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

She never raised her voice, but it was clear that if he said no, she would feel as if he didn’t value her service. And after the heavy-handed method he had used to get her to agree to this change …

Lucas swore beneath his breath. Okay, she had him over a barrel. He could push the issue, but … she was clearly a woman who had been misused, whose ego had been trampled. And he had sworn he’d never damage a fragile female again. It was another reason why he only dated women like Rita, women who were just as cold and calculating as he was.

Genevieve was nothing like Rita. She wasn’t cold enough, hard enough or experienced enough. In fact, he should never have hired her, but … letting her go would certainly damage her. She’d be out on the streets with nowhere to go. Now that he fully understood that …

“A little overtime would be all right,” he conceded. Because in the end he had gotten what he wanted, hadn’t he? She would be safe. That meant he wouldn’t have to think about her anymore. From that moment on, the two of them would only be about the job.

But hours later he realized that moving her hadn’t totally solved the Genevieve problem. Vulnerable green eyes crept into his thoughts. He knew why, too. He owned Angie’s House. And even though he was staying in a high-rent hotel all the way across town, the truth was that Genevieve was now living, breathing and sleeping beneath his roof.

Right now she was probably lying in bed.

Lucas groaned. He tried not to think about Genevieve’s beautiful copper-colored hair spread out across a pillow or those long bare legs….

“Stop it. Don’t go there. Just … speed this up. Let’s get this done—finished—so you can walk away as you always do,” he whispered. It was a good plan. Two months from now, Genevieve Patchett would no doubt be back making the debutante rounds, and he would be far away. She would barely be a blip in his memory base.

Which was … excellent, because if this heat and temptation kept building, he would be kissing Genevieve’s pretty pink lips any day now.

And that would be the worst kind of mistake.

But it wasn’t going to happen. Order had been restored to his life. His solitary journey could continue.

He could finally get Genevieve out of his thoughts, couldn’t he?

THE DAY AFTER GENEVIEVE moved in, she tried to throw herself into work, opting to paint one of the bedrooms herself, even though Thomas and Jorge were better painters. She needed activity. Not just planning. She needed to immerse herself in something purely physical, so that she wouldn’t have time to think. Because the truth was that already she was having trouble adapting to living in Angie’s House.

She knew why, too. This place was very nice. It was quiet and safe and even a bit lovely now that the decorating was beginning to take shape. But she just couldn’t seem to forget that Lucas owned this house. Living here, eating and sleeping and dreaming here … it all felt too physical, and she’d already discovered that she was very susceptible to Lucas’s touch. She couldn’t be thinking about him all the time or risk getting close to him.

Which was a ridiculous thing to worry about. He wasn’t about to let an employee get close. In truth, she knew very little about the man. She knew that he was rich, she’d searched around online and discovered that he had other philanthropic projects he was involved in besides this one. He provided free sporting goods to inner-city schools, he sponsored summer camps for poor children. What she didn’t know about him was anything … personal.

Except that for some reason he had decided to do more than give money to charity this time. He was personally involved in this charitable venture. Sometimes when he spoke about women who had terrible, frightening lives, a fleeting look of something, maybe anguish, came into his eyes. She’d seen it but she didn’t understand it at all.

Then, too, this place was called Angie’s House. Had there been an Angie or was it just a convenient moniker? And if there had been an Angie, had he been in love with her? Had he—

“Genevieve?” Lucas’s deep voice sounded behind her.

Genevieve jumped. She dropped the paintbrush onto the drop cloth, splattering blue paint, then rushed to pick it up, trying to hide her blush and her embarrassment.

“I’m sorry,” Lucas said. “I startled you. I should have made more noise or—”

Suddenly, he stopped talking and Genevieve looked up to see what had interrupted his speech. He was looking at the walls, which were …

A mess. A series of loops and sloppy brushstrokes. Obviously, she had taken her erratic thoughts about Lucas and translated them to her work. Embarrassment rushed through her. And Lucas was shaking his head.

“Genevieve, why are you painting?” he asked. “I thought we agreed that you had completed your hands-on tasks.”

They had. “I—” His frown sent her words stumbling. She looked at the walls that appeared to have been painted by a child. All of this would have to be redone. More paint. More work. More time wasted when she knew he was already on a tight deadline. The other day when he’d been there he’d received a phone call regarding the job in France. They needed him there soon, possibly sooner than originally planned. If he’d hired someone more experienced than she was … maybe he would hire someone like that and let her go. She hadn’t made nearly enough progress. “Lucas, I know I haven’t lived up to expectations yet. But I will. I promise.”

To her surprise she wanted to add, Please don’t send me away , but that was too personal. It sounded too much like she wanted to stay here to be with him . Thank goodness her voice was shaking too much and her sense of self-preservation stopped her. Why was she even thinking such a crazy thought, anyway? Most likely because Lucas had voiced concern about her safety. That must be all it was, because certainly he was nothing to her. She didn’t want to feel anything for him.

But she couldn’t stop herself from looking up at him. And what she saw there wasn’t anger, but something that looked a lot more like sadness, a hint of pain. It flickered in his eyes and then it was gone.

Heaven help her, but she wanted to move close to him and touch him, to apologize again for not being what he had expected. She knew this project was important to him. She hated the fact that she was messing things up.

And the fact that she wanted to help him, to touch him?

It totally petrified her. It was like looking over the rim of the Grand Canyon and feeling your feet slipping. She seriously needed to step away from the edge Lucas represented.

Lucas looked at the loopy, layered paint on the wall. When he had come across Genevieve she had been painting away, clearly involved in her thoughts instead of her work and going at the wall with vigor.

He wondered if that Barry guy, that ex-fiancé who had cleaned out her accounts, had tried to contact her again. Was that what had her so distressed?

Lucas felt a growl coming on. Why was he even thinking such thoughts when Genevieve’s personal life was none of his business?

Darn right, but … she was distressed and right now she was on his property, in his employ, living under his roof. That made her … his.

No! It didn’t. It simply made him partly responsible for her, especially since he clearly had her scared to death that he was going to let her go.

Grr. Damn him for being an unfeeling jerk . Lucas shook his head. “I’m not going to fire you, Gen. Stop that. I’m sorry I ever even mentioned that possibility.” While having her here was proving to be more complicated than he had hoped, she was working hard, she was trying, she had met him halfway on moving here when she hadn’t wanted to and she had some good ideas on how to dress up this place. And there was one more reason he didn’t intend to fire her. He just didn’t want to hurt her.