Regarding The Tycoon's Toddler...

What little air she had in her lungs rushed out on impact, and for a breathless second she was surrounded by heat and confusion and muttered oaths. Her purse and the envelope went flying out of her hands, and she was losing her balance, flailing for support. She gulped air at the same time that two hands grabbed her by her shoulders. In the next second she was on her feet, breathing and steady. Then she looked up at a man, into a face that seemed to be all plains and angles. Gray-blue eyes made her breath catch again with their intensity.

Thankfully, he let her go right then, and he became a blur as he dropped to his haunches in front of her. She looked at him, at strong, ring-free hands picking up an expensive-looking briefcase laying by her well-worn purse and envelope.

She quickly stooped to get her purse. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you there, until it was too late. I was so lost in thought, I wasn’t watching.” She got her purse, but when she reached for the envelope, he had it, and her hand tangled with his.

She felt heat, then the contact was gone, and she drew back. “I’ve got this appointment, and I was hurrying and I didn’t look where I was going. This place is getting so screwed up, isn’t it,” she said as she stood and swiped at the only businesslike clothes she’d been able to find—tailored navy slacks and a plain white silk shirt.

“What’s so screwed up?” he asked, the sound of his voice making her look up at him. This time she saw the whole man.

He was tall, four or five inches taller than she, wearing a perfectly cut dove-gray suit, a vest, a shirt in a lighter shade of gray, and a muted burgundy-colored tie. It all defined a whipcord leanness in the man. She looked higher. She saw a wide mouth with a disturbingly sensuous full bottom lip. Then she looked again into those eyes—eyes that were narrowed in a clean-shaven face touched by a suggestion of a tan. Gray or blue eyes, she couldn’t tell exactly.

What she did know was that there was an intensity in the man, making him seem as if he was in motion even while standing still. That there was a subtle edge to him that she couldn’t quite define—nor could she figure out why it made her so self-conscious.

His gaze flicked over her briefly before he looked her right in the eyes again.

Nerves. That was it. She was all nerves today. From lack of sleep and frustration and broken elevators and running up stairs and thinking of facing Zane Holden. No wonder an attractive man who seemed able to look right through her was upsetting her equilibrium.

He was speaking again, and she had to focus to understand that deep voice. “What were you saying about it being screwed up?”

“Screwed up?” she asked blankly, then remembered. “Oh, I meant the company, LynTech. I’m sorry. The elevators aren’t working. They said it was for service, but from what I’ve heard, they were probably told to shut them down every day for a while to save money. Anything to cut costs.”

She looked down at the envelope still in his hand. “That’s mine. I dropped it.”

He held it out to her, and she took it back. “Thanks.”

“Cutting costs is bad?” he asked.

“No, of course not. But the word is, he’s cutting and cutting. God knows where it’ll stop.”

“Him?” he asked, apparently as fond of single-word questions as she was of rambling. It was as unsettling as it was oddly attractive.

“Zane Holden and his cohorts.”

“Cohorts?” he asked, a flash of what must have been a smile touching his mouth. It was a shockingly endearing expression that lasted for less than a heartbeat before it was gone.

“Okay, associates, or whatever you want to call the lot of them. They bought the corporation from Mr. Lewis, a nice old man. Everyone loved him. Then he retired.” She frowned, focusing past this man in front of her and thinking about Mr. Lewis and his unconditional support for the day care program. “Now Holden and his…associates are in charge and making cuts everywhere they can, I guess. I’ve just talked to a few employees, and I know that there’ve been layoffs. When Mr. Lewis owned the company, there were never any layoffs. But now, well, things are changing, or at least being altered drastically.”

“Everything changes in time,” he murmured.

Time! She glanced at her watch. She was out of time, wasting what little she had talking to this man. And she had no idea who he was, even. She’d said more than enough. “Oh, shoot,” she muttered.

“What?”

“I had an appointment and I’m late. I need to get going.” She wondered something that came out of nowhere. What would he look like if he smiled—a complete expression that lingered? The man was distracting her from what she had to do, and that bothered her a lot. She didn’t allow distractions in her life, especially not from someone with eyes that she could get lost in…if she let herself. And she wouldn’t, she decided firmly.

