Книга - Regarding The Tycoon’s Toddler…

Regarding The Tycoon's Toddler...
Mary Anne Wilson


Guess who was left holding the baby!Lindsey Atherton was furious with CEO Zane Holden's attitude toward the company day-care center. But when she stormed over to tell him so, she found the usually cool, controlled exec with panic on his face and a child in his arms. The man she'd called a heartless playboy had inherited…a toddler! One look at bachelor and baby, and Lindsey's defenses crumbled.A woman like Lindsey was dangerous to Zane's carefully calculated plans. But he desperately needed her help. Could he work with the tempting beauty long enough to learn to be a father–and leave before she taught him about love and forever?Just for Kids: a corporate day-care center where love abounds…and families are made!









The next thing Lindsey knew, Zane was saying her name softly through the darkness, a gentle, low, seductive sound


Slowly she opened her eyes, and he was there, in the soft shadows of the room. He was bending over her and the child, close enough for her to inhale the scent of soap and freshness that clung to him.

“How is he?” Zane whispered.

“Sound asleep.”

“It’s a miracle,” he said, and smiled at her. That was seductive, too, almost as seductive as his soft “Thanks to you.”

She had to get out of there. She was off balance, and wasn’t at all sure how to regain her balance with Zane. She was shaking just thinking about how much she wanted him to kiss her. A man who had the power to destroy every dream she had for the day-care center.


Dear Reader,

Welcome to Harlequin American Romance. With your search for satisfying reading in mind, every month Harlequin American Romance aims to offer you a stimulating blend of heartwarming, emotional and deeply romantic stories.

Unexpected arrivals lead to the sweetest of surprises as Harlequin American Romance celebrates the love only a baby can bring, in our brand-new promotion, AMERICAN BABY, which begins this month with Jacqueline Diamond’s delightful Surprise, Doc! You’re a Daddy! After months of searching for her missing husband, Meg Avery finally finds him—only, Dr. Hugh Menton doesn’t remember her or their child!

With Valor and Devotion, the latest book in Charlotte Maclay’s exciting MEN OF STATION SIX series, is a must-read about a valorous firefighter who rescues an orphaned boy. Will the steadfast bachelor consider becoming a devoted family man after meeting the little boy’s pretty social worker? JUST FOR KIDS, Mary Anne Wilson’s new miniseries, debuts with Regarding the Tycoon’s Toddler.… This trilogy focuses on a corporate day-care center and the lives and loves of those who work there. And don’t miss The Biological Bond by Jamie Denton, the dramatic story of a mother who is reunited with the child she’d been forced to give away, when her daughter’s adoptive single father seeks her help.

Enjoy this month’s offerings, and be sure to return each and every month to Harlequin American Romance!

Wishing you happy reading,

Melissa Jeglinski

Associate Senior Editor

Harlequin American Romance


Regarding the Tycoon’s Toddler…

Mary Anne Wilson






www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


To Walker Scott Levin For all the joy and wonder you bring into my life XOXOXO




ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Mary Anne Wilson is a Canadian transplanted to Southern California where she lives with her husband, three children and an assortment of animals. She knew she wanted to write romances when she found herself “rewriting” the great stories in literature, such as A Tale of Two Cities, to give them “happy endings.” Over a ten-year career, she’s published thirty romances, had her books on the bestseller lists, been nominated for Reviewer’s Choice Awards and received a Career Achievement Award in Romantic Suspense. She’s looking forward to her next thirty books.




Books by Mary Anne Wilson


HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE

495—HART’S OBSESSION

523—COULD IT BE YOU?

543—HER BODYGUARD

570—THE BRIDE WORE BLUE JEANS

589—HART’S DREAM

609—THE CHRISTMAS HUSBAND

637—NINE MONTHS LATER…

652—MISMATCHED MOMMY?

670—JUST ONE TOUCH

700—MR. WRONG!

714—VALENTINE FOR AN ANGEL

760—RICH, SINGLE & SEXY

778—COWBOY IN A TUX

826—THAT NIGHT WE MADE BABY

891—REGARDING THE TYCOON’S TODDLER…* (#litres_trial_promo)


LynTech Corporation

Corporate Towers

Founder: Robert Lewis

20th Floor—Executive Suite

Zane S. Holden, Chairman & Co-CEO

Matthew R. Terrell, President & Co-CEO

Rita S. Donovan, Executive Assistant

Jackson D. Ford, Executive Senior Vice President

19th Floor—Legal Department

18th Floor—Accounting and Financial

7th through 17th Floors—General Services,

See specific floor directory

6th Floor—Just For Kids Day Care Center

Lindsey Atherton, Child Care Director

Amy Blake, Child Care Coordinator

3rd through 5th Floors—Marketing and Public Relations

2nd Floor—Security and Maintenance

Lobby Level—

Information, Conference Rooms and Employment Opportunities




Contents


Chapter One (#u38b8694a-9b0e-5711-bc16-d65c0e1fab7d)

Chapter Two (#ub9f26e96-988d-5d5b-91af-754d0478b85e)

Chapter Three (#ued20a341-ffc5-59d2-986a-b091be036c64)

Chapter Four (#u559ffafe-b18c-56a8-a9da-4d918b6a3a68)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)




Chapter One


Monday

“What am I supposed to do with a child?”

Zane Holden stared hard at the city of Houston, twenty stories below his office at LynTech Corporation in downtown Houston. The question held the very real annoyance and impatience he felt over this interruption to his schedule.

He turned to Edward Stiller, an attorney from Florida, and watched the slender, gray-suited man shrug. “Sir, your wife is dead—at least, I mean, your ex-wife.”

Zane was still trying to grasp the idea that Suzanne was gone. That she and her new husband had died in a multiple-car crash in southern Florida. The man sat in one of two leather chairs that faced the huge executive desk cluttered with paperwork. “You already said that,” he said. “And I am very sorry that Suzanne and Weaver were killed two days ago. But we haven’t been married for more than two years. I haven’t even talked to her in all that time. Now you’re here. Explain it to me so I can get a grip on this.”

“I told you, I’m only here because I’m executing her wishes.”

Zane moved back to his chair and sank down into the high-backed chair. “That’s what I don’t get at all.” He ran a hand over his face, as impatient with the man as he was with the odd mixture of feelings he was experiencing. Suzanne was dead. It didn’t seem real somehow. No more unreal, though, than this man babbling on about the child she had had with Dan Weaver. A child she had been carrying even before their divorce was final.

Stiller set a slim briefcase on the desk, pressing perfectly manicured fingers on the expensive leather. “I thought of calling, but felt you needed to be told this in person. There is so much to decide.”

Zane tried to focus on what the man was saying, instead of on Suzanne. He didn’t know if he’d ever loved her. Love was something he never gave much thought to. But he did know that now she was irrevocably gone, and that created a deep ache inside him. Then regret.

All she’d wanted was a family. And that was what he hadn’t wanted. So, she found someone who did. Dan Weaver. A man Zane had seen only once, in their attorney’s offices when they signed the divorce papers. He couldn’t even hate the man then. Weaver hadn’t broken up their marriage. By then Zane had realized there had never been a real marriage to break up.

