The Tycoon's Proposal

Of course there was the little matter of Kurt Callahan lurking in the background. But once his grand opening was past he’d be going home, and that interference would be gone as well. With him out of the way her peace of mind would be restored, and she and Hannah could get down to some serious digging and sorting…for a while, at least.

The nerve of the man, threatening to tell Hannah what had happened between them all those years ago. Of course he wouldn’t actually do it, because he’d be the one who ended up looking bad. Still….

Lissa had thought she was long over the sting of the single evening she’d spent with him. Even in the cloakroom last night she hadn’t entirely lost her perspective. But that had been before she’d had to deal with him on such a personal level, and now all the feelings had come flashing back: the frustration and the anger, the hurt, the desolation and—yes, the attraction too. Because he had been attractive, even to a frump of a freshman who’d known perfectly well that he was far beyond her sphere. A dumb frump of a freshman, Lissa reminded herself, who had bought the tale of his needing tutoring—which had certainly been true, as far as it went—and who had gotten in way over her head. And only when it had been too late had she found out that the whole thing had been the result of a bet, with the entire class in on it. That the single night which had been so magical to her had meant less than nothing to him.

You dropped out of that calculus class, too, he’d said.

Well, he was almost right. She’d stuck it out for a while, hoping it would all blow over and everybody would forget that stupid bet. But though the professor had kept order in the classroom, the teasing before and after class hadn’t ceased. After a while she’d made herself so sick over it that she’d skipped the rest of the lectures and turned in her work at the professor’s office. Only the fact that she was such a promising student had kept her from finishing up with a failing grade.

Just one more thing that Kurt Callahan was responsible for….

The steps up to the front of the boarding house were still buried in eight inches of snow, though a couple of trails had been broken by people going in and out. Lissa picked her way carefully up to the porch and let herself into the hallway. The landlady was standing outside the room which had originally been the front parlor, arguing with the tenant who was supposed to pay part of his rent by shoveling the walks.

Lissa unlocked her own door, then cleared her throat.

The landlady turned her head. “What do you want?”

Lissa debated. It wasn’t smart to announce that her room would be unoccupied for a while—but she couldn’t simply disappear for two weeks without letting the landlady know, either. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m going away for a while.”

The woman looked at her suspiciously. “How long a while? You going to pay for January in advance?”

Lissa couldn’t pay in advance if she wanted to. Not on the proceeds of last night’s tips. “I’ll pay for January when January comes,” she said firmly. “Just as I do every month.”

The front door opened again, and she saw the landlady’s eyes widen as she spotted the newcomer. Lissa looked around to see who had come in, and her heart sank.

CHAPTER THREE

KURT STAMPED HIS feet on the doormat and cast a long look around the dim hallway of the boarding house. The wallpaper was peeling, the glass in the door rattled as he closed it, the floorboards creaked under his feet, and the air smelled of burned popcorn.

Lissa looked over her shoulder. “Fancy meeting you here. I suppose Hannah gave you the address?”

“She sent me over to help so you’d be finished moving in time for dinner.”

The landlady stopped yelling and bustled over. “Did you say you’re moving?”

“I’m not giving up the room,” Lissa said. “I’m just picking up the stuff I’ll need for a couple of weeks.”

The landlady folded her arms across her ample chest. “If you want me to hold the room, you’ll have to pay ahead of time for January. Otherwise, how do I know you’ll come back?”

Kurt stepped between them. ”You trust her—the same way she trusts you not to put the rest of her stuff out on the curb the minute her back is turned.”

The landlady gave him the same stare she would a bedbug and went on, “And don’t expect me to return your deposit if you do give up the room, because there’s a hole in the wall.” She returned to the front parlor and went back to haranguing the other tenant.

“Home sweet home,” Lissa said. “The hole in the wall was there when I moved in.”

Honestly curious, Kurt asked, “Why do you put up with this?”

“Because it isn’t for much longer, and because living cheaply now means I won’t have so much debt to pay after I get my degree.”

“But you can’t want to come back here, after you were robbed.”

“Well, that’s rather beside the point, isn’t it?” Lissa pushed a door open. The sliding panel squeaked and stuck, and she gave it an extra shove.

In some situations there aren’t any good choices, she had said. You deal with it and go on.

It was starting to look to him like she was an expert at dealing with things and going on. Nursing a sick father, getting pneumonia herself….

She’d had a streak of hard luck, there was no doubt about that, but he couldn’t help but wonder if there was even more to the story than she’d told him.

Kurt followed her in. She flipped on every light in the place—such as they were. How she managed to get dressed in this gloom, much less read or study, was beyond him.

His gaze came to rest on the mantel, where a little Christmas tree stood bravely in the center, drooping under the weight of five too-big ornaments.

Damn. He didn’t want to feel sorry for her…but he did.

“You pack,” he said. “I’ll carry.”

The trouble was, Lissa had no idea what to pack. Clothes weren’t a problem—her wardrobe was limited, so she figured she’d just pile everything into a crate and take it along. It was all the other things she wasn’t sure about.

All the other things. What an all-encompassing, grandiose statement that was, Lissa told herself, considering how few material goods she actually possessed. Everything she owned would fit in the back of a minivan with room to spare.

Kurt came back from his third trip out to the car and raised an eyebrow at the half-empty crate Lissa was contemplating. “What’s the holdup?”

“I’m trying to decide what else to take.”

He looked around, as if he had no idea what she could be talking about.

She had to give him a little credit, though—Kurt hadn’t said a single disparaging word about her surroundings, her belongings, or the fact that her luggage consisted of plastic crates and not the monogrammed leather bags his crowd probably carried.

“Besides clothes, what could you possibly need?”

“Books, maybe. I wonder if I’ll have time to start studying for my spring classes.”

“Those would be the classes that won’t start until January? You already have the books?”

“Some of them. Picking up one or two at a time is easier on the wallet than buying them all at once.”

He looked startled, as if he’d never thought of that before.

His expression made it perfectly obvious, Lissa thought, that budgeting for textbooks had never been a problem for Kurt Callahan. “It’s sort of like putting money in the bank,” she said. “Buying what you need ahead of time, I mean.”

“So if you had invested all your cash in math books rather than just leaving it lying around, you wouldn’t be in this spot.”

“It wasn’t lying around, it was hidden.” Just not well enough. “And if I’d bought all my books with it I’d still have had a problem—namely, what I was going to eat for the next two weeks.”

“Speaking of eating,” Kurt suggested, “Janet promised prime rib for dinner, and I like mine rare. So can we hurry this project along?”

Lissa’s stomach growled at the mere suggestion of rare prime rib. Or, for that matter, medium or well-done prime rib; it didn’t matter, because it all sounded the same to her. Delicious, in a word.