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Tycoon's Temptation: The Truth About the Tycoon / The Tycoon's Lady / HerTexan Tycoon
Allison Leigh
Katherine Garbera
Jan Hudson
The Truth About the Tycoon by Allison Leigh Worldly tycoon Dane Rutherford was accustomed to handling billion-dollar negotiations, though one small-town girl had just got the better of him. He’d come to Montana with one goal in mind – revenge. But his plans changed the second that Hadley Golightly crashed into his life…The Tycoon’s Lady by Katherine GarberaThe auction was perfect. At least, it was until Angelica Leone tumbled off the stage – and landed in the arms of hard-driving corporate executive Paul Sterling, who was used to snapping his fingers and getting exactly what he wanted. The trouble was it looked as if what he wanted now was her!Her Texan Tycoon by Jan Hudson Jessica had awakened from a faint to find familiar eyes sweeping her face. For the man who gazed upon her was the spitting image of her dead husband! Millionaire Smith Rutledge was as mystified as Jessica. Meanwhile, in his quest for answers, the sexy-as-sin tycoon was happy to share his bed!
TYCOON’S TEMPTATION
ALLISON LEIGH
KATHERINE GARBERA
JAN HUDSON
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE TYCOON
BY
ALLISON LEIGH
Allison Leigh started early by writing a Halloween play that her school class performed. Since then, though her tastes have changed, her love for reading has not. And her writing appetite simply grows more voracious by the day.
She has been a finalist in the RITA
Award and the Holt Medallion contests. But the true highlights of her day as a writer are when she receives word from a reader that they laughed, cried or lost a night of sleep while reading one of her books.
Born in Southern California, Allison has lived in several different cities in four different states. She has been, at one time or another, a cosmetologist, a computer programmer and a secretary. She has recently begun writing full-time after spending nearly a decade as an administrative assistant for a busy neighbourhood church, and currently makes her home in Arizona with her family. She loves to hear from her readers, who can write to her at PO Box 40772, Mesa, AZ 85274-0772, USA.
Dear Reader,
I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with Dane and Hadley, and then when Nikki Day briefly found her way to Hadley’s boarding house, Tiff’s, there was a wonderful sense of connection for me. The Rutherford clan was now connected to some of my favourite people from Weaver, Wyoming, and the entire Double-C Ranch family. I felt like my old friends had come to have a party together!
Thank you for sharing some time with Dane and Hadley.
I hope you enjoy the party as much as I did.
My very best wishes,
Allison
For my friends, old and new
Chapter One
The pickup truck pulled out right in front of him.
Dane Rutherford swore a blue streak, wrenching his steering wheel. He missed clipping the hind end of the pickup by the breadth of a fat snowflake and shot past, close enough to see the panic widening a pair of already wide female eyes as the driver of the pickup turned to see his car.
He was still swearing as he fishtailed on the slick road, turning into the skid, trying to regain control. And though he’d missed the pickup at first, the skid caused metal to meet metal in a long, eerie scrape. They still would have been okay if she hadn’t panicked at the contact. But she did. And she careened one way, then the other.
Dane cursed anew, trying to avoid hitting her again.
The road was winding, as damnably narrow as any back road he’d ever raced, and he felt his stomach drop out as his car went airborne off the shoulder, over the ditch.
Then he forgot about whether the woman was okay, about what Wood would say when he learned Dane had smashed his precious car, about everything except bracing himself for the impact.
The car was old. The tree it hit was older. Solid as hell, and there was no way Dane could hope to avoid it.
Crashing into it should at least stop the car’s flight.
It did. Effectively.
Hadley stared in disbelief at the way the front end of the cherry-red car accordioned against the massive poplar tree trunk. She was so focused on the other vehicle, in fact, that she very nearly forgot her own problems. Gasping, she jerked the steering wheel again to keep from going down the opposite ditch and then cringed when she plowed right into the mileage marker on the side of the road, hard enough to bend the thing clean over.