“Before we decide anything, Mr. Stiller, explain to me how I ended up as the executor of the estate. You’re telling me that Suzanne never changed her will? She never thought it was important enough, even with the child involved, to change it?”

The man snapped open the briefcase. “Mr. Holden, I don’t know what was in her mind, or what her intent was, but she didn’t change it.” He took out a thick sheaf of papers and glanced at them. “I checked it very carefully.” He closed his briefcase and dropped the papers on top of it. “You can have it checked yourself—but I can tell you, it’s valid.”

Zane ran a hand roughly over his face and tried to push away that feeling of regret. It didn’t have a place in his life. He wouldn’t regret their marriage, or their divorce. He wouldn’t waste time on regret. And he wouldn’t waste time putting off what had to be done.

“This child of hers—?”

“A boy, Walker Scott Weaver. Almost two years old. Lovely child, from what I’ve heard. He luckily was with a sitter when…” He coughed slightly. “Well, he’s safe, still with the sitter, until he can be resituated.”

Zane never thought about children. They didn’t have a part in his life. But today was very different. First, there was another request for more money to fund programs at the day care center run by the company. He glanced at the yellow paper on his desk. The last request for funding from the director of the day care center, L. Atherton. The third request. And the third rejection.

He looked back at Stiller. The day care decision was cut-and-dried. But this child that Stiller was talking about—Suzanne’s son…he knew this wasn’t going to be as simple.

He looked at Stiller. “This is ludicrous,” he muttered, and reached for the phone. He punched in a two-digit extension, and, when Stiller was about to say something, he held up his hand. His secretary answered the phone.

“Marlene, get a hold of Mr. Terrel and ask him to come to my office as soon as he can. It’s urgent.”

As he put the phone back on the cradle, he looked at Stiller and asked, “What about grandparents?”

“There are none.”

“Aunts or uncles?”

“We don’t really know, but we don’t believe so.”

Suzanne had been an only child, like him, and her parents had been gone for years, but Zane would have thought Weaver had family somewhere. “No distant cousin?”

“It’s a matter of form to look for any living relatives in a case like this, and my office staff is on it. But right now, it’s up to you to make arrangements for the child. The wording of Suzanne’s will is not exact, but the intent is clear.”

“Wording?”

He motioned to the stack of papers. “I’ll paraphrase, but there is a clause that the executor, you, will have full control over all matters of her life. The child is certainly a ‘matter,’ and as such, you are in charge of him, or at least his fate.” He spread his hand on the will. “What do you want to do?”

There was a sharp knock on the door, the barrier opened immediately and Matthew Terrel was there. The man was built like a linebacker, all muscles and lean strength, and looked nothing like the corporate lawyer and co-C.E.O. of LynTech. He was dressed all in black, his blond hair the only lightness about him at that moment. His face was grim.

Matt was the closest thing to a good friend that Zane had had for the past seven years, and Zane trusted him completely. He’d know what to do about this. “Matt—” Zane motioned to Mr. Stiller. “Edward Stiller, he just got here from Florida.”

Matt crossed the room, his dark eyes narrowed, his hand held out to the attorney. “Mr. Stiller,” he said in his deep voice. “Matthew Terrel.” He shook hands with the man, then looked at Zane. “What’s the emergency?”

“Listen to what Mr. Stiller has to say, then we’ll get to work.”

Matt moved closer, sank down in the other leather chair and sat forward, leaning toward Mr. Stiller. “Okay, bring me up to speed.”

While Stiller and Matt talked, Zane stood and went back to the windows. He listened to the two men as he frowned at his image bouncing back at him in the floor-to-ceiling windows. He saw a tall, lean man who’d stripped off his gray suit coat, unbuttoned his dark vest and rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt—his maroon tie having been discarded two minutes after he’d arrived at work this morning. He looked tense, with eyes that were shadowed and unreadable. A cold man, Suzanne had called him. He hadn’t argued the point. To think she wanted him anywhere near a child was ludicrous. It’s the last thing she would have wanted.

If you don’t want children, then we don’t have a future. Her words that last day rang in his memory.

Then his words, the bare truth. No games. No empty promises or lies. “I’ve never wanted children. I don’t want them now.”

Suzanne had backed away from him—the memory was a blur now, but her words remained. “You’re self-centered and obsessed. And I made a terrible mistake marrying you.” Then, as she was leaving, she’d added, “God help the child if you ever slip up and one appears in your life. You’re as cold as stone.”

Now her child had appeared in his life. It was wrong, very wrong—as wrong as his thinking he could be married.

Suzanne had never guessed at the anger that had been there in flashes when they broke up, the bitterness over the fact that he’d done something so badly that she’d had to leave. He hated failure. He hated admitting defeat. But he’d learned a long time ago to cut his losses. So he had. She’d found Weaver, and Zane had gone back to work—

“Zane?”

Matt’s voice got him to refocus on the present, and he spoke without turning, choosing instead to look at the reflection of Matt in the glass. Matt was getting to his feet, but not moving from the other side of the desk. Stiller was sitting forward with his briefcase open on the desk again. Matt had the will in his hand.

“It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?” he asked Matt.

Matt shrugged. “Ridiculous or not, the wording’s solid in the will. As it stands, you’re all the kid has until they can find a relative.”

“Suzanne wouldn’t have wanted me within twenty feet of any child she had. You know that.”

“She obviously didn’t think she’d be gone at thirty, or that this situation would become a reality. She probably meant to change her will. She just didn’t get the chance. There has to be someone out there, a relative of some sort that will take the child and raise him. But for now…” Matt exhaled. “What do you want from me?”

Zane turned to the two men, but looked right at Matt. “What do you figure my options are?”

“You could fight it—argue that you’re divorced, you no longer have any part in Suzanne’s life in any way, shape or form, and you refuse to get involved, despite the will.”

“And if I do that?”

“The boy will go into foster care with the county or state, until they find a home for him…if they find a home for him.”

His last glimpse of Suzanne had been in the attorney’s office, she’d been obviously pregnant and holding onto Dan Weaver’s hand. There hadn’t even been anger by that time. She’d wanted everything he hadn’t wanted, but even if there hadn’t been real love there, if there was such a thing, he knew that he’d cared about her. Despite what Suzanne had thought, he had cared.

“Option B?” he asked.

“Pay to have the boy taken care of until a relative can be found.”

He frowned at Matt. “Okay. That’s doable, very doable.”

Matt glanced at Mr. Stiller. “How about that? A nanny or a service or a baby-sitter, to take care of the boy? That would work, wouldn’t it?”

Mr. Stiller closed his briefcase. “It’s up to Mr. Holden. I’ll have the child brought out here, and take care of making final payment to the baby-sitter out there. Then Mr. Holden can—”

“Brought out here?” Zane cut in. “As in bringing him to the west coast?”

“Exactly,” the man said, looking right at Zane. “He can’t stay in Florida.”

“Why not? We can do what Matt said—get a nanny to care for him—”

“Well, if you or Mr. Terrel or your representative wants to go to Miami and take care of things, we can—”

“We can’t. You do it. I’ll pay for it.”

“That’s very generous of you, sir,” the man said with a shake of his head. “But I’m an attorney with a small staff that is already stretched to the limit, and I don’t have the time to do that sort of thing. Perhaps you can find someone else to do it out there?”

