12
ANDREW WAS HAVING trouble concentrating on work again Friday afternoon, something that had been occurring with disconcerting frequency lately.
He’d been sitting at his desk all morning, trying to immerse himself in correspondence and reports. He usually liked total silence when he concentrated, so the door to his luxurious, soundproof office had remained closed. His staff rarely approached him at work unless he summoned them, or unless they had something vitally important to report to him. He’d had several hours of solitude and silence that morning. And it was driving him crazy.
It was almost enough to make a man want to keep a cat in his office. Just for the companionship.
He thought of the cat waiting for him at home. The orange stray that he’d impulsively adopted, that Nicole had named Solomon. That thought, of course, led right back to Nicole—who was really all he’d thought much about that day, anyway, despite his halfhearted efforts to concentrate on work.
She was moving out this weekend. She’d been casually bringing up her plans since she’d first mentioned finding the apartment last Friday. Each time she’d started talking about it, Andrew had either changed the subject or gone stonily silent.
He couldn’t make her stay at his house if she didn’t want to, he thought, but he had no intention of feigning enthusiasm about her new place.
He shifted restlessly in his chair, and the frame squeaked. The shrill sound practically echoed in the silence of his office. Suddenly spurred to action, Andrew planted his hands on his desk, shoved his chair backward, and pushed himself to his feet.
He had to get out for a while. Away from the silence, away from his thoughts.
He threw open the door and went through the reception area. His secretary’s desk was unoccupied; she’d taken a late lunch. Andrew hadn’t eaten. Maybe he’d head down to the cafeteria, he decided. He ate there occasionally, though not often, since his presence seemed to intimidate the employees who lunched there.
He tried to slip in unobtrusively. He made his selections—a bowl of vegetable soup, a cornbread muffin and a fruit compote for dessert—from the deferential food servers, and then carried the tray to a small table in one corner of the room. Those diners who spotted him straightened in their seats and nodded respectful greetings. A few glanced at their watches and hastily headed back to work.
He wasn’t an ogre, Andrew thought irritably as he slid into his chair. Hardly a cruel taskmaster. He’d made it his practice to leave the daily supervision of employees to his personnel director and the individual department heads. He occasionally hired or fired within the higher echelons of the corporation, of course, and he knew more about what went on within the company than some might have thought. But he’d never flogged anyone.
Just because he wasn’t one to go around grinning or making small talk all the time, did his staff have to act as though he might bite them if they called attention to themselves?
He wouldn’t have minded engaging in a casual conversation, as the others around him were doing with their co-workers. He liked human companionship as much as the next guy, when he wasn’t trying to concentrate on a business problem. But how was he supposed to enjoy a conversation with people he intimidated so badly?
As he ate, he searched the room for one of the company executives, rather disappointed when he didn’t find any of them in the cafeteria. The executives tended to be somewhat more comfortable with Andrew, though he wouldn’t call his relationship with any of them particularly intimate.
His father and grandfather had always warned him not to get too friendly with people who worked for him, even in high levels of the corporation. Doing so, they’d told him, was asking for trouble. He might as well extend an invitation for employees to take advantage of him. Friends were to be cultivated within one’s social circle, not within the business environment.
He was beginning to question some of the advice the other Andrew Tylers had given him. Carefully following their suggestions had left Andrew without any friends to speak of. And it had taken him thirty-four years to realize it.
A sudden squeal from across the room caught his attention. He watched as a group of women, who hadn’t noticed him, suddenly leapt out of their seats and descended on the blushing, red-haired young woman who sat at the head of the table. They hugged her and patted her back, making Andrew wonder what the celebration was about.
Whatever it was, everyone certainly looked happy, he thought a bit wistfully.
“Hey, Marty!” one of the women called to a young man in another corner of the room, whom Andrew recognized as a clerk in the shipping department. “Guess what. Donna’s going to have a baby!”
From all around the cafeteria, people drifted over to the table to shower felicitations on the beaming young mother-to-be. Andrew quickly finished his lunch, torn between pride that his employees apparently maintained a pleasant and friendly working environment, and a touch of envy at their comfortable camaraderie.