She sat there for a moment. Stunned.
The engine gasped. Groaned. The sad sounds were enough to break her momentary shock, and she quickly turned off the engine before it surely died.
More work for Stu to do on her vehicle.
Shaking her head to clear it, she looked back for the other car. The roadside ditch it had plunged down was deep and she couldn’t even see the car.
“Please be okay,” she muttered under her breath as she pushed out into the snowy afternoon, racing across the road. Her boots skidded as she dashed down the opposite shoulder, and her feet flew out from beneath her. Her hands flailed, her rear hitting the unrelentingly frozen earth of the steep incline. She barely felt the jarring impact shoot up her body to her teeth, which slammed together, before she was pushing to her feet again, slipping and sliding her way to the crumpled car. She couldn’t get to the driver’s side.
“Please be okay.” Her voice was a prayer this time as she rounded the hiked-up rear of the vehicle. One of the back wheels was still slowly spinning. She leaned down, peering through the spidery web of the cracked side window.
The man’s head was thrown back against the headrest. Blood splattered the inside of the windshield where he’d obviously hit his head, and it freely flowed from his forehead. The car hadn’t possessed an air bag, either.
The sight of all that blood sent alarm careening through her. “Hey.” She frantically tried to open the wrinkled door but it wouldn’t budge. Knocking on the cracked window was out of the question. And the engine was still running. She reached out and thumped her hand on the crumpled hood of the car, since pounding on the white convertible top wasn’t going to do any good in gaining his attention, but his eyes remained closed, unmoving. “Lord,” she whispered fearfully, “please let him be okay.” She banged on the car again. Hard enough to make her hand ache. Peered through the window. “Yessss.” His chest had moved. Was moving.
Thank you, God.
He was alive.
She scrambled out of the ditch and ran across the road, nearly tripping over her feet. Her fingers were so cold she could barely open her truck door. But she managed, and she leaned across the bench seat, grabbing her purse that had fallen on the floor. She dumped it out on the seat and snatched up her cell phone. It took two tries to punch the number. She clutched it to her ear as she dashed back across the road. Slid down on her rear again to get to the car. A thin dusting of snow now covered the crumpled hood.
“Shane, answer your darned phone.” She ran around to the side of the car again, banging her numb palm against the door. “Hey. Come on, mister, wake up. Oh, Shane.” She hunched over, holding the phone tightly when she heard her brother’s voice. “Thank heavens. There’s an accident—no, I’m fine.”
The man inside the car stirred. “Oh. Hey.” She waved her arms. As if he’d notice through his eyelids. “Unlock the car door.” She banged again on the hood. Even kicked at the side a little.
His head raised up. Impossibly thick lashes lifted to reveal a slit of dark eyes.
“That’s it, that’s it.” She patted the car as if she were patting a good dog. “Come on. Wake up.”
She realized her brother was yelling her name through the cell phone. “Sorry, Shane. We’re about a quarter mile past Stu’s turnoff. Better send the ambulance.” She pressed the off button on her brother’s tight voice and stuffed the phone into her pocket, where it immediately began vibrating again. She ignored it in favor of the man inside the vehicle. He’d touched his forehead. Was staring at the blood his fingers came away with.
“Unlock the door,” she said loudly again.
He eyed her. Sat forward a little, only to grimace. She read his lips easily enough. Swearing. She chose to take that as a good sign. His arm slowly moved and she heard a soft snick. He’d unlocked the door. She yanked hard on it to get it to budge and wedged her leg inside when it did. The stressed window crumbled into fine dust and a rush of warm air came out at her as she worked herself in, reaching straight across for the ignition.
She turned the key.
The laboring engine fell silent.
Her heart was pounding so hard she thought for certain he could hear it. She looked at him and realized that she was practically in his face. His… very attractive face, what there was she could see beneath the bloody smears. She hurriedly shifted, putting space between them, kneeling awkwardly on the seat beside him. The stubborn door was practically crushing her leg and she shoved hard on it with her snow boot to keep it open.
