The Tycoon's Instant Family

“It’s a beautiful night, and I want to go up into the tower with you and look at the moonlight on the sea, and just be alone with you.”

Georgie’s heart bumped against her ribs. She didn’t reply, just slipped her hand over Nick’s and squeezed gently.

It was enough. She unlocked the house, and he took her by the hand and led her up the carpeted stairs to the room at the top. And there in the moonlight they sat on the windowsill, staring out over the smooth, lazy swell of the sea, their fingers entwined.

Her fingers tightened on his. “I love you,” her mouth said, and her heart joined in the desperate protests from her feeble mind. Oh, damn, why had she said that?

He pulled her into his arms and hugged her. “I couldn’t have got through tonight without you. Thank you for being there for me.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, and wondered how long it would be before she came to regret those three little words that she’d never meant to say.

CAROLINE ANDERSON

has the mind of a butterfly. She’s been a nurse, a secretary, a teacher, has run her own soft-furnishing business and now she’s settled on writing. She says, “I was looking for that elusive something. I finally realized it was variety, and now I have it in abundance. Every book brings new horizons and new friends, and between books I have learned to be a juggler. My teacher husband, John, and I have two beautiful and talented daughters, Sarah and Hannah, umpteen pets and several acres of Suffolk that nature tries to reclaim every time we turn our backs!”

The Tycoon’s Instant Family

Caroline Anderson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

PROLOGUE

‘GIVE me one good reason why I should help you.’

The man sitting in front of him gave a tiny, helpless shrug. He was a proud man at the end of his rope, and it gave Nick no pleasure to push him, but he needed to get to the bottom of this request, and pussy-footing around wouldn’t cut the mustard.

‘Mr Broomfield?’

Another little shrug. ‘I can’t—I can’t give you a reason. I don’t even know why I’m here—’

‘So why did you come to me?’

‘Gerry told me to. Gerry Burrows—you helped him out last year.’

‘I remember. We bought his company.’

‘Oh, you did more than that. You saved his life. He was suicidal and his wife was on the point of leaving him, and you turned his life around.’

And this man looked in need of the same kind of rescue package. Nick shifted in his chair and wondered how many more desperate friends Gerry Burrows had. One at a time, he told himself wearily. Surely there couldn’t be that many?

‘Gerry Burrows had a business worth buying. As yet I know nothing about you or your business, or even what you want from me, so why don’t you start there and tell me what exactly you have in mind?’

Andrew Broomfield’s laugh was bitter and self-deprecating. ‘I haven’t even thought that far—’

‘Then perhaps you should. If I’m going to help you, Mr Broomfield, I need a reason.’

‘There is no good reason. Only a lunatic would consider it.’ His laugh cracked in the middle. ‘We buy and sell bankrupt stock, of all things. It was doing really well, but then we overstretched ourselves, bought several shops so we could open retail outlets, and things went from bad to worse, really. They’re all mortgaged to the hilt, and our only real asset is draining so much cash it’s brought us to the brink. It was meant to save us, but it’s taking us under. We can’t go on—and if I can’t find someone to intervene, then I guess the receivers will.’

‘It might be the best thing.’

‘No.’ He closed his eyes, his head shaking slowly from side to side. ‘For me, yes, it’s what I deserve, but my wife’s pregnant, and we’ve just been told the baby’s got something wrong with him and he’ll need a whole series of operations, starting as soon as he’s born. She has no idea the business is in trouble, and I can’t do that to her—make her homeless just before the baby’s born, with all we’ve got to face there, but I just can’t see any way out of it—’

Oh, hell. He’d just hit on the one thing calculated to get to Nick, but curiously it didn’t look calculated. It looked as if it came from the heart.

‘Homeless?’ he prompted.

