The Tycoon's Marriage Bid Read online

  Just thinking about ‘further’ made Alex hard all over again. They hadn’t even fully made love, and he’d never had a more satisfying moment than when Nikki had shattered in his arms.

  He shifted. Planted his boots a little more widely on the rail and clucked to the horses again. They picked up the pace infinitesimally.

  ‘Macfield told me he’s going to take my father’s offer,’ he said after a moment. ‘As soon as it’s officially tendered, that is, which can’t be done until RHS’s board votes on it at the quarterly meeting in March.’

  That sticking point was the only thing that had kept Alex’s father from already succeeding.

  Nikki was eyeing him with horror, and he didn’t know whether to be gratified that she seemed to have believed he could still pull the deal out of the fire, or feel even worse. Huffington was a major employer in Cheyenne, and the ripples of RHS’s maneuverings were bound to be felt, because there was no way that Alex Sr. would understand Alex’s loyalty in keeping the company headquartered in that town.

  ‘And and what about your cousin’s vote? Have you spoken with him?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said flatly. He didn’t particularly want to talk about Hunter. ‘He’ll go whichever way best feathers his nest.’

  Her finely drawn brows knit together over her elegantly shaped nose. ‘Oh, Alex. I can’t believe this.’

  She shook her head, then slapped her palm against her lap. ‘I wish there was some way for you to beat them at their own game. Take away their maneuvering power and see how they like it. They deserve nothing better!’

  For some reason, her ire improved his own mood. ‘Should’ve figured some way to set you on them,’

  he drawled wryly.

  Her lips twisted. Sympathy clouded her gaze.

  He looked out over the horses and adjusted his feet again.

  ‘You need to be back in Cheyenne,’ she said after a moment. ‘Being here with me can only have made things worse for you.’

  Being here with her made him want to stay here with her. Quite a realization considering he’d never wanted to stay anywhere away from business. ‘Macfield Technologies is based in Washington State,’ he said. ‘My being in Cheyenne wouldn’t have changed a thing.’

  ‘But you could have gone to Washington. You could have met with George Macfield face-to-face.

  You could have convinced him that his interests would be better served by hanging with Huffington.

  Macfield would end up being a household name before you were finished.’

  ‘Your confidence in me is heartening, but George’s interests are more simple than that. He doesn’t care what legacy he leaves in the field, he cares what financial legacy he leaves for his family. Can’t blame the guy for that.’

  She huffed. ‘Well, maybe not,’ she allowed. ‘But I can blame RHS.’

  He smiled wryly. ‘It’s business, Nik.’ God knew nothing stood in the path of his father and business.

  The horses slowed as they encountered another small rise.

  ‘Belle and Cage’s honeymoon is nearly over,’ Nikki said after another short silence. As if she were afraid of letting the peaceful moments last too long. ‘I can call her to come stay with me. Or I can call one of my sisters-in-law. Someone is bound to be available.’

  ‘Tired of my company?’

  ‘No!’

  He slanted a glance her way. She looked like a princess in ivory wool, with her auburn hair drifting unfettered in the breeze. Perfectly feminine and perfectly beautiful. It was a sight that would be forever etched in his brain.

  She propped the soles of her short boots on the rung next to his. The motion of the sleigh had her thigh bumping against his. ‘I still don’t understand what you’re doing here, Alex. Not when things are so critical for Huffington. But I’m glad you’re here, all the same.’ Her admission was husky.

  He pulled back on the reins and the horses obediently halted. He kicked the brake lever into place and looped the reins over the bend in it. ‘Why’d you quit on me, Nik?’

  Her gloved fingers slowly curled. Her lashes lifted. Her eyes were bluer than any sky he’d ever seen.

  She sucked in her lower lip for a moment, leaving it with a sheen that dragged at him deep inside.

  ‘I couldn’t stay,’ she whispered, ‘and see you together with Valerie. It was one thing when you were just dating a different woman every other week. But she came to Cheyenne and stayed. And you only saw her. I thought you were reconciling, and it hurt too much to hang around.’

