The Tycoon's Temporary Bride: Book Four (12 page)

The fact that she was thinking and talking
coherently, making decisions, expressing joy for a potential friend
and wishing her luck, meant she was bouncing back from the shock
and devastation of losing her money and her phone—well, that’s the
way it seemed outwardly.

Adam wished he knew what was going on inside
her head, behind those incredibly appealing emerald eyes of
hers.

He pulled back his hair that had become loose
and secured it at the back of his head. “Tashi, I don’t sleep with
my employees. And I don’t tolerate sexual harassment among my
employees either.” He just felt as if he needed to make that clear
to her.

She smiled. “Okay.”

He tilted his head. “Okay. Just okay?”

“Okay, I believe you.”

She believed him
. And she’d said he
was hot and sexy. His heart fluttered, and as he absorbed the
sensation, Adam realized that it was different from any he’d ever
had. It was deep and filling, yet made him yearn for more.

“I need a job. But you’ll have to pay me
under the table,” Tashi said, obviously unaware of the effect she
was having on him. “Then I wouldn’t be a burden on you. I can stay
here.” She swept her hand around in the air. “For now, until I
figure out what to do next. You’ve done enough for me. I don’t want
to cause anymore interruptions to your life.”

“You’re not a burden nor an interruption,
Tashi.” If she knew that his household staff was on hiatus waiting
for his orders to return to the estate, she’d definitely refuse to
go along with him. “You don’t have a fridge, and you just gave away
your furniture,” he said for the sake of argument. “Besides, do you
have the heart to disappoint Mindy by telling her she can’t have
the furniture after all?”

“I wouldn’t do that. I can live without
furniture for a while. I’ll buy a fridge later, or better still see
if this one can be repaired.”

“Tashi.” She was still trying to be a brave,
self-reliant soldier, and he admired her need for autonomy, but…
“No.”

She shot him a disparaging look. “Why not?
You offered Mindy a job and you’ve known her all of fifteen
minutes. Why not me? I can work. I have skills,” she said with a
stubborn jut of her chin.

Something told him that the kind of skills
she had were still very much untapped, and it would be illegal for
him to pay her to exhibit them in the state of New Hampshire—maybe
if they were in Vegas...

“I’m sure you have lots of excellent skills,
Miss Holland, but I can never hire you.” Deciding to express just
what he meant, Adam took a step forward, bringing him so far inside
her personal space, her breath fanned his shirt, and the heat from
her body wrapped around him like sparkling sunshine. He glanced
down at her hands clasped tightly together on her lap as if she
were forbidding them from reaching out to him.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he whispered,
brushing his knuckles along her cheekbones—very slowly and lightly
until heat and color illuminated the surface of her smooth tawny
skin. God, she was lovely, far lovelier than any woman he’d ever
met.

She gasped on a quiver that resonated
throughout the very core of him. Her breathing grew shallow and
heavy and her eyes darkened with uncertainty and heightened
expectations, but she didn’t pull away from him, not like she had
in the tub the other night. Her violent reaction then must have
been a by-product of her fever and disorientation, he thought.
Something had happened to her, but she wasn’t damaged to the point
where she would shy away from intimacy with a man—with him.

Their eyes locked as the tension between them
grew hot and strong, saturated with immanent passion, wistful
memories, and intrepid curiosity. It felt as if they were nowhere,
yet everywhere, floating together in a timeless atmosphere. When a
soft moan escaped her parted lips, Adam dropped his hands to his
sides and stepped back from her. He was becoming too aroused and
this was definitely not the place to indulge in those kinds of
fantasies.

She pressed a hand to her chest and took a
series of quick shallow breaths, reinforcing his suspicions that
she was still innocent, unaccustomed to the awakening of her own
sexual power and needs. She’d escaped before “they” could harm her,
and “he” was not her lover.

He cleared the passion from his throat. “This
is the reason you can never work for me, Tashi Holland. As I said,
I don’t fraternize with my employees, and you and I have been
fraternizing for three days and three nights. We’re way beyond
that, and we can’t go back.”

