The Tycoon's Temporary Bride: Book Four (4 page)

Except for Adam. He wasn’t married
. A
leisurely smile spread Tashi’s lips as that realization sunk into
her brain and her heart.

The article described Adam as the Temporary
Tycoon and the last available billionaire in Granite Falls to be
snatched from the eligible bachelors’ shelf. He was nicknamed the
Temporary Tycoon because he always warned his lovers up front that
the relationship was temporary. At least he wasn’t giving anybody
any false hopes
.
“And I shouldn’t be having any either,”
Tashi vocally schooled herself. The FBI agent had said she was to
be married temporarily, not that she was to marry the temporary
tycoon, even though his name began with an
A
.

So his little girl, Tiffany, must have been
born out of wedlock. Lots of unmarried couples shared children
these days. She herself was illegitimate, but unlike Tiffany, whose
father seemed to be a presence in her life, Tashi had never met
hers.

She had no idea who he was, or if he was dead
or alive. Her mother died before she was old enough to ask
questions, and when Tashi had asked her overprotective Uncle Victor
about her father, he’d said that he didn’t know him, had never met
him. The one thing Tashi knew about her father was that he was
black. Her light-brown complexion attested to that fact.

Tashi clicked on some more links but found
nothing about Tiffany or her mother. She wondered if Adam was still
involved with the woman who’d given birth to his beautiful little
girl. She smiled as she recalled the food stains on his shirt and
the dried baby food in his hair that spoke volumes about him as a
devoted father. Tiffany Andreas was a very lucky little girl.

Feeling as if her head would explode with the
overload of information, Tashi closed her laptop and set it back on
the coffee table, but some unseen force made her open it up again.
She pulled her phone from her pocket and added the phone number for
Hotel Andreas to her list of three other contacts—Mindy,
Mountainview Café, and her favorite pizza parlor next to the camera
shop on Oak Street. Before shutting off her phone, she made Hotel
Andreas her number one favorite.

Tashi closed her laptop again as she tried to
analyze her spontaneous behavior. It wasn’t like she was going to
call his hotel looking for him. He’d probably not even remember
her. What would she say, anyway? “Hey, Adam, remember me, the girl
you met at Mountainview Café the other day?” Nope, she thought with
a twist of her lips, calling Adam would be tacky, and could be
construed as stalking—the very thing she’d accused him of when
she’d seen him at the grocery store. There was no explanation for
saving his number to her phone, except that it gave her a
connection to him, made her feel close to him—in an odd sort of
way.

The apartment was a lot cooler than it had
been when she first arrived home, but still her skin felt as
flushed as when she’d collided with Adam Andreas. He’d left a
lasting impression on her.

Well, at least she could rule one thing out,
she mused as she got up from the sofa: a wealthy, powerful man like
Adam Andreas was definitely not the one the FBI agent had sent her
looking for. It was highly unlikely that a New York City FBI agent
would know a man like that, be friends with a man like Adam
Andreas.

And she needed to stop thinking about him,
she scolded herself as her heart began to race with the memories of
being crushed against his body. He was definitely out of her
league. Way, way out—like a billion light years away.

Nope, Adam’s knee-jerk reaction to her today
was merely hormones—a normal reaction to a man meeting a woman he
found attractive. He was probably over it by now. And if he knew
she’d killed a man in cold blood, and was a fugitive from the law,
his attraction would turn to disdain. He might even turn her in.
Nope, it was best she stayed away from him. She needed to occupy
her mind with something else.

As she walked into her bedroom and began to
separate her laundry into two laundry bags, a knot formed in
Tashi’s stomach. Her
savior
was still a mystery. He might
forever be a mystery since she had to face the harsh reality that
the agent may not have made it out of that house alive.

Maybe it was time she gave up on him and
began planning a life on her own. She was so tired of not being
able to enjoy the basic human things ordinary people enjoyed on a
daily basis. Like owning a car, having a job to go to, making
friends, and even—maybe even trying her luck at romance again.

She would do a background check on any
potential boyfriends this time—no more Scotties pulling the wool
over her eyes. Her uncle was right, there were a lot of bad people
in the world, but there were some good ones too, she had to admit.
That FBI agent who had saved her life was one of them.

