Hired Husband. Rebecca Brandewyne

receiver as he made a long attempt to clear his throat, choked with anticipation and arousal. At last, he managed to speak.

      “I…ah…do, in fact, have a friend or two at the INS. So I don’t see why I couldn’t make those arrangements for you. A casual word dropped here or there. No, that shouldn’t pose any problem whatsoever. Consider Nick Valkov as good as on a plane back to Russia at this very moment.”

      “Oh, Duckie, I knew my faith in you wasn’t misplaced. Call me just as soon as you’ve got everything fixed up with the INS, and I’ll be on the next plane out to Washington, I promise. Until then, keep my side of the bed warm and have sweet dreams about me…as I will about you. See you soon, Duckie.” A soft, seductive laugh echoed from the receiver before the line went dead, leaving the dial tone buzzing in the senator’s ear.

      After he had got his breathing and heartbeat back under control, Donald Devane punched one of the intercom buttons on his telephone, directing his secretary to put through a call for him to the Immigration and Naturalization Service bureau.

      Some minutes later, a computer at the INS began the process that would revoke the green card of one Dr. Nicolai Valkov, currently director of research and development at Fortune Cosmetics—and therefore, unbeknown to him, a spoke in somebody’s wheel.

      One

      Minneapolis, Minnesota

       A s Caroline Fortune wheeled her sedate dark blue Volvo into the underground parking lot of the towering, glass-and-steel structure that housed the global headquarters of Fortune Cosmetics, she glanced anxiously at her gold Piaget wristwatch. An accident on the snowy freeway had caused rush-hour traffic to be a nightmare this morning. As a result, she could be late for her 9:00 a.m. meeting—and if there were one thing her grandmother, Kate Winfield Fortune, simply couldn’t abide, it was slack, unprofessional behavior on the job.

      And lateness was the sign of a sloppy, disorganized schedule.

      Involuntarily, Caroline shuddered at the thought of her grandmother’s infamous wrath being unleashed upon her. The stern rebuke would be precise, apropos and scathing, she knew, delivered with coolly raised, condemnatory eyebrows and in icy tones of haughty grandeur that had in the past reduced many an executive—even male ones—at Fortune Cosmetics not only to obsequious apologies, but even to tears. Caroline had seen it happen on more than one occasion, although, much to her gratitude and relief, she herself was seldom a target of her grandmother’s anger.

      And she wouldn’t be this morning, either, not if she could help it. That would be a disastrous way to start out the new year.

      Grabbing her Louis Vuitton tote bag and her black leather portfolio from the front passenger seat, Caroline slipped gracefully from the Volvo and slammed the door. The heels of her Maud Frizon pumps clicked briskly on the concrete floor as she hurried toward the bank of elevators that would take her up into the skyscraper owned by her family. She pressed the Up button on the wall, muttering under her breath as several minutes seemed to tick by before, at last, a chime sounded and a pair of elevator doors slid open to admit her.

      Presently, she was rushing down the long, plushly carpeted corridors of one of the hushed upper floors, toward the conference room where the meeting was scheduled.

      By now, Caroline had her portfolio open and was leafing through it as she hastened along, reviewing the notes she had prepared for her presentation. So she didn’t see Dr. Nicolai Valkov until she literally ran right into him. Like her, he had his head bent over his own portfolio, not watching where he was going, either; as the two of them collided, both their portfolios and the papers inside went flying.

      At the unexpected impact, Caroline lost her balance, stumbled, and would have fallen had not Nick’s strong, sure hands abruptly shot out, grabbing hold of her and pulling her close to steady her. She gasped, startled and stricken, as she came up hard against his broad chest, lean hips and corded thighs, her face just inches from his own—as though they were lovers about to kiss.

      Caroline had never been so close to Nick Valkov before, and in that instant, she was acutely aware of him—not just as a fellow employee of Fortune Cosmetics, but also as a man. Of how tall and ruggedly handsome he was, dressed in an elegant, pin-striped black suit cut in the European fashion, a crisp white shirt, a foulard tie and a pair of Cole Haan loafers. Of how dark his thick, glossy hair and his deep-set eyes framed by raven-wing brows were—so dark that they were almost black, despite the bright fluorescent lights that blazed overhead. Of the whiteness of his straight teeth against his bronzed skin as a brazen, mocking grin slowly curved his wide, sensual mouth.

      “Actually, I was hoping for a sweet roll this morning—but I daresay you would prove even tastier, Ms. Fortune,” Nick drawled impertinently, his low, silky voice tinged with a faint accent born of the fact that Russian, not English, was his native language.

      At his words, Caroline flushed painfully, embarrassed and annoyed. If there was one person she always attempted to avoid at Fortune Cosmetics, it was Nick Valkov.

      Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, he had emigrated to the United States, where her grandmother had hired him to direct the company’s research and development department. Since that time, Nick had constantly demonstrated marked, traditional Old World tendencies that had led Caroline to believe he not only had no use for equal rights, but also would actually have been more than happy to turn back the clock several centuries where females were concerned. She thought his remark was typical of his attitude toward women: insolent, arrogant and domineering. Really, the man was simply insufferable!

      Caroline couldn’t imagine what had prompted her grandmother to hire him—and at a highly generous salary—except that Nick Valkov was considered one of the foremost chemists anywhere on the planet. Deep inside, Caroline knew that no matter how he behaved, Fortune Cosmetics was really extremely lucky to have him. Still, that didn’t give him the right to manhandle and insult her!

      “I assure you that you would find me more bitter than a cup of the strongest black coffee, Dr. Valkov,” she insisted now, attempting without success to free her trembling body from his steely grip, which continued to hold her so near that she could feel his heart beating steadily in his chest—and knew he must be equally able to feel the erratic hammering of her own.

      “Oh, I’m willing to wager there’s more sugar and cream to you than you let on, Ms. Fortune.” To her utter mortification and outrage, she felt one of Nick’s hands slide insidiously up her back and nape, to her luxuriant mass of sable hair, done up in a stylish French twist. “You know so much about fashion,” he murmured, eyeing her assessingly and pointedly ignoring her indignation and efforts to escape from him. “So why do you always wear your hair like this…so tightly wrapped and severe? I’ve never seen it down. That’s the way it needs to be worn, you know…soft, loose, tangled around your face. As it is, your hair fairly cries out for a man to take the pins from it, so he can see how long it is. Does it fall past your shoulders?” He quirked one eyebrow inquisitively, a mocking half smile still twisting his lips, letting her know he was enjoying her obvious discomfiture. “You aren’t going to tell me, are you. What a pity. Because my guess is that it does—and I’d like to know if I’m right. And these glasses.” He indicated the large, square tortoiseshell frames perched on her slender, classic nose. “I think you use them to hide behind more than you do to see. I’ll bet you don’t actually even need them at all.”

      Caroline felt the blush that had yet to leave her cheeks deepen betrayingly, its heat seeming to spread throughout her entire body. Damn the man! Why must he be so infuriatingly audacious and perceptive? Because what Nick suspected was true: her hair did fall below her shoulders, and the prescription in her lenses was so light as to be negligible. She customarily wore both the French twist and the glasses solely because she felt they gave her a more businesslike appearance, a no-nonsense image she had determinedly cultivated to conceal her vulnerable, romantic inner self from the rest of the world—from men in particular.

      “Dr. Valkov,” Caroline said frostily, forcing herself to marshal her wits and composure, “not only am I not even remotely interested in what you think, but neither of us has time