“Who the hell taught you how to drive?” His voice was deep, even if it was little more than a murmur.
She tried not to cringe. “My father, Beau Golightly.”
The man shifted, groaned a little, and she gently pressed her hands against his shoulder. “You shouldn’t move. There’s an ambulance on the way.” She dragged her sweater sleeve down over her hand from beneath the edge of her coat and gingerly pressed it against his temple, blotting some of the blood.
He closed a surprisingly strong hand over hers, staying the movements. “I don’t need a bloody ambulance.”
“Well, you are bloody,” she returned, carefully sliding her hand from beneath his. “Literally.” Even as she voiced the observation, she heard a siren whine. “My brother Shane is probably burning rubber to get here, too. He’s the sheriff.”
For a moment the driver looked irritated. But he said nothing. Merely unclipped his seat belt and peered out the windshield at the mangled hood of his car. “You’re joking about the Golightly thing, aren’t you?” he finally asked.
She frowned a little. “No. And I know how to drive just fine.” Defense came belatedly, but at least it came. “You were the one playing Speed Racer.”
His lips twisted a little. “Not anymore,” she thought she heard him mutter. But it was hard to tell since the ambulance’s siren was earsplitting in the moments before it wheezed to a halt. She finished backing out of the car and looked over to see Palmer Frame, and his latest sidekick, Noah Hanlan, slip-sliding down into the ditch. The ambulance waited on the shoulder up above them.
Palmer’s gaze traveled over her. “You hurt, Hadley?”
She shook her head and waved her hand toward the driver where Noah was making his way. “He is. He’s—”
“Fine.”
“—bleeding. A lot.” She ignored the clipped comment from inside the wreck and moved out of Palmer’s way. The tan SUV her brother drove screamed up the highway, and she sighed a little as she climbed up the embankment once more. It took some doing, since she kept looking back over her shoulder to see how Palmer and Noah were progressing with the injured man.
The EMTs had produced a crowbar and had worked the door open wide enough for the driver to get out. Standing, he was just as tall or taller than Palmer, and that was saying something. But he was standing, which meant he couldn’t be too bad off, right?
She hoped.
A part of her heard the crunch of tires, a fast stop. Shane’s tight voice muttering her name more like a curse than a prayer.
The driver had shaken off Palmer’s assistance, she noted. He’d planted his feet in the snow, hands on hips as he surveyed his car.
Very fine hips. Verrry fine rear—
“Hadley!”
She closed her eyes, whispered another quick prayer for patience—her tenth that day, at least—and stuck out her hand toward her brother. The ditch was getting more slippery by the minute and the late-afternoon temperature seemed to be dropping by chunks. “Help me up.”
Shane’s voice might have been annoyed, but his eyes were sharp with concern as he pulled her up the rest of the way to the road. His hands clamped on her shoulders as he examined her face.
Relief filled his eyes though his stern expression didn’t relax much. Evidently satisfied that Hadley was unharmed, he let go of her and headed into the ditch, pulling out the small notepad he carried in one of the pockets of his shearling coat. The sheriff, back at work.
Hadley shivered, wishing her own wool jacket were as warm as her brother’s. But she’d bought her jacket because of its pretty pink color, not because of its ability to keep the cold at bay. It was one of her ridiculously few frivolous purchases.
The three men were now staring at the car, looking as if they were in mourning or something. Well, the car did look pretty sad. It was old to start with, though the paint job—on the rear of the car at least—looked in perfect shape. She, however, was more concerned about the driver and his injuries than the front bumper that was now kissing cousins to the windshield wipers. For heaven’s sake, it was just a car. And the man was still bleeding. She could tell, because he’d swiped a hand over his forehead, and more blood oozed out to replace what he wiped away.
