she’d brought Livie here, or not? After all, he’d retreated to his study right after they’d settled in; then they’d gone to bed after saying good-night. No more mention of anything. But she figured she would have to pay the piper when the timing was more convenient for him—like in the morning.

  Yet, now she couldn’t predict him at all.

  He was as mysterious as whatever he’d put back in that chest by the TV.

  “Then I’m glad you’re not going to kick me out of the job,” she said, gathering her guts, standing up for herself and for Livie. “I think I’m good for your daughter.”

  “I see that. She looks…happy.” The corners of his mouth seemed to rise for a fleeting moment, then stopped as if his mouth was so unused to the expression that it rejected any change.

  “She’s happier,” Melanie said.

  She waited for him to react, but he only got that shadowed look in his eyes again, the one she’d seen so many times during her interviews.

  What could she do to get rid of it?

  “You know what she’d really like?” Melanie asked.

  “What?” The shadows were still there.

  “If you’d do something with her tomorrow. Even just lunch. Or, if you could spare any more time, she talks about trying some horseback riding. Maybe that’d be an activity you’d both like.”

  As if he’d been waiting for something to reject, he said, “Livie’s grandma died from a riding accident. I’d prefer we didn’t go that route.” />
  Talk about stepping on a mine in a field full of them. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  She hadn’t come across any family history articles that went so deep beyond rumor and innuendo, and that family feud with the McCords.

  “I try to keep most things private, if I can manage,” he said. “Even from the press.”

  She thought of Danielle but didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to, when it looked as if those shadows were about to wrap around him and drag him into the walls.

  “Instead of riding,” she said, “how about an hour in the neighborhood park with us? I saw one about a block away.”

  He hesitated, and Melanie stabilized herself.

  For Livie.

  “She’s missed you,” she added. “This would mean the world to her.”

  When he glanced at that chest on the shelf, the tightening of his jaw made her think he was going to refuse the invitation. But then he started to walk away from the object, toward that hallway, as if leaving whatever was in the chest behind.

  Or at least putting distance between him and it.

  “One o’clock,” he said as he continued toward the hallway, but she wasn’t even sure she’d heard him right. “I have to go into Dallas before that, but I’ll work the rest of the day from here.”

  “Did you say—?”

  He paused, staring at the ground. “One o’clock.”

  Melanie could’ve shot through the roof. “Perfect. I’ll pack a lunch, so don’t worry about eating.”

  “You’ll find the cupboards pretty empty around here,” he said, meandering away again, barely looking at her. “Maybe I should leave money, if you don’t mind stopping at the market.”

  “I don’t mind. I don’t mind at all.”

  She was smiling to beat the band, and he lifted his head, his gaze coming to rest on her mouth.

  Then his eyes met hers again, thrashing her with a slam of that awareness she’d been trying so hard to dodge.

  But dodge she did, nodding at him and then leaving before he could, walking past the kitchen and back to her bedroom, where she intended to shut the door nice and tight behind her until tomorrow.

  He’d meant to get to the park for their Father’s Day date.

  He really had.

  But Zane had found some accounting errors while reviewing a monthly report he was catching up on, and by the time he’d finished smoothing out the near damage, he’d looked at his watch to see that it was past three o’clock.

  Three o’damned clock.

  How had that happened?

  He wanted to blame anyone but himself: why hadn’t Melanie Grandy called him when he hadn’t shown up at the park?

  Yet, he figured the nanny had probably given up on him and hadn’t bothered to even pick up the phone, because he had only confirmed that he was the worst dad in existence.

  As his hand fell to his side, he wondered how Livie had taken his absence, but the answer wasn’t hard to come by. She’d had plenty of practice at dealing with disappointment in him before, and he imagined that her opinion hadn’t changed today.

  And there it was—the exact reason he’d excused himself from bringing her up in the first place.

  He called Monty to pick him up. When Monty arrived he didn’t make any comments. Then again, unlike Melanie Grandy, the driver knew it wasn’t his place to do so.

  No, his employee only handed him a box after Zane had settled in the town car’s backseat.

  “What’s this?” he asked Monty.

  The driver pulled the vehicle away from the valet station in the office building’s parking structure. “Ms. Grandy sent it for you. She said she figured you might need it.”

  Steam fogged over him, an equal mix of disliking the position the nanny had put him in and…

  God. He remembered last night, when she’d been standing there in her nightie. Even though the sleepwear had been modest, it had shown more leg than he’d ever seen of her.

  Long, lean leg. And he’d wanted to go to Melanie Grandy, bend down to curl his fingers around her ankle, then start from there on up, skimming over her toned calf, the soft, damp back of her knee, higher….

  But he’d barred himself from doing any of it, mostly because of what he’d stowed in the chest just before he’d heard her moving around while going to the kitchen.

  Danielle’s ashes in an urn.

