Myrna Mackenzie - Riches to Rags Bride / The Heiress's Baby

Growling, he flung open his door and got out. “Genevieve,” he said, his voice carrying.

She turned, those big eyes open wide, startled.

“Lock your door,” he said. “I don’t want to lose my project manager through carelessness,” he felt compelled to add.

Genevieve blushed. She bit her lip. Was that a trace of resentment in her eyes? Intriguing. He hadn’t seen that before.

“I have six locks,” she told him, lifting her chin a tiny bit. There was just a trace of haughtiness, of the miffed debutante. “I … You don’t really trust me, do you?”

He hesitated. “I hired you.”

She nodded. “Because I’m a Patchett.”

He wasn’t going to deny it. Nor was he going to tell her he trusted her. He wasn’t sure whether he did. The truth was, he had a suspicion that hiring her had been a mistake, for reasons that had nothing to do with the project, reasons he didn’t even want to acknowledge. There was something about her that made him not trust himself . He had a terrible feeling that he knew what it was, too. It wasn’t good.

But he had hired her. The only thing to do now was to muddle through this mess. Quickly. Soon enough Genevieve Patchett would just be another woman in the rearview mirror of his consciousness. He was a pro at leaving bad situations—and problematic women—behind. If Genevieve was more problematic than most … well, he wouldn’t let that happen. He’d tell her what she needed to know to do her job, oversee her progress from a distance and then he’d send her on her way with enough money to escape this place.

And both of them would walk away happy. End of story.

GENEVIEVE LAY IN THE DARK, staring up at the ceiling but seeing instead the frown on Lucas’s gorgeous face. Carefully, she went over what had taken place during the day. And cringed.

“You didn’t even know how to sweep a floor, how to wash a wall.” She groaned and placed her palms over her hot face. “The man must think that he’s hired an idiot. He’s probably cursing Teresa and me right now, probably already looking through his list of applicants for my replacement. I don’t have any of the skills necessary, nothing that he wanted.”

Worse than that, she had an annoying habit of blushing every time she looked at the man. With just one wordless glance, he had pointed out that her wet blouse was plastered to her body, and her reaction had been beyond embarrassment. Heat had slithered through her veins. Those steel-gray eyes had found her time and time again today, often wordlessly, and every time he had looked at her, she had felt like …

A woman when she should have felt like an employee . For two seconds she thought back to the days when she had appeared at all of her parents’ balls and openings. What would Lucas have thought of her had he met her under such circumstances?

“Stop it right now, Gen,” she ordered herself. She wasn’t some silly romantic girl anymore. Besides, she most emphatically did not want a man, and Lucas certainly didn’t want her , she thought, remembering Jorge’s, Teresa’s and Rita’s words.

Besides, her very survival depended on her doing well at this job. And yet … in the back of her mind she heard her parents berating her for being awkward and for not being talented enough. She heard Barry mocking her for being such a sheltered, clueless princess. The thought that any day now Lucas might decide that she was incapable of doing her job …

Genevieve swallowed hard. Even the sound of yelling down the hall paled in comparison to her fears about what would happen if Lucas fired her. And it wasn’t just about the money, either.

She sat up in bed and dashed away one stray tear. “Don’t cry, you idiot. Do . Learn. Prove to him that you’re not afraid of anything.” Even though she was desperately afraid. But she wasn’t going to let Lucas know that.

“Odious, virile man,” she whispered. “Other women have cried buckets over you, but I won’t ever be one of them. I don’t care what you think of me as long as I survive you and learn from you.”

One thing she was sure of. When this was over, she would be more than glad to see the back of Lucas McDowell.

Lucas grunted as he flexed his arms, moving into his seventy-second push-up and trying to clear his thoughts. He was staying in the penthouse apartment of one of Chicago’s most luxurious hotels and there was, of course, a gym available to him, but he had his own private regimen he followed. One hundred push-ups for starters. Every night. No exceptions. After the emotional chaos of his childhood, discipline had been his salvation. Nothing was going to change that.

But clearing his mind to concentrate on his task was proving difficult. After he’d left Genevieve at her apartment with her six locks, he’d searched the internet and easily located the crime statistics for that neighborhood. Theft was a given, domestic disputes the norm. He growled at that. He knew better than anyone that domestic dispute sounded much too mild for all the horrors that tag encompassed. But that had nothing to do with Genevieve.

“Not your problem or your business,” he reminded himself. Control the situation . He repeated his mantra. Don’t let yourself get involved. Don’t let the situation have power over you . Because control was everything. It was the only thing that had kept him out of jail. It made life and success possible.

But in spite of his best efforts to stop thinking about Genevieve, when he tried to return to his task, he could still see the look in her eyes when she had told him that she had all those locks and asked him if he didn’t trust her. Somehow he was sure she wouldn’t appreciate him interfering in her life or suggesting that she might want to take her first paycheck and move.

It certainly wasn’t the kind of thing he ever did or wanted to do. Keep a distance. Never get too involved was his motto.

And yet, Genevieve Patchett’s naïveté, her dangerous situation, had kept him from completing a task he’d done every night for years. He was still stuck on push-up number seventy-two.

“Idiot. Get control of yourself. Stay out of this. Don’t do something you’ll regret.” With a groan, he forced himself to complete the push-up and all the rest of them. Having withstood the onslaught of doubts and come out ahead, he went to bed. A soft bed. A safe bed. In an exclusive hotel in an exclusive neighborhood.

“And everything is perfectly fine,” he mumbled. But in the middle of the night he woke from a dream in a cold sweat, his fears about why Genevieve was bothering him confirmed. Voices from a past he tried never to remember had pushed their way into his dreams. He’d heard his mother crying in the night. He’d felt his own failure, his inability to be what she wanted, and his own panic as she’d walked out the door, never to return. And after his father’s death when he’d been left totally alone, there had been other mother figures, women who had tried to help him and recoiled in distress at his wounded animal anger. Some had been nice; most had merely wanted to use him to gild their reputations; one society princess had called him her “street child” until she had a baby of her own, a better, sweeter child, the kind she’d always wanted. In the end, he had spurned all of them. And then …

Lucas took a deep breath, knowing that there was no use trying to hold back the next part. Because the next was the worst, the most damning incident. Then, there had been Angie, an innocent girl who had been savagely beaten by her father just because she had been involved with a reckless troublemaker like Lucas. He’d known what her father was. He’d selfishly and arrogantly ignored it, urged her to defy her father and stay with him. And she had paid the price.