Zane looked at Matt, and the big man shrugged. “That’s too damn complicated. It’ll take up a lot of precious time just getting there. Then there’s setting it all up and monitoring the situation—”

“Whatever you decide on, you have one week to do it,” Mr. Stiller said abruptly. “The sitter can keep the boy until next Monday. He’ll have to be situated by then.”

“Option C,” Matt said to Zane.

“Which is?”

“Bring him out here. Set him up with a nanny at your penthouse at the hotel or wherever. That’s a hell of a lot less complicated than trying to do this long distance.”

Zane realized right then that he had no desire to see the child, much less live with him, even temporarily. But he knew that Matt was right. It was logical. And how hard could it be?

“Okay, we’ll do that.” He looked at Mr. Stiller. “Make all the arrangements for the trip, then contact us with the details. I’ll pay for everything. We’ll keep a discussion of what Suzanne left for the child for later. Just continue the search for a relative.”

“Of course,” the man said, snapping his briefcase shut, then gripping it by the handle as he glanced at Matt. “Who will be handling the legal aspects of this situation?”

Matt glanced at Zane. “What about the legal department?”

“I want to keep this close to home,” replied Zane. “I’ll owe you if you make sure things are set up properly.”

Matt nodded, then looked at Mr. Stiller. “My office is two doors down on the right. I’ll meet you in there in a couple of minutes.”

Matt showed the man out, then closed the door after him. Zane sank back down in his chair. Matt was studying him narrowly as he came back to the desk. But he didn’t sit down this time. He looked down at Zane.

“Just what you needed, huh?”

“I knew this acquisition would be trouble, but it’s a hell of a lot more than I ever dreamed it would be.” He looked down at the clutter on his desk, the yellow memo catching his eye. “It seems Mr. Lewis had a soft heart and an open wallet and never heard of the concept of saying no to anyone. No wonder no one around here understands that the wallet left with him and that there isn’t any more money being passed out.”

“Are you okay, Zane?”

He motioned at the work he needed to do. “I would be, if I could get some uninterrupted time to get this done.”

“I wasn’t talking about this business,” Matt said. “I was talking about Suzanne’s death.”

There was no obvious reproach in his tone, but Zane felt it nonetheless. “It was a shock, but it’s the past—at least, it was until Stiller showed up.” He sat back in his chair. “I appreciate your taking care of the paperwork for me.”

“What about the arrangements for the kid?” Before Zane could say anything, Matt held up both hands, palms out. “No, I do not do that. Corporate things? I’m your man. Finding a nanny? No way.”

“Then, who?”

Matt snapped his fingers. “I know. Rita. She’s got kids. She knows about those things. She’ll do it.”

Matt’s personal secretary was working overtime as it was, with all the work involved in the LynTech restructuring. “Will she have time for it?”

“She’s such an efficient secretary that she’s ahead of me half the time. No problem.” He smiled, a lopsided expression. “Who would have thought being your business partner, president and co-C.E.O. would get me involved in a nanny search?”

“Certainly not me,” Zane muttered, and looked down at the papers on his desk and spotted that annoying yellow page again. He reached for it. “One last favor before you go and talk to Stiller? Could you give this to Marlene on the way out and ask her to make sure this gets sent to Atherton at the day care center?”

Matt took it and frowned as he glanced at the paper. “For Pete’s sake. What is this, your third denial for funding?”

“Number three. This Atherton person who keeps sending them up—won’t take no for an answer. Obviously a proponent of the old ‘squeaky wheel gets the grease’ theory. But there isn’t any grease. And there won’t be. Maybe he’ll take the third strike and realize he’s out of luck.”

“Let’s hope so,” Matt said as he turned and headed for the door.

“Let me know what Rita finds,” Zane called after him.

“Sure, no problem,” Matt said over his shoulder, and then he was gone.

Zane sat back in the chair and refocused on the work in front of him—work that had been put there just before Mr. Stiller had shown up.

Since he’d taken over LynTech from the founder of the corporation, he’d all but lived at the office. LynTech, the core company in a conglomerate that did everything in computer technology from production to service to communications, was going to become lean and mean. Then Zane could break up the network and sell off the pieces for more than the total value of the whole. It was something he’d been doing for years with companies in trouble. He knew that LynTech was a gold mine, but it was going to take a hell of a lot of digging to get to the gold.

He started sorting through the financial reports, scanning the figures. Then he took out his gold pen and began to cross out figures, recalculating. In a few moments everything about children was forgotten.

Monday night

WHEN THE DREAM came to her, Lindsey Atherton had the clear thought that for as long as she could remember, the only constant in her life had been that dream. It had first started when she was too young to be able to tell anyone, and had stayed with her. At twenty-seven, she still had it. She’d never understood it, and she’d never figured out how to stop it.

When she was little, it had always started with her in complete darkness, nothing around her as she floated alone. No sounds, no contact with anything or anyone, and no sensations except total and complete safety.

She’d felt safe at first, snuggled into the blackness, embraced by the shadows. A tiny place that was all hers. A welcome place—until the sounds started. The faint jiggling of a doorknob, the click of a lock, then the creak of hinges. It was then that everything changed. Lights exploded around her and robbed her of the safety she craved.

When she was little, she was certain it was the boogeyman who had found her in her safe place—that he’d come to get her. But as she got older, the dream changed. There was no boogeyman. And the darkness didn’t mean safety anymore. It meant she was cut off, isolated. And the noises outside were those of a person. Someone about to rescue her.

She never knew who it was. She just knew that whoever was there had found her, and she was going to be okay. But that never happened. There was hope when the sounds came, when the creaking of hinges echoed through her. Then the light.

But there was no one there.

When the dream came that night, it was the same, except that when the light came, she had a flashing vision of someone—a shadow backed by the brilliance. She reached out, but there was nothing. She was wakened suddenly, cut off again, isolated. And it hurt. It was a dream, but she woke breathing hard, thinking that if she had just been able to keep the dream going, she would have seen who was there.

But she couldn’t. She woke suddenly, violently, and she bolted upright in bed, the sounds of her gasping breaths echoing in the high-ceilinged bedroom area of her loft. Moonlight filtered in through the high, transit windows, and she could make out the dark outlines of the furniture. There was the opening in the partial walls that led out to the living area. She was alone.

She scrambled out of bed, padded barefoot across the floor to the bathroom, and fumbled for the light switch by the door. The illumination from an old-fashioned tulip fixture over a pedestal sink and mirror made her blink at first. It exposed the claw-footed tub, the old-fashioned shower stall and the tank-topped toilet. And it exposed her.

She saw herself in the mirror, and gripped the sides of the sink. Her cap of blond hair was mussed around a decidedly pale face. The only color she had was from her eyes, a deep amber hue with smudges under them. Quickly, she turned on cold water, splashed her face with it, and was unnerved that her hands were shaking.

This was stupid. She had that dream so often, it was in some ways like an old friend to her. But she never got used to the end. And now that was changing. She was certain she’d caught a glimpse of someone. She shook her head, then grabbed a white towel and pressed it to her face.

She wasn’t six years old anymore, locking herself in a closet because that was the only place she felt safe. And she wasn’t a teenager anymore, dreaming of a knight in shining armor rescuing her and whisking her away with him. She was an adult who was making her own life, doing her own rescuing by working hard, getting an education and trying to make a difference in the world.

