The Boss's Baby Bargain

“The facts haven’t changed, Allie. I still need a wife so that I can adopt a child, and you still need money.”

“I intend to explore other avenues for the loan.” What those would be she had no idea. “I’m sorry I can’t help you with your…situation, but marriage is out of the question.”

Resting his arms on his desk, he leaned toward her. “Why?”

Why? she asked herself. Why couldn’t she marry him? Last night at two a.m., her bedsheets tangled around her legs from her restlessness, she’d had the answers. Now it seemed none of them would hold up to his scrutiny.

“Because we hardly know one another.” She groped for the words. “Because marriage…” Because marriage is far too intimate a relationship. Because it would force a false closeness on us neither one wants.

Because you kissed me.

The Boss’s Baby Bargain

Karen Sandler

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This one’s for the Barbaras: Barbara McMahon, my mentor and good friend; Barbara Stier, my stepmom and biggest fan; and Barbara Williams, my mom, who no doubt keeps them hopping up in heaven.

And special thanks to Jo Cain-Stiles for helping me understand Lucas.

KAREN SANDLER

first caught the writing bug at age nine when, as a horse-crazy fourth grader, she wrote a poem about a pony named Tony. Many years of hard work later, she sold her first book (and she got that pony—although his name is Ben). She enjoys writing novels, short stories and screenplays and recently produced her first short film. She lives in Northern California with her husband of twenty years and two teenage boys who are busy eating her out of house and home.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Epilogue

Chapter One

Allie Dickenson paused at Lucas Taylor’s office door, gulping in a breath and smoothing her hair with nervous hands.

She knocked twice, waiting for his impatient, “Come in!” before slipping inside and shutting the door. He sat behind his desk, his dark head bent to his work, his complete focus on the papers in his hands. Breath held, spine straight, she moved to stand before him, her stomach a mass of knots.

“Lucas, I need to talk to you.”

He took another moment to finish scribbling a note, then looked up at her, his gray eyes narrowing. Behind him, the morning sun streaming through the window backlit his large frame, casting his face into shadow. “Talk to me? About what?”

She slid her hands into the side pockets of her full skirt, her fingers clenching into fists. “Something…somewhat…personal.”

He just stared, still as a tiger stalking prey. She wished he’d look away…back to the papers cluttering his desk, out the floor-to-ceiling window that formed the back wall of his office. But of course he didn’t, and Allie had no choice but to meet his hard gaze.

“Personal?” He raised one brow. “As in unrelated to your job?”

“Yes…” The word came out as a near whisper. She swallowed, took another long breath. “…and no.”

As he fixed his gaze on her, the deep well of wishful thinking inside her imagined something in his eyes, something that set her heart to beating faster. Then his mouth tightened with annoyance. “I’m busy, Allie. Can you get to the point?”

The knots in Allie’s stomach froze into a sickening weight. She forced herself to loosen her fingers, ordered her shoulders to relax. Forming the words in her mind, she imagined them marching off her tongue. I need to borrow twenty thousand dollars. But they wouldn’t quite come. “This is hard for me to say.”

He waited for her to continue, fingers drumming. Then he picked up a pen, stroked its length with his fingertips. Forbidden thoughts arose in her mind as she followed his unconscious gesture. The brief panoply of images that emerged before she could banish them reminded her of all the reasons asking Lucas for a loan was a bad idea, no matter how desperate she was.

“Is this about your last raise?” he prodded. “You don’t think I’m paying you enough?”

She shook her head. “No, no, it’s not that.”

If anything, he overpaid. Since she’d joined TaylorMade Foods two years ago, she’d worked hard and had taken on increasing responsibility. But her last employee review had overwhelmed her with its glowing accolades. And the amount of her raise left her gasping. Once the problems with her father had started, though, she was glad for every penny.

“I’m probably the best paid administrative assistant in Sacramento County.” She mustered a smile and his gaze sharpened on her in a way that sent heat curling inside her. In spite of herself, she looked away briefly, then back at him. “But I’ve had some problems recently.”

