The Tycoon's Baby

Janey thanked her and gathered up her gloves and her electronic earmuffs. She had to force herself to stand up, and the thought of going back to work, of struggling once more with that machine, was hardly inviting. But she had a small burn, not a major disability—and the boss was watching.

Webb Copeland fell into step beside her in the hallway. Janey didn’t look at him. “It was nice of you to stay,” she said finally. “You didn’t have to.”

“I should thank you,” he said. “I’d exhausted all my excuses for working late, and you provided me with a new one.”

Janey frowned. Why should he need excuses for working late? In fact, why didn’t he want to go home?

He followed her onto the factory floor. For a moment Janey wondered why, until she remembered that he’d been on his way out of the building when she’d been injured.

The supervisor was inspecting her machine. “That certainly took long enough,” he said tartly as she approached. “What did they do? Skin grafts?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “There doesn’t appear to be anything wrong with the machinery. So unless you can give me a reason why I shouldn’t put you on report for carelessness, Griffin—”

Janey thought about it, and shook her head. The lecher at the next machine had been the catalyst, but she had been careless, opening the guard like that and then allowing her mind to wander.

“Then get back to work,” the supervisor ordered.

Behind her, Webb Copeland cleared his throat. “There will be no report of carelessness, because that machine is to be tagged as dangerous and taken out of production till we can get a repairman in to look at it. And since she has no equipment to work with, Ms. Griffin is not going back to work tonight, she is going home. Right now.”

The supervisor’s jaw dropped. The lecher at the next work station gasped.

Janey winced. But she could hardly stand in the middle of the factory and argue about it, so she meekly got her coat and keys from her locker in the break room and followed Webb Copeland out the employees’ entrance. She stopped on the curb as the November wind cut through her coat.

“Did you say you don’t have a car?” he asked.

“The bus will be along soon. Mr. Copeland, I wish you hadn’t done that.”

“Which part? And why not?”

“All of it—because there’ll be a lot of talk.”

“About what?”

“It’s obvious you don’t hang out with the guys on the factory floor, or you’d know.” But it was cold, and her neck hurt, and he’d probably think she was conceited even to suggest that the workers were probably talking about the two of them right now. It was too late to do anything about it anyway. “Never mind,” she muttered. “By the way, I hate to sound miserly, but is my paycheck going to be docked because I’m leaving early?”

“Since it’s not your fault, no. Come on, I’ll drive you home. It’s silly to wait in the cold for a bus.” He started off without even a look to see if she was coming along.

For some reason she’d pictured him in a low-slung, two-passenger convertible—but instead his car was midsized and quietly luxurious. “Of course,” she muttered. “Grandma.”

Webb slid behind the wheel. “I beg your pardon? I didn’t quite catch that.”

Janey was too embarrassed at being caught talking to herself even to duck the question. “I was just speculating that your grandmother would find it hard to get in and out of a Corvette.”

He frowned. “You don’t know my grandmother, do you?”

“Are you kidding? Of course I don’t. What would I have in common with her?”

“An excellent question,” he murmured. “Where do you live?”

She gave him the general direction and thought fleetingly about having him drop her off on campus instead of at her door. But why should it matter if Webb Copeland thought she lived in a slum?

It didn’t, she told herself defiantly. Because he didn’t matter. Not at all.

* * *

THE ENGINE PURRED as the car drew up next to one of the most bedraggled houses Webb had ever seen. He gave the place a glance and said, “I’ll wait till you’re inside.”

Janey paused, half in and half out of the car. “Don’t bother. I walk two blocks home from the bus stop every night, later than this, all by myself.”

He waited nevertheless, watching intently till he saw a light come on in the basement apartment. Then he sat back and tapped his fingers on the leather-wrapped steering wheel, and indulged himself in a long, slow smile.

She’s perfect, he told himself. Utterly and absolutely perfect.

* * *

THE MOMENT SHE walked into the employee break room the next day, Janey knew it was going to be worse than she’d thought possible. The looks were bad enough—sly sideways glances that slithered away like snakes when she tried to face them down. But as soon as she turned her back to get her safety equipment from her locker, the whispers started.

