Riches to Rags Bride

by Myrna Mackenzie

  Genevieve swallowed hard. Even the sound of yelling down the hall paled in comparison to her fears about what would happen if Lucas fired her. And it wasn’t just about the money, either.

  She sat up in bed and dashed away one stray tear. “Don’t cry, you idiot. Do. Learn. Prove to him that you’re not afraid of anything.” Even though she was desperately afraid. But she wasn’t going to let Lucas know that.

  “Odious, virile man,” she whispered. “Other women have cried buckets over you, but I won’t ever be one of them. I don’t care what you think of me as long as I survive you and learn from you.”

  One thing she was sure of. When this was over, she would be more than glad to see the back of Lucas McDowell.

  Lucas grunted as he flexed his arms, moving into his seventy-second push-up and trying to clear his thoughts. He was staying in the penthouse apartment of one of Chicago’s most luxurious hotels and there was, of course, a gym available to him, but he had his own private regimen he followed. One hundred push-ups for starters. Every night. No exceptions. After the emotional chaos of his childhood, discipline had been his salvation. Nothing was going to change that.

  But clearing his mind to concentrate on his task was proving difficult. After he’d left Genevieve at her apartment with her six locks, he’d searched the internet and easily located the crime statistics for that neighborhood. Theft was a given, domestic disputes the norm. He growled at that. He knew better than anyone that domestic dispute sounded much too mild for all the horrors that tag encompassed. But that had nothing to do with Genevieve.

  “Not your problem or your business,” he reminded himself. Control the situation. He repeated his mantra. Don’t let yourself get involved. Don’t let the situation have power over you. Because control was everything. It was the only thing that had kept him out of jail. It made life and success possible.

  But in spite of his best efforts to stop thinking about Genevieve, when he tried to return to his task, he could still see the look in her eyes when she had told him that she had all those locks and asked him if he didn’t trust her. Somehow he was sure she wouldn’t appreciate him interfering in her life or suggesting that she might want to take her first paycheck and move.

  It certainly wasn’t the kind of thing he ever did or wanted to do. Keep a distance. Never get too involved was his motto.

  And yet, Genevieve Patchett’s naïveté, her dangerous situation, had kept him from completing a task he’d done every night for years. He was still stuck on push-up number seventy-two.

  “Idiot. Get control of yourself. Stay out of this. Don’t do something you’ll regret.” With a groan, he forced himself to complete the push-up and all the rest of them. Having withstood the onslaught of doubts and come out ahead, he went to bed. A soft bed. A safe bed. In an exclusive hotel in an exclusive neighborhood.

  “And everything is perfectly fine,” he mumbled. But in the middle of the night he woke from a dream in a cold sweat, his fears about why Genevieve was bothering him confirmed. Voices from a past he tried never to remember had pushed their way into his dreams. He’d heard his mother crying in the night. He’d felt his own failure, his inability to be what she wanted, and his own panic as she’d walked out the door, never to return. And after his father’s death when he’d been left totally alone, there had been other mother figures, women who had tried to help him and recoiled in distress at his wounded animal anger. Some had been nice; most had merely wanted to use him to gild their reputations; one society princess had called him her “street child” until she had a baby of her own, a better, sweeter child, the kind she’d always wanted. In the end, he had spurned all of them. And then…

  Lucas took a deep breath, knowing that there was no use trying to hold back the next part. Because the next was the worst, the most damning incident. Then, there had been Angie, an innocent girl who had been savagely beaten by her father just because she had been involved with a reckless troublemaker like Lucas. He’d known what her father was. He’d selfishly and arrogantly ignored it, urged her to defy her father and stay with him. And she had paid the price.

  Anguish rushed over him at the memory of a young woman who had suffered at the fists of a full grown man, a woman who had never fully recovered, he had discovered only a few months ago.

  Lucas cursed in the night. There was the connection. Angie. Because he’d known the danger that had existed for Angie and he’d ignored it, downplayed it. Just as he knew the danger for Genevieve.

  Don’t think about it. Don’t get involved. Don’t lose control. This is a different woman, a different situation, he told himself.

  And the next day, he knew he was right. Genevieve and her situation were nothing like Angie. The Patchett princess got into his car wearing a pair of designer shoes, biscuit-colored slacks that would never survive the day and a gold silk blouse.

  He studied her, and without thinking, he raised an eyebrow.

  Genevieve stared back at him with just a tiny bit of defiance in her eyes. He was half-convinced that if he said anything about her clothes, she would sass him. But a second later, her cheeks turned pink, she looked away and he realized that he had been mistaken about the sass and the defiance. She was still just a little rich girl flailing around.

  The fact that he couldn’t keep his eyes off the V of her blouse or the way that sweet pink flush made her seem vulnerable and fragile and…enticing was irrelevant. Wasn’t it?

  Maybe. But once she was in the car, he was thankful that he had to keep his eyes off of her and on the road. It was a good reminder. Always keep your eyes on the goal, the job, on whatever got you to where you wanted to go. Goals were good. They kept a man from doing something he would regret later. And he would definitely regret doing anything…instinctive where Genevieve was concerned.

