The Antonides Marriage Deal

by Anne McAllister

  He waited for her to smile gamely and call it quits. She never did. She sat still and breathed carefully, shallowly and every now and then ran her tongue along her upper lip.

  What the hell was she trying to prove?

  Well, actually he knew what she was trying to prove. She was trying to prove herself to her father, who didn’t think she ought to be in the business world at all.

  And—Elias flexed his shoulders guiltily here—he knew she was also trying to prove herself to him. He’d made things hard on her over the past few weeks. He’d challenged her, doubted her, pushed her.

  And she had responded with determination. She had done the job.

  She didn’t need to sit here turning white around the mouth, a sheen of perspiration on her forehead.

  Abruptly Elias stood up. “Okay, that’s it. I need a little more time to digest this. Thanks, Paul. We’ll finish up on Monday,” he said to his shocked assistant. Then he turned to Tallie, “Come on, Prez, we’re going home.”

  It took a second for Tallie to even react, which, as far as Elias was concerned, just proved his point.

  Then her brow furrowed and, naturally, she objected. “What? What are you talking about?”

  “Time to close the shop.” He was flicking down the blinds in the windows and opening the door to the reception area as he spoke. “We’re ending the meeting. Heading out. It’s Friday. We close early on Fridays in the summer.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since now,” Elias said in a tone that brooked no argument. He fixed a glare on Dyson and Paul that dared them to dispute it.

  Dyson grinned broadly and rubbed his hands. “That’s right! I nearly forgot. I’m outa here!”

  Paul, still looking a little dazed, was fumbling with his notes. “Uh, yeah, but—”

  “But I’m the president,” Tallie protested.

  “And you can be president from your house just as well.” Elias stood by her chair and held out a hand. “Let’s go.”

  She looked at it but didn’t put hers in it. Figured. Stubborn woman.

  “Tallie.” Elias tapped his foot impatiently.

  Sighing, she finally took his hand and he helped her to her feet. But when she tugged her hand to get free, he didn’t go away. He fitted her crutches under her arms and held the door for her.

  “But I’m not leaving,” Tallie said “I’m having lunch with Martin.”

  “Like hell!”

  “I am,” Tallie insisted, trying to maneuver the corner on her crutches. But the effects of the accident finally seemed to be taking their toll. She was wobblier now than when she’d come in. She teetered and would have fallen if Elias hadn’t caught her.

  Whoa.

  Tallie Tough-As-Nails Savas was incredibly soft. Round. Delectable. Her father’s words echoed in Elias’s head: One hundred percent woman.

  Oh, yes.

  “Steady now,” he said gruffly, shifting her away from him, turning his head so he would stop breathing in the soft citrus scent of her shampoo.

  “I am steady,” she muttered, her knuckles white as she gripped the hand bars on the crutches.

  “Sure you are.” He steered her carefully out the meeting room door and into the main office. Rosie and Dyson and Paul and the temp girls all looked on nervously.

  “What are you looking at? Don’t you have work to do?” Elias demanded.

  They all shook their heads.

  “They were just leaving,” Tallie said impishly. “Weren’t you?”

  “On our way,” Dyson agreed. But not one moved, watching rapt as Tallie and Elias lurched through the office, like a stumbling man in a three-legged race. This was never going to work.

  “Here,” Elias said to Dyson. And in one swift movement he slipped Tallie’s crutches out from under her arms, thrust them at Dyson, then scooped the president of Antonides Marine into his arms and headed for the door.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded furiously.

  Elias kicked the door open. “Taking you home.”

  “Martin—”

  “Can bore somebody else,” he said as Paul held the door for him to go out and down the hall.

  “Elias, stop!” Tallie wriggled in his arms, giving him some very interesting tactile sensations that did nothing to make him want to let her go. Then suddenly she sucked in a sharp breath and stopped.

  “What’s wrong? Does it hurt?” he demanded, staring down into the dark-brown eyes only inches from his.

  She swallowed. Their gazes were still locked. “If I say yes will you put me down?”

