Читать книгу The Millionaire's Proposition - Natalie Patrick - Страница 9

Chapter Two

“Twenty-five, thirty-five, thirty-six...forty-six...” Becky flicked her fingernail through the change in her hand and muttered, “Give me back my charm, that’s what I should have said.”

The wind plastered her thin coat against her back. The umbrella that balanced over her shoulder rustled in the wind. Rain from the flapping awning overhead splashed the back of her neck and made her shiver. She lifted her head, suddenly on alert. People hurried past her as if she did not exist.

In the past five months, she’d grown accustomed to that feeling. But even after that amount of time on her own in the city, she could not accept getting stepped on or having something of hers so blithely whisked away.

That arrogant jerk’s attitude still galled her and if he were here right now she’d probably... The image of him, this virile suit-and-tie man with a supercharged aura of confidence, to-die-for eyes and a quick, wicked grin, filled her mind.

She’d probably stare at him like the big, uncultured goof that she knew in her heart she was, she thought. Her shoulders slumped forward. Maybe her brother had the right idea. Maybe she should go back to Woodbridge, marry a guy like Frankie McWurter and have a bunch of bucktoothed kids with big ears who all looked like their hairy-backed, knuckle-dragging father.

Becky shuddered at her own meanness toward poor ol’ Frankie and at the prospect of marriage to a small-town Lothario. On the other hand, she thought, maybe she’d stay in the city and give finding a job another shot. After all, after a day like today, how much worse could it get?

She inched in farther under the awning, closed her umbrella and propped it against her shin. She narrowed her gaze again over her cluster of coins. “Forty-six plus another twenty-five, that’s—”

Kaching.

“Seventy-one,” a deep masculine voice intoned.

“My missing charm,” she whispered, raising her gaze from the slightly mangled baby bootie to the man who had just dropped it into her palm.

“No, it’s my charm that’s been amiss today.”

Her heart did a little kaching of its own, skipping out an erratic rhythm at this first slow, enthralling look into that man’s eyes up close. “You? You!”

“Me. Me.”

“I looked all over for you in there.” She pointed lamely to the building across the way. “Even got in the very next elevator to try to catch up with you.”

“And I got on the very next one coming down.”

“You did?”

“Of course, what did you think? That I’d tromp on your trinket and then not see that you got it back?”

She had thought exactly that. “Um, no, I—”

“I’m surprised our paths didn’t cross in the building, though. I came right back and looked around for you, but you seemed to have disappeared without a trace. Instead of wasting too much time trying to seek you out, I went up to my office and had my secretary start an all-points search for you.”

“Y-you did?” Wow, she thought, her and her little charm had caused all that?

“I did indeed. She didn’t have any luck, either. Why was that? Did you take the stairs coming back down?”

“No.” She lifted her face and inhaled the smell of rain and exhaust from the street mixed with just a hint of masculine cologne from his expensive overcoat. “I, um, I had no idea where you were headed, so I, kind of, well, I...I pressed every button in the elevator, and when the doors opened, I stuck my head out to see if there was any sign of you.”

“I’m sure that made you very popular with the elevator crowd.”

“Well, when you look slightly unbalanced, people don’t tend to voice their complaints.” She held out her arms a bit, offering herself as evidence.

He took a long, leisurely look at her, not the least bit hesitant in showing how his gaze traveled from the tips of her waterlogged shoes to the top of her haywire hairdo. A subtle smile played over his hard lips at the parts in between. Nothing leering, just a hint of appreciation that carried over into his voice as he said, “I think you look very nicely balanced.”

She giggled. Giggled. That’s a great way to impress a suave man like this, she chided herself.

“And I admire your character, not afraid to go after what you wanted, protecting what belonged to you, Miss... Mrs... 7”

“Ms.”

“Of course, how Neanderthal of me.” He smiled but not just with his lips—with his eyes, the tilt of his head, the lines in his face. Even his posture added to his air of amusement. “Ms...?”

“Taylor. Becky—Rebecca—Taylor.” He admired her. Who’d have expected that? She tugged off her warped glasses and shoved them into her coat pocket. Legally, she needed the corrective lenses for driving and they helped tremendously when navigating the streets of Chicago on foot, but in a pinch she could get along without them. She pulled free the rubber band constraining her ponytail, shook her head, then fluffed her hair with one hand. “Becky, usually.”