“Bet the big boss wouldn’t have walked me to the infirmary.”

“Or held your hand while the nasty nurse hurt you.”

“Or taken you home afterward.”

There was a snort of laughter. “I wonder if it was worth his while.”

Janey had had enough. She turned to face them and said clearly, “If you mean, did Webb Copeland spend the night—no, he didn’t.”

One of the men leered. “Well, it probably wouldn’t take all night,” he said pointedly.

Janey flung her locker door shut and strode toward the factory entrance. Just outside the break room stood an elderly woman with half-glasses perched on her nose, holding a clipboard. She looked from it to Janey and asked, “Are you Ms. Griffin?”

“Unfortunately for me,” Janey snapped, “yes.”

The woman was unfazed. “Then if you’ll come with me? I’m Mr. Copeland’s private secretary, and he wishes to speak with you.”

Janey stopped in midstep. “Is that so? Well, I’ve got a few things I wouldn’t mind saying to him, too. Lead the way.”

They wended down a different hall from the one which led to the infirmary. The farther they walked, Janey noticed, the grander the surroundings became. The carpets were deeper, the walls were papered or paneled instead of merely painted, and each office they passed was larger than the last.

And each person they met seemed increasingly startled at the sight of the two of them. Janey found some grim humor in that; the contrast between her—steel-toed shoes, safety goggles, electronic earmuffs and all—and the elegantly-turned-out white-haired secretary must be a stunner.

At the end of the building, as far as it was possible to get from the factory floor, the secretary opened a heavy teak door and said, “Mr. Copeland? Ms. Griffin is here.”

Janey took two steps forward into an enormous office and watched as Webb Copeland rose slowly from behind an enormous desk.

Irrationally she found herself thinking that it hadn’t been the trench coat that had made him look so tall last night. He really was as imposing as he’d seemed.

“Have a seat,” he said, and gestured toward a pair of armchairs, which stood before a marble fireplace in one corner of the office. “I’d like to have a little chat.”

“Well, that goes double for me.” Janey eyed the pale blue watered silk, which covered the armchairs. She knew perfectly well that her jeans were as clean as they ever again could be, but here and there stains still marked the fabric. If any of them transferred to that delicate silk...

Then it was Webb Copeland’s problem, she thought defiantly. She hadn’t asked to be brought here. She sat down with a deliberately possessive thump, the kind that—when she’d been a teenager—had always made her mother cringe and plead for her to be more careful of the springs.

To her disappointment, Webb Copeland didn’t flinch—he smiled. “Actually,” he said gently, “I want to ask you a question.” He sat down across from her, carefully adjusted the crease in his trousers, and leaned back in his chair. “Ms. Griffin, how would you like to be engaged to me for a while?”

CHAPTER TWO

WEBB COPELAND’S EYES were so wide and guileless, his smile so serene, and his voice so cool and deliberate that for a few seconds Janey didn’t realize she was dealing with a man in the midst of a psychotic episode. And just how did one handle this particular variety of nutcase? Humor him? Try to reason things out? Scream and run?

“Engaged?” she managed to say. “You’re certain that’s what you meant to say? Because you surely don’t mean engaged like the step before getting married—do you?”

“Not in this case. I mean, yes, that’s exactly the kind of engagement I have in mind, but there’s no question of marriage. That’s the whole point.”

Janey put the tips of two fingers against her temple and rubbed at a throbbing vein. “I think you’d better take it from the top, Mr. Copeland. And is there such a thing as a coffee machine at this end of the building? I think I’m going to need some.”

He smiled. “Louise can no doubt find you a cup. Cream and sugar?”

“Just black.”

He went to the door and called the secretary’s name.

While his back was turned, Janey took a better look around the office. There was only one door, and Webb Copeland’s body was still blocking it. But one wall was entirely glass, and though most of the windows were set solidly in place the bottom panels obviously opened for ventilation. They were shallow, but surely she could punch out the screen and slither through on her back...

On the other hand, Janey had never been the scream-and-run type. Honesty forced her to admit, however, that wasn’t the reason she was sticking around. The truth was if she didn’t hear all of this story she’d be lying awake every night for the rest of her life trying to figure it out.