She’d fought so long to find the stability she now had. She had a good life. She loved her job, and being alone was okay. It was fine. It was what she wanted. She tossed the towel to one side and went back into the bedroom area of the loft, but instead of going back to bed, she crossed to an old-fashioned desk by the far windows. She snapped on the lamp on the scarred wooden surface, sank down in the padded office chair and raked both hands through her short hair.

She wasn’t going to sleep again tonight, so she’d get something done. The first thing she saw was the request forms for funding. She reached for the yellow sheets of paper, found a pen, then started to fill in the fourth form she’d completed in the past month. The other three forms asking for more money for programs in the day care center at LynTech had all brought rejections from the new powers-that-be—the last one just hours old. But she wasn’t giving up.

She methodically filled out all the spaces again, almost knowing by heart what to put in each place. Mr. Lewis had loved the program. He’d brought her to LynTech to build it and fine-tune it, and he’d been behind her a hundred percent. But he was retired now, and the company had been bartered off to the highest bidder.

The head man, a person called Zane Holden, didn’t love anything but money. He didn’t care about anything but the bottom line, and the word was that a lot of jobs and programs were going to be eliminated. She hesitated, then, on a line that said, Reasons for Request, she printed, The well-being of the children of the employees of LynTech Corporation.

Well-being? She could have put safety, happiness, security and helping them not have horrible dreams. So many reasons. She sat back. “To keep the boogeyman away,” she whispered. But a man like Zane Holden wouldn’t know about boogeymen, or children who lived with the fear of being alone. No, he wouldn’t understand that. Not many people did.

And improved work performance for the parents, she added, knowing she was trying to appeal to the only thing Holden seemed to care about. Then she scrawled, L. Atherton, Project Director on the bottom and dated it.

Number four. Maybe that would be the charm. She put the papers in her folder, set them by her purse, then went back across the space, avoiding the bed and heading for the bathroom again. A hot shower, a book to read. She could get through the night. Then, first thing in the morning, she was going to submit the request again. But this time she was going to do it in person. No more company mail and waiting days to find out.

She stripped off her sleep shirt, turned on the shower and stepped under the hot water. As she turned, the light from the bathroom seemed to stream into the shower stall, cutting through the shadows, like in the dream. She shook her head, then lifted her face to the spray and closed her eyes.

She needed to concentrate on life, and what she had to do. As the water streamed around her, she went over and over what she was going to say to Zane Holden when she finally met with him. The rumor was that he didn’t have a heart, but she didn’t buy into that. He just didn’t understand.

If she said the right thing, if she put things in the right way, she knew that he’d understand the importance of what she was doing. She’d talk until he saw her point of view. And after all, it was for the children. Even a heartless man had to care about the children.




Chapter Two


Wednesday

Lindsey found out it was easier said than done to get a face-to-face appointment with Zane Holden. She persevered through frustrating phone calls to his office, and being told he was “unavailable.” But she refused to take no for an answer. Stubbornness. That had always been one of her saving qualities. A quality that had helped her survive everything she’d gone through. What she had, she’d fought for—and the funding for the center was something she’d fight for.

Finally, she got some satisfaction when Zane Holden’s secretary capitulated slightly with “I’ll see if there’s any way to work you in.”

Lindsey tasted a degree of victory when the woman came back on the line. “Mr. Holden can see you for a brief meeting tomorrow morning at nine o’clock.”

A brief meeting? She’d take anything she could get. “Thank you. I’ll be there,” she said, hung up the phone in her office at the center and let out a cheer. “Yes!” she yelled and raised both hands, curling them into fists over her head.

“Shhhh, keep it down.”

She turned and found Amy Blake, her coordinator, at the open door of the small office. The tiny woman, dressed in jeans and a pink sweater, her long dark hair pulled back from a fine-featured face in a single braid, had her arms full of stuffed animals.

“Oh, sorry. I thought you were gone,” Lindsey said.

“Taylor’s still in the nap room, and I’m letting her sleep while I pick up a bit. What’s going on?” She came farther into the room as a smile grew on her face. “Come on, tell me. That sounded like a victory yell. We’ve got funding? We can get a new van? Start the Mommy and Me program?”

“No, we don’t have any of that—at least, not yet. But I have a meeting with Mr. Zane Holden, head of LynTech, tomorrow at nine in the morning.”

“That’s great,” Amy said, but the smile wasn’t as big now. Lindsey knew that Amy had more to lose than she did if the center had to make drastic cuts. She barely made enough now to support herself and her daughter. But being employed here was the only way Amy could be with her tiny daughter and still work.

“At least I can talk to the man face-to-face instead of through notes. It took me forever to convince his secretary, ‘the human iceberg,’ that I needed to see him in person.” Her sense of victory was starting to fade under nervous anticipation of the meeting. “I’ve got prep to do before the meeting.”

“You know everything inside and out.”

“I’d better,” she sighed as she smoothed the brown slacks she was wearing with a beige silk shirt. She looked around her cluttered office. Boxes and bare board shelves didn’t make it look very professional, but it was usable. Organization was not her strong suit, but she had to be completely in control for her meeting. “I need to go over the figures to make them look better. Maybe take away a few little things to make him think I’m compromising. But I’ll get the most important things, believe me. I’ll try to get you more money, too.”

“If you can do that, it would be terrific.”

Lindsey couldn’t spot her clipboard with her list of what they needed, then remembered she’d had it out in the play area. “I’ll give it my best shot,” she said as she moved past Amy and into the hallway to head for the main part of the center. She stepped into the space with clouds painted on the pale blue ceilings, walls alive with murals depicting various fairy tales, and dividers that looked like rows of giant crayons.

It was quiet now, but for ten hours a day the center was alive with children who desperately needed the care, children whose working parents knew that their children were close by and well taken care of, and children who weren’t coming home to empty houses and hiding in closets just to feel safe.

She spotted her clipboard on one of the tiny mushroom tables near the napping area on the far side of the room. “What to cut,” she whispered as she crossed to pick it up. Then she sank down on one of the mushroom-shaped stools by the flower petal tables in the story area. It was an awkward place to sit with her leggy five-foot seven-inch frame. But the only adult chair in the playroom was a rocking chair filled with children’s toys.

Amy was there, talking quickly in a low voice. “Do you think he’ll go for it? He’s rejected three attempts.”

She stared at the lists she’d made. It would be hard to cross off anything, but she could start with a few of the extras. The new storybooks. The new sleeping pads. They could make do for now. But they did need the stove for the kitchen area, and they needed a better van for transporting school-age kids to the center so they could wait here for their parents to get off work.

“I’m going to get everything I can,” she said, “even if the meeting is going to be ‘very brief.”’

“If anyone can talk Mr. Holden into giving us the funding, it’s you. Look what you did with Mr. Lewis. He didn’t even know about day care centers until you met him and convinced him to start this place.”

“He was anxious to make things better for his employees, not just worried about how much profit he could make. I just wish he were still here, instead of running all over Europe chasing that daughter of his.” She grimaced up at Amy. “Last I heard, he was in France with her celebrating her third engagement in three years and no marriages. Now, that has to be some sort of record.”

