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  When Amelia Glenn walked into Worth Carson’s boardroom wearing a trench coat and a belly dancer’s outfit, Chicago’s most powerful construction magnate was fit to be tied. But that didn’t stop Amelia from performing her entire act for the swarthy chairman of the board—complete with shimmering sequins and jingling bangles. So after Worth had Amelia fired, the last thing she expected was to be offered a job as a companion for his mother. But Worth hadn’t ignored her startling beauty. Now he was determined to bid for her on his own terms.

  Diana Palmer

  Love By Proxy

  Dear Reader,

  Little did I know that when Amelia Glenn walked into my boardroom dressed as a belly dancer, that day would become the turning point in my life. Always a loner, content to keep my distance from people, Amelia’s personality opened my heart wider than her costume had opened my eyes.

  It wasn’t hard to become attracted to this woman. After all, her smile could warm the chilliest Chicago winds. Not only was she beautiful, but there was something inside her—a quality so precious it has no name—that turned a solitary bachelor into a man seeking forever. But winning this woman was a task harder than any business deal I had ever made.

  She didn’t look upon my wealth as a wonderful thing. She’d have rather driven her broken-down car than let me give her a new one. Amelia didn’t want handouts, she wanted my heart. And giving that to her was the riskiest thing I could ever do. But it was also the safest. For with Amelia, I knew my heart was under a very precious lock and key.

  Worth Carson

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  One

  Amelia Glenn tugged her beige trench coat closer around her body and tried not to giggle as she got off the elevator on the fourteenth floor of the Chicago office building. If only her fellow office workers at the agricultural equipment company could see her like this! The way that deathly dull job had been going lately, this was more a holiday than a favor for a friend.

  She heard her bangles bunch at her wrists with a metallic ring and had to stand very still until they stopped, aware of curious stares from the two businessmen who’d come up with her on the elevator. Wouldn’t they pass out if they knew what was under her coat!

  She walked down the hall looking for office suite 1411, where she was due to deliver a special message. Ordinarily, Kerrie did this particular one, but she was out sick and Amanda had been recruited by her friend Marla Sayers to fill in. Marla’s boyfriend was going to play a joke on his associate. It was only one message, after all, and Amelia did have the body for it, or so she was assured.

  She was lean and tanned from head to toe, with a figure that could have modeled bikinis year-round. Her long, dark hair swung thickly as she walked, and her pale, dancing eyes were framed by black lashes, in a face whose features were as perfect as a cameo. She could have passed for a teenager.

  There was, oddly, no one at the receptionist’s desk when she walked in. Perhaps she was at lunch. Amelia laughed and started toward the office door. She gathered her nerve, because she’d never done this particular stunt before, pinned a smile to her full lips and breezed in.

  Apparently there was a small conference going on. A big, very cold-looking man in a patterned shirt and no jacket was leaning over a graph of some kind on a huge oak desk. Around it were two shorter, paler men, hanging on every word. Amelia hadn’t expected Wentworth Carson to be so big. He was as formidable as Marla’s boyfriend had described him. All business, ice cold, nothing in him to attract a woman. Yes, she could have recognized him in a crowd. He wasn’t handsome, not one bit. He had a big nose and bushy eyebrows and a pugnacious chin, and he looked more like a wrestler than an executive. He fit her nebulous image of a construction magnate all the way down to his big feet.

  “Yes?” the big man asked coldly, looking up with eyes that were every bit as dark as the straight black hair that fell forward onto a broad forehead.

  Amelia smiled wickedly. “Message for you, sir,” she said. And she let the coat drop.

  The two men grouped around the desk stared, gaping, with appreciative smiles and big eyes. The bigger man stood erect and looked angry.

  Amelia had a passable voice—no threat to the Met, of course, put passable. She began to gyrate in her outlandish belly dancer’s costume to the tune of the birthday song, inching slowly closer to the big, dark man.

  He didn’t look very receptive. In fact, he looked as if he’d like to pitch her out the window. That was even better. She laughed huskily as she went closer, her hips twitching, her skirts flying, her arms uplifted with the small cymbals on her fingers to show the high, soft curve of her breasts in their metallic casings.