Her hands had scrunched back into fists and she pressed them against her thighs. Despite the fullness of her muted floral-print skirt, he detected the motion, his gaze flicking down to her hips, then dragging back up to her face. There was a message in his gray eyes, in the sharp line of his jaw, one that reached inside her, teased her to translate it— That he was her superior, that he was fourteen years older than her twenty-six years, shrank to insignificance in the face of that enticing lure.

A stunning thought flashed into her mind. Maybe these ridiculous feelings weren’t one-sided. Maybe Lucas felt the same way. Maybe—

When he spoke, it took her a moment to understand the quiet words. “Allie, are you in trouble?”

She flushed, all at once mortified and relieved. Thank God he couldn’t read her mind. “No,” she assured him. “It isn’t that at all. It’s just—”

His phone jangled on his desk, forwarded from her own phone when she hadn’t been there to answer it. She took a step toward his desk, reflexively reaching for the receiver.

Lucas put up a hand to stop her. “I’ll get it.” He punched the lighted button on the phone console and lifted the receiver. “Lucas Taylor.”

He listened a moment, then glanced up at her. “I’ll have to get back to you, John. Give me two minutes.” Hanging up the phone, he said to Allie, “Can we finish our conversation later?”

Even as she felt relief at the reprieve, she worried that waiting would only make the words harder to say. She nodded. “Let me know when you have time.”

“You know my schedule better than I do. When do I have time?”

She squelched her irritation at his abrupt tone. She thought she’d learned not to react to his arrogance. It must be her unease about their conversation that had her off-balance. “You have an hour after lunch.”

“Come back then.” His gaze lowered to his papers. When she didn’t turn immediately, he looked up again. “Anything else?”

She shook her head. “No, nothing.” She quickly turned on her heel and let herself out of his office, shutting the door behind her.

Crossing to her desk with two long strides, she sank into her chair. Her hands covering her face, she wondered which was the biggest mess—her father’s crisis or the impossible situation with her boss.

What had started as a dimly remembered erotic dream had quickly flowered into a series of daytime fantasies that she couldn’t seem to stop. She’d allowed herself the indulgence at first because the fantasies distracted her from her loneliness, never mind the inappropriateness of the central figure. But her daydreams had recently taken on a life of their own, until the sexual images had drifted into decidedly unwanted emotions. Feelings for a man she truly didn’t know.

She dropped her hands from her face and glanced back at the door to Lucas’s office. Considering the craziness of her feelings for him, she’d nearly talked herself out of asking him for the loan. But where else could she go? She didn’t have an asset to her name worth borrowing against. Her brother and sister were both struggling to support their own families. If they knew their father’s money was all gone, they would help her in a heartbeat. But they didn’t know, and she planned to keep it that way.

Agitated, she tugged open her bottom desk drawer and pulled out a plastic bag of bread scraps. She needed to get out of the office, needed a break from the emotions churning inside her. Some time outside would give her a chance to regain a bit of calm.

Setting her phone to ring through to Lucas’s office, she hurried to the elevators and escape.

Lucas stared down at his telephone, his finger hovering above the keypad. The urgency of his business with his attorney, John Evans, had faded into the background the moment Allie had appeared in his office. What had once been an obsession had been bumped to second place just by her presence. Hell, he had completely forgotten he’d asked John to call him this morning.

All because of Allie. Allie, who had become invaluable to him in the last two years. Allie, who had single-handedly brought order to his hectic schedule and the extensive travel his work demanded.

Allie, who in the last several months had intruded on nearly every waking thought, weaving her way into his every sensual fantasy.

He knew it wasn’t right. He knew he was one inadvertent touch away from sexual harassment. Yet sometimes it was all he could do to keep himself from reaching out to test the softness of her hair, the smoothness of her cheek.

