The Perfect Fit Read online

  Mamie also wanted Nick to marry and to have her required great-grandchildren. His brothers had already made her extremely happy by producing babies. According to Mamie, Joel and Rafe had “left Nick in their dust.”

  Because his grandmother had raised Joel, Rafe and Nick, and because she was the head of the corporation he worked for—Palladin, Inc.—Nick’s troubleshooting talents were assigned to capturing—securing—one Silver Tallchief—for Palladin, Inc.

  Nick was also designated to see to Silver’s needs, and to make her happy during the contract. The contract would last until Silver’s unique essences were blended into a “liquor.” She would design the packaging and promotion for bath salts, powders, candles and soaps that Palladin would market exclusively.

  Nick rotated his stiff neck slowly and released the breath he had been holding. Silver Tallchief was talented, temperamental, driven by success and power, and Mamie saw her as an asset. “The Nose” also had fashion-marketing style; she could design exquisite bottles, stopper designs and packaging.

  A delicate ruby red glass perfume stopper, etched with white roses and disturbed by an accidental nudge of his shoe, rolled from a crate into his hand. He ran his thumb across the fragile and dangerous pointed tip. With Palladin, Inc.’s new remote offices in Amen Flats, Silver would be in the nest of her Tallchief cousins.

  The bell over the door jingled as Nick opened the scarred office door wider. He scanned the tiny, cluttered office, sunlight dancing in the crystal, knife-cut edges of the tiny bottles and stoppers near the window. Amber, wine, lemon and clear shades caught the sun, drinking from the filtered light A blue-gold, blown-glass bottle looked as if a genie would step from it at any moment—maybe she already had, in the person of one Silver Tallchief.

  The fronds of a delicate hanging fern caressed Nick’s cheek as he found Silver stretching in front of a window, her body arced taut, the cranberry silk clinging to every feminine curve. Silver braced one leg on her cluttered desk and placed her hands on her foot, slowly bowing her forehead to her knee. The sunlight gleamed on her toes, tipped in cranberry shades, pale and slender, escaping the strappy high-heeled sandals.

  Nick swallowed the rise of pure male appreciation as the silk stretched tautly across her bottom. His throat dried as the softness beneath the silk shifted lithely. If there was anything he didn’t need, it was to mix business and pleasure with a calculating, demanding woman like Silver Tallchief.

  The first shocking sound of her voice two months ago had instantly caused him to tense, focus and—

  Nick straightened He tossed out Mamie’s notion that Silver would appeal to him. Marriage to that manslayer woulabe’t be sweet.

  Silver’s moon white straight hair flared out from her shoulders, spilling around her and into the shadows as she turned, and straightened. She slashed a dark look at him, reminding him of the Tallchiefs when their tempers were up. “I’m busy. Move along, will you? I’m expecting a moving man with knuckles that drag the floor. I’ll probably have to take all day explaining ‘duh’ to him. So get lost. And really, I have to protect my nose. I make my living by fragrances. That animal scent is awful.”

  She left Nick to deal with that insult as she grabbed the continental-style telephone, which had just jingled Christmas music rather than ringing. She answered it impatiently, “Silver’s.”

  Her gray eyes darkened, narrowed and she turned from him. “I’m moving. I want this...no, I can’t come and discuss it with you and Father.... John is worried about me? Mother, he is almost twenty-five. He can deal with life. No, I am not going to reassure him. I’ve done all I could, so have you and Pop. This move will put distance between us, and maybe that will be good.”

  Nick leaned his shoulder against the door. Mamie wanted him to marry this cold woman, to bring her into the bosom of the loving Tallchief family. Mamie had forbidden him to research the years prior to Silver’s eighteenth birthday. Nick’s grandmother sometimes had odd requests, which he honored meticulously. Mamie’s obscure reference to Silver’s painful youth reminded him of his own and that sometimes secrets were better left uncovered.

  The pieces didn’t fit. Nick fingered the ruby red stopper and placed it on the desk beside a cool mint green one. He retraced his telephone conversations, picking over the contract’s clauses.