She didn’t refute his statement, but as her
gaze traveled down his body, he could feel the heat from her eyes,
especially when they centered on the evidence of his arousal. As he
watched her swallow and lick her lips, Adam’s own lips burned at
the thought of kissing her for the first time, and then moving
beyond that. She was definitely not a talker, but she was old
enough, and now,
well
enough to know that if she moved into
his Garden of Eden, at some point down the road, he would be
tempted to pluck her forbidden fruit and enjoy it to his heart’s
content.

His erection throbbed, and ignoring it, he
bent down and hoisted the four bags with her personal items over
his shoulders. “I’m taking these out to the car. You think you’ll
be ready to leave when I return?”

“It’s only temporary. My staying with you,”
she added in a flat voice as if her declaration needed
clarifying.

“Of course. Temporary, it is.” Adam was
beginning to dislike the sound of that word.

She rose from the bed and walked unsteadily
across the room to retrieve her backpack from the floor. She walked
out of the bedroom and the apartment without a backward glance.

Adam followed her, carrying the weight of her
life on his shoulders.

She wasn’t heavy. She wasn’t heavy at
all.

Tashi was growing stronger with each passing
day, and along with that strength came a deluge of confidence,
togetherness, and happiness she hadn’t experienced in a long
time—not since before Uncle Victor died.

She’d gained back the pounds she’d lost
during her bout with salmonella poisoning, and perhaps gained a few
more, she thought testing the waistband of her jeans. She no longer
looked like a broomstick belted upside down inside a flour sack,
like she had for the past two weeks. Her skin was subtle and
glowing and her hair had regained its shine and bounce. She felt
like a person, almost like a desirable woman again.

And she owed it all to Adam Andreas.

Setting her e-reader down on the mauve marble
table next to the mauve leather sofa she was curled up on, Tashi
glanced out the wall of glass encasing the second-floor sunroom
that overlooked the valley of Granite Falls and the surrounding
towns. It was a fifteen to twenty-minute drive to the center of
town, but from the mountaintop, it seemed much farther away.

Up here, she felt far removed from reality. A
reality she knew she’d have to return to soon. She couldn’t pretend
she was Rapunzel locked up in a castle tower forever. At some
point, she would have to face her fears and the world, and strike
out on her own again. But for now… She reached for her glass and
took a sip of the freshly squeezed orange juice Adam had prepared
for breakfast.

Tomorrow would make a week since she’d moved
into his hillside mansion and slept in his humongous white bed.
Alone. He’d been taking excellent care of her, and had been
treating her like a princess every second that they were together,
that even long after he left her, she still felt the effects of his
presence, the warmth of his smile, the deep thrilling hum of his
voice, and the affection in his eyes and accidental touches.

He’d been conducting Andreas International
business from his third-floor home office instead of going to the
hotel. Even though she’d insisted that she’d be okay, he’d refused
to leave her alone. He’d given her a tour of the house and a
partial tour of the grounds on the first day, and had presented her
with a map of the grounds—which she clearly needed to navigate
around the five-hundred-plus-acre estate.

He’d also given her a cell phone with numbers
to his cell, the house, and another private number—that only she
and his parents had access to—already saved in the first three
Favorite spots. Even though she had no one else but Adam to call,
the anxiety she’d had over the stolen one was gone. She didn’t sit
around watching it, willing it to ring so she could pick it up to
hear the voice of the FBI agent on the other end.

That short phase of her life was over. The
only way she’d ever find out if the agent was alive would be if he
made a personal appearance in Granite Falls to visit his friend.
And even then, he might not find her since she hadn’t found that
friend, and had been staying off all radars since she moved here.
Plus, she had already made up her mind to leave Granite Falls as
soon as she had the opportunity. She couldn’t expect Adam to take
care of her forever.

