The Lost Springs Ranch for troubled boys is at stake, and it’s a man’s duty to give back…

…So there’s going to be an auction!

Bachelor #4

Name: Amos Pike, 34

Occupation: CEO of Pike’s Pickled Peppers Toy Company

Biggest Achievement: Smiles on children’s faces

Bodyguard Meg Loria had never before drawn such an assignment from her family’s security firm: successfully bid on a gorgeous guy at a charity auction, hole up alone with him in a secluded cabin so she could protect him from his rivals without his knowledge, and then try—just try!—to keep her mind strictly on her work.

Sugar Spinelli’s

Little Instruction Book

Have to admit, this one has style. The way he has that tux jacket slung over his shoulder…very devil-may-care. And carrying a stuffed toy polar bear dressed in a tux to match his own is a really nice touch!

Says he runs a toy company. That explains the polar bear. And he likes kids. He also likes the redhead in the front row, by the looks of things. Now she seems really determined, but she’s gotta have some stiff competition. Let the games begin!

Dear Reader,

We just knew you wouldn’t want to miss the news event that has all of Wyoming abuzz! There’s a herd of eligible bachelors on their way to Lightning Creek—and they’re all for sale!

Cowboy, park ranger, rancher, P.I.—they all grew up at Lost Springs Ranch, and every one of these mavericks has his price, so long as the money’s going to help keep Lost Springs afloat.

The auction is about to begin! Young and old, every woman in the state wants in on the action, so pony up some cash and join the fun. The man of your dreams might just be up for grabs.…

Marsha Zinberg

Editorial Coordinator, HEART OF THE WEST

His Bodyguard

Muriel Jensen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

A Note from the Author

I loved Amos Pike the moment I saw his face. I create characters by finding likenesses in a magazine and posting them above my computer. After studying them for a while, I see beyond the toothpaste or designer clothes they were intended to promote and get a glimpse of the person inside.

I found Amos in a dress shirt, slacks and suspenders in a men’s fashion magazine. He looked thoughtful and sexy, and a little bit bored. He didn’t appear to need a bodyguard, but life—and, therefore, fiction—is about getting what you get instead of what you want.

Meg was in a shampoo advertisement, fresh faced and eager, looking as though she needed something to do.

So I put Amos in the arena in the Lost Springs Ranch for Boys benefit auction, and Meg in the crowd with the bidding money in her hands.

Here’s what happened!

Muriel Jensen

P.O. Box 1168, Astoria, Oregon 97103

To Ros and Jon Lund—good companions and great fun!

Muriel Jensen is acknowledged as the author of this work.

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 ONE

“YOU VOLUNTEERED ME for what?” Amos Pike lay sprawled on his stomach on the beige-carpeted floor of his office. He was looking up in dismay from a half-constructed toy lunar module to focus on Jeannette Boradino, his administrative assistant.

She smiled. He always worried when she smiled. She ran the business offices of the Pike’s Pickled Pepper Toy Company with the precision of a military operation and the no-nonsense attitude of a general. Clients loved her because she got things done, employees respected her because they knew where they stood with her, and manufacturers feared her because she accepted no excuses. Tall and statuesque and always impeccably attired in a neutral-color suit, she had the physical presence to back up her approach to business.

At 41, she’d had almost twenty years’ experience in office management, four of them with Amos. She never smiled unless she had something to put to him that she knew he wouldn’t like.

“I volunteered you for a bachelor auction.” She dropped a folder on his desk and tapped it with the tip of her forefinger. “Airline tickets and itinerary.” Then she walked briskly across his office and adjusted the blinds to let in more sunlight. “Don’t forget you have lunch at the Top of the Mark at one o’clock with the Dream Stores people. I have a lunch date myself. I’ll try to be back punctually, but it’s with the headmaster at Kyle’s school, and he does tend to go on.” She headed toward the door.

Amos was on his feet and in her path in one swift, easy move. “Not so fast, Jeannette.” Usually relaxed and unflappable, he did his best to look severe. And when he thought about parading down a runway while women assessed his attributes, looking severe wasn’t difficult.

“I’ve asked you not to commit me to anything without checking with me first.” He frowned down at her. “You’re usually very good about that.”

She cleared her throat and tried to stare him down. “In this case, I thought I’d save both of us a lot of time. It’s a charity event for the Lost Springs Ranch for Boys. I knew if I asked you, you’d say no, then your conscience would plague you because you’ve always contributed to every other fund-raiser they’ve approached you for. Then you’d change your mind when I’d already told them you wouldn’t do it, and I’d have to call back and say you would, and they’d have to readjust their plans. This was easier.”

He stared back at her. “You’re fired.”

She blanched. And blinked. Then her lips parted in disbelief. He saw her struggle against panic.

“I am not,” she said, her voice a little high-pitched.

“All right, you’re not.” He shook his index finger at her. “That was just to remind you which one of us is in charge here. I thought we’d already been through this with the bodyguard thing.”

“A bodyguard is a good idea. You should have let me handle...”

“Jeannette,” he interrupted firmly. “No one handles me. Not bodyguards, not strong women, not competitors out to beat me with trickery rather than talent. I have been looking out for myself for a long time. I’m good at it. Now, would you like to take another approach on this auction thing?”

Amos didn’t know much about Jeannette’s personal life, except that her husband had abandoned her before she came to work at Pike’s, and she had a twelve-year-old son in a private school. He didn’t know whether her tough-as-nails approach had developed before or after her husband left.

He only knew that to prevent her from steamrolling him, he had to be tougher than she was. She seemed to respect that.

She swallowed and put a hand up to smooth her short dark hair. She was herself again. “The Lost Springs Ranch called yesterday while you were in the production meeting and asked if you’d participate in a bachelor auction to raise money to save the facility.”

