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Forget the fairy tales, she told herself, where the prince sweeps the ragamuffin girl off her feet and into a magical world of romance and riches. That kind of thing never happened in the real world. And Becky, with her temp job over and her prospects for gainful employment about as bleak as the overcast evening skies, lived dead center in the real world.
She would probably never see her would-be Prince Charming again, except in her dreams. That, she decided as she took the last step of the dreary four-story walk up to her small apartment, was the story of her life. No job. No prince. No—
“Clark!”
Clark jerked his head up to find a pair of beautiful, shock-widened eyes fixed on him. He stiffened from his jaw to his work-tightened shoulders and all points southward. All points.
That this woman had that kind of intense physical effect on him puzzled and disturbed Clark only slightly more than the profound protectiveness he had felt toward her at their very first meeting. Something about this woman penetrated his steely control and got right to the core of his being. He did not like that. Did not like it one bit.
Clearing his throat, he forced himself to relax as much as he could in this circumstance and give her a smile of indulgent benevolence. “Hello again.”
“Hello.” Ms. Taylor looked as if she wanted to say more, to say anything, but no sound came out.
Clark did not mind. He enjoyed watching her full lips part, purse, then open slightly. Then, seductive in the sheer instinct of the action, her tongue flicked out to brush the center of her lower lip. Clark found himself wishing he could do the same—brush his tongue slowly, instinctually, over those lips and then—
Becky blew out a long, breathy whistle and shook back her hair.
She wanted him to kiss her, he reasoned. He looked into her eyes and felt them practically pleading for it.
She blinked. “Clark. It’s really...it’s really you.”
“Yes, it is.” He stepped toward her. Really him. Really just about to fulfill the inner need he saw in her, beckoning to him. He angled his head downward just enough to put him in position and then, when her mouth opened again—
“Wh-what on earth are you doing here?” She plunked her hands on her hips and gaped at him.
The stinging disbelief of her tone slapped him back to his senses. He stepped back, unsure of what to say to her. After all, Clark had asked himself the same question—what on earth was he doing here?
He’d asked himself that question more than once today already: when he’d put a senior VP on hold to take a phone call from the jeweler, again when he’d made specific arrangements that the charm not be left with a secretary but delivered to him personally, and yet again when he’d cut short a meeting to take the time to bring the charm to Ms. Taylor himself.
He glanced around at the dimly lit hallway lined with brown-painted doors with brackish brass numbers on the frames. It wasn’t a shabby place by any means, clean but unremarkable, not at all the kind of place he’d have chosen for Becky, though. “Actually, I was just thinking the same thing myself.”
“You were?”
“Yes, I was wondering what a girl like you was doing living in a place like this.” He’d asked it to turn things back to his advantage, he thought, but even he didn’t quite believe that the question had not come from some genuine concern for her well-being. “Not that it’s not perfectly...acceptable, but—”
“But?” She folded her arms over her chest, her eyes sparking with challenge.
That spark set off its own little fire in Clark. No one challenged him—not the big man, the boss, the one who signed the paychecks. He gritted his teeth to keep from grinning in sheer delight at rising to the forgotten feeling. “But I thought I’d find you living somewhere more suited to your personality.”
“Like where?” The tendrils of her hair quivered with the quick, controlled jerk upward of her head. “The armory?”
Clark laughed. It felt good to laugh and really mean it. “Actually, I had more in mind the country, but I assume if you are going to insist on city life, you could do the least damage at an armory. That or one of those steel-and-marble skyscrapers with...no, no, far too many opportunities for elevator mishaps there.”
“I can afford this place—at least for a while longer still. It’s clean, convenient and safe. That’s why I’m here.” She tacked on a look that reminded him he had yet to explain his own presence in her building.
Clark sighed. He had no business being here, he told himself as he skimmed his thumb over the velvety box in his pocket. Damaged charm or not, he had other, far more serious responsibilities demanding his attention right now.
His mind went over the reports his legal team had handed him in the meeting he’d abandoned in favor of this errand. The operation he’d been determined to buy out, a struggling, privately owned company that would flounder within a year on its own—or flourish as a part of Clark’s empire—would not sell. That incomplete transaction gnawed at his insides, but then, so had this dangling bit of unfinished business concerning a certain young lady and a bent baby bootie.
That’s why he had come here today, he knew. Once he’d tidied up this nagging loose thread that was Miss Becky Taylor, his mind would settle back on his work and turn to the more pressing issues facing him. All he had to do was hand the young woman her repaired charm, wish her well in her life and then get back on track with his own life.
Clark lifted his head. His gaze honing in on Becky Taylor as a whole package now, he looked with a more critical eye to guard against any of those impulsive, wayward reactions his body might have to her. Even in the grim lighting of the vacant hallway, she looked decidedly pulled together, youthful, healthy, radiant. Her hair, caught up in some kind of casually stylish contraption that matched her blue-and-white suit, gleamed in the yellowed light from overhead. And she was not wearing those bedraggled eyeglasses that made her look as if she needed someone to take her by the hand and help guide her through the perils of life. Still, Clark found himself wishing he could take her hand just the same.
