One Bride Delivered. Jeanne Allan
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ran his fingers through his hair, knowing he’d brought this on himself. For a second, back in New York, he’d looked at the boy and seen someone else, and before he knew it, he heard himself saying he’d take the boy to Aspen. Now he was damned if he knew what to do with him. Thomas Steele, CEO of a chain of exclusive hotels, buffaloed by a six-year-old boy.
Picking up the phone, he ordered their breakfasts. He wasn’t sure the boy actually liked oatmeal. When asked, the boy had shrugged, but oatmeal was the only breakfast food he’d eaten. Thomas made a mental note of the need for more child-friendly items on the menu.
Knuckles beat a tattoo on the suite’s door bringing a mocking smile to his face. Breakfast had arrived in record time. People jumped when the boss was annoyed. He snugged the belt to his bathrobe and jerked open the door.
By the time Thomas realized the tall blond female standing in the hallway held no breakfast tray, she’d barged into the suite. About to escort her bodily back into the hall, he reconsidered. The time had come to stop this nonsense. When he finished with this woman, he’d make damned sure no one else disturbed him. Thomas slammed the door behind him and glared menacingly at her. No one could do menace the way he could.
The woman glared back.
At least she wasn’t grinning like an ape. He glanced at her hands. No cookies. Just a rolled-up newspaper she batted in irritation against a bare leg. He didn’t know why the hell she was irritated. He was the one being harassed.
Thomas allowed the silence to grow while he inspected his unwelcome visitor with insulting thoroughness. Lightly tanned legs extended forever below the bottom of ghastly khaki cuffed shorts before finally disappearing into thick white socks above sturdy walking shoes. Slowly he worked his gaze up past trim hips and a narrow waist.
And firm breasts. Undoubtedly held in check by a practical sports bra. Skin tanned to the exact shade of her legs showed in the open vee of her blue denim shirt. Thomas visualized white knit snugly cradling mounds of tanned flesh. A dull flush crawled up her neck. Apparently his visitor read minds. Giving a tiny smile of satisfaction, Thomas brought a heavy-lidded gaze to rest on her face.
Some men might consider her a beauty. If they liked tall, athletic, healthy-looking blondes. Thomas’s taste ran to sleek, exotic, dark-haired women who oozed sophistication and sex. This woman oozed indignation. Thomas raised a mocking eyebrow, a gesture he’d practiced as a teen which now came naturally to him. He’d reduced more than one errant employee to gibbering justification and contrition with that eyebrow. Her bottom lip was too full to actually thin with annoyance, but the woman did her level best.
“No cookies?” he asked smoothly. She looked perplexed for a split second before awareness deepened her gray eyes—no, not gray, but light blue with a grayish-brown run around the pupils.
“I assume that means you know all about it.”
Thomas had seen the woman before. In passing on Aspen’s pedestrian mall or—Of course. She must be an employee of the hotel. As of this second, close to being a former employee. “I know,” he said in answer to her implied question, “you’re dangerously close to never working for a Steele hotel again.”
She gave him a startled look.
He let her think about his threat while he answered the knock on the door. The room service waiter smiled at the woman Every person who worked at the St. Christopher Hotel would know to the second how long she’d been in Thomas’s suite. They’d think he’d gotten soft. They’d be wrong Once he found out what was going on, he’d deliver a tongue-lashing this particular interloper would never forget.
The door closed behind the waiter. The smell of coffee drew Thomas to the table, and pouring himself a cup, he drank deeply. The liquid scalded his mouth, but the caffeine jolted his brain into full power. Giving the woman a dark look over the rim of the cup, he sipped more deliberately.
The woman looked at the tray. “Breakfast for two.”
Warning bells clanged in Thomas’s head. As an extremely eligible bachelor, he knew the lengths to which marriage-minded women would go. Immediately he armored himself with a fictitious female companion. “Did you think I’d allow her to leave before she had breakfast?”
“I should hope not. She needs a good breakfast to start the day off right.” The woman inspected the tray. “Milk, oatmeal. I don’t see any fruit or juice. For proper nutrition, she needs two to four servings of fruit a day. Plus vegetables.”
She was nuts. “I don’t give a damn about her nutrition. All I care about is a certain level of performance. How she achieves it is her problem”
“You’re her father. You ought to care.”
“Father,” he said blankly. “I’m talking about the woman in my bed.”
“You have a wife?”
Her stunned surprise confirmed his suspicion she’d come husband-hunting. “I’m unmarried and intend to stay that way.”
“You don’t have a wife, but you do have a woman in your bed,” she said slowly. “And you can stand there and brag that all you care about is how good she is in bed? What kind of example is that for a child?”
“That’s it. I’ve run out of patience. Tell me what the hell is going on.”
Instead of answering, the woman moved quickly to his bedroom, knocked once, waited a couple of seconds, then opened the door. Next she’d be checking his pillow for stray hairs. Not that she’d find any. The boy had definitely cramped Thomas’s social life.
After a quick survey of the empty room she headed for the boy’s room and knocked again. In answer to a muted response, the woman opened the door and peered in. “Hi,” she said. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you.” Closing the door, she turned. “There’s no woman here. Just your son.”
Thomas shrugged, not bothering to correct her. “Maybe she went out the window.”
“In broad daylight?”
“Stranger things than that happen in Aspen.”
“Not nearly as strange as you trying to convince me you have a woman in your bed. I’ve heard of men bragging of their sexual prowess, but you take the cake, buddy.”
“As you are well aware, my name is Thomas Steele.” When she didn’t react, he added smoothly, “One of the hotel Steeles.”
“I suppose because your family owns this hotel you’re rich and you do have a woman in your bed every night. Last night’s candidate come down with the flu? Or a case of good taste?”
Thomas slammed his cup on the table. “Look, lady—”
“My name is Cheyenne Lassiter. One of the ranching Lassiters.” She mocked his earlier self-introduction. “And I’m the ‘C’ in C & A Enterprises.”
For two cents he’d toss the impudent Ms. Cheyenne Lassiter out in the hall on her delectable bottom. Better yet, he’d toss her down on the carpet and turn the scorn in those muddy blue eyes to something else entirely. Hell, his brain had gone haywire. Served him right for trying to deal logically with a bunch of nutty women. “I have no idea why you and your friends are harassing me, Ms. Lassiter, but it stops now.” Thomas sat at the dining table. “My breakfast is getting cold, so if you’ll excuse me...”
She waved her hand regally, granting permission. “I ate hours ago. Working women can’t lay around like the idle rich.”
If her goal was to irritate the hell out of him, she’d succeeded. “Ms. Lassiter,” he said coldly, “I was asking you politely to leave.”
“Go ahead and ask.” She picked up a muffin from the tray and took a bite. “I’m not here to see you.” She nodded in the direction of the boy’s bedroom. “I came to see him.”
“Me?” Thomas’s nephew bolted from his room, his hair in spikes and his face glowing. “I’m going