Big-city Bachelor

Pursing her lips into a soundless whistle, she walked the length of the gleaming table and touched her fingertips to the scrolling letters. Even though she wasn’t the Hamill the sign had been made for, seeing it still gave her a thrill. No, it was more complicated than a thrill. It was a restless, stretching kind of tickle, like the one she’d felt on the plane. It was as if that unacknowledged part of her was still responding to challenge and adventure.

Run the company.

Her mouth quirked as Jolene’s outrageous comment came back to her. Ridiculous. Tracing the outline of her name was as close as she was going to come to the kind of person her Uncle Roland must have been.

The doors at the other end of the room clicked open. Lizzie used her sleeve to rub her fingerprints off the sign and turned around. At her first sight of the man whose tall frame filled the doorway, she splayed her hand over the letters once more, only this time it was for balance.

With the purposeful, controlled tread of a prowling animal, he moved closer. No, he was too civilized to be compared to an animal, wasn’t he? His shoes gleamed with a polish as glossy as the table, and his charcoal suit and snow-white shirt were as crisp as a new dollar bill.

Lord, he was too good to be true, she thought, trying not to stare. No man really could have hair that thick and black, or eyes that seductively brown, or cheekbones that strong or a jaw that square. His nose was perfect, straight, strong and regal. He smiled, and masculine lines in the shape of twin brackets framed his perfect mouth. His teeth were perfect, too. And as if to ensure that all that perfection wouldn’t get monotonous, there was a dimple in his chin.

He stopped in front of her and held out his hand. “Welcome to New York, Miss Hamill.”

His voice was as impressive as his appearance. It was deep and rich, with the polish of aged mahogany and the power of distant thunder. It was a voice that would be equally at ease commanding a legion of knights on horseback or murmuring incantations over a love potion.

She cleared her throat, certain there was a frog in it somewhere. “Hello,” she croaked. She dropped her hand from the sign and extended it tentatively, uncertain whether she wanted to risk destroying this hallucination by trying to touch it.

“I’m Alexander Whitmore,” he said, enclosing her fingers in a warm, firm and indisputably real grip.

Alexander Whitmore? No. He couldn’t be. This man was at least one and a half decades away from fifty, no more than a few years older than she was. He didn’t look old, or kindly. Or anything as bland as nice. “Mr. Whitmore?”

“Please, call me Alex,” he said in that love-potion voice.

“Alex,” she repeated like a tongue-tied idiot, although her tongue was feeling too thick and clumsy to do anything as agile as tying itself in a knot.

This was her partner? This man with the bedroom-brown eyes and toothpaste-ad smile was the man behind the name that was linked to hers? The man who had sent her flowers? Twice? And wine?

Of all the things that had happened in the past few hours—heck, in the past few weeks—this topped them all. Maybe she was dreaming. Maybe in another second she would wake up to the sound of her alarm clock and her neighbor’s yappy poodle. Yes, it had to be a dream. What other explanation could there be? No living, breathing man could actually look like…that.

Or maybe it was more than a dream. Maybe, as Marylou had said, Lizzie really had managed to fall into a fairy tale.

She must have. Of course. It was the only reasonable explanation.

Because if this was a fairy tale, then she had just come face-to-face with an honest-to-goodness Prince Charming.

IT WAS ALL working like a charm, Alex thought, holding on to his smile as he extricated his hand from Miss Hamill’s grip. So far she had been cooperating beautifully. The campaign that he and Jeremy had planned was off to a flying start. And from the starry-eyed look on her face, his new partner was well on her way to being thoroughly softened up. Good God, it was going to be almost too easy. Like taking candy from a baby.

He sidestepped the burst of conscience that followed that thought by reminding himself he would be doing her a favor. Candy wasn’t good for babies. Besides, why should he feel sorry for her? She was a Hamill, wasn’t she?