Shoving back his chair, he rose to his feet and turned to gaze out the window. Five stories below, the campus of TaylorMade Foods stretched out before him. Despite the late-summer heat of the Sacramento Valley, the rolling hills between the buildings of TaylorMade’s headquarters glowed a verdant green. Trees dotted the landscape—valley oak and scrub pine. At the center of the three five-story structures, like the hub of a three-spoke wheel, a pond glimmered in the midmorning sunlight.

The king of all I survey, Lucas thought darkly.

As he watched, a solitary swan skimmed across the surface of the pond. It was all his—the pond, the swan and its mate hiding somewhere in the reeds, the buildings of wood and stone and glass, the TaylorMade corporation. He’d worked hard for all of it, yet the sight of all that neatly landscaped beauty filled him with an edgy dissatisfaction.

Feeling a heaviness inside him, he turned back to the phone and stabbed out his attorney’s number. When John answered, Lucas didn’t waste time with preliminaries. “Sorry. What did you find out?”

John had known him too long to be put off by his brusqueness. “The county adoption agency said no way. They won’t even look at your application.”

He’d expected as much, but still the news twisted his insides. He fixed his gaze on the swan below, watching its passage. He wished he had a tenth of the serenity of the graceful white bird. “What about private adoption agencies?”

His attorney let out a sigh before he answered. “It’ll be the same story there.”

As the swan’s mate emerged from the thick cluster of reeds at the pond’s edge, Lucas caught sight of someone striding across the lawn toward the water. Allie. “Are you telling me it’s impossible?”

“I told you at the outset this wouldn’t be easy. The agencies give top priority to married couples.”

As if she were right beside him instead of a hundred yards away on the lawn below, Lucas felt heat spreading in his loins. With an effort, he returned his attention to the conversation with his attorney. “I doubt many parents could give a child what I can.”

John hesitated, as if choosing his words carefully. “Materially, no.”

Lucas heard the unspoken message, the one the usually straightforward John had danced around since Lucas had first announced his intention to adopt. With his wealth, Lucas could give a child anything he or she might desire. As for what the child might need…

He watched Allie reach into the plastic bag she’d brought with her and toss something out onto the pond toward the swans. The grace of her every movement drew him, set off an ache inside. “What about that attorney friend of yours?”

“The teenage girl he represents already found placement for her baby with a young couple.”

The swans approached the grassy shore in tandem, gobbling up the treats as they swam. Allie reached precariously out over the water to drop more bread scraps for the birds, then straightened to empty the last of the bag. Lucas took too much damn pleasure in watching her movements, as lithe as the swans she fed.

He turned resolutely away from the window. “You said he came in contact with a number of unwed teenage mothers.”

“He does,” John said slowly. “Look, I know I’ve mentioned this before and you’ve dismissed it outright—”

“No,” Lucas said, knowing where John was leading.

He continued doggedly, “—but you really ought to consider a more conventional—”

“No.”

“Just because your marriage with Carol didn’t work out—”

“No. I won’t marry.”

There was a long silence as John seemed to digest his flat refusal. “Then forget about adopting. You’re forty years old—”

“Is it a matter of money?” He couldn’t help himself; he turned back to the window. But Allie had gone, no doubt back into the building. The swans drifted together across the pond. “If greasing the wheels would speed the process—”

“There aren’t any wheels to grease. Hell, you can’t buy a child.”

Self-recrimination settled inside him, sharp and bitter. This was exactly what he had feared. That despite good intentions, what was most crucial for a child was beyond his capacity to provide. “John, I’ve got to go. Get back to that attorney friend and get another referral.”

“If you’ll think about my suggestion.”

He wouldn’t, but no point in telling John that. “Call me later in the week.”

Slipping the phone back into its cradle, he tugged open the middle desk drawer to retrieve the bottle of antacids. He tossed three into his mouth and chewed the tart, chalky tablets with a grimace. He’d been downing far too many of the antacids, a point his doctor had made at his last checkup a couple months ago. His doctor had told him to relax, to slow down, as if that would cure what was eating away at him inside.