Amy shook her head. “I heard she’d gone through tons of colleges, too, and got kicked out of most of them. She’s running her parents a merry chase.”

“And I think she’s part of the reason he retired and sold out to the Holden group.” Lindsey exhaled. “Tell me, what’s the point in getting a corporation like this, then cutting it up into little pieces and selling the pieces off to the highest bidder?”

“Money, Lindsey. It’s the money. It’s called doing business for a profit.”

Lindsey wrapped her arms around herself in a hug, rubbing the flats of her hands on her upper arms. “I don’t care what it is, as long as it doesn’t ruin this program.” She looked at the other woman, as dark and tiny as she was leggy and blond, her face tight with concern. “I won’t let anyone destroy this program.”

“They’ve already started the layoffs. You might not have a choice.”

Lindsey hadn’t had a choice about not having parents, or being in foster homes, or being alone and scared, but she’d had a choice in making a life for herself when she was old enough to be on her own. And she had a choice now.

“No, I’ve got a choice. I can fight or I can give up. I’m not giving up. I’m not going to let Zane Holden ignore us any longer. For better or worse, he’ll have to deal with me in person.”

“Isn’t that like trying to reason with the Big Bad Wolf? All he knows is killing and eating.” Amy smiled. “I don’t mean he’s a killer, but you know what I mean. He’s ruthless.”

“Do you think he has kids?”

“Do people like that breed?”

Lindsey laughed at that, and it felt good to find humor in something at that moment. “Forced sterilization is against the law,” she said. “But, God help his kids. If they don’t perform up to expectations, he probably has them downsized.”

A tiny voice came from the other room: “Mommy?” Amy turned and called out, “Taylor, Mommy’s out here, in the playroom.” She looked back at Lindsey. “I need to get her, then head on home. How about you?”

“I have to face the Big Bad Wolf, and I’m not going to end up as his dinner. So, I have to have a good battle plan in place. I think I’ll be here for a while.”

“Don’t stay too late. You’ve looked tired all day.” She frowned at her. “Are you sleeping okay?”

Lindsey shrugged away the dream that disrupted her nights. “I don’t sleep well at the best of times, but I know what we need around here. I’ll get everything I can for the kids.”

“I know you will. If anyone’ll fight for the kids, you will. It’s a shame you don’t have any.”

Lindsey shrugged that off, too. “Some have kids, some help kids, some do both. I think I’m meant to help.” She pushed aside the idea of her own kids. She didn’t even have the prerequisite—someone she loved enough to want to be with forever. A child deserved parents that wanted to be parents, not parents forced to be parents. “Tomorrow morning at nine, Zane Holden had better be ready for me.”

“Well, word is his co-C.E.O. runs interference for him. You’d better watch out for him. His name’s Terrel. I don’t know his first name, but he sounds as if he’s built like a linebacker. You know the kind—no neck, huge?”

Lindsey stood, caught a glimpse of herself in an acorn-shaped mirror. She really should wear a suit tomorrow, something very businesslike. Something Zane Holden would take seriously. There was no way he’d take her seriously looking like this, in casual clothes, with fine blond hair that insisted on curling at the worst moments, no makeup and freckles. Freckles definitely didn’t engender confidence or fear.

“Okay, if I have to, I’ll go through Terrel, but Mr. Holden is going to listen to me.”

“Mommy?”

Lindsey looked around at a tiny little girl in a rumpled pink pinafore, standing in the arched doorway to the napping room. Taylor looked just like her mother—a two-year-old version with wispy dark hair, dark eyes heavy from her nap, and clutching an oversize white teddy bear that had seen better days.

She ran over to Amy, who scooped her up and hugged her. “I’m sorry, honey. I was talking. We’re going home now.”

“And I’m going to get to work,” Lindsey said, brushing the child’s silky hair with her hand. “See you both tomorrow.”

Amy looked over the child in her arms at Lindsey. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Just cross your fingers,” Lindsey said. “And hope that the Big Bad Wolf is all bark and no bite.”

“We’ll go out the back after I get my things in the kitchen,” Amy said. “Good luck.”

Lindsey watched Amy head into the back area, and, moments later, heard the back exit click open, then shut. In the silence, she took the clipboard back to her office, and, as she passed a mural of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf on the way, she stopped.

She and Amy had painted it, and the Big Bad Wolf was looking a bit worn and not so threatening, with chips in the color at his legs, and scuff marks where tricycle handles had brushed against him over and over again. The poor old thing looked pretty vulnerable to her.

She tapped the wolf on its painted snout just above his toothy snarl. “You won’t know what hit you when I get through with you,” she said. And hoped she was right.

Thursday

ZANE SAT ALONE in his office, the drapes still pulled to shut out the glare of the morning sun. In the dusky light with the blue flicker of the computer screen to his right, he stared into the shadows…thinking. He did his best thinking alone in the morning, before the full blast of the day hit him. He swiveled slowly back and forth, and admitted he did most things in his life alone. He always had.

Suzanne had known that and complained about it. Now her child was cluttering up things, making him trip over logical thinking and rational reasoning. If there were two things he valued in his line of work, they were ration and logic. Lead with the head, he’d always thought, and shove emotions out of the way.

He turned away from the stack of papers and computer, stood and crossed to open the drapes. But before he could pull back the fabric, there was a flash of light behind him.

“Hey, Zane,” Matt said. “I thought you’d be at things early.”

He turned without opening the curtains toward the big man who, once again, was dressed all in black, from a turtleneck sweater to slacks and boots. “I’ve been here since six. I was just going to call you to work out a time as soon as possible for us to meet with Sol Alberts’s people.” He undid the buttons at the cuffs of his gray dress shirt and slowly rolled the sleeves up as he talked. “I have a good feeling about Alberts’s group. A real good feeling.”

“Okay, let’s do it. Tomorrow. I’ll make time.”

“Great. Now, what’s up with you?”

He came over to the desk. “I was just going to update you on the nanny situation.”

Matt didn’t look pleased as he dropped down in one of the two chairs by the desk. “I thought you said it was under control,” Zane said.

“That turned out to be a bit of an overstatement. Rita’s on it, doing interviews, but it appears that none of the nannies that have been sent out so far from the agency is right for this situation.”

He sat forward, elbows on the desk. “How can a nanny that’s trained to be a nanny not be right?” Zane didn’t have the patience for this right now. “What about that woman who showed up yesterday afternoon—the one I saw talking to Rita in the hallway by your office with that silly hat and sensible shoes? She looked like a real Mary Poppins type.”

“More like Attila the Hun, according to Rita.” Matt leaned forward. “Listen, I don’t know one end of a kid from another, but Rita’s got three children. She knows what she’s doing. That’s why I asked her to take care of this for you. And she says that none of the applicants so far is acceptable.”

“You trust her judgment?”

“Implicitly.”

Zane exhaled as he sank back in his chair. Strong fingers raked though his slightly long, brown hair, and his gray-blue eyes narrowed. “Then, let her do her job. We have until Monday. How hard can it be to find a glorified babysitter? I had a dozen nannies when I was a kid—and a nanny’s a nanny. My mother never had any trouble finding one.”

“According to Rita, the first one was a ditz, another one thought that painting a child’s face blue and dancing in circles would free his spirit. Another older lady wasn’t up to the stress of a two-year-old. One was acting like a drill sergeant.”

