The Bachelor Bid

“All I was going to say was ‘flowers.’ ” She smiled again, obviously unruffled by his admonition and the glare he shot her way.

Frances had worked for Wyatt for almost a decade and a half, beginning when McCauley Industries was just getting off the ground, its owner an undergrad hawking computer software to fellow classmates at the University of Texas.

In the ensuing years, the operation had expanded beyond the college crowd and into a national conglomerate. During those same years, Frances had become more than an assistant to Wyatt. To him she was a confidante, a friend, a mother figure. Which meant that she felt perfectly free to meddle in his personal life and to offer unsolicited advice.

Fortunately for Wyatt, the elevator came quickly and was occupied by another late worker, so any further discussion of Cara Breedon’s visit was dropped.

He might have been rescued from Frances’s meddling, but now, as Wyatt drove toward his home in the Tarrytown area of Austin, he couldn’t keep his thoughts from returning to Cara.

The fact was, he’d begun to delight in her campaign of persuasion, to wonder what she’d come up with next. Today’s face-to-face encounter had been unexpected, but he’d savored the good-natured sparring. She was sweet, but not too sweet—just the right amount of tang there.

Most of the women he dated were more beautiful, more sophisticated, yet there was something appealing in her natural manner and her girl-next-door prettiness. Her soft honey-colored hair fairly begged for a man’s touch and those matching tawny eyes almost had Wyatt assenting to the auction or anything else she might suggest. Cara Breedon was the kind of woman who pulled at a man’s heartstrings. Precisely the kind of woman to stay away from.

CHAPTER TWO

“HI, SIS,” two voices sang in unison as Cara dragged through her front door that evening. She dropped onto the couch, slipping out of her high heels and propping her aching feet on the coffee table. “Hi,” she said unenthusiastically. “Hello, Flake,” she said in the same voice to the white cat who’d sprung into her lap.

“What’s wrong?” Mark asked. He undraped himself from his chair and deposited an apple core into the wastebasket.

“Yes, you look like you’ve lost your best friend,” Meg added. “What’s the problem?”

Cara gave her brother and sister a wan smile. Ever since Brooke had gotten on the Wyatt kick. Cara had been complaining to her siblings about her doomed crusade. “What else? Wyatt McCauley, the bane of my existence. I’ve tried every maneuver I can think of to get him to agree to that dratted auction. I’m flat out of ideas. You two got any brilliant suggestions?”

“Maybe you should just ask him to do it as a personal favor to you...” Meg said, batting her eyes exaggeratingly.

“Maybe I should make you ask him.” Cara shook her head at Meg’s antics.

“No way. But what’s wrong with your using a more personal touch?”

“Meg, the man only knows me well enough not to like me very much. He thinks I’m...well, I’m not sure what he thinks, only it’s not good. But Flake likes me, don’t you, sweetums?” The cat butted its head against Cara’s hand to demand she scratch his ears.

“If the guy knew as much about babes as he does computers, he’d think you were a complete wow,” Mark defended.

“Thanks, honey, but I’m not the wow type, especially to men like McCauley—who, by the way, is no slouch in the looks department. Gorgeous women by the score are just begging to have their numbers entered in his personal Rolodex. There’s no space for someone who’s merely average, like me.”

“Quit underrating yourself, Cara. You’ve got a lot going for you. Smart...pretty.”

“And a brother who’s prejudiced.”

“No, for once in his life, Marko’s on target,” Meg joined in. “You are date bait. You just need to get out more, to mingle. All you do is work and take care of us. It’s not fair to you.”

“I like taking care of you.” Cara had been doing so for the past seven years, ever since their parents were killed in an automobile accident. At the time Cara was barely twenty-one, Meg and Mark twelve and thirteen, respectively. The bond between the three was irrevocable. “Have you got complaints?”

“Not a one.” Meg stood behind Cara’s chair and massaged her sister’s knotted shoulder muscles. “But what happens when we leave the nest? When you’re on your own—all alone—wondering where your life went, where all the good men went.”

“Oh, I oughta have a couple of years left to find someone after I get rid of you two, thank you very much. That is, if there actually are any ‘good men’ out there.”

