The Boss's Baby Bargain. Karen Sandler

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СКАЧАТЬ vulnerable. He hardened that softness inside him. “Why?”

      At first he thought she wouldn’t answer. “It’s personal. I’d rather leave it at that.”

      Her evasiveness made him feel justified in being harsh with her. “You expect me to give you twenty thousand dollars—”

      Her eyes burned with green fire. “Not give…loan.”

      “—loan you twenty thousand without any reason?”

      To her credit, she kept her gaze on him. “I’m not in trouble, Lucas. This isn’t to pay off a gambling debt run up in Tahoe or a stack of credit-card bills. But it is personal. I’d hoped that in the two years I’ve worked for you I’d proved myself—”

      “Yes.”

      Her mouth hung open a moment as she absorbed what he’d said. “Yes? You’ll loan me the money?”

      He gave her a clipped nod, the enormity of what was falling into place inside him nearly making him shake all over. It’s a business decision, nothing more, he told himself, but still it took a good long breath for him to continue.

      “I’ll give you the money,” he said. “On one condition.”

      She swallowed, the motion of her throat begging him to touch her there. “What condition?”

      “Marry me.”

      Chapter Two

      Allie couldn’t possibly have heard him right. She stared at his implacable face, waiting for him to continue, to clarify what he’d said. But he just stared back at her, his gray eyes unfathomable.

      “Marry?” She swallowed, shaking her head. “You?”

      For an instant, he seemed flustered, then he gathered his usual cloak of arrogance around him. “Hear me out.”

      He leaned back in his chair, his gaze falling a moment to the linen tablecloth. She knew that impenetrable expression, had seen it dozens of time during staff meetings or when he was in the midst of acquisition negotiations. It meant he felt fully in control of the proceedings and intended to turn circumstances exactly the way he desired.

      “Lucas—” she began, but he forestalled her with a raised hand.

      “Hear me out,” he said again.

      He lowered his hands to the edge of the table, his fingers gripping so tightly, his knuckles whitened. Allie suddenly realized he wasn’t nearly as in control as she’d thought.

      He kept his eyes fixed on her as if it were an effort of will. “For the past several months, I’ve been attempting to adopt.”

      “A baby?” she asked, incredulous.

      “Or a young child.” He cleared his throat. “The county doesn’t want to approve a forty-year-old single man. My attorney tells me I could even the odds considerably if I married.”

      He made the process sound so cut-and-dried, she might have thought he considered a child one more step in the well-thought-out business plan of his life. Yet she detected the faintest tremor in his voice, a shadow of desperation in his eyes. This from a man who remained aloof when employees brought their children into the office.

      “Lucas, we hardly know one another. To marry—”

      “If it’s sex you’re worried about…”

      Sex! Good God, she hadn’t even considered the physical side of a marriage to Lucas. Despite herself, her mind raced, her heart rate keeping pace. All the fantasies she’d struggled to contain surged forward.

      “…I’m not proposing a conventional marriage,” Lucas continued, oblivious to her rampant thoughts. “It would be strictly platonic.”

      The sudden rush of disappointment unsettled her. Pushing it aside, she focused on rational discussion. “Why me? There must be other women, women you’ve dated who could play the role of wife.”

      “They have much more complex lives than you. They’ve been married before, have children, their own homes. You have no strings.”

      True enough, but she felt irritation at the dismissive way he summed up her life. Allie shook her head. “Strings or not, I’m not interested in marriage.”

      “Look,” Lucas said, reaching across the table to take her hand. She couldn’t suppress a shiver of reaction. “I need a wife, you need money. Agree to marry me and we both get what we want.”

      His large hand covered hers, his warm palm nestling against her fingers. The warmth, the power of him seemed to sap her strength, to dissolve her will. Like her autocratic father, this man could swallow her up, diminish her.

      Her own mother, a sweet and loving woman, had always seemed to shrink in stature when she was with her husband. French Dickenson barked out an order and Elizabeth complied, even if it turned her own plans upside down. Allie’s mother gave every ounce of her soul to the man she adored, tucking her own needs away time and again. When the cancer took hold, Elizabeth’s physical pain was nothing compared to the agony she had felt in defying French by dying.

      Allie was not her mother. She couldn’t live like that.

      “No.” She tugged her hand free. “I can’t marry you.”

      His jaw tightened and she recognized the hard light in his gray eyes. “Then I can’t loan you the money.”

      Allie sat there, stunned. Not that he would turn her down, but that he would coerce her this way. To back her into a corner went beyond arrogance, bordered on cruelty.

      “You can’t mean that.”

      “I can. It’s my money, Allie.”

      She looked around her at the half-full restaurant, at the waiter hovering nearby, out the window at the American River below them. She couldn’t say yes, couldn’t let herself be sucked into Lucas’s control. She faced him again. “Then I’ll get the money somewhere else.”

      A faint smile curved his lips. “If you could have borrowed it elsewhere, you wouldn’t have asked me. I’m your last resort.”

      Of course he was right, damn him. And he surely knew how desperately she needed the money. Still, the words were impossible to drag out. “If I agreed, how long would we have to stay married?”

      The tension in his face eased at her apparent capitulation. “One year, possibly two. However long it takes to finalize the adoption. I’ll have to consult my attorney.”

      She nodded, her head suddenly pounding. She felt as if she perched on the lip of a chasm, readying herself to leap it. Would she safely reach the other side? Or fall to be crushed on the rocks below? “Then yes,” she said, barely above a whisper. “I’ll marry you.”

      Triumph lit his eyes—triumph and something else. Relief? “Good then. Fine.” He picked up his water glass to sip; she could swear his hand trembled slightly. “A month enough time for you? To pack up your apartment and move to my estate?”

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