Christmas with Him

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The Tycoon’s

Christmas Proposal

Jackie Braun

About the Author

JACKIE BRAUN is a three-time RITA® finalist, three-time National Readers’ Choice Award finalist, and a past winner of the Rising Star award. She lives in Michigan with her husband and two sons, and can be reached through her website at www.jackiebraun.com.

‘In 1991 I was sure I was getting an engagement ring for Christmas. So were all of my sisters. The first thing they did when Mark and I walked in the door for dinner was grab my left hand and look. But I didn’t get a ring. Mark thought that was too predictable. He proposed to me a few days into the New Year when I least expected it. I’ve never regretted saying yes.’

For my late father, Walter Braun.

Thanks for sending down a little inspiration in the wee

hours of the morning, Dad.

I miss you.

CHAPTER ONE

DAWSON BURKE was used to people doing things a certain way. His way.

For that reason alone he found the telephone message he’d just retrieved from his voice mail annoying. He flipped his cell phone closed and tapped it against his chin as he stared out the limousine’s windows at the fender-to-fender traffic fighting its way into Denver. What did Eve Hawley mean she would be popping by his office later today to discuss his gift needs? What was there to discuss?

He’d only met his previous personal shopper on a handful of occasions during the past several years. All other dealings with Carole Deming had been accomplished by telephone, fax, e-mail or proxy. Dawson provided a list of names and the necessary compensation. In return, Carole bought, wrapped and saw to it that his gifts were delivered. Mission accomplished. Everyone happy.

Well, he wasn’t happy at the moment.

Eve said she needed to ask him some questions about the intended recipients on his list. Eve said she preferred to meet with her clients face-to-face at least once before setting out to do their shopping. She said it gave her a feel for their tastes and helped her personalize the purchases she made. Eve said …

Dawson scrubbed a hand over his eyes and expelled a ragged breath. This was the third voice mail full of comments and requests that he’d received from the woman. He didn’t have time to deal with this bossy stand-in any more than he cared to make time for Christmas. He couldn’t help but wonder what had possessed Carole, who was recuperating from knee surgery, to suggest this woman as her replacement.

Maybe he should call Carole and see if she could recommend someone else. Someone who didn’t ask unnecessary questions. Someone who simply did his bidding and required no hand-holding.

The limousine pulled to the curb in front of the building that housed the offices of Burke Financial Services. His grandfather, Clive Burke Senior, had started the company, which specialized in managing stock portfolios and corporate pensions. Clive Senior had been gone nearly a dozen years and Dawson’s father, Clive Junior, had retired the spring before last. These days, Dawson was the Burke in charge. And he believed in running a tight ship.

His secretary rose from behind her desk just outside his office the moment the elevator doors slid open on the eleventh floor. Her name was Rachel Stern and her surname suited her perfectly. She was an older woman with steel-gray hair, shoulders as wide as a linebacker’s and a face that would have made a hardened criminal cross to the opposite side of the street before passing her. In the dozen years Rachel had been in his employ Dawson couldn’t recall ever seeing her crack a smile. Stern. That she was, but also efficient and dedicated. He swore sometimes she knew what he wanted before he did.

This morning was no different. She fell into step beside him, prepping him on the day’s itinerary even before he had peeled off his leather gloves and shrugged out of his heavy wool overcoat.

“The people from Darien Cooper called. They got held up in traffic and are running about fifteen minutes late. I’ve put the information packets in the conference room and the PowerPoint presentation is ready to go.”

“And my speech for the Denver Economic Club this evening?” he asked.

“Typed, fact-checked and on your desk. The television stations are looking for a preview since their reporters won’t be able to get anything back before the late night news. I’ve taken the liberty of highlighting a couple of points that might make for good sound bites.”

“Excellent.”

“Oh, and your mother called.”

Dawson gritted his teeth. He reminded himself that the only reason she called him so often was because she loved him and was worried about him. Of course that did nothing to assuage his guilt. “Does she want me to call her back?”

“No, she just asked me to remind you to have your tuxedo dry-cleaned for the ball this weekend. She’s reserved a seat for you at the head table and won’t take no for an answer.”

He bit back a sigh. The annual Tallulah Malone Burke Charity Ball and Auction was the see-and-be-seen-at event for Denver’s social elite. He’d hoped to send a generous check along with his regrets. But the ball was celebrating its silver anniversary this year, and he had little doubt his mother would show up at his door to personally escort him.

The cause was worthy, raising funds for the area’s less fortunate. At one time Dawson had been happy to do his part by suiting up like a penguin, shaking hands and making small talk with Denver’s movers and shakers. But for the past few years he’d made excuses not to attend the event, which always fell the second Saturday after Thanksgiving. It was a bad time of the year for him. The absolute worst, in fact. He’d been grateful that his mother, who was a stickler for appearances, had been willing to let him shirk his responsibilities as a Burke. Apparently his amnesty had run out.

