The Tycoon's Proposal. Leigh Michaels

fingers and drifted downward like one of the snowflakes. The small card was warm from his pocket, and the first huge flake which collided with it melted instantly and blurred the ink. He dived after it, and his dress shoe slipped on an icy spot, almost careening him headfirst into a drift.

      Even as he was scrambling to keep his balance in the snow he told himself it was stupid to care whether he could still read a number that he had no intention of calling. But it burned itself into his brain anyway, as he picked up the ticket and carefully blotted the snowflake away. The handwriting was strong, clear, and neat, with each numeral precisely formed. And there was a nice sequence to the numbers, too. A memorable sequence.

      An odd sequence, he thought as he slid behind the wheel. Maybe it was even a little too rhythmic. Five-six-seven-eight…. Wasn’t that just a little too handy a combination to be real? It sounded more like an aerobic dance routine than a phone number.

      “Was there something you needed to go back for, dear?” his grandmother asked. “Or are you just planning to sit here and block traffic for the rest of the evening?”

      Kurt stared at the ticket still cupped in his palm, and then he reached for his cell phone, angling it in the light from the entrance canopy so he could compare the keypad with what the young woman had written down. The corresponding letters leaped out at him. Five-six-seven-eight…. He started to laugh.

      It looked like a phone number, all right, but he’d bet it led only to a misdial recording. Because surely no phone company would deliberately give a customer that particular series of numbers.

      The ones which corresponded to the words GET LOST.

      Lissa smothered a yawn and tried not to look at the clock posted high on the foyer’s opposite wall. The banquet was over, and most of the crowd was gone, but her nerves were still thrumming from the encounter with Kurt Callahan. She couldn’t let down her guard yet, however; she had to stay in the cloakroom until the very last garment was claimed or turned over to Lost and Found once the security officers declared that the building was completely empty of guests.

      The double doors of the banquet room opened and one of her co-workers emerged pushing a full cart. She looked hot and tired, and Lissa wished she could go lend a hand. Though the work was harder, she’d much rather draw dining room duty than tend the cloakroom. She’d rather be busy than sitting around doing nothing. The time went faster, the tips were usually better, and there was no opportunity to think…

      She glanced at the glass tips jar. Not much in it tonight, except for the nice-sized bill Kurt Callahan had pushed through the slot. A big enough bill, in fact, that she half regretted giving him a fake phone number. Not that she would have given him a real one under any circumstances, because Kurt Callahan was the epitome of trouble; she’d learned that lesson long ago. But she could have just told him no.

      She hoped he wouldn’t actually call. No, she amended, what she really hoped was that the owner of the number wouldn’t take offense if he did. She really should have checked out whether that number was actually assigned to a customer…

      But then she’d never needed a backup before, because the time and temperature in Winnipeg had served her well through the years. Until tonight—when she’d blurted out the truth to Kurt Callahan. But why had she told him about her ploy? To show off how clever she was? To very delicately let him know that she hadn’t been trolling for a date with the athlete? To hint that she needed such stratagems to hold off the vast numbers of men who clustered around her? To point out that even though he wasn’t seriously interested in her other men were?

      She smothered a snort at her own foolishness. As if any of that would matter to him. A man with his success, and the good looks to match—hair so dark it had had a bluish cast under the artificial lights, blue-gray eyes, a chiseled profile, and a dimple in his cheek which peeked out at the least expected moments—wouldn’t have any doubts that he was attractive to any woman still able to breathe.

      Maybe she did hope he’d call that number. It would do him good to have his ego trimmed back a bit. And if she could be the one to do it…Somebody has to start a trend, she thought.

      Besides, if she’d coldly refused to give him the information he wanted, he might have started to wonder why. No, this way was better—he wouldn’t call, and so he would never have reason to question why the woman in the cloakroom was immune to his charm. He’d probably never give her a second thought.

      Her long evening shut up in the cloakroom should have meant plenty of time to finish reviewing her notes for the next morning’s political science final. Of course it hadn’t quite happened that way. Despite her best efforts, she hadn’t been able to concentrate. A dozen times she’d started to study, only to find herself straining to listen to the speeches coming from the ballroom instead.

      Well, it was too late to go to the library. She’d walk straight home instead, look over her notes again, then get some sleep. And once her last exam was past, and she had worked her only remaining dining room shift tomorrow, the semester would officially be over and she would have no other obligations until after January first.

      No obligations—but also no income. For with school out of session the student union would close as well.

      Lissa bit her lip. She had enough cash tucked back to survive two weeks without a paycheck—and the idea of two weeks of freedom, with no timeclock to punch, no boss to answer to, was sheer heaven.

      A crash made her jump and look toward the banquet room. Another of the dining room attendants had misjudged and rammed a cart loaded with the last debris of the banquet—coffee cups, water glasses, crumpled linens, and a few odd baskets of dinner rolls—into the edge of the door. An awkward stack of half-empty glass dessert plates wobbled on the corner of the cart.

      Lissa swung herself up onto the cloakroom counter and across, jumping off just as the stack of dishes overbalanced. She slapped her hand down on the top plate, stopping the disaster but splashing leftover creme caramel over the front of her own white shirt and the waitress’s. “Sorry about making such a mess, Connie.”

      “No problem. I’d rather wash out a shirt than clean glass shards out of the carpet. I think that stack will stay in place now.”

      “Now that I’ve squashed the plates together and spread dessert all over the foyer, you mean?” Lissa cautiously lifted her hand. Caramel and custard oozed between her fingers. “Maybe I should just lick it off.”

      “I wouldn’t advise it—those things never taste as good as they look.”

      Lissa reached for a crumpled napkin and tried without much success to wipe the sticky sauce off her fingers.

      Their supervisor appeared from the banquet room. “What’s the holdup, girls? And why aren’t you in the cloakroom, Ms Morgan?”

      “There are only two coats left, and no one seems likely to claim them at this hour,” Lissa said. “So I was giving Connie a hand with the cart.” She didn’t climb over the counter this time; she very properly went through the door and back into the cloakroom.

      “Connie needs to learn to manage on her own.” The supervisor eyed the glass tip jar. “You seem to have done rather well this evening. The contributions of young men, by any chance? Perhaps I should make it clear, Ms Morgan, that the cloakroom is not a dating service. If I hear again about you giving out your phone number….”

      “Yes, ma’am.” Lissa didn’t bother to explain. She suspected her boss would not see the humor in Winnipeg’s time and temperature. And right now she didn’t even want to think about how the supervisor might have heard about the whole thing.

      “All the guests have gone. Lock up the rest of the coats, and then you may punch out,” the supervisor said.

      Lissa was relieved to be outside, away from the overheated and stale atmosphere of the banquet room. Now that traffic had died down the snow was getting very deep—though she could see a pair of plows running up the nearest main street, trying to keep the center lanes clear. She slung her backpack over her shoulder, took a deep breath of crisp air, let a snowflake