The Executive's Valentine Seduction / Valente Must Marry: The Executive's Valentine Seduction. Merline Lovelace

silk tie, he wasn’t someone she wanted to encounter in a dark alley.

      The hand-tailored suit only emphasized his lean, rangy build. He wore his tawny hair cut ruthlessly short. His nose was flattened at the bridge, as if it had taken a direct hit from a club or a gun butt. And when he peeled off his mirrored sunglasses, his amber eyes lasered into Caro.

      A series of small shocks rippled down her spine. Those eyes. That deep golden tint. The russet outer ring around the iris. Wolf’s eyes, the former librarian in her cataloged automatically, due to the high incidence of that color in wolves.

      Like…Like…

      Like the eyes that had haunted her dreams for years. Mocking her. Taunting her to shed her prissy inhibitions. Tempting her to sin.

      Her heart stuttered. Her breath sliced like a razor blade inside her throat.

      It couldn’t be him! This high-powered executive couldn’t be the young tough whose motorcycle she’d climbed aboard one steamy summer night. The hot stud she gave her virginity to. The bastard who’d roared out of her life the next morning, leaving a trail of devastation in his wake.

      She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t think as he approached. Those wolf’s eyes never left her face.

      “Hello, Caroline. It’s been a long time.”

      Oh God! Oh God, oh God, oh God!

      Her mind reeled with disbelief. Everything in her shouted a denial. She gouged her nails deep into her palms and felt her body go ice-cold then blaze white-hot when Burke shot out a hand to grip her upper arm.

      “But don’t keel over on me.”

      The gruff command triggered the survival instincts Caro had been forced to develop in the aftermath of that long-ago night. She couldn’t quite stop the trembling, but she clamped down on the waves of dizziness and dragged in a breath that cut like jagged glass.

      “How…? When…?”

      “When did I find out I got you pregnant?” he finished for her. “Three months ago.”

      His gaze swept the lobby, came back to her.

      “This isn’t the place to discuss the result of our one-night stand. Let’s take it somewhere private. Am I preregistered?”

      “I…Uh…” She swiped her tongue over dry lips. “Yes.”

      “You have the room key?”

      She could only nod this time.

      “What’s the room number?”

      “Five…” She forced herself to breathe, to think. “Five oh eight.”

      He waited to relay the number to the bellman wheeling in his luggage before steering Caro toward the elevators. His hand remained locked around her upper arm. His body crowded hers in the claustrophobic cage.

      She didn’t say a word on the way up. She was still numb with shock, still fighting desperately to suppress the emotions that bombarded her.

      She’d thought she’d put her past behind her. Was so certain she’d wiped out every remnant of her paralyzing fear when she finally realized she was pregnant, her shame at having to drop out of high school, her despair of being bundled off to a haven for pregnant teens.

      She’d never gotten over the heartache of delivering a stillborn, seven-month-old baby, however. That stayed with her always. The experience had molded her into the woman she was today. Quiet. Contained. Careful.

      And strong, she reminded herself grimly. Strong enough to survive. Strong enough to endure. Certainly strong enough to deal with Rory Burke.

      Rory Burke. The name fit the man he’d become, but in no way could she connect it to the cocky, T-shirted eighteen-year-old who’d worked in her uncle’s garage for a few weeks that long-ago summer.

      “I never knew your real name,” she got out through frozen lips as they exited the elevator. “My uncle and cousin always called you Johnny. Or Hoss.”

      Short for Stud Hoss, her shamefaced cousin had admitted later. By then it was too late.

      “John—Johnny—is my middle name. I stopped using it when I went into the army. The military isn’t big on calling recruits by their middle names. Or any name except some that can’t be repeated in polite company.” He stopped at a set of double doors. “Five oh eight. This is it.”

      She fumbled in the leather folder for the key card. All her careful work—the agenda, the layout, the support setups—went unnoticed as Burke slipped the card into the lock and stood aside for her to precede him.

      She’d checked out the lavish four-room suite just a half hour ago. The welcome basket still sat on the slab of polished granite that served as a coffee table. The handwritten note from the resort manager was still propped beside it. The minibar was stocked with single malt scotch, Burke’s reported drink of choice. Yet Caro was too numb to absorb any of the details she’d checked so meticulously.

      She dropped the leather folder on the coffee table beside the basket. With her arms wrapped around her waist, she turned to the man she’d never expected to see again.

      “You said…”

      She stopped, cringing at the ragged edge in her voice. She wasn’t a frightened seventeen-year-old, dammit! She’d survived the angry recriminations her parents had thrown at her. All those lonely weeks at the home. The wrenching loss of her baby.

      In the process, she’d discovered a strength she didn’t know she had. That inner core had pushed her to finish high school by correspondence, work her way through college and attend grad school on a full scholarship. During her junior year in college, she met the two women who would become her closest friends and, ultimately, her business partners. She’d built a life for herself. She owed no explanations to anyone, least of all this man.

      But he sure as hell owed her one!

      “You said you just found out three months ago I got pregnant.”

      “That’s right.”

      “How?”

      He tossed the key card on the coffee table and yanked at the knot of his tie. “I had dinner with a prospective client. Turns out his wife’s from Millburn.”

      Millburn, Kansas. Population nine thousand or so. The town where Caro had spent the first seventeen years of her life. The town she’d returned to only once in the years since she’d left—for her father’s funeral.

      “The wife’s name is Evelyn Walker,” Burke said as he slid the tie from around his neck with a slither of silk on starched cotton. “Maiden name was Brown. Maybe you remember her?”

      “Oh, yes. I remember Evelyn Brown.”

      They’d never been friends. They’d rarely talked to each other in the halls at school. But Evelyn had led the chorus of smirks and snide comments when word leaked that prim, prissy Caroline Walters had gotten herself knocked up.

      “I asked the woman if she knew you.”

      His eyes held hers. Those compelling, dangerous eyes that had made Caro shiver every time he’d looked her over all those years ago.

      “She told me you dropped out of high school at the start of your senior year. She also told me why.”

      “Schools weren’t as tolerant of teenage pregnancies back then as they are today.”

      She could say it without bitterness. She’d never blamed the guidance counselor who’d called her in and told her she had to leave. Never blamed her parents for shipping her off to live with strangers. She was the one who’d tossed aside every principle, every precaution drummed into her by parents, teachers and church pastors to climb aboard a motorcycle that sweltering summer night.

      “When I heard what happened, I…”