Tashi glanced at her camera bag lying on the
other end of the sofa. Besides her laptop, her camera was the only
valuable possession she had. She would hate to part with it, but if
push came to shove and she couldn’t find any other means of buying
a bus ticket out of Granite Falls, she’d have to sell it. She knew
she would only get a fraction of what she paid for it, and that she
might never be able to replace one of its worth, but she couldn’t
melt it down and eat it.

She’d already searched a few electronic
e-stores to see what a used camera like hers would bring in, and if
she was really frugal—ate two measly meals a day—she might be able
to feed herself for a few weeks until she could do better. Where
she would sleep and bathe on a daily basis was a different matter.
Maybe she should start checking out homeless shelters in the
southeast part of the country. It was too cold in the north to be
homeless. Florida would be a good choice. It was warm and farther
away from New York City and the people who wanted her dead.
California would be even better, but she doubted she’d have enough
money to get that far. Maybe later.

Adam hadn’t questioned her about her past or
the money and cell phone that were stolen from her, and she never
brought it up during their daily conversations. She listened as he
did most of the talking. At first it was about Andreas
International projects in the works. He’d recently purchased an old
hotel in Japan and was remodeling it into the newest Hotel Andreas.
He was working on plans to purchase a vineyard in California, and
he was opening a restaurant in Boston next year. Andreas
International was expanding in leaps and bounds.

He’d filled her in on Mindy and her new
position as a clerk in one of the boutique at Hotel Andreas. Tashi
had felt happiness for her friend, and wished she could see her,
but then had decided it was best she didn’t form a deeper bond with
her since she’d be leaving eventually. She had to protect Mindy and
her children just as she had to protect Adam.

When she’d asked him about the basketball
playoff with the boys from her neighborhood, he’d informed her that
since he suspected they would have sold his Aston Martin for
college tuition, he and his friends had agreed to split their
tuition costs between them. In return the boys would intern at
Fontaine Enterprises and Andretti Industries during their school
breaks and that they would all return to Granite Falls to give back
to their community once they graduated from college.

Tashi had been awed by the deal. It didn’t
get any better than that.

Last night, during dinner, Adam had gotten a
little more personal and talked about his childhood growing up with
Erik, and his cousin, Massimo, and later in high school when Bryce
Fontaine came to town. Adam was the youngest of the four men, and
he’d expressed his frustration at always seemingly walking in their
shadows. Yet he loved them to death—they, their wives and kids—and
would do anything for them.

“Even my cousin who had a notorious
reputation when it came to women, and who’d sworn never to get
married, is now enjoying matrimonial bliss when I haven’t been with
a woman in months.”

Months?

Was he fattening her up so he could be with
her? Tashi had dropped her gaze to her plate and toyed with her
green salad. So he was currently unattached. Surely, if he were
involved, he’d be having sex regularly. Plus, his girlfriend would
probably have already made an appearance demanding to know why he
was spending so much time caring for another woman. That’s what she
would have done if her boyfriend had been cooped up alone in a
mansion with another woman—sick or not.

“Do you want to get married?” Why the heck
had she asked him that?

He’d paused for a long time while he slowly
chewed on a mouthful of pasta. Tashi had watched him, only then
realizing the sensuousness with which he ate. He never hurried
through his meals like most men did, but seemed to take his time to
savor every single molecule of whatever was in his mouth. The
awareness had made her nipples tingle, and to her dismay, she’d
felt them straining against the silky lace of her bra. Mortified at
the prospect of drawing his attention to her breasts, she hadn’t
even glanced down to check if her nipples were poking out against
her blouse. Yeah, he’d seen her naked, and had cupped her breasts
in the palms of his hands, but she’d been half-conscious and
delirious at the time. This was different. She was extremely
conscious of his effect on her, even from across the table.

He’d taken a sip of wine then passed the tip
of his tongue across the rim of his glass to capture a wayward drop
trailing down the side. Tashi had felt a horrendous convulsion
inside the walls of her lady parts. It had been all she could do to
keep from moaning out loud. She’d never in her life experienced
anything remotely similar. It was as if she were experiencing an
internal earthquake.