Save it? He had a running mental image of seesaws and nickel-pipe jungle gyms, the sage-and-sweet-grass Wyoming landscape—he could almost smell it now, as if he were there—and boys of all ages and descriptions, with one thing in common: they were as lost as the springs that had given the place its name.

“What do you mean, save it? What happened?”

She pointed to the folder on his desk. “Lindsay Duncan, the ranch’s owner, faxed some details. Apparently the place has come on hard times and she’s hoping the auction will help them with their financial difficulties. They’ve invited a number of former residents, including you, to come back and save the day.”

Amos had another mental image of those boys with whom he’d played and scrapped and dug his way out of despair, and wondered what kind of adults they’d become. He was intrigued by the possibility of finding out.

He stepped over the lunar module and snagged the folder off his desk.

Jeannette picked up his empty coffee cup. “I’ll refill this while you look that over. I’m...sorry if I overstepped. I thought it was important.”

He sank into his high-backed leather chair and gave her an even look. “I think so, too, so there was no reason to go around me. There is never a reason to go around me.”

She nodded docilely. “I understand.”

He studied her suspiciously for a moment, then turned his attention to the letter from Lindsay Duncan.

Jeannette walked out of the office with a determined step.

* * *

“YOU’RE SURE YOU’RE UP to this, Meggie?” It was the fourth time Meg Loria’s father had asked the question since he’d picked her up for the meeting. “I know how hard it has to be for you with—you know—having to cancel everything. But we really need you on this one.”

“It’s all right, Dad,” Meg replied under her breath as she followed the maître d’ through a sea of tables.

She was sure they didn’t need her at all, that this was simply an effort to distract her from having been left at the altar.

Well, it hadn’t literally been the altar, it had been the courthouse. Daniel was supposed to have met her there to get their wedding license two days ago and he’d never showed.

Certain he’d simply been delayed by a client, she’d called the law offices of Dalton, Emery and Flannigan and learned that as of that morning, they were simply Dalton and Flannigan. Emery had taken off with someone named Cloris Biederman for her summer home on Maui.

Having her fiancé run off with another woman had been hard enough, but when that woman was fifteen years older than Meg, it was traumatic.

Daniel’s fax, waiting for her when she got home, said that he would always consider her his friend, but that he’d come to realize she didn’t have a romantic bone in her body.

“You get better scores on the pistol range than I do,” the fax had further criticized, “and you can throw me three out of three. I’m sorry, Meg. Cloris doesn’t know which end of a gun shoots, and when I put my arms around her, she falls into them. She doesn’t throw me through a plate-glass window.”

What did he expect? When a woman was a trained security specialist, a man should think twice about surprising her from behind on a dark street in Chinatown. Meg had tried to explain that. But neither Daniel nor Jade Wing, whose tea-shop window Daniel had sailed through, had understood.

Meg forced her thoughts back to the moment when the maître d’ stopped at a table occupied by an attractive woman Meg guessed to be in her mid-thirties. The woman had gotten to her feet at their approach and now studied Meg with a frown.

Meg’s father reached around her to offer his hand to the woman. “Ms. Boradino? I’m Paul Loria, of Loria Security.”

The woman smiled and took his hand. “Hello. Thank you for meeting me on such short notice.”

“Of course. Ms. Boradino, this is my daughter, Margaret.”

The woman shook hands with Meg, then pointed her to the chair across from her. “Please. Sit down.” She reached for the arms of her own chair and was momentarily distracted when Meg’s father walked around to seat her with courtly charm. She stared at him a moment, then thanked him.

“You’re very young,” she said to Meg as her father took his place at a right angle to them. “I’m not sure this will work. Mr. Loria, I explained that the situation is dangerous.”

Meg drew a breath for patience and smiled. Rejection on all fronts was making her weirdly philosophical.

“I’m twenty-six, Ms. Boradino,” she confided. “A better shot than my brothers, and I can take you down faster than my father could.” At the woman’s startled look and her father’s quick clearing of his throat, she added quickly, “Not that he’d try to, of course. And...not you, specifically.”

Despite Ms. Boradino’s very formal manner, amusement flickered in her eyes. “Thank you for clarifying that. But when you’re forty-one, twenty-six is very young. And I don’t mean to diminish your skills, but the people I’m hiring protection against are ruthless and rather large. And...if my boss found out who you are...” She suddenly lost her air of control, reached to the middle of the table for a bread stick and snapped it in half. “Let’s just say the bad guys won’t be your only problem.”

Meg smiled flatly at her father. “Thanks, Dad. I’ve always wanted an assignment where I’m in danger from our client as well as whoever’s threatening him.”

“Now, let’s just think about this,” Paul began placatingly. “There’s no reason he has to find out you’re protecting him.” He smiled at Ms. Boradino. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? He doesn’t want protection?”

The discussion was halted temporarily when a waiter arrived with menus and to take their order for beverages. Her father, familiar with the menu, decided they should select their lunch choices, too, and made suggestions to Ms. Boradino, who looked at him as though completely fascinated.

It was the Old World charm, Meg knew. Though third generation Italian-American, Paul Loria had been raised with European manners and style. He’d tried to raise his children in the same way, but Meg’s three brothers were hopelessly contemporary, and Meg herself didn’t seem to be able to find a place where she felt comfortable.

When the waiter gathered up the menus and headed off to the kitchen, Paul nodded at their client. “Start from the beginning. Tell us everything we should know about your boss so that we can all be sure we’re doing the right thing here.”

Ms. Boradino smiled ruefully. “It’s difficult to describe Amos Pike. To say he’s a self-made man is an understatement because that only implies business success and wealth. And though he’s achieved both, his most admirable qualities have nothing to do with that. He’s a wonderful boss because he knows what he wants and he insists upon it from you, and yet he manages to help you give it to him in the way you work best.”

For someone who found it difficult to describe him, Meg thought, she was doing a thorough job. And an insightful one.