As the loud music from her upstairs
neighbor’s stereo blasted through the ceiling, Tashi knew that it
was time she got out of this hellhole. Winters wouldn’t be so bad
if she lived in a nicer area of town. With the money she still had
left, and a salary from a job, she knew she could afford one of the
luxurious studio or one-bedroom apartments at Fontaine Towers that
overlooked the Aiken River.

She wasn’t born into a wealthy family, but
she’d never lived in such a destitute place either. She’d lived
with her mother and her uncle in an upper middle class
neighborhood, and after her mother died, her uncle had moved them
into a similar neighborhood far away from the previous one.

As a child, she never got everything she
wanted, but she’d never wanted for anything. Her maternal
grandparents had set up a decent trust fund for her mother and her
uncle, but they’d never touched it. That money had supported Tashi
through, and beyond college. She had no student loans to pay back,
and she’d been able to rent a nice studio apartment close to her
university in New York City. There was still a lot of money left,
but she couldn’t take the risk of withdrawing it, not that she
needed it with all that the agent had given her, anyway.

As she swung her bags of dirty laundry over
her shoulder and left her apartment, Tashi wondered how difficult
it would be to assume a new identity. She had no idea where to
begin or if attempting to change her name would trigger cyber waves
that might reach her enemies, and alert them to her
whereabouts.

One thing was certain, she could not continue
living like this.

***

Adam couldn’t sleep. Not since he’d collided
with Tashi Holland, three days ago. No matter how hard he tried, he
could not get her out of his head, and his other head kept standing
at attention and drooling at the prospect of making her
acquaintance.

He wasn’t presently involved with anyone, so
starting something with Tashi wasn’t a problem—maybe just a quick
fling to get her out of his system might be all he needed. His most
recent relationship had lasted two weeks, perhaps because he’d
found the woman boring compared to his previous lover, Sadie, a
fifty-something-year-old with a penchant for younger lovers. Their
relationship had lasted about a year. It was the first time he’d
been involved with an older woman, and like the others before her,
Sadie had known it wasn’t permanent, even though it had begun to
feel comfortable for both of them. So when her company offered her
a promotion and transfer to Austin, Texas, she’d immediately jumped
on it, and four months ago, she’d spent one last passionate night
with him then bid him farewell the next morning.

She hadn’t called since she left, and he’d
found himself missing her for a host of reasons. Sadie had never
been married, had no children, was well traveled, well educated,
and spoke several languages. She had the body of a twenty-year-old
athlete, and was the best lover he’d ever had. She’d even taught
him a few tricks she swore would drive any woman out of her mind.
Tricks he hadn’t had the chance to try out on anyone else, yet.

Yes, he missed her—their deep meaningful
conversations, especially—but not badly enough to call her.

Rules were rules, and he was sticking by
his.

Well, that was until he’d bumped into Tashi
Holland.

After the first sleepless night and waking up
the next morning with a rock-hard cock that refused to go away,
even after he gave it some attention, Adam had boarded his jet and
flown to Austin. He just needed to forget Tashi. Forget her big
emerald eyes, her sexy mouth, her curly auburn hair, and the soft
feel of her delicate little body in his arms. Forget that she might
be a damsel in distress. Sadie could help him forget.

But Sadie wasn’t having him. It was over.
She’d moved on with another lover who was even younger than Adam,
but she’d treated him to lunch. When she’d asked about the real
reason he’d flown to Texas, he’d told her about Tashi and the pull
she had on him. He’d admitted that he was afraid he might start
something he might not have the power to end. And since ending was
his thing…

Sadie had had a good laugh, and then she’d
said, “You should have known the day would come when a woman would
challenge your commitment to your temporary rule, Adam Andreas. You
can’t stay balanced for the rest of your life. There’s no
excitement there. It’s the imbalance, the chaos that provide us the
opportunity to learn and grow, that make us want to take risks to
tip the scales in our favor again.”

“You, more than anyone know how to keep me
balanced.”