And she claimed he had inherited his stubborn streak from his father.

He consulted his watch. “My housekeeper should be in by now. Give her a call. Ingrid will see to it that the tux gets cleaned. And when you get a minute—”

“A cup of coffee and a toasted bagel, light on the cream cheese, with a side of fresh fruit,” Rachel finished for him.

“Please.”

His efficient secretary could all but read his mind, whereas Eve Hawley apparently was unable to make sense of a simple list of names, even when it included particulars like sex, age and how they were acquainted with Dawson.

“Will there be anything else?” Rachel asked.

“Actually, yes.” He retrieved the cell phone from the inside pocket of his suit coat and handed it to her. “Call Miss Hawley back for me. Hers is the third number down. She’s the personal shopper Carole recommended. Tell her I’m too busy to see her today and, though it should be completely self-explanatory, see if you can answer the questions she claims to have about the list of names I had you e-mail her last week.”

“Very well.”

“Thanks.” He reached up to massage the back of his neck as he said it, grimacing when pain radiated all the way down his spine. It had been a frequent visitor for the past three years, ever since the car accident that had claimed the lives of his wife and daughter. Tension made the pain worse. This time of the year, when memories and regrets swirled their thickest, it became almost unbearable.

“Is your back bothering you again?” Rachel inquired in a tone devoid of the syrupy concern he so detested. The last thing he wanted was to be the object of pity. Yet he knew that’s precisely what he had become in many people’s eyes.

Poor Dawson Burke.

“A little.”

“I’ll call Wanda and see if she can come by for a session between your afternoon meetings today,” she said, referring to the masseuse he’d kept on retainer since leaving the hospital after the crash.

That sounded like heaven, but he shook his head. “No time. I ran into Nick Freely on my way out last night. I promised I’d go over some stock options with him.”

“I can call him, reschedule,” she offered.

“No. I tell you what. Ask Wanda to come by my house this evening. That way I’ll be nice and limber for my speech.”

When Rachel was gone, he made a mental note to increase the amount on her holiday bonus check. She had it coming.

Eve Hawley had something coming, too, he decided later that evening. And it wasn’t monetary compensation.

He was lying on the portable table his masseuse had set up in the center of his den, only a thin white sheet standing between him and immodesty, when his housekeeper tapped at the door.

“Excuse me, Mr. Burke,” she said from the doorway. “There’s someone here to see you.”

He wasn’t expecting company. He had barely an hour before he was due to leave for his speech. As Wanda kneaded his knotted muscles with hands that would have done a lumberjack proud, he asked between gritted teeth, “Who is it?”

“Eve Hawley.”

He lifted his face from the donut-shaped rest and gaped at the housekeeper. “She’s here now?”

“Yes.”

The woman was relentless and obviously incapable of doing the job if, even after talking to Rachel, she was still hounding him.

“Tell her I’m indisposed.”

“I did, Mr. Burke. But she’s insisting on seeing you,” Ingrid said.

“Insisting? Well, if she’s insisting…” He figured he knew a surefire way to get rid of her. “Send her in.”

“Right now?” The housekeeper gaped at him.

“Yes. Right now.” If Eve Hawley wanted to see him, Dawson would give her an eyeful.

Ingrid’s gaze cut to his bare back and the sheet that rode low across his hips, covering the essentials and then leaving his legs exposed. She was old enough to be his mother. In fact, it was at his mother’s suggestion that he’d hired her. Her pursed lips told him exactly how inappropriate she found his suggestion to be. But, like all—or at least the vast majority—of the people in his employ, she minded her own business and did as he asked.

“Very well,” she said, withdrawing from the room without further comment.

“Carry on,” he told Wanda, before lowering his face back into rest. The masseuse was chopping down his spine in karate fashion when he heard the door open a moment later. The person who entered sucked in a startled breath. Though it was small of him, Dawson grinned at the floor.

“Oh. You’re …”

“Busy,” came his muffled reply.

Feminine laughter trilled. “Actually, I was going to say naked.”

“Not quite.” But he frowned at the same floor he’d smiled at a moment earlier. She didn’t sound nearly as distressed by that fact as he’d hoped.

“I’m Eve Hawley.”

“Yes, I know,” he snapped. “Even if my housekeeper hadn’t announced your arrival, I would recognize your voice from the many messages you’ve left on my phone.”

“Messages that went unreturned,” she had the audacity to point out.

“They were returned. My secretary called you back,” he said.

“Ah, yes. Mrs. Stern. If I’d wanted to talk to your secretary, Mr. Burke, I would have dialed her direct. I need to speak to you.”

