will remain the same.” An overhead spotlight threw his arrogant features into harsh relief as a smile crossed his lips.
A promotion. Higher pay. A reward for excellence?
Or a smoke screen to cover his plan to force her resignation?
“Thank you. I look forward to the new challenges,” she said stiffly.
“Good. I have a meeting to attend. Please familiarize Mrs. Dixon with the workings of our office. I’ll be at home this afternoon as I have a new mare being delivered. You may handle my calls for me.”
With a brusque nod, he strode toward the elevator leaving Sara alone with…
The Other Woman.
She wanted to laugh. Her rival was not the long-lashed, pouty-lipped casino bunny she might have imagined. No. She was a heavily powdered, sturdy-legged matron of at least fifty-five.
“Pleased to meet you,” she said, holding out her hand to Mrs. Dixon.
“Likewise.” Mrs. Dixon’s hair remained firmly in place as she nodded a greeting and met Sara’s sweating palm with her own cool, meaty hand. “Have you worked here long?”
“Nearly five months.”
Oh, and I’m having his baby, by the way.
How would she ever tell him now? With this steel-haired battle-ax perched outside the office door, ear probably glued to the intercom?
As hers had once been.
“I have thirty-five years of experience assisting executives.” Mrs. Dixon’s thin lips pressed together for a moment as she glanced from Sara’s travel-wrinkled suit to the teetering piles of folders and correspondence on her desk. “We’ll soon get this office whipped into shape.”
I have to tell him. Today.
She pumped down on the pedals, pushing her bike along the dusty road that cut through the sagebrush-strewn desert. She pedaled slowly, trying to conserve her energy, trying not to work up too much of a sweat as the summer sun glared down at her from the fierce blue sky. It was already eleven o’clock, the journey taking longer than she’d expected. When she’d looked up Elan’s address she hadn’t realized his ranch was so far from town. But she had to go there and tell him away from the prying eyes of their coworkers.
She’d tried, time and time again over the past two weeks, to get a moment alone with Elan behind the closed door of his office. But Mrs. Dixon hovered around him like a ministering angel, bearing cups of steaming coffee, bags of dry-cleaned shirts and freshly collated reports. She even took shorthand, which seemed to delight Elan, who now dictated most of his personal correspondence instead of typing it himself on his computer. There was no escaping the woman, whose old-school solicitude was a stark contrast to Sara’s own ambitious careerism.
And Elan was using her ambition as a rope to hang her with. She was scheduled to leave next Thursday for three weeks on an offshore rig in the Gulf of Mexico. After that she was headed to Canada, for a long stint at three different sites there. The opportunity was exciting, she couldn’t deny it, but it was sure to be a challenge in ways she probably couldn’t even imagine. No question, he was pushing her, testing her, trying to find her limits.
He’d wanted her gone, and now she would be. Good. No more struggling to keep her eyes off the broad strength of his shoulders, the dexterous power of his hands, the dark magnetism of his gaze.
What a relief. So why the hollow ache inside her at the thought of leaving?
Probably that hollow space was there because she’d been up half the night drafting projections for a new client, with nothing more than a quick plate of fruit and cheese to keep her going.
She didn’t think he’d fire her when he heard her news. She’d been at the company long enough to know that for all his brash demeanor Elan treated his employees with scrupulous fairness. There were several pregnant women in the office and he’d even raised the idea of an on-site daycare to encourage employee retention.
His objections would be personal.
If he was trying to force her out now, how would he react when he knew her secret? Even if he didn’t fire her, he might push just hard enough to get her on that train home to Wisconsin.
Telling him was risky, but she wasn’t the kind of person who could sit on a secret like this. It was his child, too, and he deserved to know of its existence.
She’d reached a flat expanse of land on which she couldn’t see a man-made structure of any kind, let alone a house befitting a wealthy tycoon. Was she lost?
She hadn’t phoned to tell him she was coming. She’d figured the surprise of her unexpected appearance would only herald the other, far more dramatic surprise that she had in store for him. But if she didn’t find the place soon, the surprise would be finding her bleached bones out on the burning sands.
As she came to the top of a slight rise she spied movement off in the distance. Dark lines of pipe fencing crisscrossed the desert, marking boundaries on the open plain. She squinted against the high sun, trying to make out the shadowy shapes that darted to and fro in the distance.
A man and a horse.
A dark horse and a dark-skinned man silhouetted against the sun-bleached landscape. Gradually she saw the shape of the house emerge from its surroundings. Sand-colored, it blended almost totally into the environment. Other horses sheltered in the dark shade of earth-toned structures that became visible as she drew closer.
A trickle of sweat pricked at her spine, and her heart raced as much from fear as from physical exertion as she drew closer to her quarry.
He hadn’t seen her.
Elan stood in the center of a round pen. The dark-red horse ran on the end of a long lead, as he chased it around in circles. When the horse slowed or tried to turn away from him, he cracked a whip to drive it forward.
His attention focused totally on the horse, he didn’t look up even as she dismounted her bike. She leaned it against the sand-colored wall of the imposing bunkerlike structure that she assumed must be his house.
She approached slowly, her heart thundering against her ribs. The pen Elan worked in stood a good hundred yards away and she struggled to put one foot in front of the other and cover what suddenly seemed like an impossibly large distance.
She couldn’t back out this time. Wouldn’t leave until she’d told him.
“Yah!”
His shout startled her and she jumped. But he’d shouted at the horse. His expression frightened her, brows low over eyes narrowed against the bright sun, chin jutted in an expression of determination.
Her gaze dropped lower. He wore only a pair of dusty black jeans. His bare torso shone with sweat in the blazing midday heat. His hair was damp, black tendrils plastered to his forehead. He raised a muscled arm and buried his face in the crook of his elbow, streaking a mix of sweat and dirt across his face as he raised his focus again to his horse.
And then he saw her.
The rein to the horse went slack and the animal slowed to a halt. Elan raised his hand higher to shield his eyes from the sun and squinted at her as if doubting his vision.
“Sara?”
Her heart tripped over itself and her breathing quickened as she walked to him on unsteady legs. “Yes.”
“What brings you to my home?” Still squinting against the sun, he started to stride toward her. The horse, however, had other ideas and tossed its head, almost jerking the rein from his hand.
Elan jerked back and let fly a string of words in a language she didn’t know. “This mare, she has the stubbornness of an ox, the disdain of a camel!”
Sara looked at the mare. She had her head raised and one eye firmly fixed on Elan in an attitude of visibly insolent disregard. “I’m training