“That experience with Don has given you an attitude,” Meg scolded, abandoning the massage and circling the sofa to sit by Cara. “Just because he let you down doesn’t mean—”

“Learning Don’s true nature was traumatic,” Cara said, “and an experience I don’t care to repeat.”

From the day she’d met Don Axton, Cara had deferred to him totally. Don loved running the show and she’d followed his every dictate, catered to his every whim. Then when she’d desperately needed him to lean on, he’d suffered a meltdown like a hailstone after a summer storm. But he’d left behind a new doctrine for Cara. Never again would she abdicate control of her life. And if she ever allowed a guy to get close, it would be one she could depend on to stick around.

“But if you don’t open yourself up, take some risks...” Meg was obviously intent on continuing her gloomy forecast for Cara’s fate—the fate Cara could expect unless she took action now.

Meg was a smart girl, an honors student majoring in Textiles and Apparel, her eventual goal to design under her own label of high-fashion clothing. But despite the brains and ambition, Meg was also given to flights of fancy. Time for Cara to rein her in. “Enough discussion of my love life—”

“What love life?” her sister persisted. “If you don’t watch out, that ship will have sailed without you.”

“Great. According to you, now I’ve got two things to fret about—the auction and my dull, dreary future. Thanks a lot. I think I’ll go console myself with food. Have you all eaten?” Cara rose and started toward the kitchen, her brother and sister tagging along.

They were almost through their tuna casserole when Meg leaned forward on her elbows, her eyebrows—blond and arched like Cara’s—now pinched together. “We’ve got to figure out a new strategy.”

“Strategy for what?” Cara asked warily.

“For snagging the Great McCauley, of course.”

Cara sighed. If there was any subject less appealing at suppertime than a lost love, it was Wyatt McCauley.

“I’m pretty sure he jogs at Town Lake every morning. My friend Ginger has seen him there two or three times. She likes to follow him, to watch his moves. Says he has great buns, says—”

“Meg, is there a point to this?”

“Oh, yeah... well, tomorrow’s Saturday, see. You could get there before he arrives and sort of accidentally on purpose run into him, then—”

“I’d like to run into him,” Mark broke in. “Hard. Then when he’s lying on his back, let him know how difficult he’s making it for Cara with her boss.”

Cara smiled. “Thanks, guys, but I don’t think either method of running into him would help my cause.”

“Mine might,” Meg said, refusing to give up on her idea. “He’ll be on an exercise high, in a great mood, you’ll ask him again and—kaboom!—he’ll consent.”

“I can’t imagine anyone getting in a good mood by working up a sweat.” Cara hated exercise. As far as she was concerned, workouts—the fewer the better—were to be endured the same as spinach or broccoli on the dinner plate. Just because something was good for you didn’t make it palatable. “I have no desire to mix with that throng of physical fitness buffs at Town Lake,” she said. “Especially on the first Saturday in weeks when I don’t have to work. I prefer to use my day off for something useful—like sleeping late.”

“Listen to yourself,” Meg scolded. “Preferring sleeping to meeting guys. I’ve met some fine—”

“Meg!” Cara’s hand signaled “stop.” “First, Wyatt McCauley’s a business project, not a potential romance. Second, he’s my problem to solve, not yours. You’ve got your own concerns to deal with...like school. That reminds me—when are midterms scheduled?”

“You sure know how to kill a conversation,” Mark groaned, then he and Meg began filling Cara in on their course activities.

The meal over, Meg and Mark were studying and Cara was washing the dinner dishes when the telephone rang.

“Well?”

The caller was Brooke. The one-word question—and the fact Brooke was phoning from Dallas just hours after Cara had seen her off from the Austin airport—spoke volumes. Cara might be able to quiet Mark and Meg on the subject of Wyatt McCauley, but she wasn’t about to silence her boss. Like it or not, Cara had to try, try again.

Meg’s informant had been correct. Less than a hundred yards away, chugging toward her, was McCauley—head erect, body balanced, intense and wide awake. Cara couldn’t say the same thing for herself. She stifled an emerging yawn and pretended to stretch her muscles as she surreptitiously watched his advance. The closer he got, the better he looked.

He was dressed in a gray T-shirt and skimpy gray running shorts, his legs tanned and well-proportioned. The man’s body was as perfect as his face.