Taming the Tycoon (5 page)

“Don’t think I haven’t tried. My grandmother thinks they’re evil. She’s convinced they’re carcinogenic.”

Addie smiled to herself at the dejected note in his voice. Several octaves higher and he’d sound just like a little boy who’d been told he couldn’t go to the sweet shop.

She located the gift bag and dropped the box inside. She spied the other gift she’d bought and hesitated for a moment, almost chickening out, embarrassed by her impulsive gesture. But she quickly quashed it. Being impulsive, spreading the love, and taking joy in other people’s pleasure was who she was now. And she wasn’t going to let a thwarted tycoon who wore a
suit
to a farm change her.

She’d survived a ravaging disease and a treatment that had put her on the critical list in intensive care for a week. She wouldn’t let his brooding disapproval of her lifestyle intimidate her.

“Well, this might help,” she said, bringing the book out and giving it to him.

She watched him closely as he turned it over and over like he’d never seen one before. “It’s a book,” she explained patiently. “You know, back in the old days, before iPhones and the World Wide Web, we actually used to read in our spare time? I figured a man who didn’t go to the movies has probably missed out on one of the best books to ever come out of this country.”

He grunted. “The boy wizard, huh?”

Addie pressed her lips together so the laughter wouldn’t bubble out as “boy wizards” obviously joined meditation and crystals in the neat little box in his head labeled “weird stuff.”

It could be fun opening up his world.

If she didn’t murder him first.

“It’ll keep you from being idle when the Internet’s down,” she said, patting his leg as if she were placating a child.

Except it suddenly didn’t seem very placatory and she immediately wished she hadn’t.

Nathaniel Montgomery was no child.

His quad muscle was certainly all man. It filled her palm, warm and vibrant, and her hand felt hot as his gaze fanned over it, fixing on their point of contact. She felt him tense slightly and for a crazy moment she wanted to run her palm along the length of his thigh, familiarize herself with every millimeter. She’d caught a glimpse of his leg the other day as his trousers had been cut off and now she’d inadvertently copped a feel.

She really needed to stop getting herself into such compromising positions.

His gaze shifted to her face and Addie swallowed. “Idle minds are the devil’s playground,” he murmured.

Her breath stuttered to a halt as their gazes locked for a few seconds. Her cheeks felt warm and her heart fluttered madly in her chest, and if she hadn’t realized before, she knew right then and there that he could tempt her to play with him too easily.

Nathaniel posed a threat to more than just her rose garden.

Chapter Four

“What are you working on?”

Nathaniel held her gaze as she deliberately changed the subject and pulled her hand away as if his thigh had suddenly caught fire.

Given how damned hot he felt right now, maybe it had.

“Just business,” he dismissed, grateful that Addie had steered the conversation back from the edge.

“Destroying two-hundred-year-old walled gardens kind of business?”

She softened her taunt with a smile and Nathaniel returned it with a sardonic one of his own. He had absolutely no intention of being drawn into the St. Agnes battle with her.

She was in the back of a limo, for crying out loud—couldn’t she just be impressed for a while? Other women loved being squired around in the lap of luxury. They usually wasted no time in fixing themselves a drink, turning on some music and checking out every nook and cranny, chattering nine to the dozen.

Hell, most of them were pretty damned keen to test the limits of the leather seats. But not Addie Collins. She’d sat like she had a prickle in her butt and hadn’t said a word for the first forty-five minutes.

“Just running some figures on another project I’m hoping to acquire shortly,” he murmured.

“Don’t you have a calculator for that?”

He shrugged. “Sure, on my phone. But I enjoy the challenge.”

She leaned toward him a little to peer at the paperwork on his lap and Nathaniel tried not to look at the way things shifted beneath her T-shirt.

“That’s not a challenge,” she said. “Working them out in your head is a challenge. I’m pretty good at math. I can help if you like. Throw me a sum.”

Nathaniel chuckled at her offer. He was learning not to underestimate her, but she’d need to be a bloody genius to work this stuff out without some kind of electronic aid or at least a paper and pen. “I’m good.”

“No, really,” she insisted.

He sighed. He didn’t want her help, but he was beginning to recognize that determined jut to her chin. “I’m pretty damn good at math, too, but multiplying and dividing eight figured numbers off the top off my head with any sort of accuracy is not something to mess with.”

Her gaze didn’t waver as she said, “Try me.”

Nathaniel met it for a long moment, then returned his attention to the sums he’d been working on and prattled off four seven-figured numbers that had to be multiplied and then divided by a five five-figured number with two decimal points.