But that resolution lasted only until those blue eyes flicked over her again. Their impact was not diminished.

“And you’re who?” he asked in a low voice.

“I’m late,” she said, snatching at reason and logic, and making herself move past him. “Sorry,” she called back as she hurried away and up the stairs.

She heard a soft, “No problem,” and as she rounded the next corner, she glanced back for just a moment. He was still there watching, and it jolted her. She gripped the handrail, looked away from him and climbed faster, fighting the oddest feeling that she was running away, instead of hurrying toward her appointment.

Chapter Three

But by the time she got to the twentieth floor, the man was forgotten. She stepped out into a lavishly appointed area. Paintings on the wall, carpet underfoot and wood accents everywhere—they were a far cry from tile floors and a Big Bad Wolf with chipped paint.

She stopped to catch her breath, to center herself and focus. And since there was no blue-eyed man anywhere around, she gathered her composure quickly. Then she headed down the corridor to a massive door with a discreet plate on it: Z. Holden.

Bracing herself, she stepped into an even more lavish area and crossed to a marble desk facing the door in the reception room.

“Lindsey Atherton to see Mr. Holden,” she said to a woman as plain as the space around her was lavish. A navy dress, no makeup and very short gray hair were untouched by jewelry or frills. When she spoke, it was the cold voice Lindsey remembered from the phone conversations.

“I’m sorry. Mr. Holden had to cancel.”

Lindsey closed her eyes for a brief moment to get whatever control she could find. All of this hurrying for nothing. Running into that man. And Zane Holden wasn’t here, anyway. “But I had an appointment.”

“He got called away. He said to reschedule.”

She grabbed at anything. “I’ll wait.”

“No, he won’t be back for quite a while.”

The woman opened a leather-bound book in front of her, and Lindsey could see it was an appointment ledger. Names and notes in every hour frame were highlighted with different colors—red, blue, green and yellow. The hour blocks were all filled up to five in the afternoon.

“Let’s see,” the woman was saying as she ran her finger over the pages. “If you wish to reschedule, he could work you in…hmm, uh, let’s see.” She flipped some pages. “How about two weeks from yesterday at eight-thirty in the morning.” She looked at Lindsey. “Should I pencil you in?”

She knew her jaw was clenching, but she nodded. “Yes, please, pencil me in.”

She watched the woman write. “Atherton” in a space, then highlight it with yellow. She didn’t think she wanted to know what a “yellow” appointment meant. Instead, she handed the envelope to the woman. “Could you please see that Mr. Holden gets this?”

The woman’s expression stayed neutral as she took the envelope, laid it on the desk by a stack of letters, then date and time stamp it. She looked back at Lindsey. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

“No, I guess not,” she said, then turned and left before she did or said something totally irrational.

She hurried out into the hallway and back to the stairwell. Inside, with the door closed, she fought every urge in her to scream at the top of her lungs. Weeks to wait. Two full weeks. Until the day before Thanksgiving. She inhaled deeply, exhaled, willed herself to calm down, then headed back downstairs.

She went slowly, taking the time to get a grip on herself and the mixture of frustration and anger churning inside her. All a group of two- to five-year-olds needed was a furiously frustrated caregiver. When she got to the landing where she’d collided with the stranger, she paused; something laying in the corner of the top step caught her eye. She stopped, crouched down and saw a gold pen. A very expensive gold pen.

She picked it up, fingered the smooth coolness and read the brand. Her heart sank. It had to be his, and it must have cost at least two hundred dollars. He’d had on a suit that must have cost a lot more than the pen. And he’d been coming down from the upper levels of the building…. Her heart sank.

“Damn it, damn it, damn it,” she muttered as she pushed the pen into her purse and sank down on the top step.

He didn’t just work here. He had to be an executive. An executive who had to know Zane Holden. “I’m dead,” she breathed. All the things she’d said about Holden to him. She couldn’t even remember now what she’d said. It was all a blur. But it hadn’t been good. She knew that for sure.

Twenty-seven years old, and she still hadn’t learned not to talk to strangers. Especially strangers coming down from the executive level. A flashing memory of those gray-blue eyes came to her, the intensity there, the way he asked her about Holden, the way she’d said something about a screw-up.