“Then came Attila the Hun?”

“She was about number five, I think.”

Zane clasped his hands behind his neck, lacing his fingers together and staring hard at the shadowy face of his friend. “How are you with kids?”

Matt smiled immediately. “I told you, I don’t know one end from the other. I never go near the little people. I like the way they look from a distance, but I don’t like the way they act. Besides, I’m an attorney turned co-C.E.O.—at least, I was last time I looked.”

“No chance of making an addendum to your job description?”

“None. Rita’s got some interviews today, so she’ll probably hit upon someone who she thinks is right for the job. I just wanted to tell you this isn’t easy and it’s eating up a lot of time.”

“Yeah, I know. And we don’t have extra time right now. Not with the Alberts group showing interest.”

“That’s my point.”

“Well, when Rita meets the kid’s flight on Monday morning, there has to be a nanny at the penthouse—a wonderful, intelligent, caring nanny who bears no resemblance to Attila the Hun.”

Matt grinned at him. “This is crazy.”

“Tell me about it.”

The phone rang, and Zane reached for it. “Holden.”

“Ron Simmons here. Have you got a minute?”

“Sure, hold on,” he said, then hit the speaker button. “Okay, I’m here. Matthew Terrel’s in the office, too.”

“Good. I need input on the figures you sent over. Is there any chance you can come by for half an hour, no more?”

Zane looked at Matt, who shook his head. Zane sighed, then pointed to himself. Matt nodded. “Sure, your office?”

“Yes, over on Grammercy. I’ll see if I can get someone from Alberts over, too.”

“Great, see you as soon as I can get there.”

He hung up, then sat back. “The first nibble on our offer.”

Matt stood. “Let me know what happens,” he said, then headed for the door. But before he could leave, he turned. “Zane, it’s sunny out. Open the curtains.”

“I’m leaving, anyway. Meet me back here after lunch, and we’ll talk?”

“Sure, your office or mine?”

“If the nanny candidates are meeting with Rita at your place, come on up here. We’ll have more privacy.”

“Okay, see you then,” Matt said, and left.

Zane rolled his sleeves down, buttoned the cuffs, then reached for his jacket and briefcase. He headed out of the office. As he passed the reception area, he stopped long enough to lay his briefcase on the desk and to talk to his secretary. “Cancel appointments for the next two hours and reschedule anything important.” He slipped on his jacket as he spoke. “Route any calls that you need to, to Mr. Terrel. Just hold down the fort,” he said as he checked his inside pocket for his gold pen and cell phone.

He smoothed his vest, then picked up his briefcase, but before he could head back into the office to take his private elevator down, she stopped him. “Mr. Holden, all the elevators are down, even yours. One of the maintenance men just came in to say they’d be shut down for an hour.”

“Oh, great.” He headed for the outside door and the stairwell beyond the useless elevators. At least it was all down for the twenty flights.

Thursday

THE MOST IMPORTANT DAY of her life, and it had been messed up for her before it even got going. First, the dream came again, taking away her sleep. Then when Lindsey had finally gotten back to sleep, she’d almost slept through the alarm. She’d been so preoccupied with the paperwork to present during her meeting with Zane Holden, she’d forgotten the only suit she owned was stained from finger paint and still at the dry cleaners. She’d missed her bus to work and had had to call a taxi—and the final blow had been the elevators.

The future of Just For Kids was in her hands, and she was in the stairwell of the building trying to get from the sixth floor to the twentieth floor in five minutes. She hurried up, the envelope with her printout in one hand, her purse in the other. She prayed Mr. Holden would cut her some slack if she was a few minutes late.

It was probably his doing that the elevators were down. “A servicing problem,” the maintenance man had told her when she’d stepped out of the day care center to head up to the corporate offices.

“Service problem, my eye,” she muttered. It was Zane Holden’s cuts—him and his “lean and mean” program to make the company more viable.

She’d agonized over her lists far into the night. She hoped she’d done them right. That they wouldn’t be so much that they’d put him off, but that they would be strong enough for her to get what the center needed. An echoing click of her heels rang with each step on the metal stair treads as she passed the landing for the fifteenth floor. Five more floors. A bit more time to go over in her mind what she was going to say to Zane Holden, if she had any breath left when she got there.

Thank goodness she was used to the stairs. Every day since she’d hired on as director of the day care program, she’d taken the stairs for the exercise. But not because of broken elevators—at least, not until today.

“Damn it,” she muttered, annoyed at this edge of frustration that was becoming an almost permanent thing since the company had changed hands. The man and his people had come into the company and upset everything, including all her plans for the kids.

She went over again what to say. “Hello, Mr. Holden. I want your money.” That brought a slight smile to her face, a welcome reprieve from the ever-present tension. “Just give me a blank check. Trust me, I’ll make good use of it.” That sounded good. A blank check. She smiled again as she turned right, stepped onto the next landing. Then, as she turned to start up the next flight of stairs, she realized she wasn’t alone in the stairwell. At the same time, she ran directly into someone coming down.

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.

She forced herself to move closer and hold out her hand to him. “I’m Lindsey,” she said simply, not about to make this any more formal than necessary. She didn’t need more barriers between them. “Just a few minutes, that’s all we’ll need. Not a lot of time. A brief meeting.”

He put the jacket over his shoulder, looping his finger in the collar, then took her hand in his. She’d known there was strength in his hands. She’d felt it when they’d kept her from falling in the stairwell. But she wasn’t prepared for a jolt of awareness when his hand closed over hers. Or the heat that radiated from him. Or the sudden dryness in her mouth at the contact.

“A few minutes,” he murmured.

She barely kept a sigh of relief from escaping as she eased her hand back. She needed to think clearly to make these few minutes count. And if she had contact with him, she just couldn’t think with any clarity. On some level she wouldn’t explore, the man was damn sexy. That was dangerous. Diverting. She didn’t need that. “Okay, let’s get right to the point,” she said, gripping her purse strap that was looped over her shoulder.

“We’ll have to talk on the way out,” he said.

“Sure, that’s fine,” she said, taking what she could get, but hoping for some miracle that would make the man stop long enough to listen to her and understand what she needed. “If that’s it, I’ll take it.”

For a flashing moment she was certain he was going to smile. And it was the same as it had been the first time she thought she’d caught that expression. She literally held her breath, bracing herself for it. But the expression never came to pass, the shadow flitting away.

“Well, I can walk and talk at the same time if you can,” he said.

“Sure, of course.” Nerves, that’s what it was. It was making her neck ache, and she eased her grip on the purse strap. Her hand was almost numb from clenching the leather. Nerves. And she only had a few minutes to do what she had to do. “Should I just start, then you can ask any questions you have?”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” he murmured. He turned, flipped open his briefcase, dropped the pen into an inside pocket, closed the case and gripped it in his free hand. “Go ahead,” he said as he turned and strode past her toward the door.

She hurried after him, out into the corridor, walking quickly to keep up with his long stride. It really would take a miracle to make this man stop, even for a few minutes. Somehow she knew that this man was seldom still, that there was always an impatience to get on with things.

“As I see it—” she started quickly, double stepping to get closer to him “—it’s all about doing right by a child, giving the security that child needs, and giving that child attention in good surroundings. Making that child feel safe.”