Women and their damn biological clocks didn’t have anything on his own urgency for a child. Everything he’d worked for for the last twenty years, every goal had narrowed down to a single purpose—to provide for his progeny. He had amassed a fortune, more money than a man could spend in his lifetime, and everything in him insisted he pass it on to someone. No brothers or sisters, no parents—a knot twisted inside him painfully—he had to give what he possessed to a child, a child of his own.

He didn’t completely understand his own motives. As a boy, he’d dreamed of wealth and riches. He’d longed for something as simple as a home of his own during the long, lonely nights spent in a strange bed at yet another foster placement. If he could save even one boy or girl from a life like his, it might begin to make up for those years of deprivation.

Or at least that was what he told himself.

He never would have let Carol go if he’d felt the urgency for a son or daughter so strongly seven years ago. He would have found a way to keep her. Never mind that there was no love lost between them, he would have tied her down somehow. Hell, he might have even made her pregnant, if he could have been sure the child would inherit her genes and not his. It was just as well he’d felt differently then. To have brought a child into a marriage like his and Carol’s would have been cruel.

He pressed his palm against the wall of glass behind his desk, gazed down on his domain. The swan and her mate had disappeared back into the reeds. The breathless stillness of late summer left the man-made pond surface mirror-smooth, forming a near-perfect oval. That was his life, a construction of perfection, from the neatly manicured lawns of the TaylorMade campus to the sleek barren lines of his home in nearby Granite Bay. From the artwork lining the walls of his home to the acres of tastefully decorated office space, he lived a perfect life.

If only his soul weren’t so damned empty.

Shooting the cuffs of his jacket, he checked the time on the slim gold watch on his wrist. He had a meeting scheduled in ten minutes with research and development in one of the other buildings. Then there was a lunchtime interview for a project lead position opening up soon. Then, finally, he could return to his office and resume his conversation with Allie.

Although talk was the last thing he wanted to do with her. He wanted her in his arms, pressed against his body. He wanted to bury his face in the silk of her hair, to grab a handful of her soft skirt and ease it up her legs. To inhale her beguiling scent and trail his tongue down the slender column of her throat.

Good God, what the hell was he thinking? Gritting his teeth against his body’s response to the all-too-vivid images, he slammed his chair into the well of his desk. Gathering up the papers scattered across the desk, he stuffed them into his briefcase and headed for the door.

Allie wasn’t at her desk—thank God for that. Lord only knew what he might do with the tantalizing images still dancing in his head. Stepping past her desk, he headed for the elevators and slapped the down button.

When the elevator door opened, he wasn’t prepared for the sight of Allie inside, head bent down, arms crossed over her middle. When her head swung up and she met his gaze, the impact of the visual contact felt as physical as a punch to the gut. The eager fantasies started up again, made more real by her presence. His hungry gaze took in the picture she made—her wary green eyes, the silky dark hair brushing her shoulders, the contrast of her pale arms to the copper-colored shell top she wore. Her flowered skirt reached nearly to her ankles, but somehow it was more provocative than the shortest of minis.

The door started to close; he reached out a hand to stop it. Her gaze fell from his as color rose in her cheeks. She moved past him out of the elevator. “Sorry,” she said, her low voice setting off new flares inside him.

He stepped inside the elevator, keeping a hand on the door. “I’ll be over in R and D.”

She seemed to want to look anywhere but at him. Good God, had she somehow picked up on his ridiculous middle-aged fantasies? That would be a disaster. At the least she’d want to transfer into another department. At the worst she might leave TaylorMade entirely, take a position at another firm.

The elevator buzzed, cutting into his thoughts. He wished she’d look up at him, so he could try to read what might be on her mind. The elevator buzzed again, so he called out, “See you after lunch,” then let go of the door. Just before it shut, she did look up at him, but damned if he could interpret what he’d seen in that brief glimpse of her green gaze.