Webb came back with two heavy ceramic mugs, which bore the Copeland Products logo. Janey was just a little disappointed to see that the cups were precisely the same as those in the employee break room. Wasn’t that one of the perks of the executive wing—getting to drink out of real china?

The coffee was better, though—obviously fresh, which in her two months of working there had never been the case in the break room.

She held the mug in both hands. “You were saying?”

“Oh, yes, from the top.” Webb sat down again. “Just over a year ago, my wife lost control of her car on an icy road and was killed.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve heard about the accident, of course, but I’d forgotten.” She saw his raised eyebrows and said, “Employees talk, Mr. Copeland.”

“About my wife?”

Janey said dryly, “They talk about everything. If I’d known it was going to affect me personally, I’d have paid more attention to that particular story. At least, I assume you wouldn’t be telling me unless it is going to affect me personally?”

He smiled a little, but he didn’t answer directly. “Our daughter, Madeline, was less than two months old when her mother died.”

“Oh.” Janey hadn’t heard that part of the story. “The poor child.”

“She’s doing quite well. She has a nurse, and my grandmother moved in to provide a guiding hand.” He sipped his coffee. “That’s the problem, actually—my grandmother. She’s convinced I should get married again, for Maddy’s sake, and she’s trying to persuade me.”

Janey’s eyebrows arched. “Come on, Mr. Copeland—you have five hundred employees, and you don’t have any trouble at all bossing them around. Do you expect me to believe you can’t tell your grandmother to mind her own business?”

“I have. And she’s actually stopped talking about it—the last time she brought up the subject directly was almost three weeks ago. But ever since we had that last little chat about how badly Madeline needs a stepmother, my house hasn’t been a safe place for me to go near.”

Janey frowned. “Because you told her off? If she’s so angry—”

“Oh, she’s far from angry. She’s just determined, and she’s turned my house into a social center. That’s fine with me—she has a right to entertain her friends. It’s just that all of her friends suddenly seem to be single, under thirty, and pretty in varying degrees. If I go home in time to play with Maddy before her bedtime, I’m shanghaied into joining Gran and one or another of her young lovelies at dinner.”

“That’s why you were working so late last night?”

He nodded. “I was dodging a blonde. Luckily I spotted her before Gran saw me, so I escaped the dinner routine. But I barely made it out the door, and I expect the blonde stayed the whole evening waiting for me to show up again.”

Thank you for giving me an excuse, he’d said last night outside the infirmary. Janey was beginning to see what he’d meant.

“I can’t set foot inside my own door without being ambushed—but if I stay away, I don’t see my baby girl at all.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve considered shipping your grandmother off to a rest home and telling all her pals to visit her there?”

He laughed, without much humor. “It’s painfully apparent that you’ve never met my grandmother, Janey.”

“All right, so I don’t have an answer for you. You might try dragging her to a counselor, I suppose, but other than that—”

“Oh, there’s a much simpler way. I’m going to give her precisely what she’s asked for.”

“Perhaps I’ve missed something,” Janey mused. “But I think you just said you’re going to get married to keep her from pushing you to get married, and somehow that just doesn’t—”

“Not exactly. I’m going to introduce her to the woman I’ve chosen to be Maddy’s stepmother—and, incidentally, my wife.”

Janey crossed her legs and let her foot swing free. “I still don’t see why I come into this.”

“You’re perfect,” he said calmly. “She’ll hate you.”

Janey’s foot stopped in midswing. She stared at the oversized, rounded toe of her reinforced shoes. “Because I’m so different from the ladies on her list?”

“Exactly. She’ll be horrified, in fact.”

She could almost see his grandmother now—eagle-eyed, upright, impatient to pounce on the slightest gaffe, ready to judge anyone who didn’t precisely meet her specifications. He was no doubt right, Janey thought—the woman would hate her. Of course, that fact didn’t make his assessment of Janey any more flattering... “And then, after a while, you’ll break it off.”

He nodded. “And Gran will be so relieved—”

Janey finished his sentence. “—that she’ll start right in again. I don’t know what you think you’re going to gain in the long run.”