  “Happy birthday, honey,” she added at the end, and just for pure spite, she went on tiptoe to kiss him full on his hard, chiseled mouth with as much enthusiasm as she could muster.

  He kept his eyes open. His big body was rigid and he didn’t move, not an eyelash, not a finger, not a breath. His mouth was hard and slightly cool, and totally unresponsive. He allowed the blatant caress for an instant, and then his huge, warm hands caught her bare waist and set her roughly on her feet. They released her immediately, as if he didn’t like the feel of her taut, warm skin.

  “What the hell kind of joke is this?” he asked coldly.

  “It’s a birthday greeting,” she said, trying not to show how she really felt. Most people reacted in the spirit of fun that the messages intended, but it was a fact that this man wasn’t going to appreciate the offbeat humor of his partner. She almost felt sorry for him. But she had to tell. It was part of the job.

  “From whom?” he persisted, oblivious to the amused looks of his co-workers.

  “Your partner, Andrew Dedham,” she said.

  “Then the joke is on him,” he said coldly. “Because today is not my birthday.”

  She glared at him. “Then why didn’t you say so at the beginning?” she challenged. “You surely didn’t think I came in off the streets selling magazine subscriptions!”

  His heavy brows lifted. “I wouldn’t buy that kind of magazine,” he said curtly.

  Her eyes narrowed icily. “Why not, you look as if you could use some tutoring,” she returned. “Frozen clean through, are we?” she added with a cold smile.

  He seemed to grow three inches. “Whatever I am is none of your business. And if you aren’t out that door in three minutes flat, I’ll have you arrested for soliciting.”

  “I am not a prostitute,” she told him, sliding into her coat. “But if I were, honey, you wouldn’t be rich enough!”

  “I wouldn’t be desperate enough,” he corrected. “Out.”

  Just like that, as if she were a dog! She stared holes in him, but he only folded his arms over his formidable chest and glared back. Her eyes fell. She’d never encountered anybody like this giant dead fish, and she never wanted to again. From now on, Marla could do her own messages!

  “When you do have your birthday, Mr. North Pole,” Amelia said at the door, “I hope your birthday cake explodes in your face!”

  “Just make sure you don’t jump out of it,” he returned coldly.

  “I couldn’t,” she replied with a sweet smile. “The heat from all the candles would burn me alive!”

  And she closed the door with a hard slam. Her hands trembled as she refastened the coat.

  The receptionist came back in with a tray of Styrofoam cups obviously filled with coffee. She smiled in a friendly way. “Are you waiting to see Mr. Carson?” she asked. “Sorry I wasn’t here, I just sneaked ou
t to get them some coffee.”

  She remembered belatedly the name of this building. “The…Carson Building…wouldn’t be…?” Amelia faltered.

  “Yes, it would. Named for the late Angus. Did you want to see Mr. Carson?”

  “I already have,” Amanda said with a rueful laugh. “His poor wife.”

  The receptionist blinked. “Wife?”

  Amelia was already at the other door, but she turned. “Isn’t he married?”

  “Not him,” came the laughing reply. “There isn’t a woman anywhere brave enough.”

  “I understand exactly what you mean. So long.”

  Two

  Amelia was stoked up and fuming like a steam engine when she got back to Marla’s office. She was dripping from the combined temperatures of Chicago in the summer and the winter trench coat she’d been wearing over the flamboyant belly dancer’s costume.

  Marla looked up, an elf with blond hair and blue eyes. “Well?” she asked, all wide smiles.

  “Wentworth Carson,” she began as she stripped off the trench coat and fumbled in Marla’s office closet for her neat gray suit and blouse, “is a giant dead fish. He has the sense of humor of a giant dead fish, and he looks like a giant dead fish.”

  Marla, who’d known Amelia for almost a year, as long as the Georgia girl had been in Chicago, had never heard her fume before. She stared. “Andy said he had a sense of humor,” she began.

