Deal of a Lifetime by Rue Allyn Read Free Book Online

rejection. Then he’d been crushed. He hadn’t thought her cruel or cowardly, so her silence baffled him as much as it hurt. In his mind, married or not, they were a unit. He’d failed to take her feelings seriously. Hopefully he wouldn’t make that mistake again.
    He hurried to shave and dress, made a call to housekeeping, and left an extra large tip for the maid. He wouldn’t catch up with Tam at the first seminar, but he’d be right beside her for the rest of the day.
    ****
    When Con slid into the seat next to her, Tam jerked her attention away from the speaker long enough to give him an ice-cold stare. “Don’t you have a meeting or something? Go away.”
    “Not on your life, sweetness. You’re stuck with me.”
    “You can’t mean to pursue this relationship after the conference is over.” Eyes wide, her voice rose a notch.
    “I mean precisely that.”
    “Ssssh,” came from several directions.
    Rather than continue the argument and disrupt the seminar more, Tam faced forward, ignoring her sexy shadow.
    She rose the minute the presentation ended and the applause started. She edged to the end of the row where the departing crowd forced her to stop. Con’s hot hard body thunked into her from behind. His spicy citrus scent enveloped her, and her knees wobbled—only for a moment but long enough to cause Con to steady her. He stepped up beside her, taking her by the elbow. Then using a very commanding tone of voice, he cleared a path for her to the door.
    Once in the somewhat less crowded hallway, Tam shook off his hold, uttered a brisk thank you and, weaving through the stream of conference attendees, strode off to her appointment with Buddswell.
    The crowd thinned as she made her way to the managerial offices. Almost no one loitered in the hallway, when she paused before the office lobby. She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders.
    “Meeting with Buddswell?”
    Con’s voice startled the wits from her enough for her to jump and once more make contact. His arms circled and released her in quick succession. The effect was just as devastating as if they shared the most intimate kiss. She should have known she couldn’t lose him in that mass of people outside the seminar rooms. Pointedly ignoring him despite her body’s foolish protests, she gave her name to the receptionist, then seated herself on a settee.
    “It won’t work, you know.” Con sat beside her.
    Tam paused in the act of opening her portfolio, gave Con one needle-eyed stare, then shifted herself and her belongings to a club chair across the room. Settled, she perused the notes she’d made for this appointment.
    He took up a seat on an ottoman positioned in front of her chair. “That mess in the suite was a good try,” he continued in a conversational almost soothing tone. “But you made a mistake when you used my razor. I can only believe that you’re so upset by your feelings for me that you weren’t thinking straight, or you would never have been so careless.”
    She looked up at him, opened her mouth to speak, then changed her mind and returned her gaze to her notes. The marks on the page refused to make sense. The sight of him, his gaze filled with tenderness, took her breath. She drew in a steadying lungful. He was right. She had been careless and foolish to imagine that she could chase him off with something as childish as an annoying and uncharacteristic mess.
    Her feelings for Con had never changed. Her heart belonged to him. She’d honestly intended to marry him after graduating, but she’d become ill, and that engagement announcement had hit her hard. Con’s silence and apparent desertion had hurt almost as much as her mother’s suicide and her father’s neglect. She’d lacked the strength to fight for Con, her baby, and her life at the same time. Frightened throughout the long illness that she would lose her child, Tam clung to Susa with lion-like ferocity. Regardless of the cause, she wasn’t about to risk the