  He supposed that the approaching anniversary of his first wife’s suicide had urged him to take out her remains. But then again, he often contemplated her—the memories of what he could’ve done. The penance for not being able to stop her…

  In any case, he’d been in a brooding mood, and the nanny had broken it open for a short time before he’d told himself to get out of the room, to resist a situation he just couldn’t handle.

  Now he looked at the box she had sent for him to open, and like that chest, he wished he could just keep it closed.

  But since he had a feeling about what was inside, he took off the lid.

  The R2-D2 tie.

  He tossed the box lid to the seat. Damn that woman. She’d probably found it where he’d placed it on the kitchen counter last night.

  Legs or not, she was making his life hell.

  Zane caught Monty’s gaze in the rearview mirror just before the driver looked away.

  The rest of the ride was like a session in a torture chamber, with the world’s most invisible, cutting, self-inflicted weapons. Zane went back and forth between cursing himself for blowing it with Livie today and thinking that he should just send her back home, until Monty pulled up to his townhouse, with its luxurious, sleek façade that didn’t offer even a hint of the darkness inside.

  They would be waiting in there for him: Livie, with those eyes that slayed Zane every time he saw them. And Melanie Grandy—who had quite a way of killing him softly, too.

  Dammit.

  He took off his Armani tie and put on the R2-D2 one, feeling like an ass, but not just because he was wearing a cartoon character on his chest.

  Then Zane got out of the car, held up a hand to thank Monty and watched his driver pull away in a stream of red taillights.

  He ran a hand through his hair, took a deep breath and entered his home, thinking that he’d never been so cautious about coming into his own doggone place before the nanny had arrived.

  Standing in the foyer, he set down his briefcase, listening for any signs of life. No TV. No clanging around in the kitchen.

  He went back outside to check the stand-alone garage, to see if Melanie’s designated Tall Oaks Volvo was still there where he’d parked it for her, last night before retiring.

  Present and accounted for.

  When he wandered back inside, ready to capitulate and call her cell phone, he heard something floating down from the stairway.

  Laughter.

  The roof terrace, he thought, his veins going taut as he took in the sound. It rang through him, and for a forbidden moment, he allowed it to settle.

  What would it be like to have a house that sounded like this all the time?

  Then reality returned. He had to go up to the roof, and the minute they saw him the laughter would stop.

  Okay, you’re a man, he told himself. Face the consequences.

  He straightened the R2-D2 tie and climbed the stairs, following the laughter—actually drawn to it, as he’d been last night, when it had filled this house.

  When it had even filled something else that he wasn’t sure he could define.

  Arriving at the roof, he found them sitting in lounge chairs that faced the Dallas skyline. The river sparkled in the late afternoon sunshine. They’d turned on the small rock waterfall near the hot tub, and the splash of it mingled with Melanie’s voice as she told Livie some story about a time she’d gone waterskiing.

  “I never drank so much water as I did that day on the lake,” she said at the end of her tale. “I had a stomachache for hours afterward.”

  Livie was giggling and sipping from a straw
in a glass that looked to be full of milk. Her gaze was fixed on her nanny, as if she were the most incredible thing to drop from the sky since stardust.

  As Zane watched them, his stomach ached with something sharp and empty stabbing it.

  When was the last time Livie had looked at him that way?

  Last night, he thought. And he hadn’t returned the affection.

  Worst father ever, he thought again, taking no pride in this accomplishment.

  He felt like such a nothing, all he wanted to do was change the perception—even if it were just for the final hours of Father’s Day.

  He cleared his throat and both females looked back, Livie watching him, her gaze wounded.

  And Melanie?

  She was watching him, too, but she looked about ready to throttle him. Yet, how could he be offended when she was angry for the sake of his daughter?

  “I apologize,” he said, “for missing our date. I lost track of time.”

  The excuse didn’t hold any water at all. In fact, with the way the nanny was visually shooting bullets at him, his words seemed punctured.

  He continued. “Livie, I know how much you wanted me there.”

  Her gaze had come to rest on his tie. That darn R2-D2-riddled tie.

  And lo and behold, she smiled. An injured smile, to be sure, but at least he’d done something right today.

  Thanks to Melanie, he reluctantly admitted to himself.

  The nanny saw the tie, too, but that didn’t change her expression. “We understand. Work’s important.”

  Yes, it is, he wanted to say, but he didn’t. It didn’t seem so true right now.

  They were both still sitting in their lounge chairs, their bodies slanted toward the skyline, as if they knew better than to commit to turning all the way toward him.

  “We had fun, Daddy,” Livie said. “Ms. Grandy made peanut butter and jelly starfish sandwiches. And we shared oranges with Sheree and Tammy.”

  Zane almost flinched. Even after what he’d done, his daughter was still talking to him as if he hadn’t screwed up?

  “Sheree and Tammy are neighbor girls,” the nanny said, grinning at Livie. “Their mom told me that they’re six and seven years old, almost twins with Livie.”