Natalie Patrick - The Millionaire's Proposition

No, she certainly would not go slinking back with her tail between her legs after only five months in Chicago. She would not go through the struggle just to end up in another low-paying dead-end job, about the only kind a town as small as Woodbridge could provide a girl without a degree and her limited work experience.

And how could she go back and face her old boyfriend after telling him she’d outgrown the town, the life-style and most especially her puppy love/first attraction for him? The last was certainly true and had been true for most of the year they’d dated. But then how hard was it to outgrow a guy who thought buying you a microwave burrito at his father’s gas station was taking you out to eat?

A guy who thought all women should be barefoot and pregnant—except when they put on their steeltoed boots to go to work at the local factory? A guy who had never understood, much less supported, her quest for self-improvement, her plans to go back to college, her longing for something more?

She shuddered. If she never saw the likes of Frankie McWurter again, it would be too soon. And if she never took her brother’s typical Midwestern male advice, then...

She fingered the two tiny silver baby booties on her charm-laden bracelet, one for each of Matt’s children, her niece and nephew. Thinking of her brother and his wife, Dani, and those adorable toddlers did make her think twice about never taking her brother’s imagined advice. Actually, she did want to get married eventually and have those babies. In fact, she counted on it.

Marriage, after all, was what girls in Woodbridge, Indiana, were raised to do best—even enlightened, educated girls, um, women of the so-caded “Generation X.” And babies? Becky loved babies, their tiny toes and fat tummies, the way they smelled, the way they cooed and laughed. The very idea of having one of her own someday radiated through her like sunshine through the dreariness of her day.

Becky absolutely wanted to get married and have a baby—with the right guy, at the right time and under the right circumstances. A triple threat, her sister-in-law would tease her and tell her the odds were stacked against realizing all three of her goals at the same time.

“Find Mr. Right,” Dani would say, “and the rest suddenly won’t matter quite so much.”

“Find Mr. Right?” Becky muttered, clutching her thin all-weather coat close to her body. Right now she’d be happy to bump into Mr. Coffee. She stopped by the glass front of a chaotic little coffee shop on the first floor of an elegant skyscraper.

The aroma of the exotic blends, the rich lattes, the freshly ground beans all enticed her. She shut her eyes, tipped up her nose and savored it. Since savoring was all she could afford, why not enjoy the very best? she thought.

She’d checked her budget again this morning, trying to find just enough extra to allow her to replace the contact lens she’d lost the night before. She glanced at the image of herself reflected in the huge plate-glass window before her. Even her best perfectpink job interview suit didn’t make up for the pair of bent wire-framed glasses perched on her nose or the still-damp mass of golden-brown curls glommed on top of her head. If only her roommate hadn’t moved out last week and taken the blow dryer along with her half of the living expenses, her hair at least might be presentable, Becky thought.

No, her budget would not budge for contacts or coffee. When she’d lost her job last week, she’d stocked the fridge and paid the rent and figured out the total cost of utilities, necessities and buying a paper every day for job-hunting purposes. Luxuries like latte did not fit in the picture.

She gazed longingly at the hot steaming cups set down by the waitress. Even the half-empty ones, which got whisked away almost before the patrons had left the premises, didn’t look bad to Becky today. She fought off a yawn and moved her bedraggled umbrella from one shoulder to the other. In the shop, two women in stark business attire got up from their seats, their cups still brimming, and left the coffee disregarded as lightly as the cast-off newspaper one tossed onto the counter.

Of course! Becky brightened. If she spent her allotted money for a plain, small cup of coffee and lingered over it long enough, she could gather up someone’s unwanted paper for free. Not only could she get the want ads that way but she wouldn’t go through the day feeling like some job-hunting zombie.

Her heavy charm bracelet jangled and icy water droplets splashed on her wrist and leg. She yanked and pulled and finally got her miserable pink-and-blue floral umbrella shut. She looked at the sad old thing with one rib bowed out and another bent at a forty-degree angle so that even closed it seemed as if about to burst into a rendition of “I’m a little teapot.” As soon as she got a job, that umbrella was going to go and the first thing she was going to buy was a new one, she told herself. No, make that the second thing.

She pushed through the heavy glass doors of the mammoth building, heading for the inner entrance to the shop. The first thing she would buy was a new charm for her bracelet—to mark the passage into this new, mature phase of her life. She gave her bracelet a confident shake and forged ahead, throwing herself into a throng of gray suits and shuffling wing tips.

Ping.

“My charm!” She’d felt the small object bounce against her knee moments before it hit the floor. A quick check of her bracelet told her she’d lost one of the baby booties she so cherished. Replacing it at a time like this was not an option, she thought. She had to find it!

She scanned the floor. The bright silver should stand out against the black marble, shouldn’t it?

She raised her hand to bite her fingernail and unintentionally stabbed not one, but three passersby with the tip of her crooked umbrella.

“Sorry. So sorry. I’m sorry.” She tried to meet the eyes of each of those she’d gouged.

None of them returned her gaze. She hung her head, feeling two feet tall. Of course, she thought, if she were two feet tall, at least then she might spot her charm more readily. She’d lost her job last week, her contact last night and her baby bootie moments ago, but that didn’t mean she had to lose her sense of humor or her dignity.

“Oh, my!” She gasped as something metallic winked at her just a few inches from the elevator doors. Maybe she didn’t have to lose her bootie after all. Disregarding the flash of feet and press of bodies, she dove for the tiny trinket, determined not to let it get swept inside the opening elevator doors.

Her teeth jarred as her knees hit the floor. Her fingers ached in stretching so hard to reach. Almost. Almost...

Crunch.

“Ow!” She drew back her hand, her fingertips smarting. The charm had disappeared and the man who had clomped on her fingers with it inside the elevator.

Scrambling to her feet, she jerked her head up in time to see a tall, black-haired man in a tailored suit and white shirt that set off the dark undertones of his skin dig something small and silver out of the heel of his shoe.

“That’s my charm,” she called out.

The man looked up and directly into her eyes. Her heart stopped. This was not the kind of man she normally ran into in Woodbridge or even in her usual activities around Chicago. Those kinds of men, the best of the bunch, wore power ties. This man wore power itself, raw yet refined, barely contained the way his fitted suit could not entirely temper the primitive qualities of his lean, muscular body.

His lips, pale and hard, looked like they could kiss a girl senseless, and Becky had no doubt that life provided him ample opportunity to do just that. His straight nose and dark eyebrows set off his penetrating brown eyes, which, she imagined could practically spark to telegraph underlying anger or humor or even lust.