The Rebel Tycoon's Outrageous Proposal

An oil painting, unframed, in bold oranges and reds, measuring about a foot square. Behind all that color was a green-blue swirl of background, cold where the rest was warm.

With difficulty, Jared tore his gaze from it. He wrapped his jacket around his right hand so he wouldn’t leave any fingerprints.

Ten minutes later he was done. He switched off the bedside lamp and opened the draperies. Light from the three-quarter moon provided almost as much illumination as the lamp had. As he prepared to exit through the window, a scratching sound froze him in place. Was it inside? A cat, maybe? After a moment he heard it again. He stepped out of the bedroom into the hallway, then moved to the top of the stairs.

The sudden wail of a burglar alarm almost sent him into cardiac arrest.

“Damn.” Jared raced back into the bedroom, picked up his load and headed out the window. Clambering down the fire escape was much faster than his ascent—every second he expected to be confronted by an angry neighbor or an unusually vigilant security company, the kind a woman like Holly would hire.

Holly’s back gate wasn’t locked from the inside, thank goodness. He sprinted across the communal area, praying all the way that the gate to the road would have a release button, rather than another card swipe. It did.

He threw the bundle into the car, hurled himself in after it and drove off, remembering to slow down as he hit the arterial road. Two hundred yards later, a security company vehicle passed him going the other way. A half mile farther on, a police car passed, lights flashing but siren off out of respect for the quality neighborhood.

The blood pounding in his ears, Jared drove all the way home right on the speed limit. He must be getting old.

BECAUSE SHE’D BEEN wide-awake since before six o’clock, contemplating her first day at Harding Corp with mingled dread and anticipation, Holly was first to the front door when the pounding started at six forty-five.

“Quiet,” she muttered as she scrambled for the dead bolt key that, to AnnaMae’s amusement, she’d hidden under the clay pot that held her friend’s umbrellas. “You’ll wake the neighbors.”

She glared at the man on the doorstep. “Special Agent Crook. How are you this morning?” A thought struck her. “Is it Dave? Have you found him?”

He gave her a peculiar look, as if he didn’t believe Dave actually existed. “Can I come in?”

That being a purely rhetorical question, Holly stepped back and tugged AnnaMae’s tight spare robe, a satin concoction with a delicate floral pattern, closer around her. She followed Crook into the living room.

“Where were you at eleven o’clock last night?” he asked, accepting her offer of a seat.

“Right here, listening to a David Gray CD and having a cup of coffee with my roommate while my…blouse soaked in the tub,” she said with careful precision that nonetheless omitted to mention she’d also washed her underwear.

“I’ll need to confirm that with your roommate.”

“I can vouch for her,” AnnaMae said from the doorway. “She came in at ten-thirty, which I know because I asked her to wait a moment while my TV show finished. Then we had coffee, as Holly said. We both went to bed at eleven-thirty.”

“Where were you before you came home?” he asked.

“I had dinner at the Green Room with a client,” Holly said. “Is this about Dave? Is he all right?”

“Someone broke into your condo last night.” Crook rolled his eyes when she gasped. “Your alarm went off at eleven. The security company got there five minutes later, but whoever did it was long gone. It doesn’t appear anything was taken—TV, DVD and so on. I need to know if you had any valuables.”

She shook her head. “Nothing, since you confiscated my laptop. Is there any damage?”

He ignored the question. “Did you keep any work files at home that someone might have tried to retrieve for you?”

“You think I organized someone to break into my own home?” Appalled, she stared at him. “I thought you already searched the place.”

“We did. We cleaned out your home office.”

She winced.

“But maybe there’s a safe we didn’t find.” He scowled at her. “We will find it, so you might as well tell me now.”

“There’s no safe.” Holly was still trying to absorb the news. “It must have been kids fooling around. How did they get in?”

“They broke an upstairs window, managed to get it open.”

“I always lock my windows and hide the key.”

Crook had the grace to look shamefaced. “One of our guys left the key in the lock.”

“I’ll expect you to compensate me for any loss or damage,” Holly said, outrage overriding her instinctive respect for an officer of the law.