Broomfield nodded miserably. ‘I put the house up as security, like an idiot. It’s nothing special—just an ordinary little three-bedroomed detached house like millions of others and a drop in the ocean compared to our other debts, but it’s home, and I can’t take that away from her—’

Nick sat back, twiddling a pen in his fingertips and watching the man struggle with his emotions. God, he was getting soft in his old age. He knew he was only going through the motions here, knew he’d help Broomfield even though he didn’t know him from Adam and shouldn’t care a jot about his pregnant wife or the sick baby or the mess he’d got them in.

He stuck to the facts. ‘Tell me about this asset.’

The man shrugged again. ‘It’s just a building site—a tatty, near-derelict old school with a disused chapel and other bits and pieces, and a handful of temporary classrooms scattered about the site. I bought it a few years ago and sat on it, and last year we got planning permission for conversion and a small development on the playing fields. We should have sold it then, but—well, I thought we’d make more if we developed it ourselves, but I underestimated the cost of the work. Drastically.’

‘So you’ve started doing it.’

‘Yes, but we’ve just run out of money. We put the builder on a penalty clause to move things along faster, but we can’t afford to pay him and so everything’s come to a grinding halt. I’ve bought us a little time, managed to stop him walking out, but only because we owe them so much they won’t walk until they get their money.’

‘How much are we talking about?’ Nick asked.

‘I’m not sure—thousands. Hundreds of thousands, probably.’

Nick nodded, wondering how he could have got into so much debt and not know the figure. Presumably that was how. ‘And the other debts, on your business?’

He shrugged again. ‘The same—more, perhaps. The business is in real trouble, but if you knew what you were doing you might get something out of it, and if you could sell the shops they might almost clear the mortgage debt, but it would take time and that’s one thing we haven’t got. It’s only really the site that’s of significant value, and that’s only potential. Frankly at the moment it’s worth less than it was when we started.’

Nick’s entrepreneurial antennae twitched. Potential was one of his favourite words, and another one was honesty. Nobody could accuse Broomfield of trying to cover anything up. He was being distressingly honest at his own expense, but for Nick, at least, it worked. To a point.

‘OK. I’ll try and find time to go and see the site when I get back from New York in a few days—and in the meantime I want exact figures on the business, the mortgages and the property portfolio. If they stack up, we’ll talk again.’

‘If I could just keep my house—’

‘I’m not making any promises. I’m not in this for charity, Mr Broomfield—but I’ll do what I can.’

‘Do you know what you’re buying?’

Nick shrugged off his jacket, dropped into the big leather chair behind his desk and studied the incredulous face of his PA for a moment before he sat back, twiddling his pen.

‘Want to give me a clue what you’re talking about?’

Tory sighed and plonked herself down in the chair opposite, rolling her eyes. ‘The Broomfield deal—the building site?’

He scrunched his brows together, racking his brains and trying to dredge up something—anything!—that would have put that look on Tory’s face. ‘What about it?’ he said. ‘Some scruffy old school buildings, he said. Nothing great. Potential, I think was the word—’

‘Nothing great?’ Tory snorted and waggled a fat manila folder at him. ‘I take it you haven’t looked at the plans I carefully faxed you?’

Nick grinned. ‘Guilty as charged,’ he confessed.

‘I thought so. The scruffy old school buildings are a rather fine Victorian house in the style of an Italianate villa, with a coach house, chapel, stable block et cetera, et cetera, blah, blah, blah. With a couple of acres of playing fields. OK, there are some tatty old temporary classrooms and some other bits from the days when it was a school that need demolishing, but that’s all and they may already have gone. The rest is a gem. For goodness’ sake, it’s prime real estate, on a seafront site in a prime residential area of Yoxburgh, in Suffolk. You might at least look a bit interested.’

He sat up straighter. He knew Yoxburgh—he’d spent days there as a child, playing on the beach, and his mother lived only twenty or so miles from it now. ‘You said plans,’ he reminded Tory, eyeing the folder thoughtfully.

‘Oh, yes. Detailed planning permission for conversion to apartments and town houses, and the erection of several more dwellings on the site. Nothing very inspired for the most part, but it’s a gold mine, for all that, and it’s about to be yours, if you’ve got any sense.’