She wasn’t sure he was even listening to her, until he spoke over his shoulder. “Okay, quality time and care. Sounds good to me.”

She was a bit taken back that he seemed to be agreeing. She saw a glimmer of hope. “Children are so precious, and they need to know that. I guess you could use that term ‘quality time,’ but I’m getting a bit sick of it. It’s used as an excuse to ignore the child for the rest of the time. But children need attention and reassurance and—”

She cut off her own words, when he unexpectedly stopped by the door to Zane Holden’s office complex, the empty offices she’d left moments ago. “Let’s go through here,” he said as he pushed the door open and went inside.

For a moment she thought Zane Holden might be around, that she could talk directly to him. But the offices were as empty as they had been earlier. She followed this man, who was like a human whirlwind, drawing everything in his path along with him. Including her. She crossed the conspicuously upscale den-like area and followed him through a door on the far side.

They were in a positively expansive room with walls of glass, a desk that looked as if it floated over a huge chunk of marble and metal, and pictures everywhere. But these were pictures of buildings, of partially completely blueprints. There were two solid walls, and she didn’t have a clue how they could “go through” here and get anywhere. But Terrel didn’t stop. He tossed his jacket on a very messy desk, reached for some papers, put them in his briefcase. He slipped on the jacket and tugged at his cuffs as he looked at her.

“Is it time for questions?” he asked.

“Excuse me?”

He took the pen out of the briefcase, tucked it into an inner pocket of his jacket, then closed the case. “You stopped talking, so I assumed it was question time.”

Was he serious? The man was totally unreadable when he looked at her, so she said the truth. “I was just looking at this place. I mean, it’s big enough to house a small nation and then some. It’s huge.”

He glanced at the room. “I guess it is. But it’s just an office.”

“Nice office,” she murmured.

“Can I ask you something?”

She was wasting precious time. “I’m not finished. I didn’t mean to give you the impression that that was all there was.”

“It’s not about child care. I wanted to know where you heard the things you repeated in the stairwell.”

Obviously the man wasn’t about to forget, so she had to watch every word. Being vague was her best bet. “Why?”

“Well, from where I sit, you’re not a long-term employee around here. You don’t own stock in the company, do you?”

“Of course not.”

“Then, where did you get all that from?”

She could say How stupid do you think people around here are? but she caught herself. Vague. She had to be vague and unoffensive. “I just listened to some people around here talking. It seemed to be the main topic of conversation. I told you, I didn’t mean to offend. I have this terrible habit of just saying what I think, and I’m working on changing that.”

He shrugged, tugging at his cuffs again. “Maybe you should,” he said.

She felt fire in her face. But thankfully he never saw it. He turned to get his briefcase, picked it up and said, “Go on. We don’t have much time.”




Chapter Four


“Okay.” But she couldn’t think of what she’d been saying. She took a stab at it. “I…I really think I need to make the point that being there for a child is only part of the equation in good child care. This isn’t glorified baby-sitting, no matter what you might think.”

“It’s not?” he asked, one dark eyebrow lifting slightly. “Sounds like it is to me.”

“Well, I guess it could be called baby-sitting on one level, but it’s much more than that. There are so many layers to child care, so many nuances that people don’t see. But the kids know.”

“You sound as if you’ve had a lot of experience with children. Any of your own?”

“No, but I’ve been involved—” He was on the move again, and she went with him, trying to regroup as he crossed to the door and snapped off the lights. Only the low light of a moon rising in the sky over Houston lit the room. “I love children and I want what’s best for them,” she said, stopping by him in the dimness. “That’s why I wanted—”

“What are your qualifications for all of this?” He cut her off as he walked away from the outer door, heading across to the side of the room and a set of closed, double doors.

She hurried after him. “I have a degree in Early Childhood Development. I’m working on my masters.”

As she talked, she watched him push a single brass button on the wall by the doors. The doors opened, and light spilled into the darkened room from a single elevator car. He stepped inside, stirring the air around Lindsey, then turned with the light at his back. For a moment he was a dark shadow with brightness behind him, and her dream was there. An open escape to something, or someone. And the light. She bit her lip hard to bring herself back to reality. This wasn’t a dream. It was reality—sharp, hard reality. All she had to do was step into the car with him, turn, face the doors, go down twenty floors and keep talking. She could do that.

He was talking, saying something about being impressed that she was going for her master’s degree. He shrugged, his image becoming clearer as her eyes adjusted to the light.

“I barely got a law degree.”

She stood very still, trying to get air in her lungs, but having no luck at all.

He motioned her into the car. “Come on. It’s working. Don’t worry about it. They were supposed to have the whole system in top shape by today. I’ve used the stairs too much lately. We can talk about your education on the way down and figure out how overqualified you are for what you do.”

She went forward into the small space. She liked small spaces—always had. They meant safety. But she wasn’t sure it would be that way with this man.

Lindsey hugged her purse to her middle and turned to face the doors as they slid shut. They were mirrored doors that bounced back a slightly distorted version of Lindsey Atherton next to Matthew Terrel. But they gave an illusion of more space.

“How long have you been interested in child care?” he asked, and it startled her slightly to hear his deep voice confined by the small space.

She’d been interested in how kids were treated ever since she’d found out it wasn’t normal for a six-year-old to have to hide in a closet to feel safe when they were left in a house alone. But he didn’t want to hear that any more than she wanted to share it with a stranger, so she gave him facts.

“Four years…professionally.”

“Where do you stand on discipline?” he asked as the elevator started smoothly downward.

She could feel him watching her in the reflective doors, but didn’t look at him. “Discipline?” she asked, easing her hold on her upper arms and staring at the place where the two doors met. “I…I think a child needs limits.” She exhaled. “They need rules and they need to be responsible for their own actions.”

“Agreed,” he murmured.

She looked up at the floor indicator, the floors slipping by so quickly that this would be over almost before it had begun. She girded herself and turned to look at him and not at a secondhand image in the mirrored doors.

“Listen, we need to talk about the money,” she said, getting right to the point before she ran out of time. “Unless there’s enough money, this is nothing more than glorified baby-sitting, and you can get that for a couple of dollars an hour from some thirteen-year-old who wants to buy makeup at the mall after school. This is much more than that.”

“So, if you throw money at it, you end up with babysitters who are getting their master’s degrees?” he asked.

Anger was there, mixed with frustration, and she felt fire in her face. But she didn’t have the luxury of indulging her emotions. She couldn’t afford to snap back at him, so she made herself take a breath and keep control. “No, if you invest in it, you get quality child care. And you can get people who love what they do.”

He glanced at his watch as she spoke, then his gaze met hers again. “I don’t expect love—just value for money paid.”

If Lindsey had a wish coming to her, she would wish for this man to have a heart, and for her to have more time to find that heart. But wishing never worked. She learned that early on in life. So, short of throwing herself physically at him and hog-tying him in the elevator, the meeting was over. She knew it. She’d lost.

“Then you’re settling for less than you should,” she said, knowing that she had nothing to lose now.

“I don’t settle for anything,” he said tightly.

