The Tycoon's Marriage Bid

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  ‘Don’t presume to think you know me so well,’ Nikki said stiffly.

  ‘Oh, I know you.’ Alex stopped pacing. Stared at her in the firelight. ‘And I know that out of all the women in my life you’re the only one I ever counted on. And you walked out without one single reason that I can accept. Was I really that impossible to work with, Nik?’

  ‘You didn’t do anything.’ Nikki’s voice was husky.

  ‘But someone did. Was it the father of your baby?’

  ‘Just leave it alone, please.’

  ‘You’re just letting this yahoo walk. Without taking any responsibility at all for the baby.’

  ‘It doesn’t concern you!’

  He inhaled. Exhaled more slowly. ‘Then why does it feel as if it does?’

  Nikki didn’t answer.

  And Alex knew he was right. If he weren’t, she would have said so. But knowing it with more certainty than ever didn’t make him feel any better.

  The Tycoon’s Marriage Bid

  ALLISON LEIGH

  GRANDMA’S 20-MINUTE BROWNIE RECIPE

  2 squares unsweetened baking chocolate

  ½ cup butter

  3 eggs

  1 cup sugar

  ¾ cup flour

  ½ tsp baking powder

  ¼ tsp salt

  ½ tsp vanilla

  1 cup chopped nuts

  Preheat oven to 350° F.

  Melt chocolate and butter. Cool. Beat eggs 5 minutes. Add sugar and beat again. Sift dry ingredients and add to egg mixture. Add melted chocolate mixture. Add vanilla and nuts. Spread in a greased 9"x13"

  pan and bake at 350° F for 20 minutes. Can dust top lightly with powered sugar. Cut and remove from pan while hot.

  Chapter One

  Nikki Day didn’t want to open her eyes. Not when doing so would confirm that yes, she was very much in a hospital bed, and now she was losing her mind, to boot. Because there was no way on earth that he would really be sitting there in the recliner next to the bed as if he belonged there.

  Which meant she was seeing things.

  Hallucinating.

  As if she didn’t have enough worries already.

  Her arm curled protectively over her abdomen as she felt another hard kick. At least that movement assured her that whatever was happening and why ever she was here, the baby was now gunning for kicker of the year. Nikki was in her sixth month. She figured by the time she made it to nine, the baby would be leaving behind permanent footprints her own personal Hollywood Walk of Fame.

  She gingerly shifted to her side, pushing a pillow against her abdomen, trying to find a more comfortable position, and regrettably opened her eyes as she did so.

  He was still there.

  Dismay shot through her and she hurriedly closed them again.

  Tightly.

  ‘Nice to see you, too,’ the apparition said in a low voice.

  It appeared that when Nikki hallucinated, she could do it with as much accuracy and precision as she’d done most things in her life.

  The realization made her want to laugh. Was she hysterical?

  She shifted again, wishing she could escape the ache in her back as much as she wished she could escape the rabbit hole she’d fallen down.

  ‘Careful. You don’t want to yank out that IV line.’

  She nearly came out of her skin when those long, capable warm fingers settled over her hand.

  Definitely not a hallucination.

  She jerked back, sitting up so abruptly the pale blue sheet fell to her waist, displaying a limp, blue cotton hospital gown. The pillow teetered on the edge of the bed, then slid over.

  He still held her hand, though. He was evidently concerned about the thin tubing snaking from beneath the adhesive on the back of her hand, because there was no other reason he’d have held her so.

  He. Alexander Reed. Alex.

  The man who was inadvertently and completely unknowingly responsible for the baby that was even now kicking the life out of her kidneys.

  He’d been her boss for three years, until she’d resigned last summer.

  Nikki’s heart pounded so hard she felt faint.

  ‘Easy there,’ he murmured, casually reaching for the button that hung from a cord near her shoulder.

  ‘Don’t upset yourself. You’re fine. The baby’s fine.’

  She swallowed, his assurance calming the panic roiling inside her. The baby. Concentrate on the baby.