Yes, she was a Hamill. Of that there was no doubt. She had the same uncontrollable red hair as her uncle, although she’d made a valiant effort to confine it into a knot at the back of her head. She had the same devilish arch to her eyebrows, although naturally hers were a narrower, feminine version. There were echoes of Roland in her broad forehead and her pointed chin, too, but the rest of her face was uniquely hers.

She poked at a strand of hair that had corkscrewed loose from its knot. “Mr. Whitmore?”

“Alex,” he corrected gently. “May I call you Elizabeth?”

“Well, sure. If you want.” She pressed her lips together and appeared to be wrestling with her tongue. “But most people call me Lizzie,” she burst out.

He watched as a blush spread over her cheeks. It gave her a wholesome, fresh-from-the-farm appearance. Damn, she wouldn’t last a day in the ruthless environment of the business world. He definitely would be doing her a favor by making sure she returned to Hicksville as soon as possible. “Lizzie,” he said.

“Yes?”

“You wanted to ask me something?”

“Oh.” She chewed briefly on her lower lip. She had full lips and a generous mouth that looked as if it were perpetually on the verge of a smile. “Oh, not really ask you, I guess.”

He waited, watching with interest while her deepening blush spread to the roots of her hair. When was the last time he’d seen a woman blush, or known one who was even capable of blushing?

“I wanted to thank you for the flowers,” she said finally. “And the fruit and the wine. I didn’t try the wine yet, but I’m sure it’s really good.”

“It was the least I could do, considering how you’ve traveled all the way here to visit us. I want you to feel welcome.”

“Oh, I do. You’ve been so kind.”

Kind? If she was impressed by those throwaway gestures, persuading her out of her shares was going to be even easier than he’d hoped. “Please accept my condolences over the loss of your uncle.”

“Thank you.”

“His death was so unexpected, it must have come as quite a shock.”

“I’d never met my uncle,” she said, glancing toward the wall behind him. “It’s a shame, but you would have known him much better than I did, being his partner and everything.”

“Roland was a memorable character.”

“Did he think up those ads?”

Alex didn’t need to look at the posters to give her an answer. “No, unfortunately your uncle didn’t take an active role in the company for the last few years. Jeremy will be able to explain all of that to you later.”

“Jeremy Ebbet, your lawyer?”

He nodded. “But we have some time before we have to wade through all the legal business, Lizzie. Would you be interested in seeing the rest of the office?”

She hesitated for only a moment before her mouth gave in to the smile that had been hovering. “Thanks, I’d like that.”

The smile took him off guard. It dimpled her cheeks and made her eyes sparkle. And it was so warm and innocent and genuine, it zinged right past his brain to stir an unexpected, unwelcome and unmistakably masculine response.

The reaction jarred him. He shouldn’t be feeling anything at all for Lizzie Hamill. He never let emotions interfere with business, and this was purely a business relationship, one that he hoped to terminate as soon as possible.

She turned away, and despite his best intentions, his gaze dropped. The loose-fitting blue suit didn’t reveal much about the rest of her body, but from what he could see as she walked toward the door, his new partner had an astoundingly shapely pair of legs.

He knew he shouldn’t even be noticing, but he nevertheless found himself taking in the view, from her trim ankles to the beginnings of her luscious thighs. His gaze paused on the vulnerable, pale skin at the backs of her knees and he stared, oddly transfixed.

For a crazy instant, he wondered what it would be like to touch her there, to stroke his fingertips along those tender hollows. How would she react if he did? Would she freeze him with a look, the way Tiffany used to? Would she slap him with a harassment suit?

Or would another blush spread across her cheeks? Would those devilish green eyes sparkle with interest? Would her incredibly expressive mouth move into another smile?

What was the matter with him? It must be stress. The future of the company, the security he’d planned for his children, it all depended on his ability to persuade Lizzie out of her shares. Whether she knew it or not, she was his adversary.

So he simply wouldn’t allow himself to be affected by her smile or her legs or her wholesome attractiveness. Right. Discipline and control, that’s what was necessary to keep the company running smoothly. That’s what kept his life running smoothly.