  He yanked off his gloves. ‘Now that you know that’s not the case?’

  ‘I still can’t come back to work for you,’ she whispered.

  ‘I’m not asking you to.’ He tossed the gloves onto the floor of the sleigh. Then he turned and lifted her, blanket and all, onto his lap.

  She let out a squeak, her eyes turning from sky blue to sapphire. He slid his hands along her jaw, tilting her face up to his. She was trembling. Her gloved hands slowly lifted, catching his forearms.

  ‘But I do want you to come back with me.’ His thumb grazed the corner of her soft mouth and her lips parted a little. He felt the air she sucked in.

  ‘What?’ she breathed.

  His thumb pressed again and her lips parted more. He grazed the edge of a pearly tooth. Her eyes grew heavy and her tongue flicked briefly against his small invasion.

  ‘Come back and be with me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So many questions,’ he murmured. He leaned over and pressed his mouth against hers. Felt that quick intake of breath she always drew whenever he kissed her.

  The need to plunder, to conquer, to seal, was fierce inside him. He’d wanted women before. But this, this was something else.

  And it shook him.

  ‘I want to make love to you,’ he muttered against her lips.

  Her hands slid around his neck. She pressed herself against him as tightly as the accumulation of coats and lap robe allowed. ‘Me, too.’

  ‘We can’t.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I know.’ Her mouth opened wider under his. Her hands were strong and insistent against his head.

  ‘Kiss me.’ She didn’t wait. Her tongue danced against his.

  She was a witch. A temptress.

  He caught her face again and kissed her until they were both gasping for air.

  She scrambled around, slipping onto her knees, then in his lap again, even as her hands fumbled with the buttons of her coat. ‘Put your hands on me, Alex, before I go insane.’

  ‘It’s freezing out here.’

  ‘Then why do I feel like I’m burning from the inside out?’ She dragged her coat open. ‘You want me to beg?’ She yanked at the buttons on her shirt. ‘Does your ego really need that?’

  His ego had taken a backseat to the desperate urgency congesting his veins. She pulled aside her brick-red flannel shirt to reveal her thin turtleneck, which clung to every generous, womanly curve. There was no question that she wasn’t wearing a bra beneath the white top. The shadows of her nipples were clearly visible, their shape tauntingly beaded, and as he looked, they seemed to tighten even more.

  He was aeons away from being immune, and when she, staring up into his face, pressed her gloved hands over those peaks, hiding them from view for a moment, his body clenched.

  ‘Please,’ she whispered, then slid her hands beneath the fullness, seeming to offer herself up to him.

  He was gone.

  He ran his hands beneath her coat, catching her shoulders, hauling her up to him, taking a nipple in his mouth, turtleneck and all.

  Her head fell back, her hair streaming behind her. ‘Alex.’

  He suckled until her shirt grew wet, nibbled until he could have swallowed her whole. He barely even realized she’d pulled off her own gloves and shoved his coat aside, too, until he felt the kiss of winter air on his chest, closely followed by the warmth of her slender palms. Then her fingers were flexing against
him, exploring, racing downward, fumbling with his belt.

  He swore. Laughed a little. ‘Danger zone.’ He grabbed her hands away and caught her mouth with his.

  ‘I don’t care.’ He felt her words against his lips. Felt her fingers slide between his, curling over, bringing their palms flush even as she rocked against him.

  ‘I care.’ He disentangled his hands from hers, clamping them over her maddening hips. ‘Stop it.’

  She froze. Looked at him, her eyes vulnerable, panicked.

  He swore again and slid his hands behind her spine, hugging her to him. ‘I like it too much,’ he assured her gruffly. ‘I want you too much.’ He proved it by thrusting himself against the notch of her thighs. ‘And I’m too damn old to pretend that necking in this sleigh is going to be anywhere near enough.’

  Her hands were caught between them, pressed flat against his chest. She flexed her fingers and he felt the soft scrape of her fingernails. ‘Stop calling yourself old. You’re amazing.’

  She was the amazing one. His rebel hands had tunneled beneath her turtleneck and crept up her spine, feeling every ridge, every inch of smooth, sweeping skin. He touched her the way he’d wanted to when he’d massaged her back.