  He glowered.

  She was very silent. Maybe his glowering was scaring her.

  Maybe he shouldn’t have hired someone he could scare so easily. And yet…

  “Did you survive yesterday all right?”

  He knew the minute she turned to him. “Yes. Of course. You even told me that I survived before I went home.”

  “I know, but…” Damn, but he was bad at this sensitivity thing. “You were working hard. Muscles get sore. The next morning is sometimes tougher than the day before.”

  Her sudden chuckle was soft, whisperlike. “I may have been raised a privileged debutante and okay, maybe I am a little sore, but I’ll get past it. Actually, it was rather nice…the feeling that I had actually used my own two hands to make a difference. So I’m fine, Lucas.”

  Okay, she was fine. And he was looking like an idiot. This was not the way he usually treated his employees. What was it about Genevieve Patchett that threw all of his thoughts out of whack?

  He needed to get his thoughts back in line, restore discipline.

  He would. He’d made his last mistake. Genevieve, he reminded himself, was no Angie. He didn’t really have to worry about her. She was a pampered princess, and if she’d ever met him back in the day when he was a skinny, angry, dirty kid, she probably would have put her nose in the air and run the other way. Besides for the moment at least, she was his employee. He should be treating her as such. The job he had hired her for was too important, too meaningful for all this foolishness.

  He turned his thoughts back to business, ignored the scent of her perfume. Why on earth was she wearing perfume when the smell of cleaning solution would overpower that delicate floral nonsense after a scant few minutes on the job?

  “Before we get started this morning, I’d like to go over some paperwork with you, including your job description,” he said, pulling up in front of Angie’s House.

  “All right. I’ll look forward to it.”

  Those simple words, though soft, were delivered in a professional tone. And they did the trick. He and Genevieve were back to business. All that other stuff, her fragility, his annoying urge to protect, the way her perfume went straight to his senses and made
him envision placing his lips on that enticing little pulse point in her throat…darn it, those were irrelevant. Thank goodness she knew how to speak “business style.” As long as she kept that up, he could stop thinking of her as a woman. A good thing, because he needed to be her boss. And nothing else.

  Genevieve noticed the minute Lucas’s demeanor changed. She had spent her whole life in the background, observing other people, so she was good at noting the little things that signaled a change in direction. Her parents had been volatile people, smiling at customers and sponsors one minute, screaming at their daughter for failing to do or be what they wanted the next. She had tried so hard to please them, but to no avail, and so she had learned to read the signs that a “berate Gen” attack was coming on. Even now her chest felt tight at the memory of those days.

  It wasn’t like that with Lucas. Nothing volatile, no yelling, even though she sensed that under the right circumstances, he could be very dangerous. He was, as Teresa had told her, strong and silent. Still, she noticed the subtle change when he moved from frustrated concern about her having overdone things the day before into total businessman mode.

  And, she told herself, it was a relief to have all that intense concern and attention turned away from her. Wasn’t it?

  Yes, she thought, because Lucas was too overwhelming as it was. Having him paying attention to her, and worse, she admitted, liking the attention, would lead her down the “you’re going to regret this later” road. So, she forced herself to concentrate on the task at hand.

  “You’ve had a chance to spend a day in the house and get the lay of the land. Now let’s discuss what we can do with the rooms and how we can best utilize the space that we have.”

  This was new territory for Gen. Her parents had a massive home, but they traveled so much that, beyond the bedrooms and studios, most of the rooms were seldom used. They were filled with art, were cleaned by the staff, but there didn’t seem to be any purpose to them.

  “You’ll be a better judge of what women need than I do. What do you think?” Lucas asked as they stared at a large sunny room.

  Think, Gen, think. So far you’ve done nothing to justify Lucas’s hiring you other than having a recognizable name. “I think…this would be a good place for the women to gather, to talk, to share secrets,” she said, struggling for a good response, remembering her own “travel here and there” lifestyle that had precluded building the kind of friendships other girls had. “I’d—I think I’d paint it a soft color, maybe add some comfortable couches and possibly put in lots of big floor pillows. And we could…yes, we could add a table where they could work on crafts or sit and share tea or coffee,” she said, picking up steam and forgetting that she didn’t really know what she was talking about. She had never had any real contact with poor women who had truly suffered. But she knew what she would like. Maybe those women would like some of the same things.

  “That wall would be perfect for a bank of bookshelves. And we could also add a hideaway television or hang one on the wall, so they could watch movies together. If it were my house, that is,” she said, finally remembering that she was on virgin ground here as she hesitantly turned to Lucas. He had a slightly amused expression on that too handsome face.

  Uh-oh, she had gone overboard, hadn’t she? Her parents, despite being artists, had been practical people and they had always told her that she was far too much of a dreamer. That’s why they had wanted her to marry Barry, a man of numbers, one who would overshadow the nonsensical daydreamer part of her and keep her out of trouble.

  Hmm, that was a plan that had failed miserably, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t been right about the daydreaming. Spending her time making up castles in the air hadn’t prepared her for the real world and her current lifestyle at all.

  “Those things you mentioned, is that what you did with your girlfriends?” Lucas asked.