“Well, Ms. Becky usually, I believe I owe you an apology for not returning this to you more promptly.”

He tapped the charm in her still-outstretched palm with his blunt fingertip.

The coins jingled.

Becky’s pulse leaped.

The simple gesture of this man dipping his finger into the hollow of her hand had an instant, almost erotic effect, with tiny, tingling waves building outward from the spot where his skin touched hers.

“I hope I didn’t inconvenience you too much by the delay,” he said.

“Oh, no. You didn’t delay me. You couldn’t delay me. I mean, I have nowhere special to go. Oh...that makes me sound homeless or...I’m not, not yet at least. I’m job hunting, so you see...I’m just unemploy...” The words rushed out all breathless with an unexpected young-girl quality that made her selfconscious, aware of the need to shut herself up. “Um, thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He took his hand away and slipped it into his pocket, but before he did, Becky took the time and care to notice that he wore no wedding ring.

She focused on the objects remaining in her hand, wanting to say something, anything, to show herself as calm and casual about the whole awkward situation. This man had seen her looking like a big fool after all, and suddenly it felt very important to counteract her first impression. She plucked up the bootie, turning it this way and that. The gray morning light brought out the flaws and fine details of its design. A thought struck her. “I feel a little like Cinderella here. You know, you tracking me down with only this shoe to go on.”

“That would make me, what? Prince Charming?”

“That’s Snow White. I don’t think the prince in Cinderella ever gave his name.” She shifted her umbrella. “See? There’s another similarity. You haven’t given me your name, either.”

“Winstead. Clark Winstead.” He extended his hand.

Clark Winstead. He even had a great name. She put her own hand forward, remembered she still held the bootie in her fingers, dropped her gaze to it, then started to tuck it back into her other hand.

Clark Winstead stopped her.

“Here, if you don’t mind?” He took the trinket, apparently forgetting about the handshake entirely.

Becky felt a twinge of regret at not getting to feel her band in his. They’d made a connection, she thought, one she’d have liked to prolong if only with a more formal introduction.

“I notice it’s a bit worse for the run-in with my heel.” He examined the charm with one eye half-shut, then fixed those amazing eyes on her. “Why don’t you let me have my jeweler fix that for you?”

This guy has his own jeweler? she thought.

“Or I could replace it altogether,” he suggested.

“Oh, I wouldn’t want a new one. This one has sentimental value.”

“For your own baby?”

“No, I’ve never had any babies.” She gazed up into those heart-melting brown eyes. But I’d have yours, a little voice inside her sighed. “I do hope to have one someday.”

He nodded as if she’d just confirmed something to him.

“I know I don’t look terribly responsible or anything right now, but I am. I’ve always had goals in my life—like going to college, moving to Chicago. I made the second one happen—obviously—and hope to make the first one happen when I can afford it. I think that’s the kind of thing that helps make a good mother, having priorities and never slacking off on self-improvement.”

She knew she sounded like she was applying for the job. She felt the heat rise from her neck to her cheeks, even singeing the rims of her ears, at her chattering on. But a girl like her only met a prince, or a Clark Winstead, once in a lifetime, and something inside her told her to give him as much information about herself as she possibly could. It couldn’t hurt and something she said might just strike a chord in the guy.

“Plus I love kids and they love me. When the time comes, I think I’d be a very good mother.”

“No doubt.”

What had she thought? That he’d be so awed by her blathering that he’d propose right on the spot and ask her to bear his child? She folded her coat around her like a security blanket. “Um, in answer to your question, the bootie charm is for my nephew. I have one for my niece, too. I have a charm for every major event in my life.”

She held up the bracelet before she could stop herself from the childish, bumpkin behavior. Like the man wanted to see her stupid bracelet!

“Delightful,” he said. “May I?”

This time, he took her hand in his and Becky decided then and there she knew how the “real” Cinderella must have felt when the prince slid that glass slipper into place on her foot.

He turned her hand over and the bracelet clattered softly. “Why, it looks like you’ve led a very full life, Ms. Taylor.”