Crook grunted, a sound that could have meant either yes or no. Or more likely, Get off my back, lady. He hauled himself up off the sofa. “Call me if you think of anything else that might be relevant. We’ll dust for fingerprints this morning.” He looked her in the eye. “We don’t think this was kids, Ms. Stephens. We think this is about whatever you’re mixed up in.”

When he’d gone, Holly sank into the spot he’d vacated on the couch. “Can things get any worse?”

“You need coffee.” Her friend bustled out of the room.

Holly shut her eyes, clamped a hand to her forehead to ward off an incipient headache. She breathed deeply—in, out, in, out. A tap-tapping at the window jolted her out of her attempted trance. She screamed, and AnnaMae came running.

“What is it?”

Holly pointed a trembling finger at the window where a stick topped with a white lace-and-chiffon bra tapped on the pane.

A minute later she snatched her bra off the end of the stick that Jared proffered from the living room doorway.

“Where did you get this?” She clutched the bra to her chest, then realized how suggestive that looked. She whipped it behind her back. “That’s my bag.”

“Nothing wrong with your eyesight.” He advanced into the room and dropped the canvas overnight bag. “You’ll find a few of your things in there.”

“It was you! You broke into my home last night—for a panty raid?” She heard the beginnings of a shriek in her voice and clenched her teeth.

Uninvited, Jared sat on the couch. AnnaMae, agog with curiosity, propelled Holly to an armchair. She was about to take the space next to Jared herself, but Holly’s glare deterred her. With visible reluctance, she left the room.

“You needed some clothes. I got them,” he said.

She’d have to be stupid to believe he’d done it to help her.

“No need to thank me. The look on your face when I knocked on the window was all the reward I need.”

That was the real reason. He’d derived puerile pleasure from her embarrassment. “How dare you break in—that place is a crime scene.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And you had me convinced you’re innocent.”

“You know what I mean. The FBI taped it off. And how did you get into my complex? The gate’s always locked.”

He opened his mouth to answer, but she held up a hand. “I don’t want to know. I’d probably feel compelled to report it to Special Agent Crook.”

He snorted. “You can take law-abiding too far, you know.”

“No, I don’t know. This is exactly what I’ve never liked about you—”

“You’ve never liked about me?” His voice had gone dangerously quiet. “You hadn’t met me before yesterday, but you never liked me?”

When he put it like that, it sounded unreasonable. “You’re twisting my words. I said I never liked one thing about you, that you’re known to deal on the fringes of the law.”

“So much for your promise to suspend judgment,” he snapped. “Since we’re clearing the air, is there anything else you’ve ‘never liked’ about me?”

Well, he’d asked for honesty, her personal strength. “I don’t like the deals you make that infringe on the rights of small shareholders. I don’t like the way you mislead the market, distracting people from your shadier deals by feigning an interest in a legitimate one. I don’t like the way you leak confidential information to the press when it suits you.”

Jared’s admiration for Holly grew. She was smart enough to sift through the business gossip, the newspaper articles extolling his successes, and figure out exactly what he was up to. Panic momentarily suffused him. Would she realize the role he’d set her up to play in this current deal?

With that extraordinary perception she seemed to have where he was concerned, she said, “In light of all that, I want you to promise me one thing.”

“You’re in no position to make demands,” he reminded her.

“Promise you will give me an honest answer to any question. I won’t work with you otherwise.”

He briefly considered agreeing, then lying to her when he had to. But contrary to the low opinion Holly had of his personal integrity, he didn’t break his promises. And he only lied when really necessary, which was seldom. “If I answer a question, you’ll know it’s the truth,” he said. “But I reserve the right not to answer every question.”

Because why he wanted this deal so badly was none of her business.

Holly nodded. “Now,” she said briskly, “is there anything you don’t like about me?”

For an incredulous moment he stared at her. Anxious to play fair, she was giving him a chance to insult her the way she’d just done him. He laughed loud and long.

“I mean it.” Pink tinged her cheeks. “It’s only fair.”

Her steady gaze held his, but her tongue moistened those full lips—how could he ever have thought her plain?—in an anxious gesture.

“You’re uptight.”

