Riches to Rags Bride / The Heiress's Baby: Riches to Rags Bride / The Heiress's Baby

Genevieve didn’t say much, but she listened. She nodded. “And I’ll be overseeing all of this.”

Her voice sounded slightly faint.

Lucas frowned. “I’ll work with you closely, but I have a business to run, other irons in the fire. This will largely be your project.” Except he would personally see to it that the deadline didn’t fall through. The deadline was that important.

“All right. I see.” Genevieve gave a tight nod. They turned down a hallway, not speaking, their steps silent on the carpeting.

The slosh of water sounded in a nearby room. “I don’t know. Ms. Patchett is very nice, but … not experienced,” Jorge was saying. “I hope she knows what she’s doing and doesn’t lead us into any mistakes. I don’t want to lose this job.”

“She’s very pretty. Do you think she and Mr. McDowell …?” Thomas’s voice trailed off.

“Idiot. No,” Jorge said. “I’ve worked with Mr. McDowell before. He doesn’t mix business and pleasure. Besides, she’s too … I don’t know … too innocent for him. Not his type.” He stopped. “We shouldn’t be talking like this. They might hear. We might get fired. And anyway, it’s wrong.”

Genevieve had stopped in her tracks. She looked up at Lucas, embarrassment written across every feature. Suddenly, she grabbed his hand and pulled him silently back down the hall. Then, cheeks blazing, she took a deep breath. “How long do you think the repair and renovation of this place should take?” she asked loudly. Too loudly. Loud enough for the other men to hear. Clearly, she didn’t want Thomas and Jorge to know what she had overheard.

“Everything has to be done in six weeks. After that, we invite the world in, invite the tenants, and I leave town. Can you handle that?” he asked, playing along.

She took a deep, visible breath. “I can handle anything, Mr. McDowell.” Her voice shook slightly, but it came out loud enough to carry.

They continued down the hall past the room where Thomas and Jorge were working. “I lied. I’d like to pretend that I know exactly what I’m doing, but I think it’s clear that I’m learning. But I’ll tell you this much, Lucas. Truthfully. Totally truthfully. I may not be able to handle everything yet, but I don’t intend to slack off or slow down or disappoint you if I can help it. I intend to do my best at this job.”

A nicer man would have assured her that that was enough. He had never been a nice man. “I intend to see that you do,” he said. He hoped she would be able to produce the results that he needed. If everything worked out as planned, Genevieve would be his glowing gateway to the people he needed to reach.

But, by the end of the day, she wasn’t glowing. Instead, she was wet, dirty and drooping. Strands of her bright hair had come loose from her tight ponytail and there was a scrape on her cheek. She looked as if she might drop to the ground at any minute.

“I’ll take you home,” he said. “Congratulations. You survived your first day.” But he wondered whether she would be back for a second day or if she would choose to slink away, to decide that this was no life for a debutante.

Still, when he pulled up to her apartment, the sight of her crumbling and dangerous neighborhood reminded him that she had left debutante status behind. And he wasn’t buying her declaration that she would never marry for money. Too long in a place like this and a woman—or a man—might do anything to get out. He knew about that kind of thing. Far too well, he thought with a grimace. Genevieve could get hurt. She shouldn’t be living here.

The thought caught him by surprise. He never allowed his interactions with employees to get personal, but then this project was personal, the repayment of a long overdue debt. Finishing it would close a chapter in his life he never wanted to look back on again and tie up loose ends he couldn’t control. Then, he could concentrate on a future he could control, one with zero emotional risks. Just the way he liked things.

“Thank you for the ride,” Genevieve said, reaching for the door, clearly uncomfortable. Probably not used to silent brooding bosses frowning at her.

“You don’t … fit in a place like this,” he said, stopping her and further surprising and angering himself.

To his amazement, she laughed, a light, bell-like sound. “I fit,” she said. “We’re all misfits here. I’m just not the norm.”

Then she sprinted for her building, paying no attention to her surroundings, her purse flopping against her hip.

Darn it! But then, he supposed he shouldn’t be surprised at her carelessness. A princess like her would have been used to leaving everything, including her security, to others.

Growling, he flung open his door and got out. “Genevieve,” he said, his voice carrying.

She turned, those big eyes open wide, startled.

“Lock your door,” he said. “I don’t want to lose my project manager through carelessness,” he felt compelled to add.

Genevieve blushed. She bit her lip. Was that a trace of resentment in her eyes? Intriguing. He hadn’t seen that before.

“I have six locks,” she told him, lifting her chin a tiny bit. There was just a trace of haughtiness, of the miffed debutante. “I … You don’t really trust me, do you?”

He hesitated. “I hired you.”

She nodded. “Because I’m a Patchett.”

He wasn’t going to deny it. Nor was he going to tell her he trusted her. He wasn’t sure whether he did. The truth was, he had a suspicion that hiring her had been a mistake, for reasons that had nothing to do with the project, reasons he didn’t even want to acknowledge. There was something about her that made him not trust himself. He had a terrible feeling that he knew what it was, too. It wasn’t good.

