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Bethany flushed. “I’m interested in the fact you’re never here with Ben.”
“Right,” he said dryly. They both knew she wanted him here so she could spout kidney facts. “The fact is, I pay you to care for him.” Damn, he could sense another of her lectures coming. He said quickly, sympathetically, “You know, you wouldn’t be the first woman to be jealous of Miss Georgia.”
Her outraged gasp had him stifling a smile. “I’m about as jealous of Miss Georgia as I am of that table leg.” She waved at the nightstand.
“That’s a very shapely table leg,” he conceded, “but you shouldn’t put yourself down.” He eyed her sweater again, noticed that it had worn perilously thin in places. “You have a great figure.”
She drew herself up, and her indignation had the interesting effect of swelling her bosom. “My figure has absolutely nothing to do with—”
“There’s every chance you’ll find a boyfriend one day,” he continued.
“I have a boyfriend,” she snapped.
That was unexpected. Even more out of left field was Tyler’s sudden urge to tear a telephone directory in half with his bare hands—he’d never indulged in primal-male competitive behavior. Finding Bethany curled on his bed asleep, one arm flung behind her head, her lips parted, must have struck a chord with some unconscious fantasy, and it had obviously unbalanced him. He forced himself to say lightly, “Is he deaf?”
“Of course he’s not deaf!”
“I just wondered how he puts up with you.” He dodged vengeful knitting needles. “What does he think about you living with me?”
“He’s not exactly a boyfriend,” she admitted. Tyler’s testosterone surge ebbed slightly. “Kevin is just…someone I see sometimes.”
“Ah.” Tyler put all the knowledge of a man who knew every nuance of dating into the syllable. “Someone convenient. I’ve had plenty of those.”
Bethany raised an eyebrow. “Convenient boyfriends?”
He grinned. “Plenty of convenient girlfriends.”
She sniffed. “Emphasis on the plenty.”
“Emphasis on the convenient,” he corrected. “Did it occur to you that you might get further convincing me about your funding if you were nice to me?”
“You have more than enough people being nice to you,” she said. “I plan to stand out from the crowd.”
No matter that even sitting on the bed she was discernibly shorter than him, she was giving him that superior look down her nose. He said, “I don’t have any trouble noticing you.”
No trouble at all.
His gaze locked with hers across the bed, and there was a connection that Tyler figured even Bethany couldn’t deny. It made no sense that he should find her so attractive—she dressed like a color-blind bag lady, she persisted in judging him according to her own overemotional standards and she was a pain in the backside.
But since when had sex and sense had anything in common, beyond the fact that they were both one-syllable words starting with S?
He leaned closer to her, which prompted her, gratifyingly, to lick her lips. His gaze zeroed in on that full mouth.
“Tyler,” she warned, “I am not sending out signals. Not now, not ever.”
He shook his head. “You are so deluded. One day you’re going to wake up to this attraction, and when you do, I’ll be here.”
“Never,” she insisted.
“You’re making this hard on yourself,” he chided her. “The longer you hold out, the more there’ll be egg all over your pretty face when you have to admit it.”
Bethany put a hand to her face involuntarily, then scowled when he laughed.
“Tell you what,” he said. “I’m going to make this easier on you.”
“You’re going to walk out that door and have dinner with your girlfriend?”
“Uh-uh,” he chided her. “Miss Georgia is fun, but she’s not my girlfriend. Now, Peaches, I’m going to figure out a signal you can give me so you don’t actually have to say out loud that you want me.” He added kindly, “I understand that might just about choke you.”
He took his time pretending to think, all the while enjoying the sight of her on his bed. Obviously sensing he planned a handson demonstration, she backed up against the headboard. “Don’t touch me.” Her voice held irritation, panic…doubt.
“Just this once,” he said, “so you’ll know what I mean.”
In one graceful movement, Tyler shifted so close to Bethany that she could see the gold flecks in his blue eyes. Just as plainly as she could read the amused condescension in them. He stretched a finger toward her, and Bethany forced herself not to flinch. Let him play his stupid game.
“This is what you need to do,” he said softly. His finger found the tender skin just below her left ear, traced the line of her jaw. He tilted her chin so she was looking directly into his eyes and smiled down at her. Appreciatively. Seductively. And Bethany, dammit, was only human. She smiled back. If more world leaders were women, she thought, the USA would have a secret weapon right here in Tyler Warrington.
“That’s all you have to do, Peaches, to tell me you want me.”
Reason found her again, and Bethany jerked away from his touch. “Never going to happen.” To her horror, she sounded breathless. And her jaw, where his finger had traced, felt tight, tingly.