A little flicker of something that might have been excitement stirred his senses. ‘Do we know anything about the builder?’

‘Yup—local contractor by the name of George Cauldwell. He’s got an excellent reputation, apparently. I checked him out. Been in the business for years and I couldn’t find a whiff of an unsatisfied customer. It should be an interesting little development if it’s as successful as his others—and it could be worth a tidy fortune. Someone’s been very, very sloppy—or they have no idea what they’re sitting on.’

‘Desperate, I think is the word.’ He thought of Andrew Broomfield, living with his pregnant wife in a little house on the brink of repossession and with a medical crisis looming for the baby, and felt a sense of relief that maybe, just maybe, they’d come out of this smelling of roses. Sort of. Certainly from what he’d seen of the figures the business itself wouldn’t be worth anything like what it would cost to clear the debts, so the building site had to be pretty fantastic to justify his altruistic gesture.

And if the look on Tory’s face was anything to go by…

He gestured to the bulging folder. ‘Are those the plans, by any chance?’

The folder arrived on his desk, skidding towards him and coming to a halt under his outstretched hand. He flicked through it, unfolding the plans and flattening them out on the desk, the significance of the deal finally sinking in as he scanned the drawings.

He ran his mind over the things he had to do today, the things he could delegate or leave until tomorrow, and refolded the plans, shuffling them back into the folder and getting to his feet. ‘I’m going to have a look—see if I can get a feel for it.’

‘Fine. I’ll schedule a meeting—’

‘No. I’m going now.’

‘But you’ve got lunch booked with Simon Darcy—’

‘You can handle it. Simon adores you—just don’t let him talk you into going to work for him, that’s all I ask. You don’t need me there. I could do with some sea air. I’ll be back later.’

‘I’ll phone them—tell the contractor that you’re coming. They’ve been hounding Andrew Broomfield for money the whole time you were in New York and he’s getting frantic for your answer. He’s running out of lies to tell them, I think, and they’re only a small firm. They’ll be pleased to see you.’

‘No. Don’t warn them. I want to see how this George Cauldwell runs the site before I commit myself. I’d hate you to spoil my surprise.’

Tory opened her mouth, thought better of arguing and shut it again. ‘Fine. Just leave your phone on.’

Not a chance. He’d suddenly realised how bored he was, how dull and repetitive and endless his working life had become. He’d been in New York closing another deal, and he’d had six hours’ sleep in three days. He was tired, he was stifled, and he needed some down time.

And so now, today, just for a while, Nick Barron was slipping the leash.

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS deathly quiet on the site.

Well, it would be, Georgie thought philosophically. She’d sent all the workmen home days ago, and if it wasn’t for the fact that she couldn’t sleep at night for worry, she wouldn’t have been here either, but she had nothing else to do and she’d cleaned the house to within an inch of its life since her father had gone into hospital, so she’d come down to go over the figures—again!—to see if there was a magic trick or two she’d missed.

There wasn’t.

She propped her head on her hands and sighed, staring out over the deserted site to the sea. No magic tricks, no way out, just the bank about to foreclose and her father’s health in ruins.

Not to mention her dreams.

She stood up and pulled on her coat. Sitting here was achieving nothing. She might as well check the buildings, make sure there hadn’t been any vandalism. She reached for the obligatory hard hat and wrinkled her nose. She hated the hat, but rules were rules.

Archie was at her heels, his stubby tail wriggling with enthusiasm, and his cheerful grin made her smile. ‘Come on, then, little man. Let’s go and check it all out.’

She shut the door of the site office, crossed the site in the biting March wind and unlocked the side door of the main house—the door that, without an unprecedented stroke of luck, would never now become her front door.

They climbed the stairs together, her footsteps echoing in the emptiness, Archie’s toenails clattering on the wooden treads, and finally they emerged into the room at the top of the big square tower. It wasn’t huge, but it was her eyrie, the room she’d hoped to have as her bedroom, with windows on three sides and the most stunning views over the bay and far out to sea.