  “Not a chance.”

  She made a face. “I feel like an idiot,” she muttered as he carried her toward the elevator.

  “Because you are,” Elias said flatly. “You broke your leg, you stupid woman. You should never have come in at all. You should have gone home!” The elevator door opened and he stepped inside. Paul followed with the crutches.

  “I broke my ankle,” Tallie corrected. “It’s not a big deal. It hurts, yes. It’s swollen, yes. But I’m not going to die from it. Besides, if I’d gone home you’d have thought I was shirking my duty.”

  He glared at her.

  She gave him a saccharine smiled in return. Then she resolutely turned her head away from him again, as if not looking at him would allow her to believe she wasn’t being cradled in his arms.

  Well, she might be able to deny it, but Elias couldn’t. She was too solid, too soft, too real to deny. And when she turned her head he got another noseful of soft curly hair. He held his breath.

  The elevator bumped and the door opened. Paul sprinted ahead. “I’ll flag down a taxi.” He shot out the door just as Martin de Boer was coming in.

  “Tallie!” De Boer, looking windblown and very journalist-about-town with his leather briefcase and his bomber jacket, stared, horrified.

  “Oh, Martin! Hi. I broke my ankle. About lunch today—”

  “She won’t be able to make it,” Elias said, shouldering past Martin and out onto the sidewalk.

  “Wait!” Tallie elbowed him sharply in the ribs and craned her neck to look back. “I need to talk to Martin.”

  “Phone him.”

  But there was no need because de Boer had come after them. “My God, Tallie. What happened?”

  “I had a small accident.” She was wriggling around, trying to see de Boer over his shoulder.

  “She got hit by a truck,” Elias said flatly. “Hold still, damn it,” he snapped at her, for which he got another elbow.

  “Dear God.” De Boer looked appalled.

  “I’m fine,” Tallie said.

  “She could have been killed, of course,” Elias added conversationally.

  “But I wasn’t!”

  De Boer, whose eyes went from one to the other as if he were watching a tennis match, didn’t seem capable of saying anything at all.

  “I was going to call you, Martin,” Tallie said earnestly. “To let you know that I probably shouldn’t go out—”

  “Sanity rears its head at last,” Elias muttered.

  “But,” Tallie went on forcefully, ignoring his comment, “if you want, we could eat at my place.”

  Sanity obviously didn’t last.

  Elias didn’t even give de Boer a chance to respond to that idiotic suggestion. He headed for the curb where Paul had flagged down a taxi.

  De Boer tagged along like a junkyard dog, patting Tallie’s arm awkwardly. “Well, thank you, but, er, I don’t think so.” He gave her his hopeless grin. “All things considered, I think we should reschedule. Is she really all right?” he asked Elias doubtfully. “Did she fall on her head?”

  “I’m fine!” Tallie insisted as Elias lowered her into the back seat.

  “She’s fine,” Elias echoed, deadpan, “as you can see.”

  De Boer looked from Tallie in the cab to Elias, taking the crutches from Paul and climbing in beside her, and backed away. “Well, it, um, looks as if things are under control,” he said to Tallie. �
��I’ll give you a call.”

  “They’re not—”

  But Elias slammed the door shut.

  “Where to?” the driver asked.

  Elias looked at Tallie to give her address. She glared mutinously back at him. He looked at the driver and shrugged.

  The driver rolled his eyes. “Ain’t got all day, folks.”

  Tallie’s jaw tightened, but finally she muttered her address and the taxi shot away.

  Tallie’s apartment was only about half a dozen blocks away. Elias was surprised at that. He’d pegged her as a hotshot, fast-track Upper-West-Sider. So she was walking to work and got hit? Where? he wondered, studying the street corners as they passed.

  Tallie was looking out the window, determinedly ignoring him. Probably wishing he’d let bloody de Boer bring her home, he thought irritably.