“I know.” She looked relieved that he’d stated the obvious.

He thought back over what he’d heard people say about her. It was human nature not to give unqualified praise, so those who admired her creativity, her technical precision, her intelligence, usually found something bad to say, as well. “You’re stubborn and inflexible.”

She was actually nodding, as if these were compliments. He had to play hardball. “You’re condescending to those you consider your intellectual inferiors.”

“I am not!”

Now he had her. Though the hurt in her gray-blue eyes made him feel like a heel.

“I admit I’m not a great people person,” she said, “but I would never—”

“Hey.” Jared cut her off. “You asked. You don’t have to justify yourself to me. If it’s any consolation, I’ve discovered one thing I really like about you.”

“What’s that?” she said suspiciously.

“Your taste in lingerie.” He gestured to the bag between them. “For a lady who likes to dress so shapeless and dull, you’ve got some pretty hot stuff in there.”

Holly felt her face flame. To hide her embarrassment, she leaned forward and pulled the bag toward her. She unzipped it and looked through what he’d brought. Most of her lingerie, and beneath it some clothes.

But not her clothes.

“I don’t believe it.” She rummaged through the bag again. “These are my sister’s things—none of these clothes are mine.” He’d obviously gone into the bottom drawer of her tallboy, where the overflow from the spare bedroom found a home. “I have a whole wardrobe full of suits and blouses. Why didn’t you bring those?”

“I only chose stuff I liked,” Jared said airily. “None of the rest came close. Besides, my office is casual.”

“But I don’t—” Holly counted to five. There would be plenty else to stress about in the weeks to come. At least she had fresh underwear and no need to spend a fortune on new clothes, assuming she was still around the same size as her sister.

“There’s more,” he said. “In the zip pocket on the end.”

She felt the outline of something hard through the bag and opened the pocket. “Oh.” Carefully, she pulled the painting out. Its bright colors shone in the dull of the living room. She blinked back tears. “I… How did you…?” She swallowed. “Thank you.”

He dismissed her thanks with a wave of his hand. “It looked like it might be important.”

“It is.” She clasped it to her chest. “It’s my father.”

“You mean, he painted it?”

“My mother did. It’s a portrait of my father.” Holly’s shaky laugh held equal measures of frustration and puzzlement. “I have no idea what Mom meant by it, but it’s all I have left of him.”

Jared narrowed his eyes. Could Holly not guess the meaning of a painting under whose warm, colorful surface lurked a cold, blue heart? Chances were, she couldn’t. Abstract representations would be beyond this woman who lived her life in black and white.

Holly had no idea how many shades of gray there were in this world.

“Did your father die?” Dammit, he didn’t want to get personal with her. He’d never have asked the question if he hadn’t been in this bizarre situation, sitting opposite a woman whose underwear drawer he’d enjoyed riffling through far too much. Now she sat in front of him in the thinnest of satin robes, showing a tantalizing hint of creamy cleavage where the lapels met. He dropped his gaze to her bare feet, only to find they were—with their pale pink-tipped toes—troublingly, innocently erotic. Jared dragged his eyes back up to her face, which was no hardship.

Thankfully she didn’t want to get personal, either. Her expression cooled as she laid the painting on the table. “No,” she said briefly.

Fine by him. He got to his feet. “No need to thank me for getting your clothes.” He grinned. Nothing was as much fun as pushing Holly off the moral high ground. “I’ll see you at work. You’d better get moving, if you want to be on time.”

He sauntered from the room, savoring the way she ground her teeth at his implication she might be late.

CHAPTER FOUR

HOLLY SQUIRMED in her seat. She just couldn’t get comfortable wearing casual clothes to work. No matter that everybody else in Jared’s company was dressed equally informally.

She could see right through the heavy glass tabletop in the Harding Corporation boardroom to her sister’s ultra-tight jeans. And the jeans reminded her of the appreciative and comprehensive look Jared had cast over them when she arrived at the office. At least the white cotton shirt she’d teamed with the pants was almost respectable.

But how she ached for a return to the ordered, peaceful life symbolized by her conservative wardrobe. Would she ever find her way back? She buried her head in her hands, blotting out the sight of the jeans, blotting out these surroundings she didn’t want to be in, blotting out the man she didn’t want to work for.

