The Boss's Baby Bargain. Karen Sandler

hour after lunch.”

      “Come back then.” His gaze lowered to his papers. When she didn’t turn immediately, he looked up again. “Anything else?”

      She shook her head. “No, nothing.” She quickly turned on her heel and let herself out of his office, shutting the door behind her.

      Crossing to her desk with two long strides, she sank into her chair. Her hands covering her face, she wondered which was the biggest mess—her father’s crisis or the impossible situation with her boss.

      What had started as a dimly remembered erotic dream had quickly flowered into a series of daytime fantasies that she couldn’t seem to stop. She’d allowed herself the indulgence at first because the fantasies distracted her from her loneliness, never mind the inappropriateness of the central figure. But her daydreams had recently taken on a life of their own, until the sexual images had drifted into decidedly unwanted emotions. Feelings for a man she truly didn’t know.

      She dropped her hands from her face and glanced back at the door to Lucas’s office. Considering the craziness of her feelings for him, she’d nearly talked herself out of asking him for the loan. But where else could she go? She didn’t have an asset to her name worth borrowing against. Her brother and sister were both struggling to support their own families. If they knew their father’s money was all gone, they would help her in a heartbeat. But they didn’t know, and she planned to keep it that way.

      Agitated, she tugged open her bottom desk drawer and pulled out a plastic bag of bread scraps. She needed to get out of the office, needed a break from the emotions churning inside her. Some time outside would give her a chance to regain a bit of calm.

      Setting her phone to ring through to Lucas’s office, she hurried to the elevators and escape.

      Lucas stared down at his telephone, his finger hovering above the keypad. The urgency of his business with his attorney, John Evans, had faded into the background the moment Allie had appeared in his office. What had once been an obsession had been bumped to second place just by her presence. Hell, he had completely forgotten he’d asked John to call him this morning.

      All because of Allie. Allie, who had become invaluable to him in the last two years. Allie, who had single-handedly brought order to his hectic schedule and the extensive travel his work demanded.

      Allie, who in the last several months had intruded on nearly every waking thought, weaving her way into his every sensual fantasy.

      He knew it wasn’t right. He knew he was one inadvertent touch away from sexual harassment. Yet sometimes it was all he could do to keep himself from reaching out to test the softness of her hair, the smoothness of her cheek.

      Shoving back his chair, he rose to his feet and turned to gaze out the window. Five stories below, the campus of TaylorMade Foods stretched out before him. Despite the late-summer heat of the Sacramento Valley, the rolling hills between the buildings of TaylorMade’s headquarters glowed a verdant green. Trees dotted the landscape—valley oak and scrub pine. At the center of the three five-story structures, like the hub of a three-spoke wheel, a pond glimmered in the midmorning sunlight.

      The king of all I survey, Lucas thought darkly.

      As he watched, a solitary swan skimmed across the surface of the pond. It was all his—the pond, the swan and its mate hiding somewhere in the reeds, the buildings of wood and stone and glass, the TaylorMade corporation. He’d worked hard for all of it, yet the sight of all that neatly landscaped beauty filled him with an edgy dissatisfaction.

      Feeling a heaviness inside him, he turned back to the phone and stabbed out his attorney’s number. When John answered, Lucas didn’t waste time with preliminaries. “Sorry. What did you find out?”

      John had known him too long to be put off by his brusqueness. “The county adoption agency said no way. They won’t even look at your application.”

      He’d expected as much, but still the news twisted his insides. He fixed his gaze on the swan below, watching its passage. He wished he had a tenth of the serenity of the graceful white bird. “What about private adoption agencies?”

      His attorney let out a sigh before he answered. “It’ll be the same story there.”

      As the swan’s mate emerged from the thick cluster of reeds at the pond’s edge, Lucas caught sight of someone striding across the lawn toward the water. Allie. “Are you telling me it’s impossible?”

      “I told you at the outset this wouldn’t be easy. The agencies give top priority to married couples.”

      As if she were right beside him instead of a hundred yards away on the lawn below, Lucas felt heat spreading in his loins. With an effort, he returned his attention to the conversation with his attorney. “I doubt many parents could give a child what I can.”

      John hesitated, as if choosing his words carefully. “Materially, no.”

      Lucas heard the unspoken message, the one the usually straightforward John had danced around since Lucas had first announced his intention to adopt. With his wealth, Lucas could give a child anything he or she might desire. As for what the child might need…

      He watched Allie reach into the plastic bag she’d brought with her and toss something out onto the pond toward the swans. The grace of her every movement drew him, set off an ache inside. “What about that attorney friend of yours?”

      “The teenage girl he represents already found placement for her baby with a young couple.”

      The swans approached the grassy shore in tandem, gobbling up the treats as they swam. Allie reached precariously out over the water to drop more bread scraps for the birds, then straightened to empty the last of the bag. Lucas took too much damn pleasure in watching her movements, as lithe as the swans she fed.

      He turned resolutely away from the window. “You said he came in contact with a number of unwed teenage mothers.”

      “He does,” John said slowly. “Look, I know I’ve mentioned this before and you’ve dismissed it outright—”

      “No,” Lucas said, knowing where John was leading.

      He continued doggedly, “—but you really ought to consider a more conventional—”

      “No.”

      “Just because your marriage with Carol didn’t work out—”

      “No. I won’t marry.”

      There was a long silence as John seemed to digest his flat refusal. “Then forget about adopting. You’re forty years old—”

      “Is it a matter of money?” He couldn’t help himself; he turned back to the window. But Allie had gone, no doubt back into the building. The swans drifted together across the pond. “If greasing the wheels would speed the process—”

      “There aren’t any wheels to grease. Hell, you can’t buy a child.”

      Self-recrimination settled inside him, sharp and bitter. This was exactly what he had feared. That despite good intentions, what was most crucial for a child was beyond his capacity to provide. “John, I’ve got to go. Get back to that attorney friend and get another referral.”

      “If you’ll think about my suggestion.”

      He wouldn’t, but no point in telling John that. “Call me later in the week.”

      Slipping the phone back into its cradle, he tugged open the middle desk drawer to retrieve the bottle of antacids. He tossed three into his mouth and chewed the tart, chalky tablets with a grimace. He’d been downing far too many of the antacids, a point his doctor had made at his last checkup a couple months ago. His doctor had told him to relax, to slow down, as if that would cure what was eating away at him inside.

      Women and their damn biological clocks didn’t have anything on his own urgency for a child. Everything he’d worked for for the last twenty years, every goal had narrowed down to a single purpose—to