  Why would a successful businesswoman with an exclusive clientele accept the Palladin contract so easily? Why had the offer she was about to turn down suddenly interested her, once the Tallchiefs in Amen Flats were mentioned?

  The nails weren’t real and neither was the hair. Silver had city girl written all over her. Why was she so interested in the Tallchief family, their land and legends? The woman was a hunter and Nick had immediately recognized her stealthy questions—Silver wanted to live in Amen Flats, and she had a reason.

  Silver turned to the window, the sunlight pouring over her blond hair, catching in the varied shades. She toyed with the silken tassel of a mauve antique perfume atomizer. Her voice slid into steel and ice as she spoke on the telephone. “I’m not into guilt trips anymore. You make your life. I’ll make mine. No, nothing can change my mind, Mother. I can’t... won’t come home to visit before leaving. Goodbye. Stop crying.”

  She replaced the receiver to the cradle, then leveled a cool look at Nick as she swept a stack of empty deli cartons into the trash. “Well?”

  Nick had the feeling she wanted to dump him in the trash as well, impatiently clearing anything that disturbed her to get on with her life. Too bad. He was sticking and doing the job he was sent to do—

  “A little rough on your mother, weren’t you?” the tall, powerfully built man drawled as he moved from the room’s shadows into the myriad of colors created by the sunlit crystal atomizers. The delicate muted shades did not soften the rugged contours of his face, his narrowed hunter’s eyes. “I’m Nick Palladin, the knuckle dragger, and the animal scent you don’t like is called eau de horse. I took my baby nephew for a short ride before getting on the plane. You’ll smell a lot of horse perfume in Amen Flats, Wyoming.”

  “Nicholas Palladin, of curse,” she noted quietly, studying him more closely. On the telephone, his voice had been smooch. sexy and charming; now it held a muted lash of anger, like vetiver fighting amber. “I thought I detected a baby. Their scent is distinctive, quite marketable, but the essence didn’t fit. You look hard enough to send babies crying for their mothers. Let’s get this straight—how I handle my family is my business.”

  Establishing walls protected emotions too ready to unravel. She ached for her mother and father and brother. Years of shielding her emotions never prepared her for the way her mother looked at her, as if searching for someone she had loved with all her heart and suddenly lost—

  A reflection of her face danced across the wavery window glass and a sword reached up to slice her heatt. That familiar pain, which had never lessened, shot through her, snaked around her heart and squeezed.

  Lost. Gone. Silver shivered, then slapped the stack of papers on her desk, her formulas, which she would personally carry to Amen Flats. Her entire family had been shattered, torn apart, when her twin sister died years ago, of a disease that love couldn’t stop.

  Jasmine... Born only minutes after Silver, Jasmine had lived to all of seventeen, and Silver’s life—her family’s—had come unraveled. They were just teenage girls, dreaming of their princes’ awakening kisses—when suddenly Jasmine was wasting away in a hospital room. Then she was gone. A cog of the close, loving family was always missing, never quite gone. Silver had to do something, anything, even though it was wrong to break the wall of pain—and now she had a desperate plan. She’d find the Montclair-Tallchief pearls, tear them from the past and find peace. The legend that Elizabeth Montclair Tallchief had given the pearls circled the tiny office—

  “He’ll be a fine beast of a man, haughty and proud and strong as a bear, gnawing at the maiden’s shields, testing her, claiming. her with wicked eyes and the pearls nestled in his hand
. If he places them upon her, warmed by his flesh, and gives her a sweet kiss, the pearls will be her undoing. Then their hearts will join forever.”

  Silver jerked herself into the present, and studied the man looking at her. He was even more interesting than an ancient Egyptian blown-glass perfume bottle, and few men in Silver’s experience could compete with antique perfume bottles and stoppers. A fierce pride ran in the rough edges and the lock of his jaw. She studied the sunlit jade green of his eyes. Though filtered by dark brown lashes, the shade was almost too brilliant and hard to be real. Battle, tough, competent—this was the dark knight that Mamie had sent to secure Silver’s talents—shoulders that took up too much space and a scowl like a fighter ready to punch. Power and sensuality ran through him, his scent—the unidentified base layer—slammed into Silver. This was a man as wary and determined as herself and primitively appealing. “Nick Palladin. The family’s baby. Mamie’s pride and joy.”