At the same time the world jerked violently. Lindsey felt the floor lurch under her, and she was flying forward. In that split second she felt as if she were reliving that moment on the stairs when she collided with the man. But this time it was nothing she did. Her purse flew out of her hands, and she was thrown towards the stranger. She was clutching his jacket with both hands, and their bodies connected.

It took Zane a full second to realize that it was the elevator stopping violently, and in that second Lindsey came right at him. He felt a stinging in his upper right arm, then they collided and she was against him, pushing him back against the wall.

From no contact to total contact, he felt her pressing against every inch of his body. Her hair was tickling his chin, a provocative scent that clung to her filled his senses, and he could almost feel her heart hammering against his. Her hands were tugging on his jacket, and he did what he had done the first time. He held her up, put his arms around her to steady her. But this time the shock was giving way rapidly to an intense awareness of her.

A stranger, but very definitely a woman and different from any nanny he’d ever seen in his life. He didn’t dare move, afraid that the response that was deep inside him would build. Then she shifted, her face tipped up to his, and the amber eyes were veiled by improbably long lashes. Freckles stood out against skin pale from shock.

“Oh, God,” she gasped. “What happened?”

He thought for a moment she was shocked at what he was feeling—the basic emotion of a man with a woman in his arms—but he rejected that. “An unexpected stop,” he managed to say, then took a breath. “And we aren’t moving.”

Her eyes darted to the floor indicator, and at the same time she let go of him. She moved back, and felt coolness there instead of the heat. A disturbing sense of loss came with it. “Stuck?” she breathed.

“As in, stuck between floors,” he said, waiting for panic or fear or both to show up in her expression.

He didn’t expect her to turn and start to smooth his suit coat where she’d crunched the material, a contact he’d barely felt.

“I am so sorry for doing that,” she said. “This suit must have cost you a—” She bit her lip and drew her hands back. “It’s okay, I think,” she murmured. “We’re stuck?”

He turned and pressed each floor button one after the other, but nothing happened. “Stuck,” he said, and turned back to her. She was watching him, her expression unreadable. “And don’t even say it. The elevators were not shut down to save money.”

Her cheeks flamed at his jab. “I didn’t say that.”

“You were thinking it, weren’t you?”

“Okay, it crossed my mind. I admit it, but I didn’t say it.” She crouched in front of him to retrieve her purse, which had landed on top of his dropped briefcase. “What now?”

He turned to the panel and reached for the emergency phone. “We’ll get help,” he said, lifting the receiver to his ear.

Zane pushed the button under the phone, and in two rings someone was on the line.

“Yes?”

“The executive elevator stopped, hard, and it’s stuck between floors.”

“Oh, man, I’m sorry.” The guy sounded like some teenager. “That’s a bummer.”

“Just get it going.”

“Yeah, sure, as soon as we can.”

Zane hung up, then turned to Lindsey, who was standing facing him now with her purse in hand. “They’re starting to work on it, and it won’t be long.” He couldn’t stand her just standing there looking at him as if everything was just fine. It was annoying the hell out of him to be stuck like this. “This doesn’t bother you at all?”

She blinked at the question, then shrugged. “Well, of course it does. I don’t want to plunge down seven or eight floors, that’s for sure.”

“I don’t think we’re going to plunge anywhere,” he said.

“Then, we wait. And if we’re waiting, we can talk some more. No wasted time.”

It sounded like something he would have said, if this had happened during rushed business negotiations. And when he thought about it, he had to admit that this was exactly that. He could have this nanny thing sewn up before they got to the parking garage.

“You’ve missed your calling.”

“Oh, what’s that?”

“You should have hired on to help with the cuts around here.”

“I think they’re doing just fine in the cutting department without me,” she said a bit tightly.

“You do say what you mean, don’t you.”

Her lashes lowered slightly, shadowing her expression just a bit. “A bad habit.”

“I was giving you a compliment, believe it or not.”

“I’m sure you meant it as a compliment.”

He wasn’t gaining any ground here at all, and worse than that, he had the feeling he wasn’t even controlling this interview. He backed against the closed doors and crossed his arms. “Okay, forget the compliments. We can talk business. We aren’t going anywhere just yet, as you pointed out.”

“Not unless we crawl out the escape hatch.”

He looked up at the panel in the ceiling. “I think we’ll save that for a last option.” He glanced back at her, sensing a heat in the car. Probably the air-conditioning not working right. “So, you’ve got a degree, and you’re working toward your master’s?”

“Slowly but surely. But you know, where kids are concerned, degrees are just so much confetti.”

“If academic qualifications don’t matter, what does?”

“Being there, just being there and caring.”

“And you care.” It wasn’t a question but a statement of fact. Her caring was very evident even in the short time he’d been around her. He wasn’t used to passion where it concerned work. Anger, intensity, drive. But not real passion. “Do you put that on your resume?”

She looked around, then unexpectedly moved back and sat on the floor, her back against the far wall, her legs crossed Indian-style. She laid her purse by her and looked up at him. “No, I don’t put that on my resume. It’s a given in this business. Why would anyone work with kids if they didn’t care about them?”

“I don’t know,” he said, watching that passion he’d glimpsed building in her again. And it was fascinating.

“Well, I do know, and I wouldn’t have anyone working for me that didn’t care. Amy Blake doesn’t have any degrees, but she’s all heart when it comes to kids. Her own child is so lucky, even without a father. She’s totally rearranged her life to be with her little girl.” She spoke in a rush. “She loves her own child, and she loves the other kids that she helps care for.”

“She works for you?” That didn’t make sense. Unless the agency had gotten so fed up with their failure to find a nanny for him that the boss had come for the final interview.

“She’s the coordinator and the heart behind the center.”

“The center?”

He heard her take a breath, then she pressed her hands palm down on her knees. “Okay, Mr. Terrel, since we’re stuck here and you’ve asked me to talk, I’m going out on a limb with you. I know that you and Mr. Holden are partners or associates or whatever you want to call it, and you must trust each other completely. You have equal input. You’re both in charge, from what I hear, and even though he’s the one who’s been doing the work on this, I think you can help me. Either by agreeing to what I need, or by talking to him about it and getting his agreement.”

She thought he was Matthew? “I don’t know what you think, but—”

“Oh, I’m sorry if I misunderstood the arrangement. I thought you were co-C.E.O.’s or something like that. I thought you could probably take care of this. Or if you can’t, maybe you could convince Mr. Holden that Just For Kids needs the funding badly. We need more programs, more people to help, so the child-worker ratio comes down. It’s imperative that we have more supplies for the younger children.”

He couldn’t have cut in if he’d wanted to: she was talking quickly, and her hands were moving to emphasize her points. So he just watched, listened and took in the fact that he’d found L. Atherton in a stalled elevator.

“And a van,” she went on. “A better van, for the after-school pickups. That would be great—nothing fancy, but one that keeps running and won’t break down. And the oven in the kitchen, well, it just either burns or doesn’t cook.”

She assumed that he was Matthew, and he’d assumed that she was there as a nanny candidate. They’d both been wrong, dead wrong. “Just For Kids?”

“Mr. Lewis understood that it was the backbone of the company, that an employee who knew his or her child was safe and cared for and within arm’s reach was an employee who could give more to the company than a worried parent.” She spread her hands palms up. “He knew that having the center right here was a win-win situation. And sending back my requests for funding marked “Denied” just isn’t right.”





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