The Tycoon's Marriage Bid

He lifted his shoulder. “Called over there this morning and some girl answered. Said Tiff’s is more or less closed for a while. The owner—Hadley—had some personal stuff to take care of.”

Nikki was chewing her thumbnail again. “I hope she’s okay.” Hadley was a nice woman, about Nikki’s age. Tiff’s hadn’t been booming with business by any stretch, and Nikki had felt as if Hadley was more a taker in of strays than a dedicated innkeeper. Still, Nikki had had a reason for wanting to stay at Tiff’s. And Hadley had been more than accommodating.

“Town’s small enough,” Alex murmured. “Gossip would have gotten around fast enough if she weren’t okay.”

True enough. Her mother’s family, the Clays, all lived in or near the small town of Weaver, Wyoming, and Nikki knew how effectively gossip could travel there.

Alex’s fingers stopped drumming on the dashboard. “Don’t move. I’ll take a look inside.”

Nikki propped her elbow on the armrest and dropped her chin in her hand. “I’m not going anywhere,” she murmured to his back as he got out of the vehicle.

How could she?

She’d been lifted from the hospital bed into a wheelchair to exit the hospital, and then lifted from the chair into the SUV that had been idling, warm and cozy, at the curb outside the hospital entrance.

And Alex had done the lifting.

The doctor’s instructions had been adamant. The only thing Nikki was allowed to do was sit up for very brief periods of time every few hours. And use the bathroom more or less under her own steam.

She was embarrassingly grateful for that particular mercy.

Her thumbnail found its way between her teeth again. She watched Alex go up the rickety-looking steps. The security system consisted of a door key hidden inside the ancient metal mailbox affixed to the wall alongside the door.

He glanced back at the SUV for a moment, then went inside.

Nikki wondered what he was thinking.

When she’d been in his employ, she’d believed she’d been able to anticipate his thoughts.

But now she couldn’t. The uncharted waters were too vast for her to navigate.

He’d left the door open, but she could see little inside because of the shadows from the steeply pitched porch roof. Assuring herself that the sheriff would not have recommended a place to Alex that had crumbling floorboards and other hazards he could be encountering in there alone, she focused instead on the landscape.

Dozens of winter-bare trees dotted the land around the cabin. And there were evergreens that seemed to reach a mile into the sky.

She suspected that during the rest of the year, the beauty of the landscape compensated for the stark log cabin. Now, though, the place seemed terribly barren.

And her eyes were burning all over again.

She blinked rapidly and sniffed hard. Enough with the waterworks, already. This was just another unexpected challenge to work through. It wasn’t as if it were the only hitch in life she’d ever encountered.

As long as she followed the doctor’s instructions, the baby would be fine. As long as she concentrated on that, she’d get through this. And when the doctor sprang her, Alex would go on his way again, and she would get on with her life.

Nothing all that different than what she’d been doing since last summer, anyway.

The door beside her opened and she jumped.

Alex released her safety belt. “I’ll take you in.”

She wasn’t sure she wanted to leave the warmth of the SUV, where she could entertain fanciful notions of wriggling behind the wheel and driving off. “Is it as ancient inside as it looks outside?”

“Not exactly.” He slid his arms beneath her.

The third time to be carried by him.

She buried her face from her chin up to her nose in the ivory scarf wrapped around her neck, and tried not to breathe. Tried to pretend she wasn’t fifteen pounds heavier with baby weight, and tried not to justify just how smoothly Alex traipsed across the snow to the cabin.

Yes, he was a large man. But he was a tycoon, not a lumberjack. Carting her—carting anything—around wasn’t really his style.

Yet he managed it with as much style as he did most everything else.

She stifled a sigh, only to hold her breath a moment later when he went up the steps, which creaked ominously. He turned sideways to go through the door, then kicked it shut behind them.

The solid slam seemed to echo inside Nikki’s head as she stared in disbelief at the interior.

“Oh…my…word.”

Alex didn’t comment. He merely crossed the gleaming, wood-planked floor that was partially obscured by a massive leopard-print shag rug, and set her on an enormous sectional couch upholstered in racy red leather. “There’s a shed of some sort on the other side of the cabin. I’m going to move the truck there after I bring in the groceries. Then I’ll get you some lunch. You okay here for that long?”

She nodded weakly and tucked her hands deeper into the pockets of her ivory coat. Anything that would occupy him long enough for her to regain her composure—scrambled from the unlikely interior of the cabin, as much as the unlikely prospect of Alex cook-ing—was a good thing.

He shut the door behind him when he left, preserving the little bit of warmth that the interior possessed. Her gaze settled on the soaring stone fireplace that dominated the center of the room. She had little doubt the cabin would warm up considerably when a fire was lit in it.

The cabin would warm.

The mammoth, circular bed that she could see through the empty fireplace had velvety pillows mounded against an enormous black, leather headboard. And it would warm.

The heart-shaped whirlpool bathtub that took up a chunk of floor space near the couch would warm.

The kitchen and intimate dining nook with its satiny pine table and chairs would warm.

When she and Cody had been planning their wedding, she’d seen advertisements in the bridal magazines of honeymoon cottages that weren’t as blatantly sexual as this place. But sweet Cody had only had one place in mind for their honeymoon. Tiff’s. Where his parents had spent their honeymoon together.