He disposed of his tray and used dishes, then crossed the cafeteria. One by one, the chattering group fell silent as they watched him approach.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Tyler,” one of the older women spoke up bravely. “We were all just about to get back to work.”
He nodded, trying to keep his expression pleasant. He was aware that this lunch shift wouldn’t end for another ten minutes or so, and he didn’t want them to rush out because of him. “I couldn’t help overhearing the announcement,” he said to the wide-eyed Donna. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you, Mr. Tyler,” she said, blushing more vividly. “My husband and I are really happy about the baby. It’s our first.”
He smiled, trying to ignore another twist of envy. “Then please convey my congratulations to your husband, as well.”
“Thank you. I will.”
He nodded and turned away.
He caught a few snatches of whispered conversation behind him....
“Wow! Did you see that? He smiled.”
“I thought he was very nice.”
“I was so scared, I nearly fainted!”
Andrew thought the latter might have come from Donna. He didn’t look back to indicate that he’d heard anything. He certainly didn’t want to be responsible for causing a pregnant woman to faint, he thought ruefully.
He headed back to his office, nodding pleasantly to those he passed along the way. Reaching his door, he steeled himself for the silence and solitude he would find inside.
It reminded him all too painfully of how quiet and lonely his home would be after Nicole moved out.
HE FOUND NICOLE in his bedroom. She sat cross-legged on the bed, twisted into an odd position as she painted her toenails a bright watermelon red. Solomon was curled at her side, carefully grooming his paws as though in imitation of her. Country music blared from the clock-radio on the nightstand. Nicole hummed along.
The utter rightness of the scene hit Andrew with an almost physical blow as he stood silently in the doorway, watching her. His fingers curled at his side.
Before he could speak, the song ended. In a rather frantic movement, Nicole snatched up the telephone. She held it to her ear for a moment, her fingers poised over the buttons, apparently listening to the D.J.’s babble. And then another song began and she sighed and replaced the receiver without dialing.
Andrew frowned. “What was that all about?”
With a gasp, Nicole jerked around to face him. The cat meowed in startled reaction to her movement.
Nicole gave a breathless laugh. “Andrew! You startled me. I wasn’t expecting you yet.”
“I managed to get away early today.”
“Really? Good for you,” she said approvingly, setting the tiny bottle of nail polish aside. It didn’t seem to bother her that she’d painted only eight nails. She climbed off the bed and padded over to kiss him. “Hi.”
He restrained himself to a light kiss in return, though he was tempted to throw her on the bed and let her know just how deeply it had affected him to come home and find her there. “Hi, yourself.”
“Solomon and I are trying to win a contest,” she explained, waving a hand toward the radio. “Sometime in the next hour they’re going to play the sound of a foghorn at the end of a song. The tenth caller afterward wins a thousand dollars.”
“I see.”
“Do you mind if I finish my nails? I only have two left,” she said, balancing on one bare foot as she held the unfinished one in the air for him to see.
He nodded. “Go ahead.”
She settled back onto the bed with the nail polish. He took the chair, pulling it closer to her. Solomon leapt into his lap and presented his head for a welcome-home rub. Andrew absently stroked the cat, hearing its rumble of approval as he suddenly, sinkingly, noticed the partially filled suitcase sitting in one corner of his bedroom.
He cleared his throat, which had suddenly gone chokingly tight. “I see you’ve started packing already. So you must have got the apartment you were looking at.”
Concentrating on her painting, she nodded absently. “Mmm. Yes, I did. It’s really cute. I think you’ll approve.” When Andrew didn’t comment, she continued. “I’ll take these things over early in the morning so I’ll have part of the afternoon to retrieve some of my other belongings from storage. I’d like to get somewhat settled in before I go to work tomorrow evening.”
“I had planned to go to my office in the morning, but if you need me to help you move, I can change my schedule,” he offered reluctantly. He’d rather cut out his tongue than help her move out of his house, but he felt obligated to at least go through the motions of offering assistance. He wished she didn’t look so damned pleased about her new home.
She could at least pretend to be sorry to leave him.
“About your new apartment...”
“You do want to check it out, don’t you?” she asked with a smile. “I assure you it’s in a perfectly safe neighborhood and has a security guard and everything.”