She didn’t think she’d told him her name or why she was here, or where she was going or that her appointment was with Holden. She was sure she hadn’t told him anything like that. At least, she hoped she didn’t.

She stood, pushed the pen in her purse and tried to think positive thoughts. He didn’t know anything, except that she was complaining—and any number of employees were complaining these days. Every employee was complaining. She was part of a very large crowd.

So, if she ever met up with the man again, she’d give him back his pen. He probably wouldn’t even remember her. She had a feeling about him—he was the sort of person who had so much going on in his life that a clumsy woman in a stairwell who crashed into him wasn’t memorable. Not for a man like that.

Friday

MATT STUCK HIS HEAD in Zane’s office just before six and said, “Dinner anyone? I’m heading out at seven.”

Zane sat back and tossed the cheap pen he’d had to use today onto the papers. “No, I’ve got too many loose ends here. One of them is finding that pen you gave me for Christmas. It’s gone.”

“I’ll get you another one when we finish up here,” he said.

Zane hated losing something like that. “If it works out, I’ll get you one, too.”

“So, no dinner?”

“Dinner, but not with you. I’m meeting someone at eight.”

“Business?”

“Half and half. Karen Blair. She’s a publicist for Schle-singer and Todd. She’s good at what she does. I’ve seen her work, and I’ve been thinking that LynTech could use some good publicity for a change.”

“You can say that again. Wait until those cuts hit the light of day.”

“Everyone shares in the cuts equally,” Zane said. “We’ll face the angry hordes when we have to.”

“Okay. Oh, Rita had to cancel out two nanny interviews yesterday morning, so she rescheduled for today. She’s going to take those, and I’m going to make some calls. I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, and left, closing the door behind him.

The room felt empty and seemed too quiet. Why should it be a major production to find this nanny? His mother had found them easily, one after another, until he was sent off to boarding school. It wasn’t an impossible request to fulfill, he thought as he reached for the side lamp and snapped it on a higher beam. The light made him squint a bit. Running a hand roughly over his clean shaven face, he picked up the cheap plastic excuse for a pen, and frowned. God, he hated losing things.

LINDSEY SPENT THE DAY doing schedules and trying to figure out how to make the stove in the kitchen work for a bit longer. But she kept thinking that waiting two weeks to speak to Zane Holden was two weeks too long. When she looked up at almost six-thirty, she knew she couldn’t go home for the weekend and put this out of her mind.

Two weeks? She couldn’t wait. There was too much at stake. So on impulse she called up to Zane Holden’s office on the off chance that he was still at work. All she got was a voice-mail response. She hung up on the synthesized voice, then stood, turned off the lights in her office, got her purse and went out into the deserted play area.

Everyone was gone. Everyone had things to do. She was going to go home to her cat. She’d make a meal for one. Watch some television. Go to bed. Have a dream. Wake up, and come back here tomorrow to do the touch-up painting on the murals. “Boy, a really exciting life,” she said as she crossed the room, turned off the last light and stepped out into the corridor.

She locked the doors, then turned to go to the elevators. A man was there in a maintenance uniform, on his knees in front of an open panel to one side, working on something intently. “Don’t tell me—they’re down again?” she asked as she approached him.

He sat back on his heels with a huge screwdriver in his hand and looked up at her, his middle-aged face flushed from his efforts. “No, ma’am, they’re working fine,” he said. “I’m just doing some fine-tuning on them.”

“Good. It seems they never work when you need them to.”

He got to his feet, pushed the screwdriver into a tool belt he was wearing with grease-smudged overalls, then picked up a rag and rubbed his soiled hands with it. “You and everyone else complaining about them.” He lowered his voice. “Even him up there,” he said, rolling his eyes upward.

“Him?”

“Holden. One of the big guys. He was just saying he wanted them kept in good working order, as if we’d been trying to keep them in bad working order.”

“Mr. Holden’s still here?”

“Yeah, that guy and Mr. Terrel—they’re around at all hours. They work all the time.”

So, he was here. And she knew, according to his appointment ledger, that he stopped appointments by five. She wasn’t going to go home and eat with a cat. Not when Zane Holden was still in the building and possibly available. Maybe she wouldn’t have to wait two weeks to see him, after all.