She stomped her way back into the ditch, tugging at Palmer and Noah. The men were EMTs, not car mechanics. “Don’t you think you ought to be seeing to him?” She looked up at the injured driver.
Snowflakes were catching in his thick hair. And he had ridiculously long black lashes, she noticed again, when he turned his gaze toward her. Steely blue. Until then, she’d never really known what that term defined, even though she’d used it herself when she was writing.
Now she knew firsthand. And… well. Hello.
She swallowed and took a step back, only to have her boot sink about a foot into the snow. Off balance, she felt herself falling, but the man shot out a hand and grabbed her upper arm to catch her. “You don’t know much about being careful, do you?” he observed.
Instead of falling ignominiously back on her tush, she’d ended up leaning against him. And what a him he was. Her vivid imagination immediately tripped along the path of whether or not his body was as solid as it seemed beneath the leather bomber jacket he wore.
She planted her feet more securely, pushing herself upright. Men like him did not look at women like her, particularly when said woman had helped send his car crashing into a tree.
“I wasn’t speeding,” she pointed out, yet again. But her conscience bit at that. She didn’t know if the man had been speeding or not. She’d been too preoccupied with her darned fool brothers and their unwelcome interest in her nonexistent love life.
Shane, Palmer and Noah were still dolefully shaking their heads over the crumpled car. “Um… maybe it’s escaped everyone’s notice, but you are still bleeding there.” She waved her hand generally in his direction. Then happened to notice the fingerprints he’d left on her coat. Bloody fingerprints.
He noticed, as well, and grimaced a little. “Sorry about that.”
She exhaled, impatient with the lot of them, and turned away. Climbed up the side of the ditch again and strode to the back of the ambulance where she yanked open the rear door. She grabbed a container of wipes and cleaned the blood from her hands, then grabbed a handful of gauze pads and headed back down the ditch.
Lordy, but her legs were starting to ache with all this up and downing. She tore open the paper wrapping on one of the pads and reached up, gingerly dabbing the injured man’s forehead.
He jerked a little, grabbed her hand. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to help you,” she reminded. But if the man didn’t want assistance, fine. She didn’t stick her nose in where it wasn’t wanted. Unlike some specific siblings she could name. She pushed the pads into his hands and gave Palmer a stern poke in the ribs. “I’ve got things to do.”
“Hold on there.” Shane closed his hand over her collar, stopping her cold. “There’s a small matter of the accident report.”
Of course. Stupid of her. She could feel her face flushing and hoped that the man hadn’t noticed. A lightning-quick glance his way quickly killed that little hope. “Fine. Could we do it out of the snow, though? Maybe you haven’t noticed, but it is a little cold out here.” Her words were visible puffs, ringing around her head. Since New Year’s the week before, the weather had plummeted, bringing with it an uncommon amount of snow.
She was relieved when Shane looked again at the wreckage, then nodded. The driver apparently didn’t find the EMTs’ assistance objectionable the way he had hers. But then, they hadn’t helped his car fly into a ditch, either.
Shane told her to go wait in his SUV, and she was shaken enough that she obediently turned away and started up the incline again. She heard her brother ask the driver if the registration for the vehicle was in the car as she went. Shane’s SUV was idling, and she climbed up into the passenger seat where it was toasty warm. She flexed her numb fingers in front of the air vents and watched the men.
Of course there would have to be an accident report. No need to worry over it. The worst that would happen is that her insurance rates would go up.
Again.
She rubbed her hands together. Cupped her fingers over her mouth and nose and blew on them. She loved living in Lucius, Montana, but honestly, there were times she’d be happy to spend the winter lolling on a warm, sandy beach somewhere. If she closed her eyes, she could practically feel the heated kiss of sunlight on her face.
“Hand me that clipboard.”
The only warmth came from Shane’s heater vents. She opened her eyes to see her brother standing inside the opened door, his gloved finger pointing at the items on his console.