  She carefully pulled her hand from beneath his. ‘How did I get back to Cheyenne?’

  He shook his head. ‘You didn’t. You’re still in Montana. Lucius Community Hospital.’

  ‘You sure are,’ the nurse entering the room agreed. ‘And we’re happy to see you’re awake.’ She smiled comfortingly as she bustled around the bed, checking machines and making notes. ‘The doctor will be right in,’ she told Alex as she deftly wrapped Nikki’s arm in a blood pressure cuff. ‘We’re a little busy today. Two babies on the way.’ She finished with the cuff and made some more notes. ‘How are you feeling, hon?’

  Nikki couldn’t formulate a coherent answer. But the nurse seemed to understand. ‘Just remain quiet,’

  she told her. ‘The doctor won’t be long.’

  When the nurse departed, Nikki eyed Alex again. ‘What are you doing here?’ Never mind what she was doing there. Not even the nurse had helped to answer that question.

  Alex’s dark brown eyes were as unreadable as ever. ‘They called me when you were brought in.’

  ‘They?’

  He moved his shoulders slightly as if he were impatient with the question. She wasn’t surprised.

  When she’d worked for him, Alex had depended on her to handle the details. The man wouldn’t remember his own birthday if she hadn’t reminded him to check his calendar.

  ‘The woman who owns that inn you were staying at,’ he said. ‘The only phone number she had, other than your home, was your work number. The hospital called me, too.’

  Her former work number. ‘Hadley Golightly?’ Nikki wasn’t only trying to get details out of him. She was trying not to betray the fact that she was desperately trying to recall what had happened. ‘Tiff’s is a boardinghouse. Not an inn.’

  ‘Fine. A boardinghouse.’ Alex’s sharp gaze had strayed to the window. Narrow blinds covered it, slanted so the sun wouldn’t shine directly into the room. Not that there was any sun, from the looks of it.

  Just gray skies, heavy with snow. Typical January whether she was home in Wyoming or vacationing in Montana.

  Her temples throbbed. ‘The baby,’ she whispered. ‘You’re sure about the baby?’

  ‘I’m sure.’ He looked back at her, and the steadiness of his gaze eased her as much as his words did.

  ‘I still don’t understand what you’re doing here, though.’ Why hadn’t Alex called her family rather than come to Montana himself? It wasn’t as if he didn’t know who they were. Her sister, Belle, had worked for him at Huffington Sports Clinic, too. For a while, at least.

  The whispery details of a blue, horse-drawn sleigh straight out of a fairy tale drifted in and out of her mind, as insubstantial as a curl of smoke.

  Cody had promised her a sleigh ride for their honeymoon.

  But that was years ago.

  Nikki had gone on the sleigh ride alone. It was the last thing she remembered. Sitting on the thickly padded seat, the morning air bright and crisp on her face.

  Or was that a dream, too?

  She couldn’t seem to concentrate on more than one thing at a time, and the elusive details slipped away.

  Would it be easier to deal with Alex than her foggy memory?

  Probably not.

  What was he really doing here?

  S
he’d already removed herself from his life once.

  This was backtracking in the worst of ways.

  ‘How how are things at the office?’ She couldn’t seem to prevent the question from emerging any more than she could prevent the nerves jangling through the muzziness fogging her brain.

  ‘Had to let another admin go last week.’

  ‘Another one?’ She’d heard the rumblings, of course, about Alex’s difficulty in hiring a permanent replacement for her. No matter how well she’d thought she’d excised Huffington from her life and the man who’d taken one small Wyoming clinic and turned it into an innovative network spread across the United States she’d still heard that, after she’d left, he’d gone through his first three administrative assistants in as many weeks. ‘What number was she?’

  His lips pursed a little. It only made her notice them, which she had no business doing. ‘Six.’ His gaze slanted from the window back to her bed.

  She braced herself. Even though he’d never really seemed to notice her, it had always given Nikki a jolt whenever he’d looked at her.