  “Where is it, visiting relatives in New York?” Amelia demanded.

  Marla burst out laughing. She couldn’t help it. “Oh, darling, I’m sorry, I know Andy didn’t mean…”

  “It wasn’t his birthday,” Amelia continued as she dragged on her slip and blouse and skirt with quick, methodical fury. “He said so. He accused me of being a prostitute. He threw me out of his office. He said not to jump out of his birthday cake. I hate him!”

  Marla had long since buried her face in her hands on the desk, and her thin shoulders were shaking.

  “What did you do?”

  “I kissed him.”

  The laughter got worse.

  “It made him furious, of course,” Amelia said. She fumbled for a small brush in her purse and dragged it through the tangle of her hair. “I couldn’t resist it, he looked so almighty arrogant. He should have tried to enjoy it, I can’t imagine that he’s ever been kissed by any woman who was actually willing and didn’t have to be paid!”

  Marla was just now catching her breath. “He did make an impression, didn’t he?” she gasped. “I’m so sorry! If Kerrie hadn’t been sick, you’d have been spared.”

  “I wouldn’t go near that man again for anything,” she grumbled. “He’s a…a…a…”

  “Giant dead fish?”

  “Yes!”

  “Andy will die when I tell him.” Marla sighed. “I hope Wentworth Carson is a forgiving man, or my poor Andy will be out looking for work again.”

  “What possessed Andy to pull such a joke on a man like that?” Amelia asked. “He obviously has no sense of humor, and it wasn’t even his birthday!”

  “Maybe Andy didn’t know that,” Marla said comfortingly. She studied the older woman, dressed now in her familiar staid business clothes, her hair neatly arranged in a French twist. No one who saw her now would believe her capable of pulling off a joke like that.

  “This is not how I want to spend my next hard-earned day off,” Amelia said.

  “Well, thanks a million for helping me out,” Marla said and hugged the taller girl affectionately. “Andy will be thrilled, even if you aren’t.”

  “I hope so. Tell him it was a sacrifice I’ll never make again, will you?” She waved as she went out the door.

  All the way home she thought about Wentworth Carson, and her teeth ground together. Horrible, humorless man, he must be the world’s worst lover. He couldn’t even kiss. Of course, he hadn’t wanted to kiss her back. She flushed, remembering the hardness of his closed mouth. He seemed like a lonely man. She shook herself. She even felt sorry for squashed spiders, she reminded herself forcibly.

  She went back to the sink in the small kitchen of the efficiency apartment she rented from a kindly couple in a residential area near the beach. It was really a garage apartment, but it had the advantage of being like a real house. She had the family, the Kennedys, nearby if she needed help, and she could walk to the beach. She had a phone of her own and even shared the family cat, Khan, a puffy Siamese-Persian, who visited her whenever she had chicken. She’d changed into a comfortable caftan and was just putting the finishing touches to tuna-salad sandwiches when her doorbell rang.

  She frowned. Nobody ever came calling except Marla, and Marla went out with Andy practically every night now. It could be one of the Kennedys, of course, except that they were an elderly couple and never bothered her. Perhaps it was a salesman. She grinned, thinking up ways to get rid of him. Her social life was so dull that even a salesman became a welcome pest. It was great fun deciding how to get rid of them tactfully.

  The last one had been selling subscriptions to an underwater publication. She promised to send a check as soon as her sunken living-room pool was finished. She’d closed the door on a face like a mask as he tried to decide between going meekly away or calling the nearest sanitarium on her behalf.

  She opened the door as far as the chain latch would allow—it was night, after all—and came face to face with the enemy.

  Her pale blue eyes glared at him through the crack. “I do not give private performances,” she informed Wentworth Carson.

  “Thank God,” he returned. “Are you going to open the door, or would you like it removed?”

  Heavens, he was the size of a battering ram! The Kennedys would surely throw her out if he put his shoulder to it….

  With an angry sigh, she opened the door and let him in. He was wearing a trendy blue blazer with an unbuttoned white shirt and white slacks, and a dark pelt of hair showed in the opening at his olive tan throat. He looked different than he had that afternoon in his office. Big and broad and oddly sensuous for a cold fish. He made her nervous.