  He nodded and there was nothing friendly in his expression. The sunlight glinted in his dark brown, neatly clipped waves as he nodded. Myriads of color from the crystal stoppers lit his harsh face, glittered in the emerald depths of his narrowed eyes. However smoothly he handled business on the telephone, resisting slightly when she had pushed for more perks, Nick—in person—was a man who could be dangerous. “At your service.”

  After a fresh encounter with her mother. riding on nerves. desperation and a dream about to come true, Silver didn’t want any problems as she settled into the Tallcinefs, explored them and grabbed the information she needed. Nick, taking up most of her office and looking as movable as granite, could be a big problem.

  Silver tried a small smile, the tempting one that she allowed to warm her lips after licking them—the sultry knowing smile that a man as masculine as Nick Palladin would certainly...

  He frowned, his dark brown brows separated by a harsh line. There was nothing tempting about his mouth, and Silver sensed that his relaxed pose covered an athletic body ready to pounce. She recognized that look of a predator, of a hunter—

  She straightened and slowly studied his body, from broad shoulders to narrow hips, to those long powerful legs and expensive, braced apart shoes—as if he wasn’t moving until he got what he had come to collect. She slowly lifted her gaze upward, exploring his expensive, perfectly tailored business suit, and met his dark green eyes. The essences were all there, the top layers, the “keynotes,” were instantly recognizable. The “core note,” or the essences, which give the scent character was more interesting, and the “basic note” which blended the combination together was fascinating—potent, dark, moody, private, stormy, and at the moment all the notes spelled “trouble.”

  This was the centurion, the guard dog, who wanted to know why she was so interested in the Tallchiefs’ legends, the journal their great-great-grandmother, Una, had left and why she wanted to read Elizabeth’s letters to a Tallchief relative.

  This was the protector of the Tallchiefs, of his brothers’ happy lives and children. Mamie had described Nick as sweet and caring, addicted to family life and babies, and had poured out the Palladins’ dark secret... Lloyd Palladin, Mamie’s son, and father of Joel, Rafe and Nick, was a spoiled brat turned criminal. He’d mistreated his sons and finally was sent to prison for murdering the Tallchiefs’ parents.

  There were five Tallchief children, left to survive and cling together, and Mamie and the Pailadin sons had tried to compensate for Lloyd’s crimes.

  The other Palladin brothers were now married to Tallchiefs and had children to occupy them. Silver would coo and cuddle the babies, win their wives with scents and gossip and girl-talk, and the Tallchief secrets would be in her fist.

  Nick was another matter; his questions had been too keen, too carefully phrased. “Are you done looking?” he asked in a voice that lifted the hair on her nape. There was just a touch of arrogant male, nettled by a woman’s bold examination.

  “Not quite. I’m trying to decide if I should trust you with my essences.”

  “If they are packed well, they are safe.” He smiled tightly, giving her nothing. “In our agreement, Palladin, Inc., did not agree to take responsibility for packing.”

  Silver tapped her cranberry tinted nail on her stack of formulas. If she had to seduce him to get what she wanted, she would. She had him all to herself until Amen Flats—by the time they landed in Denver she would know what he liked in a woman. Silver shrugged mentally. She could be cuddly, sweet, wholesome, innocent—her virgin state was no lie, she’d been too busy—surviving, succeeding and planning—to have time to waste indulging in affairs.

  She studied Nick’s closed expression and smiled. She picked up a cut-glass, iridescent vial of white fluid marked Silver’s Jasmine and caressed it. Whatever she had to do to get the incredible gray Montclair-Tallchief pearls, she would.

  Nick took a step, reached near her and dragged the old wooden office chair from behind the desk. It protested his weight as he eased into it and braced his long legs on the desk, effectively blocking the doorway. He studied the fingernails she was tapping on her formulas and folded his hands over his stomach. “You tap your nails when you’re thinking and planning how to come at something, to get a fix on what you want and how to get it. I recognized the sound from our telephone conversations.”