It was also the best place to view the site, and she stared down over the mangled earth, the pegged-out footings, the half-finished coach-house conversions, the sanatorium as yet untouched, the chapel almost completely concealed by the trees that had grown up to surround it.

So much to do, so much potential—such a waste. Even if Broomfield came up with the money, the design was inherently flawed and horribly over-developed.

‘In your opinion,’ she reminded herself sternly. ‘You aren’t the only person in the world. Other people are allowed a say.’

Even if they had no vision, no imagination, no—no soul, dammit. She turned away in disgust, and her eye was caught by a lone figure standing on the edge of the lawn below the house, staring out over the sea.

‘Who’s that, Arch?’ she murmured, and the dog, picking up on her sudden stillness, flew down the stairs and out of the door, racing off across the site, barking his head off.

Rats. The last thing—absolutely the last thing—Georgie needed this morning was a visitor. She’d got yet more phone calls to make, because unless she could screw some kind of sensible answer out of Andrew Broomfield by the end of the day, the bank was going to take them to the cleaners.

Big time.

And now, she realised, running down the stairs after the dog, she had some random stranger wandering around all over her site, uninvited and unannounced, and the place was a minefield. The last thing—the other last thing, in fact—that she needed at the moment was someone slapping a lawsuit on her because he’d tripped over a brick!

‘Archie! Come here!’ she yelled, but the wind caught her voice and anyway, Archie had better things to do. The little terrier was on his back, legs in the air, having the tummy-tickle of his life, and obedience wasn’t remotely on his agenda. Knowing when she was beaten, she switched her attention to the man. Maybe she’d have more luck there.

‘Excuse me!’

He straightened up, to Archie’s disappointment, and turned towards her, his expression concealed by the wrap-around designer sunglasses shielding his eyes. They didn’t hide the smile, though, and her heart did a crazy little flip-flop in response.

‘Good morning.’

Oh, lord, his voice was like rough silk, and her heart skittered again.

‘Morning.’

It was the only word she could manage. She took the last two strides across the mangled drive, scrambled up beside him on the lawn and tilted back her head, one hand clamped firmly on her hard hat.

He towered over her—not that that was hard. If only he’d been on the drive, she could have positioned herself above him on the lawn; even that slight advantage would have helped, she thought, but then he peeled off the sunglasses and she found herself staring up into eyes the colour of rain-washed slate, and her breath jammed in her throat.

No. Flat on his back he’d still have the advantage. There was just something about him, something very male and confident and self-assured that dried up her mouth and made her legs turn to jelly.

If he was a representative of the bank she was stuffed. The last man they’d sent from the bank had been small and mild and ineffectual and she’d managed to bamboozle him with one hand tied behind her back.

Not this one, in his soft, battered leather jacket and designer jeans, with his searching eyes and uncompromising jaw. This one was a real handful. Well, tough. So was she, and she had more riding on it. If he was from the bank, she’d take him by the scruff of the neck and show him exactly why they needed so much money—and he’d listen. She wouldn’t give him a choice.

Anyway, he couldn’t be all bad, because Archie was standing on his back legs, filthy front paws propped up on that expensively clad thigh, his tail going nineteen to the dozen as he licked furiously at the hand dangling conveniently in range, the fingers tickling him still.

There was a possibility, of course, that he could just be an idly curious member of the public. She straightened her shoulders, slapped her leg for the dog and sucked in a breath.

‘Can I help you? Archie, come here!’

‘I don’t know yet. I was just having a look round—getting a feel for it.’

The tension eased, replaced instantly by irritation. The idly curious were the bane of her life, and this one was no exception. Even with those gorgeous eyes.

No. Forget the eyes. ‘I’m sorry, you can’t just look round without reporting to the site office,’ she told him firmly. ‘Archie, here! Now! There’s a sign there forbidding people to walk about the site without authority. Visitors must report to the site office on the way in. You can’t just crawl about all over it, it’s dangerous—!’