“Oh, no, she won’t. Because, you see, once she realizes the lengths I’ll go to, she won’t dare push me, ever again.”

“You mean you’re going to tell her the whole thing? Confess that it was a scam?”

“Of course not. She has to believe that I’d have gone through with it, or the whole operation’s a waste.” His eyebrows drew together. “It means, of course, that you’ll have to be the one to break it all off—or at least it’ll have to look as if you’re the one.”

“Leaving you with a broken heart,” Janey mused. “Which in itself would buy you a little time, I suppose.” She nibbled her thumbnail as she thought it over. She could see all kinds of flaws in this scheme—but then he hadn’t asked her to critique his plan, only to pretend for a while to be his fiancée. She folded her arms across her chest, looked him straight in the eye and said bluntly, “So what’s in it for me?”

He looked just a little shocked, and she wondered if it was her implied agreement or the brusque question that had startled him. Or was he just surprised that she needed to ask?

“If you say my job’s hanging on whether I cooperate—” she began suspiciously.

“Of course not. That would be sexual harassment.”

“Well, it’s good to know somebody in this company knows the definition,” Janey muttered. “So what are you offering?”

He countered, “What do you have in mind?”

She slowly finished her coffee while she thought it over, and then she set her cup down and said, “Money, of course.”

Suddenly his eyes were as chilly as storm clouds.

What on earth did he expect? Janey thought, half-amused. He’d already classified her as ignorant, uneducated and socially inept—so why shouldn’t she be a fortune hunter, too?

“And rather a lot of it.” She told him exactly how much.

He swallowed hard. “Well, you’re right about it being a lot.”

Janey relented. Being paid for her work was one thing, but the figure she’d quoted was closer to blackmail—and she’d never intended for him to give it to her outright, anyway. She might not be able to borrow money from standard sources, but with her cooperation as collateral...why not? He could afford it. “We’ll call it an interest-free loan, and—let me think—in about three years I can start paying it back.”

“Of course you will.” There was only a hint of sarcasm in his voice, but it rasped on her like tree bark against tender skin. “And why are we waiting three years? What’s this loan intended for?”

Janey shrugged. “I don’t see that it’s any of your business how I spend it. If you’re worried about me paying it off, you’ll just have to rely on my character.” She smiled sweetly and added, “Of course, if you’re not happy with the arrangements, we don’t have to continue this discussion at all.”

He let the subject hang in the silent office until Janey concluded that she’d pushed him too far. Oh, well, she thought. It was a great opportunity while it lasted. She’d gambled and lost, and there was no sense in feeling disappointed. She wasn’t any worse off than she’d been before she walked into his office.

He said, “It’s a deal.”

Janey could hardly believe she’d heard him right. Relief and satisfaction—and a bit of fear at the job she’d taken on—surged through her.

His voice was brisk. “I want to get started right away. I’ll break the news to Gran tonight, and you can come for dinner tomorrow to meet her. Seven-thirty—”

Janey shook her head. “Can’t. Remember? I work the swing shift.”

He lifted one dark eyebrow. “I assumed, with all that cash coming in, you’d be quitting your job.”

She could, of course. With the assurance of that money—enough, she’d carefully calculated, to pay her tuition and support her adequately, though not luxuriously, through the rest of her education—she didn’t need to work another day. She didn’t need to face her fellow employees again, or crush her skull with those horrible electronic earmuffs, or ride the bus across town in the middle of the night...

On the other hand, there was as yet no guarantee that she’d actually be laying her hands on Webb Copeland’s cash. That would depend on the success of this con, so she didn’t dare let go of the security her paycheck offered quite yet—and with the hope that the end was near, she could put up with it for a while longer, anyway.

“I think I’ll keep working for now,” she said.

He took a deep breath, but he didn’t argue the point. “All right. Lunch, then.”

Janey consulted her internal calendar. Tomorrow was Wednesday, the day before the Thanksgiving holiday, so all afternoon classes had been canceled. “It’ll have to be on the late side—like one o’clock.”

“That’ll work. I’ll pick you up.” He stood, obviously dismissing her.

Janey stayed firmly in her chair. “How does one dress to meet your grandmother?”