But he had hired her. The only thing to do now was to muddle through this mess. Quickly. Soon enough Genevieve Patchett would just be another woman in the rearview mirror of his consciousness. He was a pro at leaving bad situations—and problematic women—behind. If Genevieve was more problematic than most … well, he wouldn’t let that happen. He’d tell her what she needed to know to do her job, oversee her progress from a distance and then he’d send her on her way with enough money to escape this place.

And both of them would walk away happy. End of story.

CHAPTER THREE

GENEVIEVE LAY IN THE DARK, staring up at the ceiling but seeing instead the frown on Lucas’s gorgeous face. Carefully, she went over what had taken place during the day. And cringed.

“You didn’t even know how to sweep a floor, how to wash a wall.” She groaned and placed her palms over her hot face. “The man must think that he’s hired an idiot. He’s probably cursing Teresa and me right now, probably already looking through his list of applicants for my replacement. I don’t have any of the skills necessary, nothing that he wanted.”

Worse than that, she had an annoying habit of blushing every time she looked at the man. With just one wordless glance, he had pointed out that her wet blouse was plastered to her body, and her reaction had been beyond embarrassment. Heat had slithered through her veins. Those steel-gray eyes had found her time and time again today, often wordlessly, and every time he had looked at her, she had felt like …

A woman when she should have felt like an employee. For two seconds she thought back to the days when she had appeared at all of her parents’ balls and openings. What would Lucas have thought of her had he met her under such circumstances?

“Stop it right now, Gen,” she ordered herself. She wasn’t some silly romantic girl anymore. Besides, she most emphatically did not want a man, and Lucas certainly didn’t want her, she thought, remembering Jorge’s, Teresa’s and Rita’s words.

Besides, her very survival depended on her doing well at this job. And yet … in the back of her mind she heard her parents berating her for being awkward and for not being talented enough. She heard Barry mocking her for being such a sheltered, clueless princess. The thought that any day now Lucas might decide that she was incapable of doing her job …

Genevieve swallowed hard. Even the sound of yelling down the hall paled in comparison to her fears about what would happen if Lucas fired her. And it wasn’t just about the money, either.

She sat up in bed and dashed away one stray tear. “Don’t cry, you idiot. Do. Learn. Prove to him that you’re not afraid of anything.” Even though she was desperately afraid. But she wasn’t going to let Lucas know that.

“Odious, virile man,” she whispered. “Other women have cried buckets over you, but I won’t ever be one of them. I don’t care what you think of me as long as I survive you and learn from you.”

One thing she was sure of. When this was over, she would be more than glad to see the back of Lucas McDowell.

Lucas grunted as he flexed his arms, moving into his seventy-second push-up and trying to clear his thoughts. He was staying in the penthouse apartment of one of Chicago’s most luxurious hotels and there was, of course, a gym available to him, but he had his own private regimen he followed. One hundred push-ups for starters. Every night. No exceptions. After the emotional chaos of his childhood, discipline had been his salvation. Nothing was going to change that.

But clearing his mind to concentrate on his task was proving difficult. After he’d left Genevieve at her apartment with her six locks, he’d searched the internet and easily located the crime statistics for that neighborhood. Theft was a given, domestic disputes the norm. He growled at that. He knew better than anyone that domestic dispute sounded much too mild for all the horrors that tag encompassed. But that had nothing to do with Genevieve.

“Not your problem or your business,” he reminded himself. Control the situation. He repeated his mantra. Don’t let yourself get involved. Don’t let the situation have power over you. Because control was everything. It was the only thing that had kept him out of jail. It made life and success possible.

But in spite of his best efforts to stop thinking about Genevieve, when he tried to return to his task, he could still see the look in her eyes when she had told him that she had all those locks and asked him if he didn’t trust her. Somehow he was sure she wouldn’t appreciate him interfering in her life or suggesting that she might want to take her first paycheck and move.

It certainly wasn’t the kind of thing he ever did or wanted to do. Keep a distance. Never get too involved was his motto.

And yet, Genevieve Patchett’s naïveté, her dangerous situation, had kept him from completing a task he’d done every night for years. He was still stuck on push-up number seventy-two.

“Idiot. Get control of yourself. Stay out of this. Don’t do something you’ll regret.” With a groan, he forced himself to complete the push-up and all the rest of them. Having withstood the onslaught of doubts and come out ahead, he went to bed. A soft bed. A safe bed. In an exclusive hotel in an exclusive neighborhood.

“And everything is perfectly fine,” he mumbled. But in the middle of the night he woke from a dream in a cold sweat, his fears about why Genevieve was bothering him confirmed. Voices from a past he tried never to remember had pushed their way into his dreams. He’d heard his mother crying in the night. He’d felt his own failure, his inability to be what she wanted, and his own panic as she’d walked out the door, never to return. And after his father’s death when he’d been left totally alone, there had been other mother figures, women who had tried to help him and recoiled in distress at his wounded animal anger. Some had been nice; most had merely wanted to use him to gild their reputations; one society princess had called him her “street child” until she had a baby of her own, a better, sweeter child, the kind she’d always wanted. In the end, he had spurned all of them. And then …