HIGHLANDER: The Highlander’s Surrender Bride (Scottish Alpha Male Pregnancy Romance) (52 page)

“Ow!” she cried out.

“
Ow
?” he inquired, looking at her.  “What did you feel?”

“What did I feel?” she asked, grasping her wrist and wriggling her fingers.  “It felt like I got stung… even shocked,” she said a little irritably.  She looked around the frame of the door, but saw no devices that could have delivered such a thing.  “Is there a zap field around this door?”

He looked at her curiously… interestedly even.  And were it not for the lingering sensation in her hand she would have been very intrigued by that.  “Most people fall to their knees from the jolt that protects this door.  You say it only stung?  Is that
all
?”

“Isn’t that enough?” she asked, suddenly realizing that her temper had risen and felt the small burning in her hand replaced by icy fear across her whole body.  She shook the feelings out of her.  “I’m sorry, sir… I-I didn’t mean to lose my temper.”

“No, no, no,” he said quickly, “not at all… I’m just… impressed.”

She froze at that.  “Impressed?”

He nodded.  “For reasons that I can’t explain… not at present, but perhaps I might be able to at a later time.”  He crossed his arms and turned his head to look at her sideways, like he had done the day of her interview; looking at her from a different angle.  “I want you to schedule a dinner for two next week, Lanie… say next Friday night.”

She nodded, thankful to have her outburst put behind her for any reason at all.  She removed her tablet from under her business jacket and began tapping away.  “At what time shall I set it?”

“Say… 7 PM.”

“Very good, what would you like as your entrée?”

“Whatever you like.”

She paused and looked up curiously at him.  “Whatever
I
like?”

“Yes,” he said with a grin.  “You’ll be the one joining me.”

Her look of shock must have been plain because his grin endured.  “Uh… I… I…”

“Anything you like,” he promised.  “Wine… food… whatever is your pleasure, Lanie.  I do believe that you may fulfill that little something
extra
that I mentioned the other day.  We’ll discuss it at that time.”  He looked back at the door.  “Now, as for this…”

She listened closely, her tablet still held in her hands as if she had been frozen in place, her mind still boggled by having been invited to dinner – albeit in an offhanded kind of way – by the wealthiest man on the planet.

“I tend to slip inside this room at least once a day… sometimes more often, if I feel the need.  That
sting
that you felt… it’s only the first of several countermeasures designed to keep out intruders.  In the interests of full disclosure, you should be aware that the countermeasures only become more painful – even deadly – if one should press into this room uninvited.  This room is reserved strictly for my private use.  No one else is permitted inside, Mercy is aware of this and she keeps an eye on the place for me.  Now, you’ll find that this is the most unusual part of your day.”

She shook her head, trying to realign her senses.  “I don’t understand?”

“I didn’t expect that you would.  But I’ll do my best to explain… the time that I spend in here is precious to me.  While I am in here – and please mark this rule as inviolable – there are to be no interruptions.  If the building is on fire and threatens to collapse around us, I do not wish to be bothered.  If one of the projects in the labs has suddenly spawned some horrible monster that will devour the world, I do not wish to be bothered.  No matter the reason, once I am in here, I will leave you to deal with any issues that may arise.”

She wanted to speak, but somehow she knew that any words that escaped her mouth would only be incoherent stutters.  It was better to remain silent, at least for the moment.

“While I am in here, you’re free to pursue any ambitions that you like,” he went on.  “There’s no telling how long I may hide myself away in here.  I may be in for a quarter hour… I may be in all day… there really is no telling.  I will of course notify you when I emerge and then it’s back to business.  But please remember, no disturbances, not while I am in here.”

All she could do was nod.  “Yes… sir, uh… yes,
Ian
.”

He gave her an appreciative nod, “Very good.”  He straightened his business jacket.  “Well, come then.  I still have much more to show you.”

Chapter 5

The next two weeks were over before she even had time to realize it.  Ian had not been shortchanging her when he told her that things moved apace here.  Her life had turned into something resembling the inner workings of a clock.  Her day started at the same time and ended at a different time every other day.  But the official end of her day only ever came when Ian decreed it so.

Twice now he had told her to cancel or reschedule his appointments by noon and advised her that the rest of the day was her own.  Several times he’d had her working well past the point of midnight only to free her to sleep for four hours before summoning her again.  She felt ragged at such times, having very little time to shower or to eat anything, but she managed to carry on until Ian slipped inside his sanctuary, providing her a chance to tend to her appearance. 

As a result she had become a master of a three-minute shower and a five-minute lunch break, which came in handy on days where Ian was focused on one task or another.  She understood why the advertisement had said that this was a fast-paced job, considering that she lived her life in small increments between calls or meetings. 

