Her Tycoon Lover: On the Tycoon's Terms / Her Tycoon Protector / One Night with the Tycoon

Her lashes flickered. Once again her cheeks paled, until they matched the white linen cloth on his table. She whispered, “You know. About Donald. Don’t you?”

“You didn’t do it,” Luke said, putting all the force he could behind his words. “You were totally innocent. I knew that the moment I heard about it.”

“I inherited all his money,” she said flatly.

“I don’t care if you inherited a billion dollars—you had nothing to do with his death.”

To his horror Luke saw tears flood Katrin’s eyes and tremble on her lashes. “Oh God,” she said, “I’ve got to get out of here.”

With a huge effort Luke stayed sitting in his chair, his fingers wrapped like manacles around the arms. “I’m really sorry,” he said, and this time could hear the emotion in his voice. “Taking you by surprise like this was about the dumbest move I could have made.”

She drew a long, shaky breath. “For once we’re in complete agreement.”

“Well, that’s something. And now you’d better go back to the kitchen…Olaf’s glaring at me. He probably thinks we’re having a rip-roaring affair.”

“There’s not a chance in the world of that,” she retorted with a trace of her usual spirit. Then she pivoted and hurried back to the kitchen, ignoring Olaf as if he were just one more oak chair.

Hoping she didn’t mean it, Luke buttered a slice of crusty French bread and took the first mouthful of soup. It smelled like and tasted of spinach. Naturally. Trying to think of it as penance, he unfolded his newspaper.

Why had Katrin been so shaken up by her first sight of him?

The fish was excellent. He followed it with a maple syrup mousse that more than made up for the soup, and two cups of coffee. After she’d poured the second one, Katrin said politely, “Can I get you anything else, sir?”

The four guests who’d had the roast beef had just left. Luke said forthrightly, “Can I meet you somewhere after work? Do you have your car here?”

“My bike. Why do you want to meet me?”

“I need to talk to you!”

She looked at him coldly, rather as if he were a fly she’d just discovered in his spinach soup. “You came all this way to talk to me? You expect me to believe that?”

“Yes, I did. And yes, I do.”

“I’d have thought you had better things to do with your time. More profitable, anyway.”

“I came here to see you, Katrin,” Luke repeated, his voice rising in spite of himself.

“Short of hiring a bouncer, I’m not going to get rid of you, am I?”

“Not before you and I sit down and discuss everything I found out.”

“You’re boxing me in!”

“I know I’m not doing this right,” Luke said in exasperation. “Please, Katrin, let me come to your place later on, will you do that much?”

For a moment it hung in the balance. Then she snapped, “No earlier than ten-thirty.”

Her eyes were now filled with a mixture of hostility and terror; Luke wasn’t sure which he disliked more. “I’ll be there,” he said. “Tell Olaf to jump in the lake if he gives you a hard time.”

“My pay gets docked the price of four plates of roast beef,” she said. “C’est la vie.”

“That’s disgraceful—the resort shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.”

“I’m not a labor lawyer,” Katrin said sweetly, “I’m a stockbroker. See you later.”

Somehow—once again—Luke was quite sure she was telling the truth. Guy had known her background; that’s why he’d goaded her with talk about investments. She’d be very good at her job, Luke would be willing to bet. Although most people might steer clear of a beautiful female broker who had a murder trial in her past.

Had he really categorized her as deadly dull the first time he’d laid eyes on her? He couldn’t have been more off base if he’d tried.

It was five to nine. He had an hour and a half to kill.

He went for a stroll along the lakeshore, listening to the shrill chorus of frogs and the soft lap of waves on the sand, the hands on his watch moving with agonizing slowness. He should have been on a jet to Whitehorse today, to look after a contract dispute; instead he’d delegated the job. Early this morning he ought to have been talking to a foreman in Texas. But yesterday afternoon had put paid to all his plans and schedules. Yesterday afternoon he’d gone to the library.

Against his better judgment Luke had spent a couple of hours there, reading through the accounts of the trial. The flash photos of Katrin had cut him to the heart. Her dark suit and silk shirt, her smooth, sophisticated chignon, her elegant pumps and gold jewellery: none of these were familiar to him, showing him another side to a woman who was still, in her essence, mysterious. But her air of reserve and her pride of bearing came across even in the grainy newsprint; these he knew all too well.

The headlines were cheap and degrading; her privacy had been mercilessly invaded for months at a time. As for her dead husband, Luke loathed him on sight, with his heavy jowls and thin, rapacious mouth. Why on earth had Katrin married him?

Even now, on the lakeshore, Luke couldn’t get those photos out of his mind.

At ten twenty-four he was in the parking lot unlocking his car. At precisely ten twenty-nine he turned into Katrin’s driveway. The lights were on in the house. A bicycle was parked by the side door. He walked up the steps, wiped his damp palms down the sides of his trousers, and rang the doorbell.

The door was pulled open immediately. Katrin ushered him in and shut the door with an aggressive snap. Then she stood a careful three feet away from him and said brusquely, “We can’t talk for long. I’m on the breakfast shift.”

As an opener, thought Luke, this wasn’t encouraging. She looked as though she’d just gotten out of the shower, her hair still in its loose knot, damp strands curling by her ears. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes guarded; her jeans and loose sweater hadn’t been chosen with seduction in mind. He said, “I like your hair like that.”

“You didn’t come here to talk about my hair.”

He said calmly, “May I sit down?”

She flushed. “Do you want something to drink?”

“No, thanks.” He looked around, trying to get a sense of her surroundings. He was standing in an old-fashioned kitchen, panelled in pine, with colorful woven rugs on the softwood floor and plants on the wide sills. There were dishes in the sink, papers on the oak table, mail thrown on the counter. It was a room as different from his immaculately tidy stainless steel kitchen as could be imagined. He pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. With obvious reluctance, Katrin sat down across from him.

As far away from him as she could get.

Luke cleared his throat and said the first thing that came into his head. “Why did you drop the plates when you saw me?”

“You were the last person I was expecting to see.”

“Come on, Katrin, there was more to it than that.”

“If you just came up here to interrogate me,” she said tautly, “you can turn right around and go back.”

He leaned forward. “Yesterday I went through all the newspaper accounts of the trial…I can’t imagine how you survived such an ordeal.”

She tilted her chin. “I knew I was innocent and I had the support of good friends.”

This wasn’t going the way he’d hoped. Hadn’t he pictured her falling into his arms as soon as she opened the door? “Why did you marry him?” Luke asked quietly.