  She didn’t say a word until they were on her block. Then she leaned forward and said to the driver, “This one,” and gestured to a four-story brick building right on the East River’s edge. Like many of the buildings in the neighborhood—including the one that housed Antonides Marine International—this one was a converted warehouse, home to a funky used-clothing store, a kitchenwares shop, a music store and a pizza place on the ground floor with three stories of loft apartments and businesses above. Elias paid the taxi and climbed out, then reached back to get the crutches, but Tallie already had them.

  “I can manage,” she said, a mulish look on her face.

  “You’ll fall on your face.” She was as pale as a ghost. “Don’t be ridiculous. Just give me the crutches and—”

  She gave him the crutches—one of them—right where he least expected it. Or wanted it!

  “God almighty!”

  Elias jumped back and nearly doubled over. Good thing she hadn’t put any force behind it. If she had, she’d have settled his mother’s “isn’t it about time you got me some grandchildren” issue once and for all. And not in the way his mother would have preferred.

  Not the way he would prefer, either. “Bloody hell!” He gritted his teeth and waited for the pain to subside.

  “Sorry.” Tallie’s cheeks flushed. “Are you…all right?”

  “No, damn it. I’m not all right,” Elias said through his teeth. “You fight dirty, Prez.”

  She had the grace to look ashamed, but then she lifted her chin and said haughtily, “Well, if you’d get out of my way—”

  When Elias could move again, he did just that. “Fine. Do it yourself. Be my guest.” He stood back watching as she wriggled and squirmed and eventually made her way out of the back seat of the taxi one slow, painful inch at a time.

  The taxi driver, waiting, shot Elias despairing looks and tapped his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel.

  Elias just shrugged.

  “You ain’t no gentleman,” the driver told him.

  “And she’s no lady.”

  The cab driver who had seen her jab with the crutch barked a laugh. “Ain’t that the truth!”

  Tallie glowered at them both. Then she concentrated on extricating herself from the taxi and negotiating the curb. Elias let her do it. Then he slammed the door shut and the cab sped away.

  “Now you’ll just have to flag down another one,” Tallie pointed out.

  Elias ignored her. He crossed the sidewalk to the door of her building, then turned and wordlessly held out his hand for her key.

  The look she gave him promised a fight. But apparently the logistics of dealing with the door and the key and the crutches were—for the moment—more than she wanted to deal with.

  With a long-suffering sigh, Tallie handed over the key.

  Elias opened the door, held it for her, got a muttered ungracious “Thank you” for his trouble. Then he followed her into the building.

  The foyer was utilitarian. Brick and steel, clean and spare, with a door to the stairs and an elevator at the far end. Tallie turned and gave him a level but annoyed look.

  “Okay. I’m here. You’ve seen me to the door. Mission accomplished. Thank you again. I’ll see you on Monday.”

  “Not a chance.” Elias stepped around her and headed for the elevator, leaving her behind. He pushed the button and waited while it whirred to life overhead and begin its descent.

  Tallie glared at him. “You’re a pain in the ass, Antonides.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  She looked longingly toward the door that said Stairs on it.

  Go for it, sweetheart, Elias thought irritably. See how far you get. He turned back to the elevator.

  A full thirty seconds passed before her crutches thumped his way across the tile. She reached him just as the door of the elevator opened. He held it open silently. Tallie hobbled past him and gave him a fulminating glare on her way in.

  Elias stepped in after her. “Would’ve been a hike,” he said conversationally.

  She pressed the button marked three. “I would have loved to do it just to spite you,” she admitted, surprising him. Then she shrugged. “But when I thought about what would happen if I fainted halfway up…” She gave him a wry, weary grin. A ghost of a smile, really.

  “You wouldn’t faint,” he said, and somehow believed it was true. She was tough, was Tallie Savas. He might fight her, but he respected her. Looking at her now, he saw that she was white around the mouth again and there was really very little colour left in her cheeks at all.

  “Are you okay?” he asked warily, discovering that he much preferred the spitfire Ms Savas to the one who looked as if she were in danger of keeling over.