As he rode the elevator down, his stomach roiled with an unfamiliar anxiety. The sudden fear that Allie might leave, that his own lack of control might have driven her away dug its claws into him. When he should have been planning for the meeting ahead of him, his mind wouldn’t leave that fear alone.

Was that what she’d come to talk to him about this morning? That she planned to leave the company? Despite his every effort to keep his feelings hidden, had she somehow sensed his passion for her? Lord, no wonder she’d seemed so skittish. She was probably afraid he’d make a play for her at any moment.

He was such a damned idiot. Striding through the downstairs lobby, he gave the glass door leading to the outside a savage push. As he followed the concrete pathway leading to the next building, he ran over and over every nuance of what Allie had said—and hadn’t said—this morning.

As he did, snatches of his conversation with John interwove themselves in his mind with images of Allie, and a preposterous idea floated briefly into his consciousness. He didn’t allow himself even a moment’s consideration before abandoning the notion. Instead he concentrated on the points he would use to counter Allie’s intent to leave.

He’d convince her that her impressions were wrong. That what she’d sensed from him had been merely his admiration for her abilities as his admin assistant. Because that was all that really mattered—her value to him as an employee. The rest was just his ill-timed lack of control, a weakness of approaching middle age.

Tugging open the door to the research and development building, he forced his attention back to his scheduled meeting. For the next hour he kept his focus there, his mind straying to thoughts of Allie no more than a half dozen times during the meeting.

When Allie returned to her desk after lunch, she found a yellow sticky note on her phone. She recognized the handwriting on it immediately as Lucas’s hasty scrawl.

Problem in R and D.

Have to postpone our meeting.

—L.

She stared at the brief message with Lucas’s extravagant looping L at the bottom. He’d taken the time to write her a note? Ordinarily he’d bark out a few words to whoever was nearby, leaving Allie to ask around to discover his whereabouts.

She was even more surprised when he called twenty minutes later, launching into his explanation without even a hello. “The developers and marketing are at each other’s throat. This might take the rest of the day.”

Even the sound of his voice set off a trembling inside her. Eyes shut, she held the phone to her ear and willed herself to be calm. “No rush,” she said, even though her father’s dilemma pressed in on her. “We can try again tomorrow.”

He paused, piquing her curiosity further. “What about dinner? Are you free?”

“Dinner? Tonight?” She had nothing planned, but dinner with Lucas seemed terribly…intimate. Part of her ached to say yes even as her mind warned that she would be treading into dangerous territory.

“If you have a date…”

“No,” Allie said quickly. “Dinner tonight would be fine. What time?”

“Six? Gives me a deadline for this group.”

A deadline. Of course. Dinner with her gave him an excuse to call an end to what would likely be an interminable meeting. There was nothing intimate about it.

“Six is fine. I’ll meet you in the lobby.” She pulled his calendar toward her, determined to be businesslike. “What about your afternoon appointments?”

“What have I got?”

“Two meetings, another interview.” She read the details from the calendar.

“Attend the meetings in my place. Get Randy Sato to do the interview. Got to go.”

“See you—” But he hung up before she could get the words out.

Allie sagged back in her chair, trying to quiet the clamor inside her. This couldn’t go on much longer, her feeling this way and working so closely with Lucas. She had to get over her silly schoolgirl crush. Before long, someone would notice. At the least, it would be terribly embarrassing. At the worst, she might well lose her job.

She didn’t even want to think about that possibility, not with the situation with her father so dire. She had to keep a level head, for her father’s sake.

Turning to her computer, she printed off the documents she needed for the two afternoon meetings, then caught up on some correspondence. When the time for the first meeting rolled around, she had her focus back, her mind on work. Yes, she had to return to her desk twice before she’d even reached the elevator—once to get her laptop, once to retrieve the papers she’d carefully printed for the meetings. And she did draw a blank on the names of two of the attendees—people she’d known for the entire two years she’d worked at TaylorMade. But her dinner with Lucas didn’t intrude on her thoughts at all.