It took her less than ten seconds to shoot him an answer. “Okay,” he said, amused at her deadpan delivery as he wrote the number down. “And how do I know it’s right?”

She didn’t even blink. “It’s right.”

“If you say so.”

“Get your phone and check.”

Nathaniel reached into his inner jacket pocket and pulled out his phone. He scrolled to the calculator application and did the sum, hitting the equals button. The answer blinked back at him and he stared dumbfounded as it matched the one she’d given him.

He looked up and shot her another sum, doing it on the calculator as he dictated it to her. A dozen sums later, he was staring at her, completely gobsmacked.

She
was
a genius.

Who owned a crystal shop.

And lived on a boat.

Even knowing about her obviously thriving business—yes, he had noticed the busy store, though he hadn’t realized it was a front for a booming organic food business—the two concepts were hard to wrap his head around.

“Addie, Addie, Addie,” he murmured. “When are you going to stop surprising me?”

Addie’s abdominal muscles clenched as his silky words trailed sticky fingers over her belly, and she drew in a ragged breath of air that felt as thick as soup. She suddenly wished she’d chosen to sit at the other end of the limo.

Hell—she was sitting in a luxurious moving machine that oozed debauchery with a man who looked like he’d invented original sin. She should have been sitting up with Carl, the driver!

Her gaze drifted to the exposed hollow of his throat and the defined ridge of his collarbone before returning to his face. She steeled herself to sound normal. “When are you going to stop judging me?”

He regarded her for a moment and Addie felt a trickle of anxiety. “So, you’re some kind of genius, right?”

“Well…” she hesitated.

Nathaniel’s gaze narrowed. “Spill.”

Addie sighed—she’d bought this upon herself. She’d been showing off. “I was a gifted child, particularly with numbers. My learning was accelerated and I was accepted into Oxford at sixteen, where I studied pure math. I left at twenty with a master’s degree and a job with top-secret clearance in the defense department working in encryption.”

Nathaniel blinked. “You’re kind of unconventional for a genius.”

She gave him a grudging smile. Little did he know, she’d been boringly conventional not that many years ago. “Thank you.”

“Your parents must be very proud.”

She shrugged, looking down at her book, rubbing her palm over the cool pages. “Not really. It was no more than was expected. They’re both internationally renowned physicists. I’m even named after a famous physicist called Adelaide Worthington. I think they would have been most disappointed to end up with an average child.”

“So…what happened?”

Addie looked at him. “I got leukemia.”

She heard the air hiss out of his lungs as he leaned in toward her. A frown scrunched his forehead and he looked shocked. “Oh, God.” He sat up in his seat a little higher. “I’m sorry. That’s awful.”

Addie smiled at his awkwardness. “It’s fine.
I’m
fine. Now. It was a horrible time in my life…there were complications. But it made me reassess my priorities, work out what was important.”

He eyed her for a moment and she swore she could see the cogs working in his brain as he said, “St. Agnes’s. That’s where you had your treatment, right?”

Addie nodded. “That garden was my salvation. The only green thing in a world of gray and white. It fed my soul.” He had the good grace to look uneasy and she pressed her advantage. “It will be a devastating loss to see it go.”

He pursed his lips. “Emotional blackmail won’t work.”

“What will?”

“It’s happening, Addie. You need to get used to that.”

The low certainty in his voice made her shiver. She gave him a ghost of a smile. “We’ll see.”

He shook his head and turned to look out the window for a moment, and Addie castigated herself for pushing too hard too soon. He was obviously determined to have his way and if she didn’t want him shutting down every time she tried to discuss it, she needed to tread carefully.

He turned back. “Are you…is everything okay now?”

Addie was pleasantly surprised by his obvious concern, but her approaching anniversary had been something she’d been trying not to dwell on. “I’ve been in remission for nearly five years. I get my final clearance soon.”

“So what happened after you were better?” he asked after a while. “You just… dropped out?”

Addie nodded. “Pretty much. For a couple of years. Penny and I—Penny’s younger sister, Alice, was sick the same time as me, and she died a month before I finished my last treatment—we bought the Kombi and took off for Europe. Traveled around. Worked here and there. Laughed. Cried. Grieved. Loved. Just…lived, really.”

“And the shop?”

“I talked about doing it all the time I was away. Eating top-quality food is vital when your body is being ravaged so viciously, and meditation helped me so much in those dark days. When we got home, I inherited the
Ida May
, and Penny and I spent some time renovating it. We drove it from Wales and ended up moored at St. Katherine’s and I knew, I just knew, it was the place I was meant to be.”

