From Boss to Bridegroom (18 page)

There was only one way to find out. So tonight she'd talk to him, she vowed.

If she could keep her courage up that long.

 

The doorman for Rand's apartment building recognized Lucy when she arrived at nine that evening but he wouldn't allow her to go up until first calling ahead.

That didn't help her nerves as she stood in the lobby waiting and imagining that Rand had another woman with him and had left orders with his doorman not to be disturbed.

Within moments she got the okay but the anxiety remained with her on the elevator. She hadn't only rejected Rand once yesterday, she'd rejected him twice. And now she couldn't help worrying that, even if he had intended something permanent, maybe after twenty-four hours of thinking about it, he'd gotten angry and would tell her to take a hike.

But she'd come this far and she wasn't going home without knowing exactly what he'd been suggesting the day before, even if her heart was in her throat and her knees felt as if they were made of jelly.

When the elevator doors opened on the eighth floor, Rand was standing in his open doorway, which cut short the idea of retreating back to the lobby, so she willed her legs to hold her up and stepped off the elevator.

“Is everything all right? Is Max okay?” Rand
asked in greeting, clearly concerned that something bad had happened to bring her here.

“Everything is fine. Max is doing amazingly well,” Lucy assured quietly, wanting to allay any worry as she crossed the outside hallway. She appreciated that he cared enough for that to be his first concern, though. It bolstered her decision to do what she was there to do.

From her pocket she took out a page torn from one of her son's new coloring books and handed it to Rand. Max had colored the picture and had her show him how to write thank you and his name at the top.

“Max wanted you to have this,” she said. “He was about as excited as I've ever seen him to get home and find that gift from you. You've done enough. You didn't have to do that, too.”

“I wanted to. But you didn't need to hand-deliver his thank-you. Especially not tonight.”

Rand's expression was inscrutable and it didn't make this any easier for her, particularly since he hadn't so much as invited her into his apartment. Again she worried that he might have female company. Female company who might have been helping him off with his clothes because he was down to just navy blue suit pants and an untucked, unbuttoned shirt that exposed a mind-numbingly sexy strip of chest and belly.

But again she summoned her courage to go headlong into her purpose for being there.

“I didn't just come to bring Max's picture. I wanted to talk to you,” she finally admitted. “But if you aren't alone…”

“I'm alone,” he said with an edge to his voice that let her know he was reading her thoughts and didn't appreciate the implication.

He stepped out of the doorway then, though, and made a sweeping gesture with his arm to indicate invitation.

Lucy went in, swallowing hard along the way and praying she was brave enough to go through with this as they stood facing each other in the entryway.

“Did you get a temp in today to work?” she asked, curious and trying to ease some of her own stress with small talk when he seemed inclined to have them remain in the foyer.

“The service sent over a pretty good one, actually. Sheila. She'll be back tomorrow and I may offer her the job.”

“Young? Beautiful?” Lucy didn't know where that had come from and she wished she could call the words back the moment they were out.

“She's about fifty, slightly plump, not attractive at all. But she's a great secretary.”

“Good,” Lucy said in a voice she barely recognized as her own.

Rand must have taken it to mean that she wasn't happy to have been replaced because he said, “I didn't think you'd be back. Between Max and—”

“No, it's good you found someone else. You're right, Max needs me at home.”

Silence fell then as Lucy's courage flagged.

But after a moment Rand said, “Now tell me why you're really here.”

There was no hostility in his tone. In fact there was a conservative sort of compassion that helped her to face him and say, “Sadie says I was wrong, and after thinking about it I've come to agree with her.”

“What are you wrong about?”

“You.” She took a deep breath and pushed herself to go on. “I'm sorry, Rand. It's just that Sunday morning when you started to talk about changing your life, I panicked. I had you all mixed up in my mind with Max's father and… Well, I was just wrong. I know that if you say you want to change your life you do. That you will. That you won't regret it. That you'll accomplish that as well as you've accomplished everything else.”

“This sounds like an endorsement from an objective third party apologizing for not giving credit where credit is due. But is the punch line that you still don't want any part of it?”

“I don't know. That depends on what part of it you had in mind for me. I didn't let you get far enough to find out.”

“I was casting you as the leading lady.”

“What role exactly does the leading lady play?

Steady girlfriend? Significant other?”