He shook his head. “That’s not what I—”
“I want you to be my first dinner guest. I’m a lousy cook, but I grill a pretty decent steak and anybody can make a salad. Will you come?”
He tried to be pleased that she still wanted to see him after she moved out. They weren’t splitting up, he reminded himself. She was simply moving into her own place. Claiming her space. They could still date. Have dinner. Spend the occasional night together. Maybe she’d give him a key to her apartment.
He touched a hand to his stomach, wondering vaguely if something he’d eaten at lunch had disagreed with him. He was suddenly feeling rather nauseous.
Apparently bemused by his silence, she cocked her head and frowned comically at him. “You don’t think I can handle a steak and salad? You think I’m going to poison you or something?”
He sighed. She was being very difficult to talk to this afternoon. “Of course not. What I want to say is—”
“Hang on.” Nicole snatched up the telephone and waited breathlessly as the last twangy notes of the song ended.
And then she sighed and recradled the receiver when another song immediately began. “No foghorn. Now, what were you saying?”
“How much do you like the apartment?” he blurted.
She considered the question a moment, then shrugged. “It’s nice,” she conceded, capping the polish. “Hardly luxurious, but better than some places I’ve stayed. If Mom comes to stay with me for a while, I’ll have to sleep on the couch, but it won’t be the first time for that, either. But, for the money, it’s not a bad apartment, and it’s furnished, which is another plus. Why do you ask?”
“I’ve really enjoyed having you here,” he said, not exactly answering her question.
She smiled a bit mistily. “I’ve really enjoyed staying here,” she said softly. “You’ve been wonderful to me. I guess you never dreamed when you left for your club on New Year’s Eve that you’d be bringing home an unexpected houseguest.”
“No,” he admitted.
Two weeks and two days ago, he hadn’t even met her. And now he found himself wondering how he would ever get by without her.
“Poor Andrew. It was certainly an eventful New Year’s Eve for you, wasn’t it? Everything that could go wrong did.”
He shook his head. “Not quite.”
As far as Andrew was concerned, none of the bad things that had happened had overshadowed the wonder of having Nicole come into his life. “I’ll always remember that night, Nicole.”
She glanced down at her drying toenails, almost as though she wanted to evade his eyes. “So will I,” she said, so softly he hardly heard her.
“Nicole, I—”
She snatched up the telephone, fingers poised for dialing.
Andrew exhaled gustily. Why were country songs so damned short? “I’ll give you a thousand dollars if you’ll stop doing that!” he snapped, his nerves shredding his patience.
Her eyes widening, Nicole hung up the phone. “I’m sorry. Was there something you wanted to say?”
Hell. He sighed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. It’s just that I...”
“That you what?” she prodded when he hesitated.
He opened his mouth to tell her that he didn’t want her to go. How could he be satisfied to see her only occasionally when he’d grown accustomed to having her sleep in his arms, to seeing her smile first thing every morning? And if their schedules remained as they were now, he knew their time together would be limited and frustrating, at least as far as he was concerned.
And then he swallowed the words as he wondered bleakly what he had to offer that she wouldn’t find for herself in her new apartment. They’d known each other only two weeks, he reminded himself brutally. She would think he’d lost his mind if he proposed marriage now. She would probably be right. Because that was exactly what he wanted to do.
He didn’t want to date Nicole. He wanted to marry her. He wanted to have a family with her.
He’d known those staggering facts since the moment he’d first laid eyes on her. And she would probably think him insane if he said so.
A streak of cowardice he didn’t want to examine too closely kept the impulsive words locked inside him. He knew of only one way to let her know how much she had come to mean to him in such an incredibly short time.
“When do you have to leave for work?” he asked abruptly.
She glanced at the clock. “I’ve got another half hour or son.”
“Then we’ll have to hurry, won’t we?” He was already unbuttoning his shirt as he rose from the chair and stepped toward the bed.
Her eyes widened, then twinkled. “Yes, I suppose we will,” she murmured, setting the nail polish aside and opening her arms.
He was lowering her to the bed when they both heard the sound of a foghorn. Andrew covered Nicole’s lips with his own and reached out to turn off the radio.
Nicole smiled against his mouth and pulled him eagerly closer.