Her father apparently thought so, too. “Are you in love with him?” he asked gently.

Even Meg turned to him in surprise.

At the woman’s startled look, he replied with a kind smile, “With lives at stake, it’s important that we know everything. Relationships can make small but significant changes in our approach.”

Meg concluded that was hogwash. Her father was interested in their client and wanted to know what or who stood in his way.

Ms. Boradino shook her head. “I’m seven years older than he is.”

Paul shrugged as though that were negligible. “A young man delights in a woman with experience. Just as an older man can find rejuvenation with a younger woman.”

Meg held back a wince at her own recent proof of his claim.

Her father seemed to realize what he’d said and cast her a quick, apologetic glance.

She shrugged her forgiveness.

“We’re friends,” Ms. Boradino said. Then she seemed to reconsider. “Well, not precisely. I have trouble letting people get that close.” Then she glanced at Paul and at Meg, clearly startled that she’d admitted that much. She went on briskly. “He’s the finest man I know, as a businessman and as a human being, and I don’t want him to be hurt because of his own stubborn pride.” She seemed suddenly to notice the two halves of bread stick in her hands and dropped them onto her bread plate. Then she dusted off her fingers.

“He’s a toy manufacturer,” she said. “You’ve heard of Pike’s Pickled Pepper Toy Company?”

When Paul shook his head, Meg nodded. “Yes, you have, Dad. You bought that little boy next door the castle where you put the water in the moat and sea monsters go around in it. Remember? That was a Pike product.”

Ms. Boradino brightened. “That’s right. That was our bestseller last year.” She sobered again as quickly. “Competition for the toy market has always been very intense, but since the development of Amos’s Interactive Space Station, I’m afraid it could become...deadly.”

“Why do you say that?” Paul asked.

“It’s all been top secret, of course,” she replied calmly, though she fiddled nervously with a fork. “We even missed the February toy show in favor of this later one here in San Francisco. Amos needed to refine the software that comes with the station after NASA agreed to give him some data.” She put the fork down and met Paul’s eyes, then Meg’s. “There was a mysterious fire at our factory and a break-in at our office, and Amos was mugged by four men in his condo’s parking garage. Fortunately, one of the other residents was returning with a couple of friends and the muggers took off. I think someone was out to get the designs for the station, so Amos finally hid them. Even I don’t know what he’s done with them, or with the prototype.”

“But why the muggers?” Meg asked. “Did they think he had the plans on him?”

“Perhaps,” Ms. Boradino replied. “Or maybe it was just...revenge.”

“But that’s getting pretty personal for a business intrigue.”

Ms. Boradino spread her hands. “That was what made me suspect Jillian Chambers.”

Meg nodded, waiting for her to explain.

“She’s the CEO of Chayco Toys,” Ms. Boradino elaborated. “Pike’s only real competition in the toy market. She and Amos used to see each other—until Amos found her photographing his designs at his home one night after they’d...been together.” Ms. Boradino looked skeptical. “She still insists he misunderstood her intentions. That she was designing something similar and wanted to match the plan to hers to see if they could coordinate their designs for a joint project.”

Paul made a scornful sound. “Pretty thin excuse.”

“She’s been trying to get him back ever since,” Ms. Boradino continued, “but he doesn’t deal well with having been lied to or deceived.” She smiled wryly at Meg. “So you’ll have to be careful.”

The waiter arrived with a carafe of gewürztraminer and poured three glasses. When he left, Boradino said with a worried frown, “My real concern is that Jillian, who has always been high-strung and impulsive, has taken a dangerous turn. Her business is in trouble and I’m afraid she blames Amos for it. I wouldn’t be surprised if her intentions have changed from simply trying to get him back to ruining him. And everybody in the business is waiting to see the space station demonstrated at the upcoming toy show. The software allows a child to take trips from the space station in over a dozen directions, both factual and fictitious.”

Her voice had risen in excitement, but now fell as she added, “If Jillian can prevent him from being there with it, she can ruin him. It’s taken a great financial investment to get this far with it, and Amos has an electronics company waiting for the word to start production, depending on the reaction at the show.”

“Okay, you’re convinced the situation is desperate.” Meg leaned toward the woman. “Why is it so hard for Pike to see this? If there’s been a fire and a mugging and an attempt to copy his plans, and he still doesn’t want protection, I don’t see what we can do for him. When’s the toy show?”

“The weekend after the bachelor auction.”

Meg was confused. “What bachelor auction?”

“That’s part of the plan Ms. Boradino has come up with.” Paul raised his glass in a toast. “And it’s really rather a clever one. Shall we toast it?”

Boradino raised her glass to his.

Meg didn’t. “I think I’d like to hear the plan first.”

Paul lowered his glass with a shake of his head at their client. “Meg’s very methodical. Gets that from her mother. She’s never one to be surprised by the unknown, and exasperating as that can be for those of us in her personal life, it’s an invaluable quality in a bodyguard.”

Boradino, too, lowered her glass. “I understand completely.” She studied Meg a moment, as though measuring her ability to carry out whatever it was she had in mind. Then, apparently deciding Meg was capable, she went on to explain.

“I tried to hire bodyguards for Amos after the mugging, and he sent them away. His entire administrative staff has been worried about him. Without his knowledge, the men have taken turns following him home at night, watching his condo, watching the plant. Someone stays all night in the office.” She sighed, then smiled in self-deprecation. “We don’t really know what we’re doing, but we felt better knowing he had someone watching out for him. Then the Lost Springs Ranch for Boys called me about the bachelor auction they’re having this weekend. If they don’t get out of debt, they may have to sell out to a consortium. Amos spent eight years there as a child. They’ve invited back the former residents who are still single. I accepted for him without asking him first because a plan began to hatch in my head.”

