Audra Adams - The Bachelor's Bride

Trudy looked down in the vicinity of Rachel’s stomach. “Apparently not.”

* * *

Reid wanted the meeting to be over. Now. He was beyond bored, teetering awfully close to comatose. Why did these people go on so? Why didn’t they just say what they had to say and leave?

He put a hand up to his chin and nodded in their direction, pretending to be listening, hoping that his response was appropriate. Of course, it wasn’t just these people who bored the hell out of him. It was everyone and everything in his life.

At thirty-five he’d seen it all and done it all...and then some. He had put together a multimillion dollar conglomerate of varied and sundry corporations in a ten-year frenzy of activity that earned him equal amounts of praise and criticism.

But now he was tired. And he was done. Let someone else—or a dozen someone elses—run the businesses. He wanted out. He’d been thinking about it for a long time now, ever since his mother had died three years ago. He’d proven all he’d had to prove to her, and to his father, too, who’d finally acknowledged his existence only after he’d made his first million.

But getting out, letting go, was easier said than done. The time never seemed right. There was always another meeting to attend, another crisis to face, another “fire” to put out.

Not anymore. His interest was nil. He was done, through. Finis.

He needed only one thing to let go completely—and that, he feared, was not so easy to find.

He needed another reason to go on living.

“Excuse me,” Reid said as he stood. His words stopped the speaker in midsentence, and out of deference to him, the room was silent. “I have to leave,” he said, and did.

He felt their eyes on his back as he made his way to the door, but of course, no one said a word. No one ever did anymore.

No one questioned him. No one challenged him.

He was omnipotent.

He strolled back to his office, in no real hurry to get there, stopping along the way to talk to employees who greeted him. He knew their names, each and every one of them from the mail boy on up. A name was something that was important to him. He’d had to fight for what should have been his from birth, and when he finally had the right to use it, he gave it up, opting instead for a play on the name he’d been given by the nuns in the orphanage.

His back straightened as he walked, recalling all too well the perfect posture drilled into him by the saintly but tough-as-nails Ursuline Sisters.

Charlotte Mercier, his executive assistant, sat at her desk in his inner sanctum. She effectively ran the office now, answering his mail, signing his name to letters. He trusted her implicitly and would have no qualms about handing the reins over to her if he ever left. Whenever he mentioned the possibility, she pretended to be shocked by the thought of it, but he had no doubt that she could handle the responsibility.

She glanced up at his approach and handed him a stack of pink slips with phone calls to be returned. He leafed through them, quickly dropping the majority back on her desk for her to handle or dispose of. This exercise was just a formality. He returned very few calls anymore. Charlotte expertly picked through them, putting aside those she would return, and trashing those she would not.

One did catch his eye. “When did Mazelli call?” he asked.

“About a half hour ago.”

He nodded. Eddy Mazelli was someone who did interest him. Eddy was a private investigator who’d been recommended to him as the best in the business. Problem was that in the six weeks since he’d signed on, the man had come up empty.

Not that he’d had much to go on.

Frustration gnawed at Reid like a cancer. He hated not being in control, but this was one situation where that had never been the case. Not from the first.

He wished he could get that night out of his head, but he couldn’t. Maybe it was because it had been such a long time since he’d been with anyone like her. Scratch that. He’d never been with or even known anyone like her. The time they’d spent together had been surreal. She’d been so relaxed, uninhibited, funny, soft, feminine, lovely, hot, sexy, and...something else...loving. Things he’d never had nor expected from a woman.

It had scared the holy hell out of him.

They’d made love, and it wasn’t so much that they’d done anything different or out of the ordinary. No, it wasn’t the way they’d made love, but what had happened between them as they’d made love.

Reid had lost himself in her. He’d heard about such things happening, of course, but it had never happened to him, not in all the years with any of the women he’d bedded. Never.

So the fear came first, but it was quickly followed by exhilaration, and later, much later, by this frustration that had gripped him since and not let go.

She’d disappeared. He’d left her for only a few moments to get a drink, and when he’d returned she was gone. Poof! Up in smoke. As if she’d been a dream.

But she was no dream. Her scent had clung to his pillow for days afterward and, silly man that he was, he’d fought with his housekeeper not to change the sheets, acquiescing only when the woman threatened to quit.

No. It had been all too real, and it—she—had consumed his thoughts, his nights, his days ever since.

“Get Mazelli on the phone for me,” he said to Charlotte, and walked toward his office.

“Trudy Levin is in there waiting for you,” Charlotte said as she lifted the receiver.

“What does she want?” Reid asked, hand on the doorknob.

Charlotte shrugged. “She wouldn’t say. Only that she had to see you. Important.”

He nodded. “Okay. I’ll see her. Get Mazelli.” He opened the door.

“Oh, and she has a woman with her.”

Charlotte’s voice followed Reid as he entered his office. The room was large, taking up the better quadrant of the top floor of the office building that he owned. It was bright, with all the draperies pulled back to allow the maximum amount of sunlight inside. He’d picked the room purposely for that, one of his greatest weaknesses being the sun on his face.

Trudy stood and turned to him as he entered. She smiled. “Hi, Reid.”

He smiled, too. He liked her. She was one of his best employees. Smart. Loyal. Ambitious. All the things he liked to think he was.

He took a step closer to his desk. “Trudy. What can I do for you?”

And then his eye caught sight of a dark-haired woman standing by the corner window. Her hand was entwined with the material of the drapery as she admired the view. At that moment she turned and looked at him over her shoulder. Reid squinted against the light that framed her face like a halo.

Recognition came like a fist to his solar plexus.

“Rachel.” It was a harsh whisper.

Trudy sighed, just loud enough to divert his attention for an instant. “I see,” she said, “there’s no need for an introduction.”

“You know my name?”

Reid took a step closer. “Only that it’s Rachel. Nothing more.”

She looked the same to him, the only difference being her mood. The first time she’d been smiling, carefree, loose. Now she was nervous, uptight, strung out. But the eyes were the same, a soft gray rimmed in a black so dark it matched the color of her hair.

The buzzer sounded and Charlotte’s voice filtered through the intercom. “Mazelli on line one.”

As if to insure that she wouldn’t disappear again, Reid kept his eyes riveted on Rachel as he walked to his desk and lifted the receiver.

He pointed to her. “Don’t move,” he said, then pressed the button for line one. “Yes.” He tapped his fingers on the leather blotter on his desk and listened for a short time. “Fine. Send me a bill.” He looked up at Rachel, and their eyes locked. “Yes. That’s right. I no longer need your services.”