Dawson felt the muscles in his back beginning to tighten again despite Wanda’s competent ministrations. “Look, Miss Hawley, surely Carole Deming briefed you on what I’m looking for. This is gift shopping, not rocket science. If you can’t do the job—”

“Oh, I can do the job. I just believe in doing it well,” she replied in a voice that was stiff with pride. Another place, another time, he might have admired it. He had no patience for it at the moment. “I won’t take up much of your time,” she promised.

Dawson relented with a sigh, but he didn’t raise his head from the padded hole. He was being rude, insufferably so. But then that was the point. The woman already had strained his patience.

“Fine. Shoot.”

“You want to discuss this right now?” Her tone was incredulous.

“Right now is all the time I have. My schedule is very tight and will be for the next several days.”

“I see.” He thought she might object and leave. That had been his goal. But he heard a pair of heels click over the parquet floor. They stopped just outside his limited field of vision.

“I have some concerns,” she said, her tone that of a professional who apparently was not the least bit concerned about discussing business with a nearly naked man. Perhaps like the housekeeper, she, too, was old enough to be his mother.

“What are these concerns?”

“Well, in addition to business associates and acquaintances, your gift-giving list includes friends and several family members.”

“My parents, sister, her husband and their two children,” he said. “I’m well aware of who is on the list, Miss Hawley. After all, I’m the one who made it out.” Well, his secretary had done that, but he’d approved the final version.

“I do things a little differently when family members are involved.”

Heels clicked on the floor again and Dawson was forced to revise his opinion of her age when a pair of lethal-looking pumps came into view. They were red and made of faux alligator skin. But those weren’t the reasons that had Dawson subtracting a few decades from her age. Women of his mother’s generation generally didn’t have little butterflies tattooed on their ankles.

Curiosity got the better of him. He brought his elbows up and levered partway off the table so that he could see her. Then he sorely wished he hadn’t. The rest of Eve Hawley, from the curves that filled out her knit dress to the long dark hair that snaked over her shoulders, was every bit as sexy as her legs and those shoes. Suddenly, the fact that he was nearly naked didn’t give Dawson the advantage he’d sought. No. That had shifted squarely to the black-haired beauty who at the moment was eyeing him with her arms crossed, brows raised and unmistakable amusement glimmering in her eyes.

He sent a glance over his shoulder in the direction of his masseuse. “Wanda, that will be enough for now.”

“I don’t know, Mr. Burke. You still feel awfully tense to me,” she objected.

Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Eve’s full lips twitch.

“I’m fine.” To Eve he said, “Give me fifteen minutes and we’ll go over your concerns.”

“Sure.”

This time he was positive she was holding back a smile when she sauntered from the room.

Eve waited in a sitting room that was tucked just off the kitchen. The housekeeper had thoughtfully brought her a cup of hot tea. She sipped it now as she stared into the flames of the fire that was flickering cheerfully in the hearth and contemplated her client.

Dawson Burke was a surprise, and not because he’d been clothed in nothing more than a bedsheet at their introduction. He was not the paunchy, middle-aged workaholic who so often relied on her services. God bless those men since they had been helping to pay her bills for nearly a decade, but she hadn’t expected Dawson to be quite so young or handsome or—she sipped her tea—physically fit.

As an unattached woman of not quite thirty, there was no way details such as those were going to escape her attention.

Eve was relatively new to the Denver area, and the state of Colorado for that matter. The beauty of her job was that she could do it anywhere. She’d been looking for a fresh start after a particularly nasty breakup the previous spring, and after some Internet research she’d decided that anyplace with a view as pretty and panoramic as the one the Mile High City boasted just might provide it.

So she’d been settling in, building up a client list and sinking down roots. She’d caught a lucky break when she’d met Carole Deming while shopping in a boutique a couple of months back. The two women had hit it off right away. The fact that Carole was fifteen years older and they were technically competitors hadn’t stood in the way of their friendship. Indeed, Carole had been kind enough to toss some of her clients Eve’s way while she recuperated from surgery.

What was it she’d said about Dawson Burke? “I think you’ll find him a challenge.”

At the time, Eve had assumed Carole was referring to his gift needs, not his personality. Now she suspected she understood perfectly why the other woman had laughed while saying it. A challenge? Just getting past his pit bull of a secretary had taken an effort, which was why she’d decided to drop by his home unannounced.

Eve didn’t mind difficult clients. She’d worked for plenty of them in the past, picky people who gave her cart blanche to buy presents for others or clothing for themselves only to veto her every choice later. But this was different. She simply couldn’t do what Dawson wanted her to do without gathering more information, gaining more insight. It wasn’t right. As far as Eve was concerned, family members deserved more thought when it came to gifts. She had no qualms about buying for them, but she wouldn’t allow the purchases to be impersonal.