Paul pointed a finger at his wineglass. “A plan worth toasting, Meg. If you bid on him and win, you can take him to the cabin on the lake until the toy show next weekend, and he won’t even know he’s being guarded.” To Boradino, he added in an aside, “My brother lived in Casper and he and I bought an old house together on Bluebell Lake in the Bighorns for fishing vacations.”

Meg considered her father’s plan and experienced very real trepidation. “Dad, what man would want to take off for a week to a cabin in the woods with a woman he’s never seen before? One who’s bought him at an auction!”

Paul laughed lightly. “Almost any man I can think of.”

“Dad...”

He put a hand over hers on the table. “Meggie, use your imagination. You can tell him you want fishing lessons, or a hiking companion, or you want to write a book about him. You can do this.”

That’s what he thought. She hadn’t shown him Daniel’s fax. What would a woman who was purported not to have a romantic bone in her body do with a successful young executive in a mountain cabin for a week?

Okay. There were a hundred creative answers to that question. But, those aside, what else could she do without making him suspicious?

“If you can’t help,” Boradino said, shamelessly placing the responsibility on Meg’s shoulders, “then I’m out of ideas. I don’t know where to turn. You’re the only chance we have of keeping him safe.”

Meg put a hand to her forehead, where a throbbing pain had beaten since she’d made the call from the courthouse to Daniel’s law office two days ago. Another drumming had begun in counterpoint. “What kind of scenario could I possibly make believable? I can’t pass myself off as an heiress. I just don’t have the...” She didn’t know what it was. She just knew she didn’t have it.

“He doesn’t like heiresses,” Boradino said, leaning toward her as though they were alone at a pajama party and indulging in a woman’s favorite topic. “He likes women who are real because he’s very real himself. Unfortunately, many of the women in his social circle are more interested in what he can do for them, rather than what they can do together.” She studied Meg closely, then added after a moment, “I think he’d find an honest, unpretentious woman refreshing. And once you’ve bought and paid for him—” she smiled wickedly “—he sets his own limits on what he’ll do for you. But I know him to be reckless and daring. He steps aside for no one. He’ll go with you to wherever this cabin is you were talking about.”

“And when he finds out it was all a setup?”

“The plan is mine. I’m the one who’ll have to answer for it.”

The whole idea was crazy. Meg had gained a reputation as the methodical one in her family because her life seemed to have been drafted on the principles of Murphy’s Law. Everything that could go wrong did—and frequently.

She could keep Amos Pike safe. She was sure of that. But she was worried about her ability to attract him in the first place, to convince him to take off with her for a week in the wilderness.

And even if he did go with her out of a sense of duty, she knew her own limitations. Her mother died when she was ten and she’d grown up in a family of men. While she wasn’t entirely unattractive, she didn’t know how to make the most of her attributes, partly because she never thought about them.

She worked for her father, and she spent her spare time teaching martial arts and other classes in the Women in Transition program at the community college. She lived her life in sweats, watching for trouble. Not the best way to meet men.

“Of course,” her father prodded as he swirled the contents of his glass, “if you think you’ll need backup, I could get Ben or Brian to...”

“No. Thanks.” That was dirty. He’d done it deliberately to force her hand. Meg’s brothers were the kindest, dearest men on the face of the earth, and the bane of her professional life. They were incapable of believing she could handle an assignment without one of them looking in on her. She hated that. And her father knew it.

“And I’m supposed to outbid wealthy women,” she asked him, “on what you pay me?”

Boradino straightened hopefully in her chair and Paul smiled. “Ms. Boradino’s taking care of that with the help of the rest of the administrative staff and other...undesignated company funds.”

Meg could imagine how much Pike must mean to this woman if she was willing to risk his wrath by tricking him with a bodyguard and using “undesignated” company funds with which to do it.

Somehow, Meg couldn’t find it in her to fail this woman. She picked up her wineglass. “To Ms. Boradino’s plan.”

“Bless you!” Boradino said, touching her glass to Meg’s, then to Paul’s.

Meg’s father smiled fondly at his daughter. “You’re going to have a good time with this, Meggie.”

“Mmm,” she replied. “I can hardly wait.”

CHAPTER TWO

“RED OR BLACK?” Becky Winston, director of the Women in Transition program at Wild Hills Community College, opened her wardrobe closet and pulled out two cocktail dresses. The red one was slinky and sequined, the black layered in chiffon and hanging from spaghetti straps.

Meg sat on the foot of her bed and shook her head. “They’re beautiful, but it’s not a formal occasion. It takes place in the afternoon and outdoors in an arena at the Lost Springs Ranch for Boys.”

Becky, a half inch shorter than Meg’s five-seven, and just as slender in build, had offered Meg the pick of her wardrobe when she’d complained of having nothing to wear to the auction.

She put the dresses away and pulled out beige twill trousers and a brown silk shirt, then a denim jumper that would fall just above the knee. “This looks really cute with a T-shirt. Want to try it on? You’ll wow him with your legs.”

Meg was about to deny that she wanted to wow Amos Pike, then remembered that she did. She had to make him want to go away with her for a week or the whole Boradino plan fell apart.

She pulled her slacks and sweater off. Becky dug in the drawer of her dresser and handed Meg a crisp white T-shirt.

The shirt and jumper on, Meg studied her reflection in the mirrored wardrobe doors.

Becky combed her fingers through Meg’s curly red hair. “What kind of impression do you want to make? Sexy? Powerful? Vampish?”

Meg remembered what Boradino had said. “I don’t want to strike any poses. I just want to be me.”

Becky winced. “No, you don’t. Let’s face it, Loria. What you are right now is Chuck Norris in a skirt. What we want him to see is the woman inside the security specialist, the part of you that would have blossomed if you’d had a mom as a teenager. You have it all—the sweetness, the nurturing qualities, the tenderness. But you’re always thinking like a bodyguard.”