ANDREW HELPED Nicole carry her bags to her car the next morning. Appropriately enough—at least in his mind—it was a gloomy day. Heavy gray clouds hovered low overhead. A cold wind moaned around corners and cut through layers of clothing. The air was heavy and damp, warning that the predictions of snow had a good chance of coming true.
Nicole slammed the lid down on the overloaded trunk of her little car and turned to Andrew. She shivered in a leather bomber jacket that was too thin for the frosty temperature. It bothered him that she never dressed warmly enough. It would be a wonder if she didn’t come down with pneumonia or something, he fretted. And who would take care of her when she was all alone in a tiny apartment?
Biting his tongue to keep from voicing the comment, he reminded himself that Nicole didn’t need anyone to take care of her. She was as capable of taking care of herself as anyone he’d ever known. Damn it.
“Well,” she said, her smile a shade too bright, her eyes not quite meeting his. “I guess I’m ready.”
“You’re sure you have everything?” You’re sure you want to do this?
“Yes, I’m sure,” she replied airily, and he almost fancied she was answering both the spoken and unspoken questions.
He nodded and shoved his hands into the pockets of his warm, down-filled jacket. His face felt frozen into an expressionless mask, though he wouldn’t have wanted to say whether it was from the cold or his determined efforts to hide his feelings from her.
Don’t leave me, Nicole. I don’t want to go back to being a robot.
“Drive carefully,” was all he said.
“I will.” She took a step closer to him, rising up on tiptoe to brush a kiss against his unsmiling mouth. “Thank you for all you’ve done for me, Andrew. I’ll call you when my phone’s installed, okay?”
He nodded, his voice lodged behind a lump in his throat. He was aware that he was showing little emotion, that he probably looked as though he weren’t at all affected by her leaving. He knew an outside observer would think him detached, unfeeling. Ashley, for example, had never understood that his inability to express his emotions hadn’t meant that he had none to express.
He and Nicole weren’t saying goodbye. Maybe, with time, he could persuade her to return. He would be patient, undemanding, give her all the room she needed until he thought the time was right to approach the subject. He would court her—patiently, logically, conventionally. How long should he wait before it would be appropriate to propose to her? Six months? A year? Two? Assuming, of course, that she didn’t drift away from him long before that much time had passed.
He shivered, but it had more to do with the cold, gray bleakness inside him than the frigid January weather.
Nicole had her hand on the handle of her car door. “I’d better go. It looks as though it could start snowing at any minute.”
His fists clenched in his pockets. He took a step backward, putting more space between them.
Nicole searched his face one more time, her own expression hard to read, and then she drew a deep breath and opened her door. “See you, Andrew.”
He watched without moving as she climbed behind her wheel, snapped her seat belt, started the engine and drove away from him.
She was gone. She’d departed his life as quickly as she’d entered it. And she’d taken with her all the warmth and color and joy that she’d brought him for such a brief time.
He turned toward his house. Back to his quiet, lonely life of tediously predictable routines. His house wasn’t exactly empty, he reminded himself, climbing the steps with heavy feet. His housekeeper and his cat waited inside for him. Both had been watching him all morning with rather disapproving looks that seemed to ask him if he was really just going to allow Nicole to leave.
Hadn’t she known that he hadn’t wanted her to leave? Would it have made any difference if he’d actually asked her to stay?
He had his hand on the doorknob. All he had to do was open the door and step inside. And he couldn’t do it.
He didn’t want to go inside. Nicole wouldn’t be there.
For the second time in as many weeks, Andrew acted entirely on impulse. He turned on one heel and bolted down the stairs, digging in his pocket for the key to his Range Rover.
DRIVING MORE SEDATELY than Andrew, Nicole had just passed the security gate when he caught up with her. With her turn signal blinking, she was sitting at the busy intersection on the other side of the gate, waiting for an opening to pull onto the street that would take her away from Andrew’s neighborhood.
He rammed the heel of his hand against his steering wheel, blowing his horn to catch her attention before she drove away. He saw her look into the rearview mirror just as he shoved his vehicle into park and jumped out of it, leaving it parked in the entranceway to the security gate.