  She’d almost not taken the administrative assistant position in the first place, as a result of that. She hadn’t wanted to feel any sort of jolt from anyone. Not when Cody was still in her heart.

  The jolt was there. As usual.

  A dip, a sway, a leap. Deep inside her.

  More than three and a half years since the April day she’d sat across from Alex’s desk and accepted the position, and it was as bad or worse than ever.

  ‘How’s, um, how’s everything else with the clinics, then?’ Her voice was a little breathless. She hoped he’d think it had something to do with whatever had put her in the hospital.

  Knowing Alex, he knew more about those details than she.

  His expression didn’t change. ‘You think I came here to discuss business?’

  ‘You called me nearly five times a week at first to discuss business.’ He’d stopped calling after that first month, though.

  She’d breathed easier, but grieved a little harder for the job she’d really loved.

  ‘I wouldn’t have had to make those calls if the personnel department had a clue about hiring someone competent.’

  ‘It’s your personnel department,’ she replied mildly. Huffington was entirely Alex’s baby. There was no higher authority in the company.

  She had a fanciful image of herself hovering around the ceiling of the hospital room, watching this particular exchange. Discussing business?

  The baby kicked again and she dragged her split persona down from the ceiling. ‘So you came here to what? Ask me to come back to my job?’

  ‘You still consider being my administrative assistant your job?’

  She shifted her shoulders. ‘No.’

  ‘Then you’re employed elsewhere now.’

  ‘I start a job very soon.’ She hoped, desperately wishing she knew how long she’d been in the hospital. She’d been living on her savings for months, and her pride simply refused to let her take handouts from her family, no matter how easily they could have afforded it.

  She was Nikki Day. She stood on her own two feet.

  The practice had kept her together when she and

  Belle were only fifteen and their father died, and it had kept her together again when Cody died just as unexpectedly.

  She needed the job she was supposed to begin after this trip to Montana.

  ‘A job.’

  She had to gather her scattered thoughts again. It was about as easy as gathering up sand with a sieve.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where?’

  His disbelief wasn’t at all flattering. ‘It’s none of your business, Alex.’ She’d have prided herself on the statement if her voice hadn’t trembled.

  He looked disbelieving, but let it slide. Probably out of whatever pity had motivated him to come to the hospital. Then he glanced at his watch. Not overly noticeably, except that she knew him so well, having worked fifty -to sixty-hour weeks for him for three years.

  She’d taken one week of vacation during her second year with Huffington. She and Belle had gone to Florida. If she hadn’t made the mistake of taking her cell phone with her, she might actually have managed to leave work behind. Instead, her sister had come back far tanner than Nikki, with a little album full of pictures of herself scuba diving and parasailing.

  Nikki had come back knowing the room service menu by heart.

  She hadn’t bothered trying to take a vacation again. ‘Don’t let me keep you,’ she said now. She was desperately eager for him to leave, and painfully aware that she was doing a miserable job of hiding it.

  He lifted one slashing eyebrow. ‘What’d I do to piss you off, Nikki?’

  ‘Nothing!’

  ‘Right.’

  His dark gaze drifted downward from her face and she felt the heat of a fresh flush. She had to look as washed out as she felt.

  She was used to being in control of things. Of herself.

  Now, adrift in a tangle of pale blue sheets, she felt completely at a loss.

  ‘Did you quit because of your pregnancy?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she exclaimed rapidly. Truthfully. The fact was, when she’d quit, she’d typed up her resignation and placed it square in the center of his computer keyboard where he’d be certain to see it before she’d realized she was pregnant.

  Had she known, she still would have handed in her notice.

  ‘You could have told me you were pregnant. I would have made some adjustments,’ he said, ignoring her denial. He scooped up the pillow from the floor and set it on the bed beside her. ‘Maybe hired an assistant.’

  ‘That’s what you did,’ she pointed out. She pushed the pillow behind her. ‘I quit. You hired another admin. Simple.’