He scowled for no one’s benefit but his own. He had to get this over with so he could get his mind back onto the pending buyout with all its pitfalls and problems. He coughed and then put on his most congenial, yet formal tone. “Actually, Ms. Taylor, I am, in fact, here to see you.”
“I thought so. Why else would a man like you be in a place like this? It’s an okay place, of course, but it doesn’t exactly have Clark Winstead written all over it.” She blinked at him. Her hand flattened just above her full breasts, and her cheeks flooded with a pale blush.
Any thoughts Clark had of mishandled meetings and arrested acquisitions faded on the spot.
“I mean, that is, Mr. Winstead.”
She cocked her head.
“Yes?” He tipped his head to mimic the angle of hers. “What is it, Ms. Taylor?”
“What is what?” she whispered as if hypnotized.
“What is it you want?” He lowered his voice to match hers.
“Want? Want? I don’t want anything. You’re the one who came here to my apartment to see me, not the other way around.” She rolled her eyes and shook her head. Twice she made a quick, gasping sound, one of exasperation that he would even ask such a thing, he believed.
“But you said my name,” he reminded her.
“I did? Oh, yes, I said...” She winced, overplaying it with great zeal and apparent self-deprecating humor. “I was correcting myself—for calling you by your first name. I really shouldn’t have, not without your asking me to for real, that is, not just in my...” She bit her lip, smiled and then waved one hand in the air. “Anyway, it was rude and I’m sorry.”
“Think nothing of it.” Clark could not think of any woman, either known to him in business or in his private life, who would have reacted so openly, so honestly, so overtly. In fact, she could not have been less subtle in her flustered chagrin, Clark decided, feeling his smile grow from practiced gesture to genuine enjoyment, if she were choking on a chicken bone. And that endeared her all the more to him. He extended his right hand. “Please, do call me Clark.”
“Clark,” she repeated. Her gaze sank into his, shining with blatant admiration, he assumed, and hoped he wasn’t too big-headed for making that assumption. Her small hand became a perfect fit inside his larger one. Her fingers curled around his and she lowered her chin just enough that her lashes created an enticing veil over her pupils as she murmured, “And you can call me—”
“Rebecca,” he concluded, wanting to let her know he had not forgotten how she had first introduced herself. Clark was a detail man and he had no compunction in letting everyone involved with him know that up front. Not that Miss Rebecca Taylor was in any way now—nor was she ever likely to be—involved with him. He released her hand. “Or is it Becky?”
“Becky is fine, thank you.” She tucked her hands behind her back, then folded them in front, then let them fall to her sides. “I’m sorry again about calling you by your first name like that. It was so presumptuous of me, but after our little run-in, I just sort of thought of you as...well, I just sort of thought of you as a Clark and not a—” she made a dour face “—Mr. Winstead.”
“Well, I am pleased to see I did leave a...lasting impression on you.” He let his gaze linger in hers until she looked away. “And happy to report the impression my heel left on your silver charm was not quite so everlasting.”
He dipped into his pocket and pulled out the box, offering it to her the way one might tempt a high-strung pony with a sugar cube—the box resting in the center of his outstretched hand.
“Why, thank you. You really didn’t have to do this, you know. Just sending it back to me would have been enough.”
Enough for her, perhaps, but Clark needed to see this thing safely and satisfactorily through to the end. Or so he told himself. That’s why he had gone to such great lengths to return the trinket.
“Or I could have come down to your office and picked it up myself.”
“No. I don’t mind doing it, really.” Besides, the idea of this woman loose in his office with her lethal umbrella, her pointedly honest opinions and...those great big angel eyes... Clark blinked at the turn of his thoughts, then shook his head, half-expecting to hear his suddenly short-circuited brain rattling. Even after doing it, he realized he could think of worse things than having Becky in his office, much worse—like perhaps never seeing her again.
She took the box, and just as her fingers brushed his palm, he closed his hand.
She raised her questioning gaze to his but said nothing.
He pressed the pads of his fingertips to her skin, the box still between them. Once he let go, he would have no reason to see her again—unless he made a reason. The picture of Becky dressed, as he could provide for her, in extravagant jewels and designer clothes, or perhaps in just the jewels without the clothes—sprang to mind.
Why not? Why not ask her out, set her up in a nice apartment, give her charge accounts, take her to the finest restaurants, show her the world? It might be a fun diversion for both of them for a while, until it played itself out as those things always did—always. Clark placed his other hand beneath hers and narrowed his eyes, fully prepared to make the spontaneous and quite magnanimous, to his way of thinking, proposal.
Proposition, he corrected mentally. He was not making a proposal; he was making a proposition. Plain and simple. The distinction might be subtle, but it was very real, especially with someone like Becky.
He studied the open expectation on her face, the way she looked up at him and in so doing looked up to him. He drew in the smell of the comfortable old building and the apple aroma of the young woman’s shampoo, which seemed to so suit her. This was not the kind of girl a man propositioned—not unless he wanted a sharp, well-deserved slap in the face. He relinquished her hand.
“Um, thanks. Thank you.” She curled the box close to her chest and smiled up at him without even inspecting the charm.
She trusted him. It showed in her action and in her eyes and it clawed at Clark’s conscience.
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