“Are you okay?” Impatience rather than sympathy edged Jared’s words.

She took a breath that was unfortunately shuddery. “Tell me more about these deals I’m working on.”

Jared paused a moment, presumably to see if she was about to dissolve into inconvenient tears. He stretched and clasped his hands behind his head, a movement that emphasized the lean length of his torso beneath his black knit shirt. Holly dropped her gaze back down to the papers in front of her.

“Two companies are involved,” he said. “I want to buy Wireless World and merge it with one of my subsidiaries that isn’t doing so well.”

Holly nodded, his no-nonsense tone flipping her out of her black mood and into work. It wasn’t unusual to put a highly profitable business like Wireless World together with one that was performing badly for the sake of tax benefits. In the up-and-down Seattle software industry, it happened all the time. “Any anticipated problems?” she asked, and was pleased that came out steady.

“One of the family stockholders has agreed to sell me his shares. I’ll have a big enough holding that I can make life difficult for the rest of them if they don’t sell me theirs.”

“A hostile takeover.” She couldn’t blame the owners, a well-known family from Atlanta, for their reluctance to be bought out by Jared Harding. It would be like the three little pigs opening the door to the big bad wolf.

He grinned, as if he’d read her thoughts. “They’ll come around.”

“And if they don’t?”

He blinked, and the humor was gone. “Too bad.”

Holly gritted her teeth. “What’s the other company we’re looking at?” Did she imagine his hesitation?

“EC Solutions. It’s a small software company, but it’s made some significant overseas sales.”

She leaned forward. “Tell me what you want, and I’ll make sure you get it.”

Jared had a few ideas as to how she could satisfy him—and they didn’t involve balance sheets or calculators. When Holly had turned up in those skintight jeans this morning, he’d had the first inkling that choosing to liberate the least dull clothes in her condo might have been a bad idea. And though now she’d pulled her hair back into its usual unflattering style, in his mind’s eye he saw it loose as it had been earlier. He’d realized then that what he’d taken to be no particular color was in fact a rich brown that, depending on the light, glinted red or gold.

“What do you want, Jared?” She pressed him, in the politest of tones.

He preferred women who didn’t ask any question more difficult than “Can I get you a beer?” Holly would ask so many questions, he’d be forced to start thinking about the answers.

What did he personally want from this deal?

Revenge.

“I want,” he said, “to win Wireless World without being plastered all over the newspapers as a predator and without doubts about the legality of the subsequent merger.”

He didn’t tell her what he really wanted—a deal so tight it would frustrate the hell out of anyone who wanted to outdo him. Would make them careless, ready to rush headlong into the next opportunity to beat him.

“And EC Solutions?” she asked.

“I’m not a hundred percent committed to that business.” It was a form of the truth, at least. “Start the process and see how we go. It might get too competitive. There’ll be other interested parties.” One other interested party.

“I’ll need a couple of days to familiarize myself with the companies and their accounts,” she said.

“The bulk of your time should be spent on Wireless World.” He was taking a risk getting her involved in EC Solutions at all. A necessary risk. If Holly couldn’t unravel the web he’d set up, no one could. She was the ultimate test.

“There’s one more thing,” he said.

She lifted her gray gaze from the accounts she was studying.

“This deal is confidential.”

Holly bristled. “I would never betray a client confidence.”

He waved her protest away. “I don’t mean that. I don’t want anyone here knowing what’s going on, either.”

“You don’t trust your own staff?”

“There have been a couple of leaks to the press.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“Leaks that didn’t come from me,” he added. “This time.”

“I won’t gossip to your staff.”

He moved on to the difficult part. “I don’t want anyone here even knowing you’re involved.” She looked hurt, and he was annoyed to find himself reassuring her. “This has nothing to do with the FBI. It’s a matter of internal security.”

She frowned. “But I don’t have an office, and all the resources I’ll need are here.”

“Come with me. Bring your stuff.” He rose, waited the briefest possible time for her to pack up her briefcase and follow him.