“No, sweetness,” she’d said, resting her hand
on his. “This Tashi girl tipped your scale. You and she are on this
seesaw together. You have to work with her to tip it back. The fact
that you broke your rule and came to see me tells me that
you
know that
your
heart knows something you’re not
ready to admit.”

“My heart has been wrong before.”

“Was it your heart that was wrong, or was it
you, Adam?”

His heart had skipped a beat as if agreeing
with her.

“Don’t fight the pull, darling. Explore the
possibilities before this opportunity moves on to someone
else.”

“What if it doesn’t work out?” he’d asked,
trying desperately to refute her wisdom.

“What if it does? Sometimes we just have to
live the questions, Adam,” she’d admonished, giving him a lingering
kiss on the lips for old times’ sake before sending him back to
Granite Falls and his impending fate.

Adam tossed the sheet off his naked body and
got out of bed. It was a little past two, but he knew the restless
hour and a half of sleep was all he was going to get tonight.
All
, he thought, gazing down at his cock pressed tight
against his belly with drool easing out of it. It was literally
becoming a pain to wake up horny with only one way to relieve the
tension—well two, but he hated cold showers.

Adam grabbed an elastic hair band from the
nightstand and secured his mane into a ponytail as he left the
bedroom of his third floor master suite. He crossed the hall, and
walked through the dining and living rooms to the kitchen. There he
busied himself making a pot of coffee. What he would enjoy more was
a strong espresso, but he was out of his favorite beans, and since
his mind had been flooded with nothing but thoughts of Tashi
Holland lately, he’d forgotten to restock. Coffee would have to do
for tonight.

As he waited for the java to brew, he walked
to the wall of French doors on the other side of the kitchen and
gazed out into the darkness of the night.

Upon his return from Austin, he’d gone
straight to the café where he’d met Tashi Holland, hoping beyond
hope that she’d be there. Mountainview Café and Hair Salon was
jointly owned by Lillian Fontaine and Felicia LaCrosse, the mothers
of two of his best friends— Bryce Fontaine, and Erik LaCrosse who
was the father of Adam’s goddaughter, Tiffany.

Adam, Erik, Bryce, and Adam’s cousin Massimo
Andretti had been best friends since high school. They were closer
than best friends. They were brothers who’d sworn a blood oath to
always be there for each other.

His brothers were all married with growing
families. Massimo had taken a wife just last year and had already
produced an heir to the Andretti fortune. Married life had put a
damper on their “guy bonding” time, and when they did manage to get
together, his married friends did nothing but swap pictures and
stories about their children, and talk about silly spats with their
wives. Adam, of late, was feeling more and more displaced around
them, having no stories of his own to share.

It was ironic that he was the only one of the
group still not married when he was the one who’d had the most
interest in starting a family years ago—way back when his man-whore
cousin, Massimo, had taken an oath never to marry just to spite his
philandering father who’d picked out a suitable wife for him. On
the contrary, Adam had caved under his own father’s pressures to
expand the Andreas bloodline, and had thus proposed. He’d wanted to
make his old man happy even it meant making himself miserable.

Within a year after their breakup, Claire had
married some web design entrepreneur, but four years later when his
company went bankrupt and he was unable to support her lavish
lifestyle, she divorced him. She’d tried to rekindle whatever she
thought they’d had, claiming that Adam’s deep spirituality and
journeys into his inner universe, and the pressure from his father
to immediately start a family had scared her. She’d said she’d made
a mistake by leaving him at the altar. He’d told her she hadn’t
made a mistake and that he was over her completely. Lady Fate had
been kind to him, and he wasn’t about to throw her gift back into
her face.

Ten years had passed, and he hadn’t even been
mildly tempted to go that route again. But his desire to contribute
to the filial conversations had prompted him to begin taking
Tiffany out—once in a while. Being with Tiffany reminded him of the
void in his life, but he nonetheless enjoyed spending time with
her, and then reporting on the unexpected things she said and did.
He also appreciated the added bonus she provided after Sadie left.
Seems like a single man with a baby was the ultimate female magnet.
He’d procured several dates because of Tiffany’s cute little smiles
and darling antics, even her whining on cranky days.