  ‘I want to be inside you when you climax again.’ He felt the ripple that worked through her at his blunt statement. ‘I want to be inside you when I do,’ he finished raggedly.

  She moaned a little and buried her forehead in the crook of his neck. ‘I think it might be too late for me.’ Her voice was broken, breathy, her breath warm, the flick of her tongue white-hot.

  His control shattered. He pulled on her shoulders and their torsos parted, her back arching, supported by his arms, his hands. ‘Lift your shirt,’ he growled.

  Beneath her lashes, her eyes glowed. She slowly drew up the hem of that clinging turtleneck.

  Revealed the burgeoning swell of the child inside her that couldn’t be hidden by his jeans. Then the jutting swell of her breasts.

  ‘Stop there.’ The ascent of the shirt stopped just high enough to reveal her peach-tinted crests.

  He swallowed hard. Even through their jeans he could feel the heat of her, the incredible giving softness where he wanted to bury himself until the world went away. ‘We’re not making love,’ he growled.

  She rocked against him, her lips parted. Her hands flew out suddenly and she reached upward, behind her, finding purchase on the slanted driver’s seat. ‘Yes, we are,’ she gasped. Her back arched again.

  God, she was a beautiful thing. He surged hard against her. ‘I don’t want to hurt the baby.’

  She slowly shook her head, her hair a stream of fire, her body a pagan offering to the winter sky.

  ‘Carmichael said oh, Al ex.’ It didn’t seem possible for two bodies to be so close without becoming one.

  ‘He said as long as we didn’t’

  He let go of her shoulders to wrap his arms around her waist, pressing her hips even harder to his own. ‘You talked to him, too.’

  Her ‘yes’ was barely coherent.

  And it didn’t matter anymore what he’d thought he’d wanted before. He needed her. Now.

  However much she could give. And when he slid his hand between them, cupping her intimately, she gave, and gave, crying out his name in an agony of pleasure that was too much for him to deny. When she was finally spent, he pulled her boneless form up, and she draped herself over him.

  He managed to tug the tangled lap robe around her back, though their body heat was more than enough to keep them warm.

  One of the horses stomped in the snow and shook his head, and the rigging jingled softly.

  ‘Oh, Alex,’ Nikki whispered against his shoulder, her palm resting against his jaw.

  ‘Next time,’ he repeated, in a promise. ‘We do it my way.’

  Her hand slowly smoothed over his cheek. Whether that was agreement or not, he couldn’t tell.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The electronic tones of Beethoven’s ‘Für Elise’ startled Nikki right out of her nap.

  She sat bolt upright in the bed, blinking blearily.

  Whether from the fresh air of the sleigh ride earlier that day or the headiness of Alex’s lovemaking or both she’d been sound asleep.

  The music continued and her brain clicked sluggishly into gear. Her cell phone was ringing. It hadn’t rung since Alex’s replacement phone had arrived, so it was no wonder it sounded foreign.

  She leaned over and turned on the lamp by the bed as she picked up the phone from the nightstand.

  ‘Hello?’

  Static answered her.

  She frowned a little, glancing quickly at the display, but the number shown on the readout was unfamiliar. She listened again. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Nik?’

  ‘Belle?’ Nikki pressed the phone more tightly to her ear. ‘I can hardly hear you. Is everything all right?’

  ‘Are you kidding me? You’re the one who isn’t where she belongs. You were supposed to be home from Lucius by now. Where are you?’

  ‘I’m okay. We’re still in Montana.’

  Static sounded. ‘We?’

  ‘Alex is with me,’ Nikki admitted.

  ‘Alex as in Alex Reed?’

  No amount of static could disguise the shocked surprise in her sister’s voice. Nikki untangled herself from the bedspread and slid off the bed, hitching up the legs of her borrowed jeans. ‘Yes. Alex Reed.’

  She peeked around the fireplace. He was not in the living room or the kitchen. She sat down on the couch and the red leather creaked. The quilt he used at night was folded haphazardly at the opposite end, and she curtailed the impulse to grab it and hold it close to her.