“I am a bodyguard.”

“But the body you’re guarding is yours. And we want this guy to find it.”

“No, we don’t. We just want him to find me appealing enough to come away with me for a week.”

Becky rolled her eyes. “And you don’t think your body will have anything to do with that?”

“I just don’t want him to think I bought him for a week of sex, you know? Or I’ll have more trouble than I’ll know what to do with.”

“He’ll want to think that’s why you bought him, whatever your reasons are. Now, come on. Where’s your hair clip? I swear, I’ve never known a woman who carries one around so faithfully and never wears it.”

“I want my hair to look neat,” she said, watching Becky rout through the jeans Meg had tossed onto the bed. “But the clip always bothers me after a while, so I take it out.” She caught her hair at the back of her head and held it there as Becky applied the filigree clip.

Becky stood beside her and frowned into the mirror. “Earrings,” she said, then went to her jewelry box on the dresser. “Silver and turquoise. Where... are they? Ah!”

She handed Meg a pair of large chaste silver buttons with a beadlike turquoise inset. “There you go. Now you look like a page out of an Eddie Bauer catalog. What do you think?”

Becky was right. She looked like a woman who ran a Fortune 500 company Monday through Friday and on weekends frolicked on a ranch with a handsome man in plaid flannel.

But it was a lie. And she remembered what Boradino had said about Pike appreciating honesty in a woman.

“Do not look like that,” Becky ordered, pulling several shirts out of her closet and tossing them onto the bed. She put an arm around Meg’s shoulders and pointed to the mirror. “This is the real you, Meg. Not the woman who fell for Daniel because he was the first man to notice you. He wanted the vulnerable part of you, not the strong part. You want a man who’ll appreciate all of you.”

Meg spread her arms and blew out her breath in exasperation. “The problem is I don’t know who I am. I like men, generally, but in our work with Women in Transition we hear so much about the bad ones. And when my other job is to protect people from those out to harm them, you start to see everyone as a threat. So I tried to loosen up about that, fell in love with Daniel, and look where that got me.”

“Free in the nick of time, if you ask me,” Becky said without apology. “Where’s your backbone? You weren’t the problem, he was.”

“Becky.” Meg put her hands on her friend’s shoulders and squeezed gently, apologetically. “You realize what Daniel changing his mind might do to Grandma Rooney’s endowment to your program?”

Becky nodded philosophically. “I like to think she’ll listen to reason when you explain that Daniel left you.”

Meg gave her a little shake. “Reason? Becky, we’re talking about the woman who offered blue-chip stock to Kenny Kaiser in high school so he’d take me to the prom.”

Becky smiled. “So, she’s a little...wacky. When’s she due back?”

“Next week sometime.”

Guinevere Rooney Ross, Meg’s maternal grandmother, was currently in Africa buying art for a small museum in northern California. She was in her early eighties and in good physical health. But she suffered from a form of age-related dementia that caused her to confuse and sometimes connect unrelated facts until her reality existed on a separate plane from everyone else’s.

For the past two years she’d pleaded with Meg to spend less effort on Becky’s program and more time trying to find the right man. In her mind, a woman’s happiness depended upon husband and family.

When Meg introduced her to Daniel and told her they were engaged, her grandmother had said that since Meg had done what she’d asked, she would do something for Meg. At Meg’s request, she had promised a substantial donation to the Women in Transition Center Becky had been dreaming of building for years, a place where young women without guidance or those starting over for any reason could stay until they found employment and felt secure enough to be on their own again.

“I don’t know, Becky.” Meg checked her reflection in the mirror and smoothed the jumper’s short skirt. “Grandma told me she wouldn’t do it if I chickened out.”

“But he chickened out.”

“Do you have any idea how hard it’ll be to make her understand the difference? Especially since he left with a woman fifteen years older than I am? She’ll blame me. I know she will.”

Becky put the shirts inside a black plastic suit bag. “He found her money more appealing.” Then she giggled. “And he never could get over the plate-glass window episode.”

Meg rolled her eyes. “I’m an Amazon with an inferiority complex.”

“You’re beautiful, Meg,” Becky corrected her, handing her the bag. “Remember what we’re always telling the women in the program. The past doesn’t matter. It makes no difference who tells you you’re stupid or you can’t do it, or you’re never going to make it, or it’s more than you should try for. Everything you need to succeed is inside you. You have to believe in you.”

Meg nodded. “I know that, Becky. I have faith in my ability to support myself, to make friends, to live a good life. I’m just not sure I’m destined for love and marriage.”

“That’s ridiculous. Of course you are.”

Meg decided there was little point in arguing. Becky would believe what she wanted to believe, and Meg knew what she knew. After so many years of frightening men away with her physical strength and dexterity, she’d attracted a man who’d walked away less than two weeks before the wedding.

“Well,” she said, taking a last look at herself in the mirror. She did look far more confident than she felt. “This week isn’t about love and marriage, anyway. It’s about making myself appealing enough to Amos Pike that he’ll come away with me. Then, I suppose if I have to keep him locked in a room until the toy show, I can do that.”

“You won’t have to,” Becky said, walking her to the door. “Trust me. And don’t worry about the center. I’ll just keep dreaming about it awhile longer.”

* * *

AMOS FOLLOWED the brightly lit streetlights down Main Street in Lightning Creek, Wyoming, population fifteen hundred and something, and looked around him in disbelief. Time had stopped. That was the only possible explanation. Everything he remembered was still here—the general store on the east side of the street, Ellie’s Dress Shop, Western Savings and Loan, the post office.

Across the street was Reilly’s Feed Store, Twyla’s Tease ‘n’ Tweeze—wait. The beauty shop might have been called something else back then, but it had been there. The Main Street Grill. The aroma of barbecue drifted out to him and he had to stop and breathe in a deep gulp of it.

