Leigh Michaels - The Tycoon's Baby

Then it was Webb Copeland’s problem, she thought defiantly. She hadn’t asked to be brought here. She sat down with a deliberately possessive thump, the kind that—when she’d been a teenager—had always made her mother cringe and plead for her to be more careful of the springs.

To her disappointment, Webb Copeland didn’t flinch—he smiled. “Actually,” he said gently, “I want to ask you a question.” He sat down across from her, carefully adjusted the crease in his trousers, and leaned back in his chair. “Ms. Griffin, how would you like to be engaged to me for a while?”

CHAPTER TWO

WEBB COPELAND’S EYES were so wide and guileless, his smile so serene, and his voice so cool and deliberate that for a few seconds Janey didn’t realize she was dealing with a man in the midst of a psychotic episode. And just how did one handle this particular variety of nutcase? Humor him? Try to reason things out? Scream and run?

“Engaged?” she managed to say. “You’re certain that’s what you meant to say? Because you surely don’t mean engaged like the step before getting married—do you?”

“Not in this case. I mean, yes, that’s exactly the kind of engagement I have in mind, but there’s no question of marriage. That’s the whole point.”

Janey put the tips of two fingers against her temple and rubbed at a throbbing vein. “I think you’d better take it from the top, Mr. Copeland. And is there such a thing as a coffee machine at this end of the building? I think I’m going to need some.”

He smiled. “Louise can no doubt find you a cup. Cream and sugar?”

“Just black.”

He went to the door and called the secretary’s name.

While his back was turned, Janey took a better look around the office. There was only one door, and Webb Copeland’s body was still blocking it. But one wall was entirely glass, and though most of the windows were set solidly in place the bottom panels obviously opened for ventilation. They were shallow, but surely she could punch out the screen and slither through on her back...

On the other hand, Janey had never been the scream-and-run type. Honesty forced her to admit, however, that wasn’t the reason she was sticking around. The truth was if she didn’t hear all of this story she’d be lying awake every night for the rest of her life trying to figure it out.

Webb came back with two heavy ceramic mugs, which bore the Copeland Products logo. Janey was just a little disappointed to see that the cups were precisely the same as those in the employee break room. Wasn’t that one of the perks of the executive wing—getting to drink out of real china?

The coffee was better, though—obviously fresh, which in her two months of working there had never been the case in the break room.

She held the mug in both hands. “You were saying?”

“Oh, yes, from the top.” Webb sat down again. “Just over a year ago, my wife lost control of her car on an icy road and was killed.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve heard about the accident, of course, but I’d forgotten.” She saw his raised eyebrows and said, “Employees talk, Mr. Copeland.”

“About my wife?”

Janey said dryly, “They talk about everything. If I’d known it was going to affect me personally, I’d have paid more attention to that particular story. At least, I assume you wouldn’t be telling me unless it is going to affect me personally?”

He smiled a little, but he didn’t answer directly. “Our daughter, Madeline, was less than two months old when her mother died.”

“Oh.” Janey hadn’t heard that part of the story. “The poor child.”

“She’s doing quite well. She has a nurse, and my grandmother moved in to provide a guiding hand.” He sipped his coffee. “That’s the problem, actually—my grandmother. She’s convinced I should get married again, for Maddy’s sake, and she’s trying to persuade me.”

Janey’s eyebrows arched. “Come on, Mr. Copeland—you have five hundred employees, and you don’t have any trouble at all bossing them around. Do you expect me to believe you can’t tell your grandmother to mind her own business?”

“I have. And she’s actually stopped talking about it—the last time she brought up the subject directly was almost three weeks ago. But ever since we had that last little chat about how badly Madeline needs a stepmother, my house hasn’t been a safe place for me to go near.”

Janey frowned. “Because you told her off? If she’s so angry—”

“Oh, she’s far from angry. She’s just determined, and she’s turned my house into a social center. That’s fine with me—she has a right to entertain her friends. It’s just that all of her friends suddenly seem to be single, under thirty, and pretty in varying degrees. If I go home in time to play with Maddy before her bedtime, I’m shanghaied into joining Gran and one or another of her young lovelies at dinner.”

“That’s why you were working so late last night?”

He nodded. “I was dodging a blonde. Luckily I spotted her before Gran saw me, so I escaped the dinner routine. But I barely made it out the door, and I expect the blonde stayed the whole evening waiting for me to show up again.”

Thank you for giving me an excuse, he’d said last night outside the infirmary. Janey was beginning to see what he’d meant.

“I can’t set foot inside my own door without being ambushed—but if I stay away, I don’t see my baby girl at all.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve considered shipping your grandmother off to a rest home and telling all her pals to visit her there?”

He laughed, without much humor. “It’s painfully apparent that you’ve never met my grandmother, Janey.”

“All right, so I don’t have an answer for you. You might try dragging her to a counselor, I suppose, but other than that—”

“Oh, there’s a much simpler way. I’m going to give her precisely what she’s asked for.”

“Perhaps I’ve missed something,” Janey mused. “But I think you just said you’re going to get married to keep her from pushing you to get married, and somehow that just doesn’t—”

“Not exactly. I’m going to introduce her to the woman I’ve chosen to be Maddy’s stepmother—and, incidentally, my wife.”

Janey crossed her legs and let her foot swing free. “I still don’t see why I come into this.”

“You’re perfect,” he said calmly. “She’ll hate you.”

Janey’s foot stopped in midswing. She stared at the oversized, rounded toe of her reinforced shoes. “Because I’m so different from the ladies on her list?”

“Exactly. She’ll be horrified, in fact.”

She could almost see his grandmother now—eagle-eyed, upright, impatient to pounce on the slightest gaffe, ready to judge anyone who didn’t precisely meet her specifications. He was no doubt right, Janey thought—the woman would hate her. Of course, that fact didn’t make his assessment of Janey any more flattering... “And then, after a while, you’ll break it off.”

He nodded. “And Gran will be so relieved—”

Janey finished his sentence. “—that she’ll start right in again. I don’t know what you think you’re going to gain in the long run.”

“Oh, no, she won’t. Because, you see, once she realizes the lengths I’ll go to, she won’t dare push me, ever again.”

“You mean you’re going to tell her the whole thing? Confess that it was a scam?”

“Of course not. She has to believe that I’d have gone through with it, or the whole operation’s a waste.” His eyebrows drew together. “It means, of course, that you’ll have to be the one to break it all off—or at least it’ll have to look as if you’re the one.”

“Leaving you with a broken heart,” Janey mused. “Which in itself would buy you a little time, I suppose.” She nibbled her thumbnail as she thought it over. She could see all kinds of flaws in this scheme—but then he hadn’t asked her to critique his plan, only to pretend for a while to be his fiancée. She folded her arms across her chest, looked him straight in the eye and said bluntly, “So what’s in it for me?”