Caught in the Billionaire's Embrace / The Tycoon's Temporary Baby: Caught in the Billionaire's Embrace / The Tycoon's Temporary Baby

Marcus filled the other plate with eggs, bacon and a bagel, then retrieved his coffee and joined her, placing his breakfast on the opposite nightstand. Where she had seated herself with her legs crossed pretzel-fashion facing him, he leaned against the headboard with his legs extended before him. Noting the way her robe gaped open enough to reveal the upper swells of her breasts, it occurred to him that neither of them had a stitch of clothing to wear except for last night’s evening attire, that wasn’t exactly the kind of thing a person wanted to wear during the day when a person was trying to make him- or herself comfortable.

Oh, well.

He watched her nibble a strawberry and wondered how he could find such an innocent action so arousing. Then he wondered why he was even asking himself that. Della could make changing a tire arousing.

“Well, since you won’t tell me why home is so fluid,” he said, “will you at least tell me where you’re making it at the moment?”

“No,” she replied immediately.

He thought about pressing her on the matter, then decided to try a different tack. “Then will you tell me what brings you to Chicago?”

“No,” she responded as quickly.

He tried again. “Will you tell me where you’re from originally?”

“No.”

“How long you’re going to be here?”

“No.”

“Where you’re going next?”

“No.”

“How old you are?” “Certainly not.”

“Do you like piña coladas and getting caught in the rain?”

He wasn’t sure, but he thought she may have smiled at that. “Not particularly.”

“How about fuzzy gray kittens, volunteering for public television, long walks on the beach, cuddling by firelight and the novels of Philip Roth?”

At that, she only arrowed her eyebrows down in confusion.

“Oh, right. Sorry. That was Miss November. My bad.”

Her expression cleared, but she said nothing.

“What’s your sign?” Marcus tried again.

That, finally, did make her smile. It wasn’t a big smile, but it wasn’t bad. It was something they could work on.

“Sagittarius,” she told him.

Now that said a lot about her, Marcus thought. Or, at least, it would. If he knew a damned thing about astrology. Still, it was something. Sagittariuses were born in June, weren’t they? Or was it October? March?

All right, all right. So he knew as much about her now as he had when he started his interrogation. Which was nothing. Hell, he didn’t even know if she was telling the truth about being a Sagittarius or not liking pina coladas and getting caught in the rain.

Immediately, however, he knew she was telling the truth about those things. He had no idea why, but he was confident Della wasn’t a liar. She was just a woman who wouldn’t reveal anything meaningful about herself and who was sneaking around on a lover. Had she been a liar, she would have had a phony answer for every question he asked, and she would have painted herself as someone she wasn’t. Instead, he was left with a blank slate of a woman who could be anyone.

But that, too, wasn’t right, he thought. There were a lot of things he knew about Della. He knew she loved an esoteric art form that most people her age had never even tried to expose themselves to. He knew she cried at all the sad parts of an opera, and that she was awed by the intricacies of the music. He’d seen all those reactions on her face when he’d watched her last night instead of La Bohème. He knew she liked champagne. He knew she was enchanted by a snowfall. He knew she laughed easily. He knew she was comfortable in red, red, red. All of those things spoke volumes about a person.

And he knew she came from a moneyed background, even if she was currently making her way by having someone else pay for it. It hadn’t taken an inspection of her jewelry or a look at the labels in her clothing—even though he had as he’d picked up their things from the floor while she slept—to know that. She was smart, confident and articulate, and had clearly been educated at excellent schools. She carried herself with sophistication and elegance, obviously having been raised by parents for whom such things were important. She’d been perfectly at ease last night in every venue he’d encountered her. If she wasn’t the product of wealth and refinement, Marcus was a bloated yak.

Not that wealth and refinement necessarily manufactured a product that was all the things Della was. He need only point to himself to prove that. He’d been kicked out of every tony private school his parents had enrolled him in, until his father finally bought off the director of the last one with a massive contribution for the construction of a new multimedia center. The same contribution had bought Marcus’s diploma, since his grades hadn’t come close to winning him that. Not because he hadn’t been smart, but because he hadn’t given a damn. As for sophistication and elegance, he had gone out of his way as a teenager to be neither and had embarrassed his family at every society function he’d attended. He’d raided liquor cabinets, ransacked cars and ruined debutantes—often in the same evening—and he’d earned an arrest record before he even turned sixteen. If it hadn’t had been for Charlotte …

He pushed the memories away and instead focused on Della. If it hadn’t had been for Charlotte, Marcus wouldn’t be sitting here with her right now. And not only because Charlotte’s absence last night had allowed him to strike up a conversation with Della, not once, but three times. But because if it hadn’t had been for Charlotte, Marcus would now either be in a minimum security prison for wreaking havoc and general mischief past the age of eighteen, or he’d be lolling about on skid row, having been finally disowned by his family.

“What are you thinking about?”

Della’s question brought him completely to the present. But it wasn’t a question he wanted to answer. Hey, why should he, when she wouldn’t answer any of his?

At his silence, she added, “You looked so far away there for a minute.” “I was far away.” “Where?”

He sipped his coffee and met her gaze levelly. “I’m not telling.” “Why not?”

“You won’t tell me anything about you, so I’m not telling you anything about me.”

For a minute, he thought maybe she’d backpedal and offer up some answers to his questions in order to get answers to some of her own. Instead, she nodded and said, “It’s for the best that way.”

Damn. So much for reverse psychology.

“For you or for me?” he asked.

“For both of us.”

The more she said, the more puzzled and curious Marcus grew. Just who the hell was she? Where had she come from? Where was she going? Why wouldn’t she tell him anything about herself? And why, dammit, did he want so desperately to know everything there was to know about her?

“All right, if you really want to know, I was thinking about something at work,” he lied.

She said nothing in response, only picked up one of the pastries and enjoyed a healthy bite.

“Don’t you want to at least know what I do for a living?” “No.”

There was that word again. He was really beginning to hate it.

“I work for a brokerage house,” he told her, deliberately being vague about his position there, since he still wasn’t sure how much to say. Actually, that wasn’t quite true. He wanted to say a lot about himself. But not for the usual reasons. Usually, he only opened up to a woman by saying things designed to impress her, in order to get her more quickly into bed. But he’d already gotten Della into bed and still wanted to impress her. That was strange enough in itself. Even stranger was how he suspected that the best way to impress her was to not brag about himself. Well, not just yet, anyway.

She was swallowing when he told her about his job, but it must have gone down the wrong way, because she immediately began to cough. A lot. Marcus was about to reach over to pat her on the back—or administer the Heimlich if necessary—but she held up a hand to stop him and reached for her coffee instead. After a couple of sips, she was okay. Though her face still looked a little pale.

“I’m fine,” she said before he could ask. “That swallow went down the wrong way.”

He nodded. And once he knew she really was fine, he picked up the conversation where he’d left off. “I work at—”

“Stop,” she said, holding up a hand as if trying to physically stop the information from coming. “Don’t tell me what you do or where you work. Please, Marcus. We agreed. No background information. No last names. No strings. No past, no present, no future.”

“We also agreed only one night, “he reminded her, “but that’s obviously not going to be the case. We’re stuck here for at least another twenty-four hours. There’s no harm in getting to know each other a little better. Unless you can tell me one.”