“I guess as full as a girl can lead and still be allowed to sing in the church choir in Woodbridge, Indiana.”

He laughed, probably just out of politeness, but it was a warm, genuine-sounding laugh all the same that radiated through Becky’s rain-soaked being.

He raised his eyes to look at her, his chin still tucked in. “That’s where you’re from? Woodbridge, Indiana?”

“Born and raised,” she said, nodding.

“Lucky Woodbridge.”

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He released her hand and reached inside his pocket. In a moment, he had withdrawn two perfect business cards the color of rich vanilla ice cream. He handed them both to her, then took a pen from inside his overcoat.

Becky recognized the type of pen from windowshopping for a gift for her brother’s last birthday. That simple, stylish, fine writing instrument, as they were called in the store, easily cost more than she could earn in a month at her old job in Woodbridge. Well, she thought, had she expected less from a prince?

“Write down your name, address and phone number on one of these,” he said. It wasn’t a request.

He wants my number, she thought. Her fingers could hardly grip the pen he handed her.

“I’ll take the charm to my jeweler to be repaired, then have him send it to you.”

“Oh.” She blinked. The noises of the city, which had seemed muted by the very presence of the man, came rushing back to fill her ears. Car horns blared, tires whooshed over the wet road, people called out to one another. Becky swallowed hard and managed to eke out a stiff but respectful “Thank you.”

If she had a shred of pride left, she’d tell him not to trouble himself. Correction—if she had pride and enough money to get the charm repaired herself, she’d tell him...

She looked up into that face.

His gaze brushed over her chin, her lips, her hair, then settled on her eyes.

She’d tell him... “Here you go. If it takes past the end of the month, I may not be at that apartment anymore, so I jotted down my brother’s address in Woodbridge.”

He slid the card slowly from between her fingers and placed it in his breast pocket. “Good. And you keep my card just in case they don’t do the job to your satisfaction.”

She ran her fingertip over the engraved lettering. “thank you. I will.”

He tipped his head and took a step backward. “Goodbye, then.”

“Bye.” She smiled, then stepped back herself, bumping into a burly mailman as she did. Her umbrella slid down her shin and clunked to the pavement, rolled into the gutter, then burst open just in time to get run over by a speeding taxi.

She was having one of the worst days of her life and the only prince she’d ever meet was right there to witness it.

Becky Taylor was either the sweetest, most innocent young woman he had ever run across—or she was a stark, raving lunatic.

“Miss Harriman, have this sent to my regular jeweler for repair and then have it...” He glanced down at the name and number written in delicate swirls on the back of one of his business cards.

Plus I love kids and they love me. When the time comes, I think I’d be a very good mother. Her words echoed through his mind.

He ran his thumb along the sharp edge of the card.

Flawless-as-cream skin, hair that looked, when not bunched up on her head, like the spun-gold curls straight off a Christmas angel and every bit as wholesome.

Clark did not often run into girls like that. The novelty of her spirit and innocence intrigued him, stirred something up in him. Other things about her stirred him up, as well.

Not too thin, but not too plump, either, the girl had a body that would fill a man’s hands, that could fulfill his most primal fantasies. Not like those stick-figure women who inhabited his moneyed world. That type wouldn’t do more than nibble on the exorbitant meals he’d buy them at all the best restaurants, but they’d damn sure eat a girl like Becky Taylor alive if given the chance.

And she’d give them indigestion for their trouble, too, he decided with a wry smile.

He chuckled to recall the fury she’d shown when she thought he’d made off with her prized ornament. Oh, sure, she looked like a pitiful but precious rag doll at first glance, but underneath it she had fire in her, self-reliance and character. And she was a virgin, too. He’d stake his fortune on that fact.

That “fact” touched something in him, awakened his male protective instinct and made him feel proprietary even though he hardly knew the girl. And any girl who did that to a man like him, someone suspicious of entanglements since childhood and distanced from them by choice in adulthood, deserved due consideration.

Yes—provided she wasn’t a lunatic—Becky Taylor might just be exactly what he was looking for.

He closed his hand over the crisp card. “Just have the charm repaired, Miss Harriman, then returned to me. I think I can handle it from there.”