His gaze drifted slowly down the length of her body. “How about your work clothes, and after lunch I’ll drop you off here in time for your shift?”

“Don’t you think that would be just a little obvious? I thought I’d settle for painting my face like a clown and stuffing all the tissue I can find down the front of a strapless sequined dress.”

Webb smiled. It was, Janey thought, the first time she’d seen him display honest humor, and it looked good on him. The tiny lines around his eyes crinkled and his eyes glowed...

And that’s enough of that, she told herself. He was the boss, he had hired her to do a job and she wasn’t getting paid in smiles.

* * *

AFTER SHE WAS GONE, Webb called his secretary in. “You can send this back to personnel,” he said, pushing Janey’s file across the desk. “And call my grandmother, please, and tell her I want to talk to her alone tonight, so she’d better kick all the wannabe brides out of my house.”

Louise’s lips twitched. “I’ll rephrase that, if I may?” she murmured, and left without waiting for an answer.

Webb pushed his chair back, put his feet up on the corner of his desk and stared out the window. The whole thing had gone very well, he thought. If he’d constructed her himself, he couldn’t have come up with a more delightful combination for this job than Janey Griffin. Not only was she smart-mouthed, hard-edged, and entirely lacking in tact—qualities guaranteed to send Camilla Copeland straight up the nearest wall—but she was very nicely packaged as well. Janey was not beautiful, of course; in that department she couldn’t begin to compete with the women Camilla had been throwing at him. But even in her work clothes Janey was attractive enough—tall, slender, straight-backed, with curves in the right places and huge hazel eyes and well-shaped little ears and a firm if stubborn small chin and pleasant, ordinary brown hair—that his grandmother wouldn’t have to ponder the question of how she’d initially captured Webb’s attention.

There were some women, he told himself, that Gran simply wouldn’t believe he could fall for, no matter how convincing a story she heard. Janey Griffin wasn’t one of them. And yet, as soon as Camilla ran up against the smart mouth, the hard edges and the complete lack of tact...

And Janey was going to keep her job, too—just as he’d hoped she would. The idea of a prospective granddaughter-in-law who worked the swing shift on a manufacturing line—moving, carving and bending steel—was guaranteed to make Camilla turn purple. He’d been right. Janey couldn’t be more perfect.

He took his feet off his desk and got his trench coat from the closet. Louise would have made that call by now—so he might as well go home, play with his baby daughter and shock the hell out of his grandmother.

He was looking forward to it.

* * *

NOT ONLY THE supervisor but every worker on the line knew that Janey was late because she’d been summoned by the boss. And since Janey could hardly tell them what that conversation had been about, she could only pretend not to hear the comments that rippled across the factory floor.

Eventually, when she didn’t respond, the remarks settled back into a more normal pattern—still suggestive and annoying, but at least not actively cruel. And she’d been right in thinking that with an end in sight it would be easier to ignore the tasteless talk. Instead of two more years of this nonsense, she only had...weeks, perhaps?

She’d forgotten to ask how long he expected this masquerade to run, but she knew it wouldn’t be two years; the fairy tale Webb Copeland intended to spin for his grandmother couldn’t possibly hold up that long.

And when the farce was played out, she’d be sitting pretty. With cash on hand to pay her expenses, there’d be no need for her to work. She could enjoy the rest of her education, instead of enduring it. She could soak up every drop of knowledge instead of skimming the surface.

She’d have to pay all that money back, of course—and she’d do it, no matter what it took. It was obvious that Webb Copeland hadn’t believed for an instant that she intended to, but Janey regarded this loan exactly the same as if she’d gone to a bank. Apart from the matter of interest.

By the time she started making payments, she thought dreamily, she’d be working at a job she liked, and she wouldn’t be trying to balance school along with it. And she’d positively enjoy making sure he got every last cent back, if only to see the look on his face when he had to admit that she’d meant her promise all along.

Suddenly Janey realized that, though the machines still roared, the human noise on the factory floor had dropped to almost nothing. The effect was positively spooky, for it was nearly midnight—and people usually made more noise, not less, as the shift ended and they were free to go home.