The Tycoon's Proposal. Leigh Michaels

she reached the house she was cold and wet. There were still lights on upstairs, but the main level was mercifully dark and relatively quiet. With a sigh of relief she unlocked the sliding door which separated her tiny studio apartment—which in better days had been the back parlor of a once-stately home—from the main hallway.

      The fireplace no longer worked, of course, but the mantel served nicely as a display shelf for a few precious objects, and in the center she’d put her Christmas tree. It was just twelve inches tall, the top section of an artificial tree which had been discarded years ago, stuck in a makeshift stand. There were no lights, and only a half-dozen ornaments, each of them really too large for the diminutive tree. But it was a little bit of holiday cheer, a reminder of better days, a symbol of future hopes….

      She frowned and looked more closely. There had been a half-dozen ornaments that afternoon, when she’d gone off to work. Now there were five. On the rug below the mantel were a few thin shards of iridescent glass where the sixth ornament, an angel, had shattered.

      Someone must have slammed a door, she told herself, and the vibration had made the angel fall. But she knew better. The fact that there were only a few tell-tale slivers meant the ornament had not simply been broken, but the mess had been hastily swept up.

      But no one was supposed to be in her room, ever.

      Lissa’s breath froze. She spun around to the stack of plastic crates which held almost everything she owned and rummaged through the bottom one, looking for her dictionary. In the back of it, under the embroidered cover, was an envelope where she kept her spare cash. She’d tucked it there, secure in the thought that no other occupant of the house would be caught dead looking up a word even if they did invade her privacy to snoop through her room, as she had suspected some of them might be tempted to do.

      The envelope was still there, but it was empty. Someone had raided her room, searched her belongings, and walked away with her minuscule savings. All the money she had left in the world now was in her pocket—the tips she’d taken from the glass jar before she left the student union tonight.

      She had to remind herself to breathe. Her chest felt as if she was caught between a pair of elevator doors which were squeezing the life out of her.

      You’ve survived hard times before. You can do it again. There would be a check waiting for her when the union reopened after the holidays, pay for the hours she’d worked in the last two weeks.

      But in the meantime, to find herself essentially without funds and with no immediate means of earning any….

      Maybe, she thought wryly, she should have given Kurt Callahan a real phone number after all. At least then, if by some wild chance he had actually called her, she could have hit him up for a loan, for old times’ sake….

      By the next afternoon the snowstorm was over, though the wind had picked up. In the residential neighborhood where his grandmother’s three-story Dutch Colonial house stood, some of the alleys and sidestreets hadn’t yet been plowed. The driveway had been cleared—the handyman had been busy since Kurt had left that morning—but in places small drifts were beginning to form once more, shaped by the wind.

      He parked his Jaguar under the porte cochere at the side of the house and went in.

      From the kitchen, the scents of warm cinnamon and vanilla swirled around him, mixed with the crisp cold of the outside air. Christmas cookies, he’d bet. He pushed open the swinging shutters which separated the kitchen from the hallway and peered in.

      His grandmother’s all-purpose household helper was standing on a chair, digging in a top cabinet which looked as if it hadn’t been opened in years. As he watched, a stack of odd pans cascaded from the cabinet, raining past Janet’s upraised arms and clattering against the hard tile floor.

      He offered a hand to help Janet down, and started gathering up pans almost before they’d stopped banging. “Why are you climbing on a chair, anyway? I thought I bought you a ladder for this kind of thing.”

      “It’s in the basement. Too hard to drag it up here. That’s the pan I need, the springform one.” She took it out of his hand. “Everything else can go back.”

      If only all of his store managers were as good as Janet at delegating responsibility, Kurt thought, the entire chain would run more smoothly. He gathered up the remaining dozen-odd pans and climbed up on the chair to put them back. “Is Gran home from her lunch date?”

      “Not yet. She and Miss Marian always have a lot to talk about.”

      Including, Kurt remembered ruefully, planning a tea date for him and Marian’s “little friend.” As if he couldn’t see through that for the matchmaking stunt it was. No wonder Gran had been helping to hold off the procession of women at the banquet last night…

      “There’s fresh coffee,” Janet said.

      Kurt got himself a cup and carried it and a couple of cookies into the big living room. The sun had come out, and it reflected off the brilliant whiteness outside and poured into the house. The arched panel of leaded glass at the top of the big front window shattered the light into rainbows in which a few dust motes danced like ballerinas.

      The enormous fir tree in front of the house swayed in the wind, and a clump of wet snow fell to the sidewalk just as a small reddish car turned the corner and pulled into the driveway. Kurt stared. That was certainly his grandmother’s car, but why she would have taken it out in weather like this—

      The side door opened and shut, and he met her in the doorway between hall and living room. “What the devil are you doing driving around in this snow?” he demanded.

      “The streets are perfectly clear now, dear. We’re used to snow in Minneapolis, and the road crews are very good at their job.”

      “It’s freezing out there, Gran. The wind chill must be—”

      “A man who climbs mountains for fun is worried about wind chill?”

      “Not for myself,” he growled. “For you. You could get stranded. You could have a fender-bender. Just last night you were telling me how much you appreciated having a good, reliable driver.”

      “Very true. It’s quite a fine idea, in fact. Would you hang up my coat, dear? And ask Janet to brew a pot of tea.” She dropped her mink carelessly on the floor and walked into the living room.

      Kurt bit his tongue and started for the kitchen. Just as he pushed open the swinging shutters to call to Janet the side door opened again, and he had to jerk back to prevent his toes from being caught under the edge. Cold wind swirled in, and a feminine voice called, “Mrs. Wilder?”

      “I’m just across the hall,” his grandmother answered from the living room. “Come on in.”

      A face appeared around the edge of the door. A heart-shaped face with very short auburn hair ruffled around the ears and cheeks reddened by the wind. The young woman from the cloakroom.

      Kurt stared at her in disbelief. “Where did you come from?”

      She didn’t answer directly. “I didn’t expect you to be here. I mean—right here. I didn’t bang the door into your nose, did I?”

      Finally things clicked. What was wrong with him that it had taken so long to make the connection? “I should have known Marian’s ‘little friend’ would turn out to be you,” he grumbled. No wonder she’d looked at him that way last night. She’d been speculating, all right—wondering what his reaction would be when he finally figured out who she was. “Is that why you pulled all that nonsense with the phone number last night? So I’d be surprised when you turned up here?”

      She flushed suddenly, violently red. “Look, I’m sorry about the phone number. It was a stupid trick, and if someone took it as a prank call—”

      “I didn’t have to dial it to figure out the joke.”

      “You didn’t? Then I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. All I did was drive your grandmother home from the student union.”