It was twenty-five years ago. He was nine years old.

He felt a little shudder deep inside him that recalled that time even more sharply than the old familiar storefronts. It had been dark then, too, and he’d been driven into Lightning Creek by Barbara, his caseworker.

Barbara had already been working with him a year when she’d brought him to Lost Springs Ranch for Boys, a few miles out of town. She’d been kind and done her best to be supportive, but she hadn’t known what to do with him after a year of moving him from one grandmother to another, from aunt to aunt.

She’d pulled the car over right about where he stood now. He could remember staring at the floodlit statue of Wyoming’s famous cowboy on a bucking bronco that dominated the town’s center.

“Amos, please try to hear me this time,” she’d said. “You have to start helping yourself now. I know what happened to your mom and dad was a terrible tragedy, and it’s not something you can get over quickly—even a smart, strong boy like you. But you have to make a start. You have to decide you want to go on. You can’t keep running away and doing things that you know will get you hurt. That radio tower thing, Amos, was crazy! If you had fallen, they wouldn’t have found enough of you to bury. Now, I know that sounds harsh, but it’s time you...”

He could probably remember the rest of it if he put his mind to it, but he had finally found his footing here after a few rough months, and what had gone before was put away somewhere inside him with the memories of the parents he’d loved so much and had wanted so desperately to join.

It was surprising—and also humbling—to discover that despite all his hard work and success, he could still feel the loneliness that had swamped the little boy he’d been.

He pushed his way into the café, needing coffee. The square room was quietly lit to take advantage of the stone fireplace on one side. Booths lined the walls and tables and chairs were grouped in the center.

A score of tempting aromas mingled with that of barbecue, filling the air with a welcoming familiarity. Red meat had been considered a man-builder when Amos had been a boy, and the Lost Springs residents had eaten well.

When he’d been a young teenager, he and Bill Bartell, another resident of the ranch, would ride their bikes to town to spend the money they’d earned chopping wood for old Mr. Ferris, whose property had bordered the ranch. They would never miss treating themselves to a burger, fries and Coke at the café. While they ate, they would boast about their dreams for the future.

“I’m going to be a country-western star with babes following me everywhere I go,” Bill would say.

Amos had envied Bill’s single-mindedness. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Amos would say. “Be an architect, maybe. Something like that. And I’m gonna get rich. Yeah. Really rich.”

Like Bill’s dreams of stage-door babes, Amos had been sure that success in business would mean the company of women. And as a fifteen-year-old boy with raging hormones, he’d been convinced that would make up for being alone in the world. He just needed women.

The court had emancipated him at seventeen so that he could go east to college on a scholarship. He’d earned his degree in psychology with a minor in engineering—an odd combination of interests that had served him well when he turned his fascination with toys into a business.

In the years since then, he’d made friends, money and love to a number of women, but the heart of him still felt disconnected from the rest of the world. Set apart. Lonely.

The sound of country-western music and the buzz of conversation punctuated by loud laughter brought him back to the moment. He headed for the counter when he heard a voice call out from behind him.

“Pike?”

He turned to find a tall man in jeans and a Western shirt standing by a table in the middle of the room, a cautious grin on his face.

“You are Amos Pike?” the man asked. Everyone was staring at him, women particularly.

It took Amos a minute to connect the tall, broad-shouldered man with an air of celebrity to Bill Bartell, the childhood friend with whom he’d shared hamburgers and dreams of the future.

Laughing, Amos changed direction and walked into his old friend’s back-slapping embrace.

“Hell!” Bill exclaimed, taking a step back to admire Amos’s well-cut suit. “You did get rich, judging by the look of you.”

“And you got famous. I saw your duet with Alan Jackson in the video for Farm Aid. I suppose you do have babes following you everywhere.”

They sat down on opposite sides of the table. For the first time Amos noticed another man seated at a right angle to him.

“Well, Amos,” the man said, his aristocratic features elusively familiar. “Cutter Brown. You and I had kitchen detail together one month, remember? We were fencing with the brooms and managed to break all the juice glasses.”

Amos laughed again, remembering the incident clearly. “We were grounded for a week.”

“Yeah. As I remember it, we spent most of the time under the big table in the laundry room playing Lego.”

Amos remembered that. The smells of detergent and fabric softener had made it an unusually sweet-smelling construction site. “What are you doing now?”

“I’m a developer,” Cutter replied with a dry glance in Bill’s direction. “Not the babe-magnet job our buddy has. I know you’re the ultimate toy maker. I read about you in Forbes. How’d you get into that?”

“Completely by accident. Titus Toys offered me an internship after college because I had a degree in psychology and they were planning to revamp their personnel tests and evaluations. One slow afternoon I was talking baseball stats with one of the designers, who happened to mention a problem he was having with the movement on an animated tiger. I helped him rework the structure, got a friend to help on the circuitry, and that was it. They transferred me to design.”

Bill raised a hand for the waitress. Amos ordered a burger and fries. His only concession to the intervening years was coffee rather than Coke.

“Well, I can’t imagine you city slickers are going to make half the money in the sale barn that I am.” Bill punctuated the boast with a tauntingly disdainful look at his companions. “I mean, you might look good in the society pages, but in the clinches, let’s get real. Women want sex appeal and muscle. And you just don’t find that in a three-piece suit.”

Cutter sent Amos a challenging look across the table. “We going to let him get away with that?”

Amos rolled his eyes. “He’ll get set straight when we earn twice what he does. Poor man doesn’t even know that women appreciate style and polish as well as muscle.”

“Probably because he’s never had any,” Cutter added.

“Yeah.”

Bill dug into an inside jacket pocket and produced a hundred dollar bill. “This says you’re wrong, and I earn a higher bid than either of you. Can you match it?”

Amos found two fifties and slapped them on top of Bill’s hundred. Cutter wrote a check and added it to the pile.