  “Yes, of course,” she said with some asperity. “I didn’t take the stairs because I know my limits.”

  He grinned his relief. “That’s my girl.”

  “I am not your girl!”

  Which was exactly what he knew she’d say, which was exactly why he’d said it. His grin broadened.

  The elevator shuddered to a halt and the door slid open. They stepped out into a small vestibule painted a bright poppy red. There were three doors besides the elevator. Tallie nodded at the purple door opposite it.

  “That’s mine,” she said and, bowing to the inevitable, waited while he unlocked it and pushed it open. She went in, then turned back to offer him a real, if wan, smile this time. “Now I really am home, and I didn’t faint, and while it wasn’t necessary for you to accompany me, I suppose I should appreciate it.”

  “I suppose you should,” he said. “And I’m sure you won’t appreciate this, Prez, but I’m not leaving.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  WHAT was she supposed to do? Throw herself in front of him and stop him?

  Tallie had done enough throwing of herself for one day, thank you very much, even if the throwing hadn’t been her idea.

  She hurt, damn it.

  Her ankle was throbbing, her head ached, the scrapes on her hands and arm were stiff and smarting. It felt like rigor mortis setting in.

  But she had sucked it up and gone to the office—had never considered not going in to work today. As long as she was alive and breathing—and unhospitalized—she had been determined to go to work, to prove to Mr. All-Work-and-No-Play Antonides that her level of commitment to the job equaled his.

  But a woman’s strength and stamina and grit only went so far. And then she was done. Shot. Kaput.

  Tallie was kaput. It was true what she’d said in the elevator. She might have fainted had she tried the stairs—and God knew she’d wanted to take the stairs and prove herself independent and whole!

  But she was feeling less independent and whole by the minute. And right now if she didn’t sit down soon she was going to fall down and she knew it.

  After having been carried—carried!—through the streets of New York (well, thank God, actually only Brooklyn) and in front of Martin (who had been shot at by terrorists and made it sound like a walk in the park) Tallie didn’t think she could stand further humiliation today. Not and survive.

  So she just looked at Elias’s straight back
as he walked past her into her living room and did the only thing she could—she stuck out her tongue.

  Then she turned ever so carefully on her crutches because, even though she’d used crutches plenty of times before and knew it was a skill that would come back quickly, she wasn’t swift on them at the moment. She was decidedly shaky. Her arms, unaccustomed to bearing her weight, were fatigued. The scrapes she’d sustained were stinging. And her ankle, which the doc had said to rest, elevate and use ice on, was now throbbing beyond belief.

  He had given her painkillers. But she had adamantly refused any at the hospital. She’d been determined to have all her wits about her in the meeting. Now her wits seemed expendable. Where was that bottle of pills?

  “Where’s my briefcase?” She looked around, but didn’t see it.

  Elias was looking around her apartment, probably making more judgments about her competence based on the fact that she furnished from thrift shops and the Goodwill. At least he didn’t seem offended that Harvey was walking around him, sniffing, checking him out.

  “Where is it?” she demanded again, feeling a little panicky now. “Elias?”

  “Oh, give it a rest. You’re not going to work now.” He had stopped staring around the apartment and was looking straight at her. His hands were jammed into the pockets of his khakis, which had the effect of making him look very masculine and gunfighterish.

  The last thing Tallie needed was a gunfighter. Unless he could shoot her and put her out of her misery.

  She took a breath. “I know I’m not going to work,” she said with all the patience she could muster. “I just need my briefcase. My pain pills are in it.”

  “Then why the hell didn’t you say so? It’s at the office. I’ll call Rosie. She can bring it over.” Elias dug his mobile phone out of his pocket and punched in a number, then waited, tapping his foot, looking at Tallie for signs that she might explode before his eyes.

  She tried to look more patient than she felt.

  There was apparently no answer because Elias continued to wait. He tapped. Waited some more. Muttered to himself about bloody answering machines, then punched in the number again and waited some more, until finally in disgust he flicked the phone off and stuffed it back in his pocket.