As the days had passed she fell into a routine all of her own.  Her private cook had fallen into the habit of preparing meals for her that were waiting a ready when she woke so that she could at least swallow a mouthful or two before speeding off to Ian’s summons.  The food too could be kept warm until she had time to return to her room and eat it completely.  She made a mental note to find a suitable gift for her cook for the foresight. 

Lanie also got into the habit of preparing the clothes that she would wear for the next few days in advance while she had time and laid them out on chairs or hung them on hooks so that she could slip into them when chance came.  It also happened that there was a laundry service within the building that cleaned and hung her clothes for her as she didn’t have time to tend to their cleanliness herself.  This had come as a shock when her laundry hamper had been filled and she returned home one night to find all of her clothes cleaned, folded or hung, in her room.  A surprise, but a welcome one, as it saved her the trouble of having to do laundry.  She made a second note to find a way to thank the laundry service that kept her clothes fresh and crisp.

But as the days rolled by one after the other she found a comfortable equilibrium with her job.  There were times when she felt like she had no time to herself at all and then there were times when it felt like she should be climbing the walls looking for something to do.  The peaks and valleys in her activities took some getting used to, but she managed to endure them well enough. 

And then finally came the Friday when she was supposed to have her dinner with Ian.  After everything that the first two weeks had taught her about the job and the demands that it required she found that she was more nervous about this dinner than she had been about anything else.

Ian had given her the authority to make million-dollar deals without any issues.  She had overseen new projects begging for funding from Madison Tech. and okayed them with minimal oversight from Ian.  She’d had new security measures implemented that affected the whole tower, yet Ian had allowed the changes with nothing more than a nod of the head or a wink of the eye. 

In other businesses she would have thought that her actions would merit some kind of a punishment or reprimand for overstepping her bounds.  Such had never been the case where Ian was concerned. 

“Your actions have merit because they are borne by intelligence,” he had said.  “I trust your judgement, Lanie.”

And that had been that.  There was no small amount of comfort in knowing that Ian had that much faith in her abilities.  Here she was, the right hand of the largest corporation in the world, and she felt like a kid who had just been given the keys to the family car and that she was trusted to do so.

It was nothing short of miraculous in her eyes.

She was busy inspecting herself before the mirror when Mercy’s voice spoke to her over the room’s speakers.

“Lanie?”

“Yes, Mercy?” she replied, not looking away from her image in the highly polished glass.

“Just a reminder, your dinner with Mr. Madison begins in five minutes.”

“Thank you, Mercy,” she said gratefully, though she was very well aware of the time.  Their impending dinner had been on her mind all day she found herself curiously anxious to be in Ian’s presence in a less formal kind of way. 

She looked herself over, measuring her appearance.  She had chosen to wear one of her white dresses, made from some kind of crushed crystal that had been spun into sparkling fibers so that it glistened on her skin like newly fallen snow.  Though her figure was rounded she felt that the dress hugged her body in just the right way and in all of the right places. 

Is it enough to catch Ian’s eye?

She pondered at the voice in her mind.  Was the dress really enough to catch the attentions of her employer?  Maybe… but a greater question was: why did she want to?

Ian was a man of substance and known throughout the world.  She didn’t have any doubts that he could have any woman he wanted.  She recalled an article where some foreign minister’s daughter had been offered to him in marriage for the sake of business.  The girl had not been unattractive, Lanie had thought.  But for reasons that no one had been able to comprehend, Ian had turned the proposal – the business deal come to that – down. 

But still, the throngs of women who would have happily had him did not diminish.  If there was one thing that jabbed at her about her job it was the continuously growing list of social appointments that Ian kept being petitioned with.  Models… actresses… daughters of the CEO’s or rival companies… athletes… authors… scientists… there was no limit to it all.  But being his aide she was thankful for the opportunity to shut them all down once she had run their names past Ian.

“I’m not interested,” is all he would say.

She had found that interesting considering that some of these women were of shapes, wealth, and status that men all over the world would sell various organs on the black market to possess.  And Ian had dismissed them all like magazines that he didn’t care to look at.

Sure, Ian was handsome, mysterious, and rich: a perfect trifecta.  He was everything that most women dreamed of having in their men… yet she only worked for him.  And here she was, dressing like a woman intent on impressing a man on a first date.

Hoping things will become a little more animalistic between you and the new boss, are we?

She felt a small surge of heat course through her at such a thought.  Maybe this ‘something extra’ that Ian had mentioned involved becoming a little more intimate.  Maybe she was hoping that that was exactly the case. 

“Time to find out,” she said, slipping her shoes on and heading for the elevator.

Chapter 6

Ian’s private dining area was something right out of the history books, Lanie thought.  Like the rest of the top floors it had a definitive old-world feeling to it.  Thick carpets, paintings of souls long past hanging on the walls, and antique furniture.  The center piece of which was the table that they presently sat at.