“Who holds the bet?” Cutter asked.

Bill handed it to him. “Give it to Lindsay Duncan in the morning.” Lindsay was the daughter of the man who’d founded Lost Springs Ranch for Boys and was its current owner. “Whoever wins donates it to the cause in his name. Deal?”

They mounded hands in the middle of the table as they used to do when they were boys.

“So.” Cutter tucked the money into his pocket. “Nobody’s been married?”

Amos and Bill shook their heads.

“Engaged?”

Two more noes.

Amos leaned back in his chair as the waitress arrived with their food. When she left again, he pounded out a blob of ketchup and passed the bottle to Bill. “How have you managed to avoid the groupies?”

Bill grinned slyly. “I don’t avoid them entirely. The right one hasn’t come looking for me yet.”

Cutter frowned as he accepted the ketchup bottle. “Aren’t you supposed to go looking for her?”

Bill shrugged. “Too busy rehearsing.”

Cutter put the ketchup aside. “And you, Amos? I can’t believe toys are more fun than women.”

“They’re not. But they’re easier to deal with. I haven’t found the right woman, either.”

“And the right one would be?”

“Beautiful, amusing, nymphomaniacal—and a great cook.” He dipped a french fry into the ketchup. “I’m sure she’s just around the corner.”

His companions laughed at his prerequisites, then sobered.

“She sounds perfect,” Bill said.

Cutter nodded. “If we’re lucky, she’s a triplet.”

* * *

LORD, IT WAS HOT. Meg, accustomed to breezy San Francisco, walked the grounds of the Lost Springs Ranch for Boys and looked around desperately for shade.

The place was filled with people. Children wielding water guns ran across the grass with barking dogs in pursuit. Meg would have welcomed a good soaking herself. There were booths and tables offering crafts for sale and advertising services. The air smelled of ribs and chicken grilling on an open pit, and something fresh and wild—some herb or grass she wasn’t familiar with.

Her father looked up from a display of leatherwork, but except for a brief double-take at her appearance, he pretended not to notice her. He’d insisted on coming along to be certain everything went according to plan so that he could report back to Ms. Boradino.

Meg put her hands in the pockets of her jumper and walked on, liking the freedom and comfort of her short jumper—or, rather, Becky’s short jumper—and her low-heeled white sandals.

She’d caught her hair back in the clip and put on the silver-and-turquoise earrings. Laboriously following directions in a magazine dedicated to glamour, she’d even made a serious effort with makeup. After receiving several second looks, she was feeling a little giddy with success.

Then she reminded herself that she had yet to meet her client, Amos Pike. As far as the Boradino plan was concerned, Pike’s opinion was the only one that mattered.

A sudden attack of nervousness threatened to overtake Meg, and she headed for the shade of a spreading oak tree. She was immediately distracted by the sight of a beautiful quilt attached with clothespins to the tree’s lower limbs.

A raffle table with tickets had been set up under the tree, and a banner proclaimed Converse County Hospital—35 Years of Sharing and Caring. Behind the table, a redhead with a bright smile looked up at Meg.

“Here to take a chance on a quilt or a bachelor?” she asked.

Meg handed her a ten-dollar bill. “Both. The quilt is gorgeous. I suppose the men are, too.”

The woman handed her ten tickets. “You mean you haven’t seen them yet?”

“No.” Meg slipped the tickets into her purse.

“Well, here. Somebody left a catalog.” A glossy folder was slipped under Meg’s nose. On the cover was a picture of the ranch and bold letters that read Bachelor Auction. “You’d better hurry if you’re going to pick one out. They’ll be starting in a few minutes.”

Meg straightened and looked at the photos and accompanying bios, pretending a casual perusal. At last she found Amos Pike. And gasped.

“Aha!” The woman laughed. “You found one. I’m Twyla McCabe, by the way.”

Meg tore her eyes from the brochure and shook Twyla’s hand. “Meg Loria,” she said.

Twyla shooed her toward the deeper shade. “You’re looking a little flushed. You know we redheads can’t tolerate too much sun.”

Meg smiled and glanced once again at the photo of Amos Pike. She felt the same emotional punch to the gut she’d experienced a moment ago when she’d seen it for the first time.

She knew this man!

Oh, no one had ever introduced them, but he had Kevin Costner eyes and a George Strait smile, and she’d dreamed about him since she was twelve and the boy next door had called her a scrawny geek and told her she was too puny to grow boobs.

She’d have loved to find him to prove to him that he’d been wrong. But he hadn’t been that wrong, so she’d never made the effort.

“Lord,” she whispered to herself. “Look at him.”

He’d been photographed in a tux, dark hair side-parted and neat, eyebrows dark slashes on a broad brow, nose nicely shaped. His jaw was strong, but his smile softened it.

Her pulse began to accelerate. She had to appeal to this man, who probably had every heiress in the country and several international ones clamoring for his attention. She couldn’t do it. She simply couldn’t do it. She would have to find her father and explain that this just wasn’t...

“Favorite Song,” the bio read, “‘All for Love,’ by Bryan Adams. Best Come-on—‘May I have this dance?’ Biggest Achievement—‘The smiles on children’s faces.’”

Okay, maybe she could do it. If this bio was true, they were made for each other. He sounded like everything she’d ever wanted—and maybe a few things she hadn’t thought of.

Twyla came to put a hand on her arm. “Are you all right?” she asked in concern. “Is the heat getting to you?” She looked at the page Meg was studying, then up into her eyes. “Or is it the man?”

Meg noticed that people, women particularly, were streaming toward an arena a small distance away. A stage had been set up and a long line of men was climbing onto it.

Twyla patted Meg on the back and offered her half a cup of lemonade. “Here. It’s getting a little warm, but the sugar might help. There you go. You don’t have to bid on him, you know, then you won’t have to deal with him.”