  “It’s what I think the women who’ll live here might want to do,” she said, trying not to sound too defensive. She was most definitely not going to tell Lucas how few friends she’d had. She already looked pathetic enough as it was.

  “Then it sounds like a very good idea,” he said. “Excellent, in fact.”

  At the words of praise a glow began deep inside Genevieve. No one had ever applauded her ideas before.

  Well, don’t make too much of it. Teresa said that Lucas was a good boss. He probably praises everyone’s ideas.

  “Where to next?” she asked.

  “Well, after that, I don’t think there’s any need to do a play-by-play of each room. You seem to have the right idea. Instead, let’s move on to the big-picture plan. Come on. I had Jorge set up a control room last night.”

  “A control room?”

  “Yes. Once we get you set up and comfortable, I’ll return to my hotel where I have a bank of offices to oversee McDowell Sporting Goods and the other projects I’m involved in. I’ll drop in to check on the progress of Angie’s House and for public events, but you’ll be spearheading things, so you’ll need an office. It’s just at the top of the stairs.”

  Genevieve followed him into a room that had been totally empty yesterday. Now it was filled with the latest technology, furniture, a bookcase filled with reference materials on the city, a cabinet full of supplies and a state-of-the-art sound system. There were pictures on the wall, curtains at the windows, a fresh paint smell and new carpeting.

  Blinking, she shook her head. “All this for a job that will end in a few weeks?”

  He shrugged. “All my jobs end in a few weeks.”

  Which she supposed she already knew. Lucas was renowned for coming to a town, getting a buzz going, setting up a new store and then moving on. Surely he must have one place he called home, but if so, Teresa had said, he didn’t share that info. It was a good thing to remember. The man was both temporary and a mystery. And she’d had enough of secretive activities and men who left you empty-handed.

  “Thank you for being so thorough,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll find everything I need here.” If only she knew exactly what she needed to do.

  “Here’s what you’ll be doing,” Lucas said, as if he’d read her mind. He came up beside her. And for some reason she didn’t want to examine, her heart began to pound. He was much taller than her with broad shoulders and he exuded virility the way desert sand exuded heat waves. Standing this close, she felt small, feminine, as if her whole body was waiting for something to happen.

  Then he reached around her and picked up a stack of papers. His arm brushed hers.

  Genevieve’s breath stalled in her throat. She hoped he hadn’t noticed how aware of him she was. It would be a good idea for her to step away. But would a strong, sensible, seasoned project manager do that just because a good-looking man was standing beside her? Of course not. With a great effort, she modulated her breathing. In. Out. Show no emotion. Try to look professional, Gen.

  Thankfully, Lucas stepped aside quickly. He held the papers out to her. “Here’s the agenda, all that has to be accomplished during the next few weeks. I want you to avail yourself of whatever resources you need and if you need additional personnel let me know. You will, of course, have an expense account. Also, for the next few days, until you get acclimated, I’ll drop in from time to time and you can also update me on the way to and from work. Thereafter, I’ll provide you with a driver and we’ll meet at scheduled times for updates just as I do with my other employees and my other business. I’ll be available for any public events you set up. So…are there any questions or concerns? Things you want to talk about?”

  Gen looked down at the list. It was long. She was to oversee Thomas and Jorge in the renovation and decoration of the house itself, and introduce herself and the project to the neighbors, possibly by hosting a neighborhood gathering. She was expected to locate sponsors for the women and donors for future projects, contact charities for prospective candidates to live at Angie’s House, establish links between local community colleges for classes and train
ing sessions for the women, contact possible employers for those women who needed work, arrange for the open house, interview candidates and hire a director. In several places, he had noted that she could rely on him and on her own social contacts to smooth the way and drum up interest.

  Did she have concerns? She had them in spades, although pulsating fears that turned her legs to jelly might be a better way to phrase it. This was beyond anything she had ever done for her parents and so much of it seemed to rely on using her family name. Genevieve wanted to close her eyes, to try and explain to Lucas just how little influence she had. Her parents had been the movers and shakers, while she had been an insignificant shadow in the background. And after Barry had spread all those ugly, damning and humiliating lies about her, no one was ever in this lifetime going to care what she had to say. About anything. But if she told Lucas that…

  “I have to be honest, Lucas. I don’t think my name is going to have much influence. My parents were the ‘capital P’ Patchetts. That’s not me.”

  He studied her, looking down at her shoes. “Genevieve, look at yourself. Look at that little patrician nose of yours, that perfect posture and those long, slender artist’s fingers. Listen to the way you enunciate your words. You may be living in less elegant surroundings right now, but you’re still a Patchett.” With that, he reached out and touched the silk of her blouse. His finger didn’t even make contact with her skin, but she felt as if it did. An awareness of him thrummed through her, sending warmth down her body in a rush. “You’re still a princess.”

  With some effort, she raised her chin. “I’m sorry if I misled you, but I was never a princess.”

  “I see. So…you don’t think you can do this?”

  Genevieve swallowed hard. “I just don’t think that anyone who was wild about my parents is going to transfer that esteem to me.”