“Thanks,” she said to the man. “Thanks a lot.”

He looked a bit confused, but nodded and smiled. “You’re real welcome, ma’am.”

She pushed the up button on the nearest elevator, and the car was there immediately. “Have a good night,” she said as she got in.

“You, too,” he called after her as the doors shut.

“That’s the plan,” she muttered as she pushed the button for the twentieth floor. “That’s the plan.”

As the elevator started upward, she felt her heart start to hammer in her chest. She wasn’t dressed right. It was Friday—dress down day—which meant she was in jeans, a plain white shirt and chunky boots. And she had no makeup on.

She caught herself. All that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t dressed up. She didn’t matter. This was an opportunity. And she was going to take it. She had to take it.

She steeled herself. There was so much at stake, but she had always been a fighter by necessity and knew that you didn’t wait for an opening to magically appear. You made the opening, then you struck when the iron was hot.

This was her opening. It didn’t mean that she liked it or that she wasn’t afraid to take on the powers that be, but she had no choice.

ZANE HAD BEEN in a hurry. He’d worked longer than he’d intended to, and by the time he looked up it was six-thirty. Karen Blair didn’t do “waiting” well, and he didn’t want to have to test her on that—not before he found out what she had to say about the company’s PR issue.

He’d grabbed his jacket and briefcase, then headed down the hall to Matt’s office to drop off more figures he’d ironed out. He went through his partner’s empty outer office and into Matt’s personal space. The room was supposed to be a duplicate of his, a matching C.E.O. suite, but he never ceased to marvel at the almost Spartan condition Matt could maintain anywhere he went. Despite the thick carpeting, the wood touches and elaborate metal-and-glass desk, there wasn’t a thing out of place. The massive desk held only a silent computer and a phone system. And Matt was gone.

The man didn’t own anything, despite all the money he was making. He didn’t “collect personal paraphernalia,” he’d said once. He lived out of a suitcase, in a hotel room, and drove rental cars and worked. Zane knew Matt grew up poor, got to college on scholarships, passed the bar exam, and had real brains for business. And another thing he knew for sure—Matt was one of very few people that Zane trusted, really trusted.

As he tossed the paperwork on the pristine desk, he heard the sound of a door opening. Matt wasn’t gone, after all. Zane crossed to the door and stepped out of the inner office, but he wasn’t facing Matt.

There was the hint of a flowery scent in the air, a scent he remembered from somewhere. Then he saw a woman in the open doorway, and he remembered. The first time he’d seen her he’d had a flashing impression of a slender wisp of a woman in dark slacks and a white top, just before she’d crashed into him in the stairwell. Then, as he’d grabbed her to keep her from falling, there had been a sensation of fine bones, heat, softness, before she spoke and everything had shifted.

A woman who had no use for Zane Holden and his “cohorts” had been a blip on his day at the time. But now she was here, and in the harsh overhead lights he took in details. Jeans defined slender hips and long legs, a shirt tucked in at the slim waist, hinted at high breasts. Then he looked up into her face. Incredible amber eyes were huge with shock, and sudden color flooded her face, emphasizing the fact that she wore no discernable makeup and that she had freckles, real freckles. A woman who blushed and had freckles. He almost smiled. Then he remembered what she’d said about him. He didn’t smile. Instead, Zane went a bit closer, flicking his gaze over her feathery blond cap of hair, her straight nose, those freckles, pale pink lips softly parted with surprise—then back to her eyes.

“It’s you,” she breathed. “Oh, shoot, I’m so sorry. I never should…” She bit her pale bottom lip. “I really owe you an apology for what I said the other day,” she said, then started fumbling in her purse. “I didn’t know who you were and I was just saying things, and…” She was talking quickly as she rummaged in her purse, then suddenly said, “Aha. Here it is.”

She pulled something out of her purse, then held it up to him. His gold pen. “Where in the hell did you get that?”

“You dropped it on the stairs when we…when I ran into you.” She came closer, and held it out to him. “I found it and didn’t know who you were.”

That color came again. She was blushing, which made her freckles vivid. When was the last time he’d seen someone blush? He didn’t have a clue.

“Anyway, I kept it and was going to give it back, and now…” Her voice sort of faded.