Meg didn’t bother to explain that she wanted to deal with him. She just didn’t know what to do if he didn’t want to deal with her. And she wasn’t talking about the Boradino plan.

She downed all the lemonade and felt the sugar kick in almost immediately. Get it together, Loria, she told herself as she handed back the cup. Amos Pike was a job, and she had to be in top form to carry it out. He might be her dream lover, but she could damn well bet she wasn’t his. She would just have to get over it.

After slipping the catalog into her purse, she smiled at Twyla. “Thank you,” she said. “I think you just saved me from heat prostration.”

Twyla squeezed her arm. “Good luck in the raffle—and with your bachelor.”

Meg strode toward the arena, putting on the persona of a rich and privileged woman out for a lark. This part she knew she could do. She’d been donning personalities to see how they fit since that day when she was twelve and would have given anything to be small and blonde with a budding bosom.

Women crowded the rows of bleachers that had been set up in front of the stage. Meg pushed her way to the front and found a spot between a leggy blonde in a leopard sheath and a middle-aged woman in shorts and high heels.

Not all of the bachelors were on the stage, but she immediately picked out Amos Pike. In the flesh he was even handsomer than in his photograph. He was wearing the tux in which he’d been photographed, except that the heat had forced him to remove the jacket. It was tucked beneath one arm, and in the other he held the eighteen-inch-long plush polar bear, also in a tux, that was the trademark of his toy company.

Pike had undone the tie and the top button of the shirt, and he looked ready for action.

* * *

AMOS WAS A LITTLE surprised to find himself getting into this. Not that it was any less grisly than he’d imagined. The rowdy mob of women was cheering, whistling and hooting with easily as much enthusiasm as he’d have expected from their male counterparts if the roles had been reversed.

Except the roles never would be reversed in quite this way, he realized with a private smile. If men ever lined up a group of women on a dais and bid on them for a weekend’s services of any kind, there would be a hue and cry among feminists from Boston to Los Angeles, and the men would be up on charges.

Relax, he told himself as he watched Rob Carter, now a doctor, be auctioned off for a considerable amount of money. Don’t lose your sense of humor. This is all in fun. And all for the ranch.

It seemed only a matter of minutes before Amos took his place near the auctioneer. He turned in the direction of a few screams from the audience and smiled. The screams swelled to one loud, high-pitched, suggestive wail, and the front row of women leaned closer to the stage.

The auctioneer introduced Amos and explained that he was a toy manufacturer, repeating most of the information already in the auction catalog.

“All right, ladies,” he began. “What am I bid for a man who obviously knows how to play?”

Another raucous cheer rose from the women, and Amos tossed the Pike’s Pickled Pepper Toy Company bear into their midst. Grasping arms flailed the air for it, and the hapless bear disappeared within a flurry of tanned limbs, colorful coiffures and bright cotton prints.

Bidding began.

Please, God, he prayed silently as he smiled at the crowd. Let me bring in at least as much as the bake-sale booth.

Numbers were shouted quickly from one side of the crowd to the other.

No, Amos thought. He must be hearing things.

“Five thousand dollars!”

The bid came loud and clear—and in a disturbingly familiar voice. He turned in the direction from which it had come and picked Jillian Chambers out of the crowd.

She waved at him and blew him a kiss.

He was careful not to let the contempt he felt for her show on his face. He turned to the other side of the audience from where spirited bidding had also come and hoped for a counterbid.

A leggy redhead stood up in the front row, holding the stuffed bear he’d thrown. Blue eyes met his across the small space that separated them. She looked serious and just a little scared.

But she shouted firmly, “Six thousand!”

Jillian upped the bid another five hundred. Even the guys behind him were applauding.

“Seven thousand!” the redhead said.

“Seven thousand dollars!” the auctioneer repeated, turning to point at Jillian. “She’s getting your man, little lady! Seven thousand dollars. Do I hear eight?”

Jillian obliged.

There was a long, pulsing silence. The cloudless sky seemed to close in on them, the sun beat down and heat waves rippled over the landscape.

Amos began to make plans to buy himself out of whatever it was Jillian had in mind.

Then the redhead came a little closer, the bear clutched in her arms, her eyes still riveted on his. He waited with everyone else, unable to guess what she would do.

That fear in her eyes was mystifying, but the determination—particularly when it seemed to be aimed directly at him—was a decided turn-on.

“Ten...thousand...dollars!” she said, still staring at him.

The crowd went wild. The auctioneer went wild. Out of the corner of his eye Amos saw Lindsay Duncan jump up and down, then throw herself into the arms of Rex Trowbridge, the ranch’s director.

Women leaned back to clear a path as Jillian stormed down from the bleachers and marched away.

Reckless with relief, Amos leaped off the stage, took the redhead into his arms and kissed her.

* * *

THIS IS GOOD, Meg told herself.

No. There had to be a better word than good. But she couldn’t think of one because her brain wasn’t working. Her lungs didn’t seem to be functioning, either. And as the kiss went on one protracted moment longer, her knees lost their ability to function.

In some distant corner of her mind, she heard shouting and cheering, but all she was really aware of was the warm mouth on hers, drawing up from deep inside her the woman she’d always wanted to be—the woman she’d always known lived inside her, somewhere.

I did it! she thought as he finally raised his head and looked into her eyes. I got him!

She felt herself reeled into the warm, sexy depths of his hazel eyes and realized that that had been the easy part. Now she had to hold him for a week.

She let her forehead thunk against his shoulder.

The crowd, already charmed by his flying leap off the stage, seemed to think her reaction was understandable.

The auctioneer pointed them toward the table where the auction officials waited. “Pay up, little lady.”

Meg was grateful for Amos’s supporting arm as she headed off to pay for him. She was in trouble—in more ways than one. The budget Boradino had given her was five thousand dollars.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.