  He stared down at her with a frown, his eyes on the blue-green-and-gold striped caftan she was wearing, with bare feet, no makeup and her dark hair still in its neat French twist.

  “Are you Amelia Glenn?” he asked as if he couldn’t quite believe it.

  “Surely you don’t make mistakes, Mr. Carson?” she asked with a false smile. “I’d never believe it!”

  “You look more mature,” he said.

  She glared at him. “You mean I look older. I was twenty-eight last month, in fact,” she said. “About half your age…?” she added pointedly.

  “I’m forty,” he replied.

  “Twelve years your junior,” she corrected smugly. “I do feel a mere child by comparison.”

  He scowled blackly. She wondered if he ever smiled. He put his hands into his slacks pockets and stared at her openly.

  “Miss Sayers tells me you don’t work for her.”

  “No, I don’t.” She turned back toward the kitchen. “You’re welcome to join me if you like tuna fish,” she said over her shoulder.

  He closed the door and followed her into the kitchen, pulling out a chair at the small table. “Is this called Southern hospitality, or do I look underfed?”

  She couldn’t help the laughter. “Underfed, my foot. I’d hate to have your grocery bill.”

  “I have to watch what I eat,” he said frankly. “Even then, I work out at the gym to keep from looking like a walking beer barrel.”

  She laughed again, and reddened. “Sorry.”

  “No offense taken. What do you do for a living?”

  She poured coffee into two handmade pottery cups, her eyebrows asking if he drank coffee, and he nodded.

  “I’m a clerk typist for an agricultural equipment firm,” she said.

  His eyebrows arched.

  “Well, I am,” she grumbled. “What do I look like?”

  He actually smiled. Or it could
be a muscle spasm, she thought wickedly. “I expected a more exotic occupation,” he returned.

  “I grew up working in a print shop. The most exotic thing I’ve ever done in my life I did this afternoon, to help Marla out.”

  “Andy Dedham started working for me last month,” he said as she sat down and shoved a platter of sandwiches between them on the table. “He doesn’t know me very well yet, but he’ll learn. I am going to pay him back in kind, and you’re going to help me. In costume, of course.”

  She froze. “How?”

  “His mother,” he replied, toying with his cup of black coffee, “is from Boston. She is a saintly widowed lady with impeccable manners, and once a month she comes to town and takes him to La Pierre for an elegant dinner.”

  “Oh, no.” She shook her head. “Oh, no, I couldn’t, not there! All those people…! And Marla would never forgive me!”

  “Where’s your spirit of adventure, Miss Glenn?”

  “Under the table, hiding,” she returned. “I can’t! Furthermore,” she added with hauteur, “I won’t!”

  He considered that, watching her with pursed lips. “Suppose I had a male stripper appear for you, at your sainted place of work?” he asked pleasantly.

  She went violently red, gaping at him. “Oh, no, you couldn’t. Mr. Callahan would fire me on the spot!”

  He smiled, very slowly. “Would he, really?”

  “You wouldn’t!”

  “Get in your rig, Cleopatra, be at La Pierre tomorrow night at exactly 7:00 p.m. and ask for Carlos when you get to the door,” he said. “Everything will be arranged. If not,” he added, studying her carelessly, “the morning after, you will have a particularly nauseating visitor, G-string and all.”

  She buried her face in her hands. “I’d die!”

  “My, my, aren’t you a paradox?” he murmured on a deep chuckle. “You seemed to enjoy your role enough, when the shoe was on the other foot.”

  “I didn’t embarrass you,” she countered. “That can’t be done!”

  “That’s true enough,” he affirmed. He leaned back in his chair, all blatant masculinity, big and dark and frankly sexy, with that shirt unbuttoned just enough to make her wonder what was under it. Dark hair peeked out of the opening, and a deeply tanned throat. He was as sensuous as any man she’d ever encountered, and twice the size of most of her dates. She would have found him fascinating under other circumstances.