Taming the Tycoon (17 page)

“That’s preposterous. We’ve only known each other for a handful of weeks!”

Addie felt a lump in her throat. She supposed to a man who set goals sixteen years in advance, something as messy and as instant as love
would
seem preposterous.

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” she assured him, her voice thick. “I can’t be with you. Everything I’ve done in my life to get healthy and stay healthy has gone by the wayside. Everything I’ve held dear these last few years, I’ve let slip since I’ve known you. I’m eating meat, I’m drinking, I haven’t meditated in weeks.”

“I haven’t asked you to do any of that.”

She continued, ignoring him. She had to get it all out. “I’m losing sight of myself. Right from the start you’ve forced me out of my peaceful, healthy lifestyle by making me take up a protest flag to help with the garden—”

“I did
not
make you—”

“Yes, you did, Nate. The minute you announced it was coming down, you did. And I can’t stand by and watch you destroy it. I know if I stay with you, the stress of your corporate high end life, your money, money, money lifestyle would eventually infect me and I’d be back to who I was before I got sick. I don’t want to be that person again. She was just going through the motions. She wasn’t happy with her life and I think it contributed to her getting sick. You’re a negative influence on my health, and after this scare, I can’t be complacent about that.”

Addie took a breath from the words that just kept tumbling out. Was he listening? Did he understand?

“And you shouldn’t be either,” she continued, unnerved by his silence. “You might not be able to see what it’s doing to you, but I can.
I know
.”

“I’m perfectly fit, Addie. I can deal with a bit of pressure.”

Addie shook her head at the bluster in his voice. He didn’t get it. He just didn’t get it. And she wasn’t going to waste years of her life trying to make him. Like his mother had done with his father.

She shook her head. “Good-bye, Nate.” And she hit the end button.

…

Nathaniel was in a foul temper all week and by Friday, everyone around him was looking forward to the approaching two-day respite. Margaret buzzed through to him mid-afternoon.

“Your mother is on line one,” she announced.

Nathaniel was staring out the window, pen in hand. “I don’t want to talk to her.”

“Yes, sir, I know.”

“So tell her I’m busy.”

“No, sir.”

Nathaniel threw his pen down on the desk. “Damn it, Margaret!”

“Sir, if you do not talk to your mother right now, I will ask both her and your grandmother to come to London to sort you out. You are being an unbearable oaf. You will talk to your mother this minute or my resignation will be on your desk by close of business.”

Nathaniel gritted his teeth. As much as his PA drove him nuts, he couldn’t do what he did without her. “Not if I fire you first,” he snapped.

“Yes sir, line one.”

He glared at the blinking light for a moment, then snatched the receiver up. “Mother, I am busy.”

“Goodness,” Delphine said. “Margaret’s right. You are being snippy.”

Nathaniel raked his hands through his hair. “Margaret needs to mind her own damn business.”

“Is it Addie?”

Nathaniel turned back to the window. He was thirty-four years old—his private life was none of his mother’s business.

“She’s a great girl, Nate. Don’t let her go.”

Nate felt a well of irrationality rise in him. Was it too much to ask his mother to be on
his
side? “She said I was a negative influence.”

“Oh, dear.” His mother tutted. “And why would she say that, darling?”

He shut his eyes as the thing that was weighing on his conscience the most needled at him. “I tried to bribe a nurse.”

It wasn’t why she’d said he was a negative influence, he knew that, but along with a million other thoughts of Addie this week, it had been the one he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about.

And then he was telling his mother everything. About that incident and the health scare and his unease over the garden, especially now that Addie had put a human face to the whole conundrum.

“Do you think I’m turning into Dad?” he asked.

“No, darling. Dad would have had no guilt over the rose garden or throwing a bit of money around to get his way.”

It was hard to hear. He’d always admired his father’s guts and determination and glossed over the shady bits, but as much as he tried to ignore them, they were a matter of public record.

“What happened with you two? I always just assumed that you’d fallen out of love.”

“I loved your father even when I divorced him. But he was too busy making money to put me first in his life, and after a while, that wasn’t good enough.”

Nathaniel was starting to think his father wasn’t as smart as he’d always thought. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Just don’t make the same mistakes he did. You’re only thirty-four—you have all your life to fulfill your promise to your dad. Don’t sacrifice ambition for love like he did, Nate. Promise me you won’t do that, darling.”

Nathan felt that unease again. “I won’t,” he said briskly.

“Really, darling? Isn’t that what you’re doing?”

Nathan opened his mouth to deny it. He was
not
in love with Addie. She drove him nuts. She believed in repaying the universe and crystals and meditation. She had no goals other than stopping to smell the roses. And she was like Jiminy bloody Cricket—humanizing something that should be straightforward.

Apart from being compatible in bed, there wasn’t one single thing they had in common.

Then he remembered the absolute dread and fear that had gripped him during Addie’s health scare. How he’d done something so absolutely out of character because he’d been out of his mind with worry. How physically ill he’d felt when she’d told him good-bye.

How he’d been plotting all week to get her back without even realizing it.

He sat forward in his chair. “Oh my God, I’m in love with her.”

“Yes, darling. Now what are you going to do about it?”

…

Addie answered the phone a week later to Penny’s incoherent blabbering. Eventually, she figured out her friend wanted her to turn on the television to channel four.

She found the remote and flicked it on to a press conference. Nathaniel filled the screen standing on a raised podium as he had that day they’d first met. His suit and black sunglasses and Bluetooth were just as impressive. As was the way he wore them.

Her gaze devoured him.

Margaret stood behind him with her Mona Lisa smile, and a gaggle of reporters stood in front of them shouting questions. He raised his hand and they fell silent.