Nicole opened her car door and slid out, her expression questioning. “What’s wrong?” she asked as he approached her in long, no-nonsense strides. “Did I forget something?”
“No,” he said, reaching out to take her shoulders in his hands. “I did.”
“You? But what—?”
He smothered the question beneath his mouth.
Oblivious to their surroundings, to the curious eyes of the security guard, to the traffic speeding by, Andrew kissed her until he ran out of oxygen. And then he lifted his head, studying her dazed expression with a fierceness he made no effort to mitigate. “I don’t want you to go,” he said flatly. “I want you to stay. Here. With me.”
“Here?” Her voice had risen half an octave as she parroted his words. “With you?”
He nodded. “That’s what I said.”
“For...for how long?” She seemed to hold her breath.
“Forever,” he said simply. “This is where you belong. I’ve known it since that first night. My life wasn’t complete until you entered it. I wasn’t complete. I don’t want to go back to the way I was before I met you.”
“Andrew,” she said, exhaling, creating a steamy cloud that hung between them. She blinked rapidly, as though overwhelmed by emotion.
Surprise? Shock? Dismay? He couldn’t quite read her expression.
His stomach tightened in apprehension. If she said no, he wasn’t sure what he would do. He hoped he would have the dignity to accept her answer with grace, rather than throwing her over his shoulder, carrying her back to his house and locking her in his room, which would most likely be his first instinct.
Then she smiled, and even he could identify the emotion. Joy.
“Andrew!” She threw herself at him, her feet leaving the ground as her arms locked around his neck.
With a startled whoosh of breath, he staggered, then righted himself, his arms dosing tightly around her. “This had better be a yes.”
“Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.” She planted kisses haphazardly on his face with each repetition.
“I need you, Nicole.” The words were difficult for him to admit, but they had to be said. He’d never been more honest with anyone.
“Yes, I know you do,” she said fervently. “I just didn’t know if you knew it.”
He frowned as an uncomfortable suspicion occurred to him. Nicole had such a tender heart. “You aren’t feeling sorry for me or anything, are you? Because if you are—”
Her laughter interrupted him. “Heavens, Andrew, how could anyone feel sorry for you? You’re practically perfect. You just need someone to love you for yourself and not for all that money and prestige.”
He caught his breath at her words. “L—love?” he repeated, almost afraid he’d misunderstood.
“Don’t you start getting cold feet on me now,” she chided, still clinging to his neck. A gust of wind caught her hair, tossing it around her flushed face, tickling Andrew’s cheek. A car horn blew from somewhere behind them, but she happily ignored it. “You’ve said you need me, and I know you wouldn’t have said that—”
“—If I didn’t love you,” he finished for her, beginning to smile. “You’re right. I do love you.”
She hugged him more tightly. “And I love you.”
“You love me?” He was having trouble believing it was really true. “It has been such a short time—”
“It took me all of two hours to fall in love with you.”
“It took me less than two minutes to fall in love with you,” he replied, shaking his head in remembered amazement. “I loved you before I even knew your name. I thought I’d lost my mind.”
She laughed. “Thanks a lot.”
He grimaced wryly. “Nothing like that had ever happened to me before. I didn’t know what to do.”
“You never let on,” she said with a shake of her head. “I couldn’t tell if you wanted me to stay or go, or if you didn’t really care one way or another—”
“I’ve always wanted you to stay. I just didn’t know how to tell you. I’m...I’m not very good at expressing my emotions,” he explained, feeling almost as though he should apologize. “I never really learned how. But with you, I’ll try. I want you to know me in a way no one’s ever bothered to know me before.”
Her smile turned tremulous. Her dark eyes gleamed softly. “I want that, too,” she whispered.
“Mr. Tyler? Hey, Mr. Tyler?” The security guard approached them quickly, sounding harried and amused all at the same time. “You’re, er, going to have to move your vehicles, sir. You’re blocking traffic.”
Andrew nodded, unable to look away from Nicole’s beaming smile. “Nicole? Let’s go home.”
She slid out of his arms just as the first flakes of snow drifted down around them. She seemed wholly unaffected by the cold. “Yes,” she said happily. “Let’s go home.”
It was the first time that he could remember that the word “home” had ever sounded so utterly right to him.