He glanced at the pen in her hand—a hand with slender fingers, no polish, short, oval nails and no rings. Then he shifted his briefcase to the same hand holding his suit coat and took the pen. He was vaguely aware of a sense of heat in the rich metal. Her heat. “I was looking all over for it.”

“I bet you were,” she said as she moved back a bit. “I mean, it had to have cost a fortune, and I know if I had a pen like that I’d about die if I lost it.”

He fingered the pen. “You came here to bring it back to me?”

“Oh, no, of course not. I didn’t even know who you were, obviously. I mean, if I had, I certainly…it would have been…” She shrugged. “Okay, let’s just get this over with. I’m sorry for saying what I said. I had no idea who you were, or I never would have said it. Can we forget it and start all over again?”

He doubted he’d forget that reproach in her voice, but starting over with her had its own appeal. “Okay. If you aren’t up here to bring back the pen, why are you here?”

“I was told you were still here, you and…” She shrugged. “I had an appointment the other morning, when we met. And it was cancelled, so I came up now. I went to the other office and no one was there, and I thought I was too late. I’m so glad I found you.”

She talked quickly and breathlessly, and he had to really listen to follow what she was saying. Being found by this woman wouldn’t be all bad, he thought, but he didn’t have a clue why she’d be looking for him if it wasn’t for the pen. Unless she just wanted to tell him off even more. “If you’re here to tell me more about the shortcomings of the company, I—”

“Oh, no, of course not. It’s the child care,” she said as she came closer, stirring the air again.

Child care? Oh, it couldn’t be. She was a nanny? It seemed crazy, but in a way it made sense. She’d been coming for her interview with Rita when they ran into each other in the stairwell. Rita had cancelled.

He was stunned. She didn’t look like any nanny he’d ever had. “Child care,” he repeated as he watched her stop by the secretary’s desk.

She exhaled softly, obviously calming herself, then spoke in a breathy voice. “Children are so important, aren’t they.”

Yes, he could see her as a nanny. Young enough to do the job and obviously interested enough to come back this late on a Friday evening for another interview. He looked into those amber eyes and wondered if he’d literally run into the answer to his problems.

“Yes, very important.” He glanced at his watch, regretting that he didn’t have time to do the interview himself, and he just hoped that Rita was still around here somewhere. “It’s getting late and I need to get going. Let me make a call and see who’s still here.”

Lindsey knew he was going to push her off onto someone else. He might have agreed to start all over again, but he didn’t want to talk to her. The thing was, she wanted to talk to him. Matthew Terrel. Holden’s partner. Equal to Holden. Co-C.E.O. This man in front of her looked the equal of anyone. His expensive, pale-blue shirt hugging broad shoulders, a darker tie perfectly knotted. His dark gray jacket off and over one arm. A watch on his wrist that she could probably pawn and use to buy a new car.

The man was power. He certainly would do, since she’d missed the man she’d come to see. Yes, he’d do very nicely. But he was trying to get away. He put the briefcase on the desk, laid the pen on top, then reached for the phone on the secretary’s desk.

She spoke quickly. “Why don’t we just talk?”

He held the receiver in one hand and cast her a slanted look. “I have an engagement, and it is getting late. I don’t have the time.”

“Since I’m here and you’re here, and this is so important, why don’t we both just take a few minutes and talk? This isn’t something that can be put off much longer.”

He studied her narrowly, bringing back that uneasiness she’d first experienced in the stairwell. Abruptly he turned, punched in some numbers, listened, then hung up and turned to her with an exasperated rush of breath. “I guess you’re right. It’s just you and me.”

This wasn’t a good beginning, him begrudgingly agreeing to talk to her. But at least he hadn’t turned her away. “I think this is for the best. It actually saves time, instead of going through too many people. It gives everyone a clearer picture when it’s not diluted by too many renditions of the facts, don’t you think?”

He had the most annoying habit of pausing before he responded to her, and it made her nerves even more raw. The man would make a very effective bodyguard for Holden. He probably just made the people trying to get past him die from nervousness. She knew she was close to that herself. His eyes were narrowed, assessing, and for the first time she noticed a hint of gray at the temples of his rich brown hair.