She smiled absently, thinking about that amazing trek through the canals of Wales and the midlands with her best friend. She also remembered the sense of coming home she’d had when she’d moored the
Ida May
in the spot it was now.

She looked up and saw him watching her. “I learned to listen to my gut when I was sick, and it was telling me that St. Katherine’s Docks was my destiny.”

Just like it was telling her saving Nathaniel was her destiny.

“You ever had that feeling?” she asked.

He nodded. ”Of course. I’ve built an extremely successful empire on gut feelings. But I don’t believe in
destiny.
I believe you make your own path in life through hard work and dedication to your goals.”

Addie sighed.
Of course he did
.

“And I really should be getting back to it,” he said, and turned to his paperwork like the poster boy for workaholic tycoons.

Who knew destiny could be such a bitch?

Two hours later, they’d left the motorway and were gliding through picture-postcard villages. Addie gave up on the pretense of reading and looked out the window instead as thatched roofs and quaint pubs with brightly colored flower boxes and names like
The Cock and Bull
and
The Royal Artilleryman
whizzed by.

It took her back to her time on the canals. She had a sudden thirst for a nice cold lager and a desire to be sitting at one of the outdoor tables soaking up the sunshine.

Which probably had more to do with sitting next to Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Silent than anything else. She had a feeling he was the real reason she’d rather be at a beer garden somewhere drinking in the sunshine.

Great
.

Two hours in his company and he was already driving her back to drink. Something she’d given up quite happily during her lifestyle revamp and hadn’t missed.

Except for right now.

He was just so…distracting. Sans jacket, his broad chest and fascinating forearms were constantly drawing her eye. And he smelled so damned good—like those spice markets again—a primitive part of her wanted to bury her face in his neck and get a little high.

Not that he was even aware of her interest. Since making it perfectly clear that he had work to do, he hadn’t raised his head—not even when he answered his very annoying continually ringing phone—for the rest of the journey.

Addie thought it was fair to say that he was completely oblivious to his impact on her equilibrium.

Which was a good thing.

She doubted she’d survive if those intense blue eyes ever looked at her with any kind of interest.

Nathaniel Montgomery was the big league.

And she was here to show him the joy of eating the hot dogs, not to play ball.

The car slowed at a roundabout and he finally looked up from his laptop. He peered out the window then glanced at his watch. “We should be there in fifteen minutes.”

Addie felt butterflies dance in her stomach, even though she wasn’t entirely sure the comment had been directed at her. But she took the first opportunity at conversation she’d been presented since she’d told him her life story a couple of hours ago.

“What are they like? Your mother and grandmother?”

She was curious to know about the women in Nathaniel’s life. From what she’d heard on the phone at the hospital, his mother sounded very West Country. She’d come across as warm and loving, concerned for her son, a bit indulgent, even.

Certainly not the type of woman she envisioned could have raised a cold-hearted businessman. No Cruella De Vil or Mommy Dearest.

Maybe that had been his father’s influence?

He looked at her. “They live on an
alpaca
farm. What do you think they’re like?”

Addie blinked at the way he said “alpaca.” As if the matriarchs of his family were rearing unicorns.

“Well, I’m not quite sure what alpaca farmers really look like—sweet little old ladies who spend their days bottle-feeding baby alpacas, I suppose? I’m guessing not quite as insane as the tone of your voice implies. Probably not as quick to judge, either. Probably appreciate rose gardens a lot more than some.”

She shot him a sweet smile and weathered his exasperated look.

“There is nothing remotely sweet or little-old-ladyish about either of them. They’re loud because my grandmother is a bit on the deaf side and refuses to wear her hearing aid, so they have to yell at each other all the time. They’re opinionated. They’re rabid conservationists. My grandmother thinks she’s a white witch and my mother indulges her. Trust me—they’re quite, quite mad.”

Addie grinned because even through his exasperation, she could hear a grudging affection. “Oh goody, I’ve never met a white witch.”

Nathaniel eyeballed her. “Please do not encourage her.”

Addie bit back the urge to laugh at his stern look. “Okay fine. I’m just saying, they sound like my kind of people.” Rose-garden kind of people.

She felt his gaze sweep from the purple sunglasses perched atop her blond hair to her flip-flops. He sighed. “Yes.”

The car slowed down and Addie looked out the window as the limo turned into a long driveway. She noticed the crooked carved wooden sign proclaiming
Hill Top
and in the distance on a slight rise, a large stone house.