“I’m here today to make an announcement. After revising our strategies for the St. Agnes project and taking the community’s concerns into account, I have decided to preserve the walled rose garden and donate it back to the city for use as a green space by the citizens of London.”

A small crowd had gathered and there was clapping, but Addie didn’t hear anything else as Penny babbled in one ear and she scrabbled around for her scarf and jacket.

“I’ve got to go,” she told her friend. “I’m going to the garden.”

Addie’s heart rate was off the scale as she texted Nathaniel with shaking fingers.

I’m coming to the garden. Stay there.

She wasn’t crazy enough to think this was about her, but she had to see him, to thank him. Whatever his reasons for saving the garden, they all owed him a debt of gratitude. She knew what it meant financially for him, mentally and emotionally, too. Now he wouldn’t be able to reach that goal he’d been working toward, and that probably meant the most to her.

She was out of breath when she finally rounded the corner just outside the garden thirty minutes later. She had no idea if he’d still be there, but her heart hammered in anticipation as she ran up the street.

Margaret was leaning against the hood of a sleek black limo. She grinned as Addie dashed past. “He’s expecting you.”

“Nate?” she called once she was inside the walls. He didn’t answer. She ran through the rows to the center where they’d picnicked not that long ago. Winter had well and truly killed the blooms off, but there was something comforting about the dark green leaves all around her.

“Nate?” she called again as she turned into the row she’d been seeking.

And there he was, looking magnificent and male with his wicked Lucifer lips and blue-black hair. She even detected a hint of overnight growth peppering his jaw line.

He had one hand in his pocket and one behind his back. He smiled at her and Addie’s insides melted.

Must not do evil tycoon in garden.

She pulled up short a couple of meters away from him, her chest heaving from exertion. “You saved the garden,” she panted, her warm breath fogging in the frosty air.

He grinned. “Yes, I did.”

Addie couldn’t allow herself to smile back. He was doing strange things to her equilibrium and she was in danger of forgetting why the two of them together were a bad idea. “But why?”

He shrugged taking his hand out of his pocket. “To get into your pants.”

Okay, she smiled at that. She’d missed him so much.

“Seriously,” she said because he was looking at her like he had X-ray vision and she wasn’t wearing any underwear. Even though she was. And one of them had to be serious.

“Because I love you and I’ve been a fool.”

Addie felt each quietly delivered word slam into her like amplified rock music. “What did you say?”

“I said I love you.”

Her pulse leapt but she kept her feet firmly planted on the ground. It couldn’t be so, could it?

“And because I’m not my father. He was an idiot choosing the company over my mother, and I don’t want to do the same.”

He took a step toward her as she absorbed the open criticism of his father.

“Because you scared the living daylights out of me last week and I realized how much you meant to me.”

He took another step and Addie could feel the warmth radiating off his body.

“Because I don’t want to live in a world that’s all work, work, work when I could be making love to you.”

Addie swallowed as her knees went a little wobbly. The man knew how to make a good argument. She shook her head, taking a step back—she couldn’t think with him crowding her.

“But what about the money, Nate? Your goals?”

“Your health scare and my mother got me thinking. People have been telling me for years that I have plenty of time, and they’re right—I’m only thirty-four. So it’ll take me longer, but…” He shrugged. “I’ll get there and if I’m not in so much of a tearing hurry, I can take a leaf out of your book. Hire some managers, take it easy, stop and smell the roses.”

He pulled a scraggily, seen-better-days, bloom from behind his back and presented it to her. He must have searched the entire garden and found the only bush with a rose still on it.

It was perfect.

But still she held on to her heart, refusing to take the flower. She wasn’t going to settle because he was making some concessions. She didn’t want to be Delphine in a few years’ time. “How do I know you’re not just saying what I want to hear? That you won’t go back to your old ways?”

“I guess you don’t,” he said, and she was pleased he hadn’t tried to whitewash her concerns with a smooth line. “And there will be times when I’ll work more than I should and I’ll slip a little because I’m a pretty driven guy, but I’m hoping you’ll be there to pull me up. Because you personify everything that’s worthwhile about not working all the hours God gave me and I want to spend as many of them with you as I can.”

Addie could feel herself weakening as he held out the rose to her again and said, “Please give me a chance to make you happy. I make this promise to you in this beautiful garden you fought so hard for, that I will spend every day putting you first.”

Addie wavered. How could she say no to that?

“I’m going to hold you to that,” she said as she reached for the rose, feeling the fight leave her as the love flooded in.

“I’m hoping so,” he said as their fingers brushed and he pulled her close.

She smiled at him then, her chest tight with emotion. “I love you,” she murmured.

He smiled back. “I love you, too.”

He lowered his head and she accepted the sweetest, gentlest kiss she’d ever known.

“Now,” he whispered, “let’s go somewhere I can get into your pants.”

Addie laughed. “Isn’t that your limo outside?”

About the Author

Amy Andrews is an award-winning romance writer who has written 29 romances for Harlequin. She wrote her first book at the age of 22 whilst unemployed and freezing her butt off in the UK, largely because it allowed her to stay in bed with her electric blanket. One 12-year apprenticeship later, she finally got “the call.”

To date, she’s sold a million books and been translated into thirteen different languages. In 2010, she won the Sexy category in the prestigious Australian Romantic Book of the Year Awards, affectionately known as the R*BY.

In what she euphemistically likes to call her spare time, she works part-time as a pediatric intensive care nurse and was on the national executive board for Romance Writers of Australia for six years, during which time she organized two national conferences and undertook a two-year term as president.

She’s been married for twenty-two years and has two teenagers who only admit to her being a writer when they have to explain to their friends why there’s no food in the house. She lives on acreage on the outskirts of Brisbane with a gorgeous mountain view.