“You're still thinking of me as that other guy, Lucy. I'm talking about you being my wife.”

Relief washed over her and she smiled for the first time since her arrival. “Oh.”

“That's all you have to say? Oh?”

“Is the offer still good?”

He took her hand in both of his and shook his head as if he couldn't believe she was asking that question. “If you'll recall, I told you to think about it. So yes, the offer is still good. I'm in love with you, Lucy Lowry. I don't know how you could have missed it, but since you did—”

“A girl just likes to hear the words.”

“Okay. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you so much that nothing is as important to me as being with you, as making you my wife, as making my life with you, as being a father to Max. I'd like it if you'd agree to marry me. And if you do, I promise you that I will never hurt you intentionally, and that I will always put you and Max and any other kids we might have first and foremost.”

“And you're sure?”

He rolled his eyes. “I'm sure. I'm positive. I'm absolutely certain. So what do you say?”

She didn't have to think about it. She said, “Yes. I say yes.”

He stared down at her for a moment and she honestly thought he was going to pull her into his arms and kiss her. But instead he said, “I have one condition.”

“You do?”

“I want you to let me be the breadwinner so you can go back to law school. You don't have to take a full load, just a few classes a semester while Max is in school. But I want you to go. I don't want to see that mind of yours wasted. And then, once you pass the bar, we can be partners in that, too.”

Lucy laughed. If she'd had any lingering doubts about how different Rand was from Marshall, they disappeared in that instant because there wasn't a hint of the resentment for her ambitions that Marshall had always shown.

“I think you're just looking for a way to lighten your caseload,” she joked.

“I'm looking for it all—wife, mother of my children, law partner, lover.”

He finally did take her into his arms, kissing her a few playful, short kisses.

“Is Sadie with Max?” he asked between them.

“Yes.”

“Is Max asleep?”

“Yes.”

“So he wouldn't miss you if, say, it takes an hour or so for us to get back to him?”

“I don't think so,” Lucy said, her voice growing deeper and more breathy as his kisses grew deeper and more passionate.

“Think Sadie would mind?”

“She figured out that you spent Saturday night with me and said she approved, so I don't think she'd mind.”

Rand smiled. “That's my girl.”

He kissed Lucy's neck then, just below her earlobe at a spot she'd never realized was so sensitive, so arousing.

“And what about you? Any qualms about sticking around here for a little while?”

“Depends on what for,” she teased, tilting her head to allow more of the feather-brush of his lips against her skin.

“For this,” he said in a husky voice as he slipped off the coat she was still wearing and reached beneath her sweater to massage her bare back while his mouth returned to hers in open, hungry kisses that wiped away all other thoughts.

Even though Lucy had believed she'd given herself over to Rand when they'd made love before, she learned then that she hadn't. Not the way she did now.

Now, when his hands grazed her flesh, shedding her clothes and his.

Now, when he led her to his bedroom and laid her on the downy comforter, lying beside her, capturing her mouth and claiming her breasts with his wondrous hands. Now, when her own hands claimed him in return.

Now, when she opened to him, accepted him fully into her and rode the wild ride with him that sealed the union they'd finally made, that celebrated it and bound them together for all of eternity.

And when they lay spent and exhausted and holding each other, Lucy finally said the words she'd
thought she might never again say to anyone but Max. “I love you.”

Rand chuckled slightly. “I was wondering if I was ever going to hear that from you.”

“I like to keep you guessing. It stokes the fires.”

“I don't think you'll have any problem stoking my fires. And by the way, in case you've forgotten, I love you, too.”

She knew that. But it was still good to hear again. In fact, she couldn't imagine ever hearing it enough.

“I should get home,” she told him on a reluctant sigh.

“
We
should get home,” he amended and it sounded incredibly good to her.

Still she didn't hurry to move. She allowed herself just a little while to savor being there in Rand's arms, reveling in his love for her, in her love for him, in the fact that she'd found him just when she'd been certain there wasn't anyone out there she could trust again.

But there had been. There had been just one man who was perfect for her, who would be perfect for her for the rest of her life. Perfect for Max, too, whom she knew would be thrilled to welcome Rand into their small family.

And a family was just what they'd be, she thought.

A wonderful, loving family.

A family that really could have that happily-ever-after she'd thought was too good to be true.