Tyler laughed. “Never say never.” His mission of throwing her off her stride apparently accomplished, he got off the bed and said briskly, “By the way, if I don’t see you when I get in tonight, I need you to bring Ben to my office tomorrow afternoon. Four o’clock.”
Now he was done toying with her, he was dismissing her.
“Tyler,” she said firmly, “I need to talk to you about my research. Now.”
“Go ahead,” he invited, surprising her. Then he unbuckled his belt. His hand hovered over the button of his pants. “You don’t mind if I get changed while we talk, do you?”
If she’d been braver, or at least less prone to blushing, she would have told him to go right ahead. But with her face in flames, Bethany scrambled off the bed and almost ran from the room.
AT THREE-THIRTY on Friday, Olivia was typing the latest batch of rejection letters Tyler had asked her to send out, when the door to her office opened. She looked up.
And thought, Call Security.
A hobo stood framed in her doorway. A giant hobo, more than six feet tall, enormous shoulders made broader by a grubby overcoat. His hair, an unkempt salt-and-pepper mix of brown and gray, grazed his collar, and Olivia judged the matching stubble on his chin to be at least three days’ growth.
She reached for the phone.
“I’m Silas Grant,” the hobo announced.
Two things stayed Olivia’s hand. First, his name seemed familiar. Second, the words were uttered in a voice that was slow to the point of sleepiness, gravelly…and unquestionably educated.
As she puzzled over that riddle, he walked toward her with a silent, purposeful tread at odds with his sleepy voice. That lithe, almost graceful gait would have worried her if she’d been walking down a darkened street, but here she couldn’t believe he posed any threat. Other than to her discriminating taste in fashion. His brown corduroy trousers were pale and worn at the knees, and over them he wore a heavy shirt in brown and green plaid, buttoned to the neck, but untucked. But while they may have been more suited to gardening, the clothes did appear clean. Unlike the overcoat.
“I’m here to see Tyler Warrington,” he said.
Now that he was up close, Olivia saw he had gray eyes, but they weren’t at all cold. They held the deep, dormant heat of ashes, beneath which lurked the potential, if stirred by just a hint of breeze, for fire.
“Do you have an appointment, Mr. Grant?” She knew he didn’t—neither she nor Tyler believed in Friday-afternoon appointments. Tyler invariably had a hot date to prepare for, and, often enough, so did Olivia. Today she planned to be gone by four; she’d promised Gigi Cato she would come by to approve the floral arrangements for this evening’s soiree. It was inconvenient—she’d have to drive home from Gigi’s to change, then turn around and go straight back to the Catos’ again—but what were friends for?
Silas Grant frowned. “How could I have an appointment,” he asked gently, “when Tyler Warrington can’t see a conservation crisis when it’s right in front of him?”
Conservation crisis? Olivia remembered where she’d read those words.
“You’re the man with the red-spotted tree frog,” she said, pleased with herself. She couldn’t quite remember if the spots were red or yellow.
“Hyla punctatus,” he said sternly.
It took Olivia a moment to realize he wasn’t uttering some dreadful curse over her, but rather was giving her the Latin—or was it Greek?—name of the frog.
“It’s on the verge of extinction,” he said. “And Tyler Warrington just signed its death warrant.”
He spoke slowly, even for a Georgian. The pace lent an unlikely authority to his words, went some way toward countering his oddball appearance. But not far enough.
“I’m Olivia Payne, Mr. Warrington’s secretary. I’m afraid he’s unavailable,” she told him with the dismissive, wellbred Atlanta-belle tone that had served her through her years as a debutante, then as a single woman. Olivia was an expert at giving men their marching orders. Over the years, she’d broken off no fewer than six engagements. Possibly seven, if you counted Teddy Benson, who’d popped the question three years ago. She’d seen the light faster than normal, and broken it off even before the engagement announcement hit the newspapers.
“Thank you so much for stopping by,” she added pleasantly to Silas. Because one should always be polite in one’s dismissal.
He planted both hands on her desk, which might have intimidated her if he’d done it any faster than a hedgehog crossing the road. The movement put his eyes level with hers, close enough to break through the professional distance she’d set with her voice.
She dropped her gaze, and observed that his hands were clean, his fingernails cut so neatly they might be manicured. She recalled that the tree-frog funding application had come from an address in Buckhead—could this man really live in the most expensive area of Atlanta?
“I won’t take no for an answer,” he said, and there was a hint of steel behind the soft drawl.
While his announcement might be tiresome—at this rate she’d be late to Gigi’s house—it was nothing Olivia couldn’t handle.
“Mr. Grant, as you were told in the letter you received, the foundation does not enter into correspondence about its endowment decisions.” The same clean-break policy worked well with fiancés, she’d found. “I understand you’re disappointed, but I can assure you, Mr. Warrington will not see you.”