The room, by and large, looked to have been modeled after the dining chambers of some bygone age where kings and queens sat to a golden-trimmed banquet table.  The room was at least twenty meters to a side and the entire east wall was made up entirely of glass windows that stretched from the floor to the high ceiling, allowing for a sweeping view of the city below where pinpoints of light dotted the landscape.  Seeing this, Lanie again felt like a goddess, being so high up that she was looking down on the stars and the mortals so far beneath that.

It was an incredible feeling.

Ian sat directly opposite her, dressed in a tuxedo that she found to be nothing short of delightful.  She often admired the classical look of men in the old suits.  Some of the newer fashions were not all that bad either, but there was something about the old looks that simply could not be denied as appealing.

“You look lovely tonight, Lanie,” he said as he carved off a piece of the roast pheasant that she had decided should be their evening meal.

“Thank you,” she said with a gentle blush.  “You look very handsome as well.”

He showed his appreciating by visibly blushing.  The look on his was positively adorable. 

“So how do you feel after these last couple of weeks?  Settling in alright?”

“I believe I am,” she said, sipping her wine.  “It was a bit much at the beginning but I think I’ve managed to find a good balancing point.”

“I’m pleased to hear it.  And what about the work?  Are you managing well enough?”

She nodded.

“Good.  I’ve noticed a decided upswing in productivity these last two weeks.  Some of my more important projects are up in productivity by about sixteen percent, and all of it from suggestions and changes that you’ve made.  I will say that I’m impressed, Lanie.  Very much so.”

It was her turn to blush.  “Thank you, Ian.”

He rested his elbows on the table and folded his hands in the same manner that she had come to know as his contemplative manner.  The way he looked at her over his hands was meticulous somehow, as if he were trying to discern something that she was not willing to share. 

“Tell me, Lanie, what do you know of our deep space exploration project?”

It was a question that seemed to fall from nowhere but it had the ring of inquisitiveness to it and she knew it was best to answer as quickly and as fully as she could.  “It’s the twenty-seventh item on your most-interesting list,” she began, “delving into theories and technology that could be utilized in the exploration and colonization of other planets.  It’s headed up by a Dr. Luke Eisner, and he’s presently working on… what was it called… planetary optics, I believe it was.   Developing new telescopes that can survey a planet for habitability from Earth without the need of physical space exploration?”

Ian nodded.  “Very good.  And what do you know of their time table?”

She combed her memory.  “The first of these new telescopes that they’re designing hasn’t made it past designing stages, but they’re on track with the math of it all and they hope to have their first prototype within… six years?”

“Seven,” he corrected.  “But yes, that is essentially correct.”  He didn’t lower his gaze from her and leaned in.  “What if I told you that they had another agenda?”

She listened.  “Such as?”

“Well… you’ve seen the movies, I’m sure.  Space is a pretty big place… what if we weren’t the only ones in it?”

She saw where this was heading.  “You mean extra-terrestrials?”

He only sat in silence watching her.  She could tell right off that it was his turn to watch her work things through in her mind and allow her to come to her own suppositions. 

She reached a conclusion after only a few seconds and it sent an icy tingle down her spine.  “Wait… you mean…?”

He gave a nearly imperceptible nod. 

She felt a second chill.  “It’s not possible… is it?”

“That depends,” he said, picking up his wine and taking a short sip.  “There are an incalculable number of stars in the galaxy with an untold number of planets surrounding them.  It’s mathematically feasible to believe that ours is not the only one with sentient life upon it.  It’s also highly improbable to think that ours is the most technologically advanced.”

She was silent, uncertain as to what to say next.

“Did you know that the Aztec pyramids at Teotiuacán were built to mirror the planets in our solar system… quite a long time before humans discovered that the sun was the center of our solar system and not the Earth?  Have you ever looked at some of the relief carved in Mesoamerican tombs that depict men in some kind of spacecraft?  Did you know that the Nazca lines in Peru went completely unnoticed by most until someone with an airplane flew over them and noticed those geoglyphs?”

She was quiet.  She had never heard these things before but she could sense where Ian was going with these things.  “You mean… we’ve been
visited
before?”

Ian gave a very clear nod this time.  “The scientific community dismisses these ideas as folly… superstition… some even use it as an idea to ridicule those that truly believe such things.  But me?  Well, I know otherwise.”

It felt as if some invisible fist had just punched her in the chest.  He said it so simply, like he was describing the color of his tuxedo but Lanie could not help but feel the pressure of the remark behind her chest.  “You
know
otherwise?”

He smirked.  “Yes.”  He stood up from his chair.  “Come with me, Lanie.  I want to show you something.”