  Would he sleep on the couch that night?

  After what they’d done together in the sleigh?

  After he’d told her he wanted her to come back to Cheyenne with him?

  The fact that she hadn’t answered that question ticked away inside her. How could she have answered, though?

  Nothing had really changed.

  She was still pregnant with his cousin’s child.

  She forced cheerfulness into her voice. ‘So, how’s da island, mon?’

  Belle didn’t laugh and Nikki could just picture her sister glaring at the phone.

  ‘Nikki, what is going on? What are you still doing in Montana? I talked to Emily this morning and she said you’d left some message with them that you were staying in Lucius for a while. I thought you’d have started your new job at the salvage place by now.’

  ‘Nothing’s going on. I just thought I’d stay in Montana awhile longer.’

  ‘What on earth for? Honey, I know this trip to Montana was sort of a pilgrimage to Cody’s memory, but it’s time you stopped mooning over him. We all loved him, but you’ve got to get back to the land of the living!’ Nikki held the phone away from her ear, and still could hear her sister’s emphatic voice.

  She nearly jumped out of her skin when Alex appeared beside the couch and nimbly pulled the phone out of her hand, holding it to his own ear. ‘Belle, this is Alex.’

  ‘Give me the phone back,’ Nikki whispered.

  He put his hand on her shoulder and held her in place. ‘Nikki’s had a little trouble with the pregnancy, and that’s why she’s still in Lucius. She didn’t want anyone worrying about her. But she and the baby are both fine. I’m making sure of it.’

  She covered her face with her hand. God only knew what her sister would make of that. Nikki couldn’t hear the words, but she could certainly hear the tone of the spate that followed his statement.

  ‘I’m here because I’m the one who was called when she was in the hospital.’

  ‘Give me the phone.’ Nikki held out her hand, sending him what she hoped was a stern look.

  Obviously not stern enough, for he easily ignored her.

  ‘How’d they have my number? Because it’s the number Nikki gave when she made her lodging reservation. And I have every right to be here,’ he answered, to w
hatever Belle was saying. ‘Nikki’s going to be my wife.’

  The angry buzz through the phone abruptly ceased.

  Nikki blinked. Her lips parted, but nothing came out. She could only stare at Alex.

  Maybe she was still lying unconscious in the pretty blue sleigh and had dreamed all this, from waking up in the hospital to the present moment.

  ‘She’ll be able to travel in another week and we’ll all get together then,’ Alex said. ‘For now, she shouldn’t be upset.’

  Upset?

  She didn’t think her jaw could drop any more than it already had, but she feared it might well hit the mirrored coffee table at that.

  She finally sidled along the couch, away from the hand he’d clamped on her shoulder, and stared up at him. ‘Give me the phone.’

  ‘Yes,’ Alex said into the cell phone, evidently not intimidated by her imperiously outstretched hand.

  ‘Thank you. We’re very happy. And you’re the first we’ve told about it.’ He listened for a moment. ‘I’ll tell her. Enjoy the rest of your honeymoon.’ He folded the phone, sliding it into his pocket. ‘She said to tell you she loves you.’

  Nikki was shaking. ‘What has gotten into you? Do you know what you’ve done? She’s going to think think that’ She was so shocked she couldn’t even speak.

  ‘Think that I’m the baby’s father?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Which means that you haven’t told even your twin sister the truth.’

  ‘That’s my choice.’ Her voice was hoarse. ‘My business.’

  ‘Is it?’

  She frowned. ‘Don’t go changing the subject, Alex Reed. You told my sister that I was going to be your wife! She’s not going to keep that to herself. She’s going to burn the phone lines telling all the rest of my family your little news! What on earth possessed you? How am I going to explain it when we clearly are not getting married!’

  ‘Don’t explain anything. Just marry me.’

  She was grateful she was still sitting. ‘You cannot be serious.’

  He sat down on the coffee table in front of her and grabbed her flailing hands. ‘I’ve never been more serious in my life. I told you I wanted you to come back to Wyoming with me.’