He straightened, but only so he could reach one long arm to pull up a chair. “I’ll wait,” he said, and sank into it, legs stretched out in front of him.
This had happened before, so she said, “As you wish,” and returned to her typing.
Most people started to fidget within two minutes. After five minutes, they’d bluster some more. But when they saw she wouldn’t be moved, they’d leave. The longest anyone had stayed was fifteen minutes. Something about silence unnerved them.
Today, it was Olivia who was unnerved. Silas didn’t fidget, not once, for fifteen minutes. He sat with his arms folded, quite still.
She kept her gaze fixed on her screen and wished the phone would ring with a summons to collect something from another part of the building, so she’d have a reason to move. But for once, no one called.
“Who else have you refused money to lately?” Silas’s abrupt question startled her, so that she mistyped a word and looked at him before she remembered not to.
“It’s not my money to give,” she said politely. She added, “Nor is it Mr. Warrington’s.”
“What are your views on conservation and the environment?” he asked.
He really did have an attractive voice, one that almost made her want to say those things mattered to her. But, in this respect at least, she was always honest. Better to admit an unnatural lack of sentiment than to pretend to care.
“I don’t have any.” She was concerned, of course, that the planet shouldn’t be flooded or burned up as a result of global warming. But that wasn’t going to happen in her lifetime, so she didn’t lose any sleep over it.
“Hyla punctatus is a Georgia native, not found anywhere else in America.”
“I’m aware of that. From your funding application.”
He ran a considering gaze over Olivia. She half wished she’d had her roots done this week. She wasn’t out to impress him, she scolded herself. And if she was, her hair, worn loose today in its sculpted bob, her artfully applied makeup and the emerald-green cashmere polo-neck that made her neck look longer and slimmer would surely withstand his scrutiny.
“You know what this world lacks?” he said.
She pressed a hand to her mouth and gave a ladylike yawn.
“People who care.” Sharpness tinged his words.
Of course she knew that! She said lightly, “If you can’t beat them, join them.”
Fire sparked into life in his eyes, and his jaw jutted beneath the mouth that she now noticed was firm and well shaped behind all those whiskers.
Olivia had the same keen appreciation for good-looking men that she did for silk lingerie and French champagne. Each of her seven fiancés had been gorgeous by anyone’s standards. So she could only look at Silas Grant and rue the waste of such a fine specimen.
She wondered why his bizarre appearance didn’t exempt him from her appreciation. Discomfited by the thought that perhaps, now that she’d turned fifty-five, she might be desperate enough to let her standards slip, Olivia looked away.
“It’s exactly your kind of apathy that’s sending this world to hell in a handbasket,” he growled.
She’d obviously pressed one of Silas’s buttons, because he began to decry, albeit in an undramatic way, the parlous state of the world, the shallowness of materialism and the loss of life’s simple pleasures.
Olivia, who collected designer handbags, liked to dine on Wagyu beef and had two real fur coats in her wardrobe that she resented being unable to wear, struggled to sympathize.
Yet still, Silas Grant mesmerized her, whether with that unexpectedly cultured voice or with his sheer size. When she found herself wondering what he would look like with a shave and a tuxedo, she realized this had gone far enough.
“What will it take to convince you to leave?” she said abruptly, heatedly. She’d never reacted like this before, not to any of the cranky rejectees who’d turned up here.
“Your promise that you’ll ask Warrington to meet me.” Either Silas had the good sense to say no more, or he’d run out of steam.
Olivia was so relieved to hear the end of that gentle diatribe that she agreed. “I’ll let you know Mr. Warrington’s response.”
“Thank you.” The two syllables stood stark, and for one moment, Silas sounded alone, as alone as Olivia.
CHAPTER FIVE
BETHANY PAUSED on the threshold of Olivia’s office. Tyler’s secretary was locked in a death glare with a bum in a dirty coat. Should she fetch help? She tightened her grip on Ben’s car seat in case she had to run and said, “Olivia?”
The bum didn’t acknowledge her arrival. He said to Olivia, “I’ll be back,” with about as much menace as a low-on-batteries Terminator. He swung around, loped past Bethany with his coat flapping.
Before Bethany could ask Olivia what that was about, Tyler opened the door of his office. “Olivia, have you seen my silver pen? I can’t think where I—” He stopped, distracted by the disheveled appearance of the departing visitor, now out of earshot but still visible. “Who’s that?”
Olivia cleared her throat. “Silas Grant, the guy who’s saving the red-spotted tree frog. He wanted to see you.”
“Was he bothering you?” Tyler took a step forward as if he might head down the corridor and grab hold of the man.
Olivia shook her head. “He’s all right. Just…odd. I told him I’d find out if you’re willing to meet with him.”