  ‘Hired you an assistant.’ His lips compressed a little, and the slashing dimple in his hard cheek flashed. ‘So you could work fewer hours or something.’

  Alex had never once concerned himself with how many hours she’d put in for him. She was back to hallucinating again. Or maybe she’d wake up and find herself sitting with her nose in her computer outside Alex’s office, and that the last half year had been nothing more than a long, incredibly vivid nightmare.

  She rubbed her temples.

  ‘You didn’t have to quit on me,’ Alex said.

  Quitting was exactly what she’d had to do. And there was no way on earth she’d ever be able to explain that fact to him.

  She dropped her hands to her lap and leaned wearily against the pillow behind her. She pulled the limp sheet and thin blanket up to her shoulders.

  She wasn’t cold. She just needed more of a barrier between them.

  She’d been a good administrative assistant. But nobody was irreplaceable. ‘I still don’t understand what you’re doing here.’

  ‘Your sister is on her honeymoon.’

  She frowned, wondering how he’d known that. ‘Yes.’ ‘Your mom and her husband are on some cruise or something.’

  Her mother had spent months planning the vacation. Squire, Nikki was convinced, had only agreed to plant his cowboy boots on a cruise ship deck because of the wife he adored. ‘Yes,’ she confirmed warily.

  ‘But what’s that have to do with you?’

  His shoulders moved again. He stood and walked to the foot of the bed. ‘So I came to Montana,’ he said flatly. ‘Someone needed to.’

  He’d hardly explained his actions. Aside from her twin sister and her mother, he knew she had a sizable stepfamily. Any one of the Clays would have assisted her in any way they could, just as she knew, without question, that she’d have abhorred even asking.

  But Alex didn’t know that. And he never did anything without an agenda.

  Not that he couldn’t be kind when he chose. She knew only too well how many philanthropic efforts he’d been involved in, the boards on which he sat. Chaired. Organized. All located in the nine cities from Florida to Arizona where Huffington clinics were situated.r />
  But mostly, Alex ate, breathed and slept his business. If she hadn’t been his administrative assistant, he’d have never noticed her.

  ‘Well.’ She settled her palms flat on the blanket beside her hips. ‘I appreciate your concern, but as you can see, I’m fine.’

  ‘A polite way of telling me I can just toddle on out the door now?’ His voice was dry.

  She winced. Flushed, yet again. ‘Alex, this is just embarrassing for me,’ she admitted.

  ‘Why?’

  Her hands were no longer flat. They curled, bunched into fists, as Nikki wished the ground would swallow her whole. ‘How would you feel if I walked in on you in the hospital?’

  He tucked his hands in his pockets, but the action did little to mar the line of his perfectly tailored black trousers. ‘Perhaps glad to see a familiar face.’

  She felt her cheeks flame even hotter. ‘Now you’re making me sound ungrateful.’

  ‘If the shoe fits.’

  There was a knot constricting her throat. ‘Please don’t try guilting me into coming back, Alex.’ She wasn’t sure she could withstand it again.

  ‘It didn’t work when I tried before.’ He stepped across the room and pulled one hand out of his pocket to adjust the window blinds.

  More gray light entered the room, and Nikki realized she was staring at the subtle play of muscles beneath Alex’s ivory sweater. Cashmere, undoubtedly, considering the way the soft garment draped his broad shoulders.

  His hair was black, tipped by silver around his temples. His nape, too, if he went a week too long between haircuts. But now it was cut as short as ever. Then those salt-and-pepper strands turned, and she swallowed, caught gawking, when he looked back at her.

  Not that he made any mention of her staring.

  ‘I came because I was concerned,’ he said mildly. ‘So. Is there someone you’d prefer to have called?’

  One eyebrow lifted, his chocolate eyes shifting to her midsection. ‘Maybe the guy who did that?’

  She looked down at her hands. They were puffy. She’d stopped wearing all her rings a month ago.