‘Don’t tell me—you’re the health and safety official,’ he said, that beautifully sculptured mouth twitching with laughter, and she felt her brows climb with her temper.

‘No—I’m the site agent, and I’m getting heartily sick of people wandering about on my site as if they own it! Why is it that everybody treats building sites as public open spaces?’ she continued, warming up to her pet hate. ‘This is private property, and if you refuse to follow procedures, I’ll have no alternative but to ask you to leave—’

‘That may be a little hasty,’ he said softly.

‘You think so?’ She raked him with her eyes, then met that cool, steely blue gaze again with mounting anger. ‘Well, I’m sorry, we don’t need you suing us, so if you won’t comply with site rules, you’ll give me no choice but to ask you to leave my site before you hurt yourself.’

‘Your site?’ His voice was mocking, and she had to struggle with the urge to hit him.

‘That’s right,’ she retorted, hanging on to her temper with difficulty. ‘Mine. Now, are you going to do this the easy way, or am I going to call the police?’

His head shook slowly from side to side, and the smile which had long faded was replaced by a slow, simmering anger that more than matched her own. ‘Oh, I’m going nowhere. You might be, though, and hopefully taking your dog with you before he licks me to death. Now, I’m going to have a look around, and while I do that, perhaps you’d be kind enough to tell George Cauldwell I’m looking for him. Although I’m beginning to think I may have very little to say to him. The name’s Barron, by the way. Nick Barron.’

Uh-oh. The name meant nothing to her, but it was obviously supposed to and she was beginning to get a sinking feeling about this man. If he was looking for her father, then he might well be someone from the bank, although his jeans and leather jacket made that seem unlikely, but if not the bank, then who…?

‘He’s not here,’ she told him. ‘Are you from the bank?’

‘Not exactly. Will he be back today?’

Not exactly? What did that mean? She shook her head. ‘No. I’m his daughter, Georgia,’ she said warily. ‘I’m in charge while he’s—away.’

‘In which case, since you claim to be in charge, perhaps you’ll be good enough, in your father’s absence, to give me a guided tour of the whole development. If I’m going to be foolish enough to proceed with the purchase, I want to see every last square inch. In triplicate.’

The purchase? The whole development?

Oh, lord, what had she done? This project was the biggest development her father had ever taken on, and standing in front of her was the man who had the power to make or break them. And she’d just threatened him with the police!

Fantastic. For the last two months they’d been throwing money into the site, forging ahead with the conversions and making a start on the new builds, and all the time waiting for instructions and—most importantly—funds. They’d been trying to get to the point of another stage payment, but all the way along they’d been delayed by a lack of detail in the specifications. Although Broomfield’s company seemed big on ideas, they were miserably short on detail, and the devil, in this case, was certainly in the detail. With the clock running on the penalty clause, it was debatable whose fault it would be.

And now the man who could have been the answer to her prayers was right here in front of her, and if she hadn’t already screwed up totally, she wasn’t going to let him leave until she’d had a chance to put their side of it and hopefully secure his promise to clear their debts, at the very least.

But her first move had better be an apology—a good one. She forced herself to meet his eyes and her heart sank. He was clearly running out of patience, and his eyes were sceptical and filled with doubts—doubts she had to get rid of at all costs.

‘I’m sorry, I hadn’t been told anything about a buy-out,’ she confessed. ‘My father’s been in hospital for nearly two weeks, and I’ve been dealing with Andrew Broomfield—or trying to. He’s been avoiding me.’

‘I wonder why?’ he murmured.

She swallowed her pride. The first apology obviously hadn’t worked. She’d have to try harder, and she forced herself to hold his eyes.

‘Look, I’m sorry. I was really rude, I apologise. I’m not normally like this, but I thought you were just being nosy, so I took it out on you. We’ve had some vandalism and thefts on the site, so I’m a bit edgy when I’m here on my own—’