They headed to the elevator. Instead of going down to the main office floors, Jared used his security card to allow access to the floor immediately above, the top floor of the building.

Holly stepped out. There were no offices here, only two numbered doors. Jared used his security card again to open Number Two and motioned her into a penthouse apartment—spacious, with fabulous views over Elliott Bay visible through floor-to-ceiling windows. Despite its luxurious furnishings, the apartment felt unlived-in.

“If anyone on my staff asks why you were in the office, I’ll tell them you were looking for work but I turned you down.” He ignored her indignant gasp. “You’ll work here.” He pointed to an office area in the corner of the living room. “This place is wired into the company network. I suggest you live here, too.”

“Why would I—?” Her voice rose.

“It’s a long commute from your friend’s place to the city. And the amount I’m paying you, I want you working day and night.”

Holly hesitated, and he tsked. “The sooner you get the job done, the sooner you get your money. Since I live right next door, it’ll be convenient for us to work together in the evenings.”

“You live here?”

“In Number One.”

Holly bit her lip. She wanted to keep as far away from Jared as she could. But it was a big job on a tight time frame. And no matter how welcoming AnnaMae had been, Holly did like her own space.

“I promise I’m a good neighbor. No loud parties, no drugs.”

“I don’t like feeling I’m a prisoner,” Holly said shortly.

“No one’s saying you can’t leave the building. If anyone sees you in the elevator, they’ll assume you’re working for one of the other firms with offices here. I just don’t want you wandering around Harding Corporation. It’s bound to trigger speculation.”

Before she could argue, her cell phone started playing “America the Beautiful.” “I’d better take this,” she said. “It might be the FBI.”

While she took the call, Jared walked over to the window that wrapped around the northwest corner of the building. Out one side he glimpsed the Space Needle, out the other the expanse of Elliott Bay. The Bainbridge Island ferry broke the surface of the blue water, and above the bay, traffic crawled across the West Seattle Bridge. Beyond the downtown office buildings and department stores stretched a clear blue sky. And beyond that, space. Cyberspace. When Jared had started his business, cyberspace had been the Wild West of the corporate world. He and others had tamed it to some extent, but its boundaries were still enticingly vague.

He imagined Holly would hate to operate in the virtual world he inhabited. She was bound by facts, realities. She thrived on—what had she said at The American The American way. Play by the rules and it’ll be okay. The woman’s cell phone played a patriotic tune, for goodness’ sake.

For Jared the American way meant freedom. Freedom to pursue vengeance to the ends of the earth.

Holly was arguing with whomever she was talking to, employing the superior tone that often sneaked into her conversations with Jared. The tone that drove a man to do things like break in to steal her underwear.

“You can’t do that,” she said. “I’m innocent, and I will prove—” She listened for another half a minute. When she spoke again, the assertiveness had disappeared from her voice.

“Just wait,” she begged. “Please don’t do this now.”

When she ended the call, she turned to Jared white and stricken.

“What is it?” he asked. All the times they’d discussed the fraud inquiry he hadn’t seen her look this shattered.

“That was the chairman of the Northwest CPA Association. They’ve revoked my membership.”

For a second Jared thought he must have misunderstood. But she didn’t say anything else, merely waited for his reaction. “That bunch of gray-haired, fat-bellied—” he grasped for a polite noun “—number-crunchers. Who gives a damn what they think? I thought someone must have died the way you—”

“This is a kind of death,” she blurted out. “You may not have much respect for my profession, but it’s…it’s my life. If I’m not acceptable to the association, I’m not going to be acceptable to any client with ethics higher than pond scum. This will be the end of me.”

Holly could have guessed Jared wasn’t the sort to offer kind reassurances. But the anger that hardened his blue eyes took her by surprise.

“Don’t you dare reduce your life to nothing more than your work,” he snarled. “Damn well pull yourself together and get on with the job you’re here to do. You can deal with those jerks at the association when this mess is over. In the meantime, stop your whining.”

Holly’s jaw dropped and she stared at him.

Jared unclenched his fists and said more calmly, “This thing with the CPA crowd won’t affect your work for me, since you won’t be the one signing off on the accounts. Now, are you going to live here or not?”