She jumped a little when Alex entered again, his arms loaded with grocery bags, and she dragged her eyes away from the empty bathtub, feeling as if she’d been caught doing something…scandalous.

There was little in the cabin that couldn’t be seen from where she sat on the couch—everything seemed oriented around the fireplace—and she watched him dump the bags on the kitchen counter, then stride back outside.

He hadn’t done any shopping personally, of course.

He’d merely stopped outside a grocery store after picking her up at the hospital, and as if by magic, a young clerk had dutifully trotted out with the bags, loaded them in the back of the SUV, collected some bills from Alex and disappeared again.

The world according to Alex Reed.

There were a few closed doors in the cabin, and plenty of windows running along the back side of the structure. Unlike the miserly one she’d seen from the outside, there seemed to be a dozen of them. All large and un-adorned and overlooking more trees and a narrow, winding stream.

By the time Alex returned after moving the truck, Nikki hoped she’d managed to wipe most of her shock over the cabin interior from her expression.

Not that he’d have noticed, anyway.

He went straight to the kitchen again and began rummaging around. Opening smooth, walnut-planked cupboard doors. Pushing items into the sleek, stainless-steel-fronted refrigerator.

“Alex?”

His head lifted. He looked at her. She could see him through the slice of space between one corner of the fireplace and a bulging green ficus that stood guard over the far end of the sectional couch.

“Do you actually know how to cook?”

His teeth flashed in a surprisingly amused grin. “I can punch a microwave button as well as anyone.”

She hesitated a moment. “Um…Alex? That’s what you said about using the coffeemaker at Huffington.” He’d punched buttons on the commercial-style appliance and the repairman had actually been forced to install a new machine when he’d been unable to fix it. After that, Alex had wisely stayed away from the employee break room.

“We’re going to have to take our chances,” he said dryly. “This microwave is built-in. Don’t think I can move it over there next to you so you can do button duty.”

She heard the microwave door shut, followed by a few beeps. Alex rummaged around a little longer, then approached her, extending an opaque glass toward her.

“Here.”

She took it. Looked inside the squat rim. “It’s milk. I don’t drink milk.”

“You’re pregnant. You’re supposed to drink gallons of it, aren’t you?”

She’d managed not to so far, courtesy of the prescription she took daily, which her obstetrician vehemently assured her were actually prenatal vitamins and not horse pills.

Alex’s expression was much the same as it always was: a hint of amusement underlying his otherwise impervious calm. There was no particular reason for her to take the glass. Certainly not because she wanted to please him or something.

That would be ridiculous.

She was pregnant, so he gave her milk.

She needed to stay off her feet, so he made sure she was able to do so.

Why?

She took the glass and began drinking. He pushed the mirror-topped, iron coffee table closer to her end of the couch before returning to the kitchen. Several minutes later, he was back again, tray in hand. The mirror reflected his image as he leaned over to set the tray on the table.

“Interesting decor,” he murmured as he handed her a chunky white mug filled with soup. “Hope you like chicken noodle. It’s salt free,” he warned. “Carmichael said your sodium intake needed to be minimal.”

Considering she’d just drunk nearly an entire glass of milk, she suspected she’d have eaten the soup, too, even if she didn’t like it. “It’s fine,” she said truthfully.

In fact, she was suddenly starving, and it was all she could do not to attack the soup with him standing right there watching her. But as soon as he saw her scoop up a spoonful of slippery noodles, he went back to the kitchen.

A moment later, she heard him talking on his cell phone.

At least that was typical behavior for him. Alex and his cell phone had always been nearly surgically attached. The man was a serious workaholic.

Somewhat comforted by this small piece of normalcy, she devoured the soup. There was also a banana and two rolls on the tray, and she ate them, too.

Her gaze kept straying to the slice of kitchen she could see. Alex’s voice was a low murmur, too indistinct for her to make out words. Given the coziness of the cabin, she knew he was deliberately keeping his voice low.

A personal call?

Alex was forty-two and the epitome of tall, dark and handsome. He was also extremely wealthy.

Women always flocked to him.

She brushed a bread crumb from her chest and leaned her head back against the arm of the couch. It was no business of hers whatsoever who Alex was speaking to.

Was it Valerie?

Still?

She closed her eyes. But while she could block out the sight of the cabin for lovers, she couldn’t block out the low ebb and flow of Alex’s voice. And she couldn’t block out the thoroughly unwelcome fact that, while it was none of her business, she couldn’t pretend that she didn’t care.

She scooted down farther in the couch, wishing she could burrow beneath the red cushions and erase the past week.

Erase the past year, for that matter.

If she could, then Alex would still be the guy who changed women almost as often as he changed shirts. She’d still be working at his side, doing a job she really had loved, and keeping her own feelings for him sternly under wraps, because she was definitely too smart to think seriously about a man who sent nearly every woman off with some tasteful gift that Nikki had arranged for him.

If she could wish away the past year, Alex’s ex-wife, Valerie, wouldn’t have come back into his life, and Nikki wouldn’t have had to quit her job because of her own foolish behavior.

She wouldn’t be lying here now in this rabid honeymooner cabin, pregnant with the child of a man whose only appeal to her had been his strong resemblance to Alex.

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