She set the tea aside and stood, walking closer to the fire when memories left her chilled. Her mother had died when Eve was eight years old. Suicide, or so it had been rumored. The alternative, an accidental drug overdose, had carried nearly as much stigma, especially since her mother’s family blamed her father. Growing up, she’d been shuttled from one relative’s house to another’s. Her dad had hit the road, ostensibly to try to turn his pipe dream of being a musician into a bona fide profession. More accurately, though, he’d been running from a reality he could not accept.

The last she’d heard, he had a gig at a pub in Myrtle Beach. At nearly sixty, Buck Hawley was no longer waiting for his big break. But he was still running.

He’d missed out on more than two decades of Eve’s life, though he always managed to send her a gift to mark another birthday and Christmas. She hated those gifts. They were always impersonal things that Eve knew upon opening he hadn’t picked out. For that matter, even the signatures on most of the cards hadn’t been his.

While growing up, that had pained her. All these years later it still hurt. She’d needed her father’s time, craved his attention as a child. At the very least, she’d wanted to know he thought about her while picking out gifts. So, when clients asked her to buy for their loved ones, she required more than the name and age Dawson had provided on his list.

“Would you care for more tea?”

She turned to find the man in question standing in the doorway. His dark hair was combed back from his forehead, lean cheeks freshly shaved. He was wearing an expertly cut charcoal suit with a white shirt and conservatively patterned tie, yet her heart did the same little somersault it had upon seeing far more of his skin.

“I’m fine.” Eve spoke the words for her own benefit as well as his.

He nodded. “Well, not to rush you, but I do have someplace I need to be. I believe you said you wouldn’t take much of my time.”

“Right.” She retrieved her briefcase from the side of the chair. “I do things a little differently than Carole.”

“So I gathered,” he said dryly.

“For starters, when I shop for close relatives such as those on your list, I need to know something about them.” He opened his mouth, but before he could speak Eve added, “Something beyond their sex and age and your price range. For instance, what are their hobbies? Do they have a favorite color? Do they collect something? For the children, are they into video games, sports? Who’s their favorite recording artist? And for the record, I don’t believe in gift cards, fruit baskets, flower arrangements or the like. Anyone can purchase and send those. They don’t take any effort or require any thought. I won’t buy gifts like that.”

“Maybe I have the wrong person for the job.”

Dollar signs flashed in neon green before her eyes. This was a big account, the biggest by far of the ones Carole had fed her. The commission it was likely to bring would go a long way toward fattening up the bank account her cross-country move had depleted. Still, Eve crossed her arms, blinked the dollar signs away and said, “Maybe you do. It’s a matter of principle for me.”

He studied her a long moment before sighing. “What do you need?”

Eve opened her case and pulled out a folder, which she handed to him. “Given how difficult it’s been to reach you, I decided that instead of conducting an interview I would give you this questionnaire. Fill it out at your convenience, but if I could have it back to me by next Monday, that would great.”

“Anything else?”

She didn’t miss the sarcasm in his tone, but she chose to ignore it. “Actually, there is. While I don’t mind flying blind when it comes to buying gifts for business associates and clients, if you have any insights or personal anecdotes about any of the people on your list, I’d welcome them. Feel free to jot down anything that comes to you on the line I’ve provided next to their names.”

“Maybe I should go shopping with you.”

Again, she ignored his sarcasm. Smiling sweetly, she replied, “It’s kind of you to offer, but that won’t be necessary. Unless you really want to. I can always use someone to carry the purchases out to the parking lot.”

She wasn’t sure why she had just baited him, other than the fact that his arrogance rubbed her the wrong way.

“Excuse me, Mr. Burke?” the housekeeper said from the doorway. “The driver has brought the car around.”

“Fine.” He turned his attention back to Eve. “I believe we’re finished.”

“For now,” she affirmed and had the satisfaction of watching him scowl.

CHAPTER TWO

DAWSON prided himself on being the sort of man who thought outside the box when finding solutions for problems. It was one of the things that had helped make him a success in business. So, when adversity knocked Friday afternoon, he let opportunity answer the door.

“Your mother is on line one and Eve Hawley is on line two,” Rachel informed him.

“I’ll take the call from my mother. Tell Miss Hawley I’ll call her back.” As he said it, he glanced in the direction of his in-box, where the questionnaire she’d given him remained untouched. He had a good idea of the reason behind Eve’s call. He also knew why his mother was phoning. The charity ball was Saturday.

“Hello, Mom.”

“Dawson, darling. How are you?” she asked.

“Fine.”

“So, you always say,” she chided. “But I still worry about you.”

“There’s no need to, really.”

But she disagreed. “It’s a mother’s job.”

“I’m an adult, Mom. Thirty-eight last month,” he reminded her.

“Your age doesn’t matter. Nor, for that matter, does mine.” Tallulah was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “I know this is a difficult time of year for you.”