  Silver jerked her hand away, picking up an envelope opener. She eased around the desk and braced her hips on it. This guy is a real problem. She stabbed the envelope opener into a soft ball of red velvet and left it there. “You’re very shcewd—intuitive, aren’t you? What do your senses tell you about a day’s moving work ahead of you? Is there anything about, ‘shall we hurry’?”

  He leaned back, tipping the chair against the wall, his hands behind his head, as he studied her. “I thought we could have a little chat before packing your things into the jet.”

  His “little chat” rang of setting the ground rules; Silver intended to have her way, regardless of the tall, powerful man sprawled casually in her office. “My personal belongings have ahead been shipped. They should be arriving in that cozy little country home you got for me, equipped with a laboratory, isn’t it? I did want those meadows of wildflower and an excellent air-filtering system in my laboratory.”

  “Your four-poster bed and your exercise toys are waiting. You have everything you asked for—a view of Tallchief Mountain and Lake, and why, I wonder, would you want that specifically?” This time, his gaze slowly moved down her body to her strappy heels and glossy toenails. “You do that, too. Tap your feet when you’re impatient and want to get on with whatever you want. You want, Miss Tallchief, and that is the problem. Exactly what do you want out of this? Not money, or the success of the Patladin Silver line. You’re successful, on the rise, and any corporation would count themselves lucky to have your blends exclusively. Briefly your price was high, but a bargain for what you could have gotten for an exclusive contract Bargains make me uneasy. Why do Amen Flats and the Talichief legends, especially Elizabeth’s letters, intrigue you?”

  His gaze moved upward, meeting her frown. The warmth that men usually returned to her was not there. Silver braced herself and repeated what she had practiced—not into a mirror because Silver meticulously avoided her own reflection. “I am related to the Tallchiefs—Duncan, Calum. Birk, Elspeth and Fiona. It’s only natural that I would want to visit and study the place where my ancestors met and loved, that I would want to know about the legends about Una’s dowry, sold to protect Tallchief land. Each of my relatives went in search of that dowry, and according to the legends attached to the dowry, each found love. It’s all very romantic, don’t you think?”

  “Glynis, isn’t it?” Nick asked after a long, thoughtful pause. The name dropped like an ice block into the shadows.

  His tone caused fear to skitter, icy cold, across her skin. Nick Palladin had been researching her, finding a life she had buried long ago. He was too thorough to please her, that meant she had to disarm him. “It was. I had my name
legally changed.”

  “Mmm. Interesting.” Nick’s chair came down with a thud and Silver forced herself not to shiver. He stood slowly, his body coming up close to hers, his eyes too focused, penetrating, foraging for Silver’s motives. He reached for a strand of her hair and studied the color and texture, a pale contrast to his tanned, slightly scarred skin. “Silver, you’re creative, but you don’t have a romantic bone in your body. You are entirely directed toward your personal success. I’ve just heard you speak to your mother, and that shatters any illusions of family love. You’re out for something from the Tallchiefs. and I won’t let you hurt them.”

  “Hurt them?” Silver pushed down the anger that had begun to rise in her. Who was he to care, to prowl through her life, her pain and accuse her of hurting the Tallchiefs?

  Two

  “Get this—you won’t,” Nick murmured, leaning very close to her. “You won’t hurt them or my grandmother, who seems to like you or she wouldn’t have let you drive the contract price sky-high and met all your whimsical demands. She’s worked hard, running an empire after her husband died, putting up with my father, and finally raising my brothers and myself. We weren’t an easy ride as teenagers, and she kept us in line. She’s paid enough for my father’s crimes, and nothing, but nothing, is going to hurt her, if I can help it. That includes you, Silver.”

  The impact of his level stare and his low, carefully spaced tone sent a shiver skidding up Silver’s back. She’d underestimated Nick. His telephone voice, businesslike and yet friendly, had sent her off the track. He’d easily agreed to her list of demands, and now, after meeting him, Silver sensed that Nick made the rules. She couldn’t have that in her life, not now. “If you are Mamie’s sweet, lovable, playboy bachelor, baby grandson, I’d hate to meet the others.”