The Tycoon's Seduction Plan Page 0,49

not passing judgment since he hadn’t been in her shoes. “You can’t stay here,” he said, hearing the dissipating sounds of Jimmy dragging a resisting man down the hallway. He felt her stiffen in his arms and tightened his hold. “You’ll have to stay at my place until we figure out what to do next.” He released her and looked down into her soft, blue eyes. “Go pack your bags. You’re not coming back here, Lana,” he said firmly. He’d been trying to figure out how to get her to move in with him for several days so this was serendipitous, even though he wished she hadn’t had to go through the terror of being mauled by the inebriated jerk to get to this point.

Lana stared up at him, her eyes huge and shocked. “You want me to move in with you?”

He smiled at her timid expression, trying to reassure her but still hide his satisfaction at how this whole thing had come about. He didn’t think she would appreciate his sense of satisfaction, at least not yet. “Yes. For as long as you’d like. I’ll help you find a new place to live, but you’re not staying here another day.”

Lana didn’t want to argue with him. She smiled up into his face, her body moving closer to touch his jaw gently with her fingers. “You’d do that for me?”

“In a heartbeat,” he said. He didn’t tell her that he’d been considering this for the past several days and just hadn’t figured out how to introduce the subject. He knew she was just out of a bad relationship and didn’t want to push her too quickly, but nor was he going to let her get away from him. He just needed time to convince her that they could make a go of it.

If he had to take it in stages, then so be it. Moving into his place was the next step. After that, he’d figure out how to stop her from moving out. A marriage proposal might be too soon at this stage, especially since he’d just physically thrown out her previous husband, but he’d work around her aversion to marriage eventually.

Victor put a hand to the small of her back. “Go pack all your clothes,” he told her, taking out his cell phone and calling his secretary. “I’ll get movers in here to pack up your furniture and move it into a storage facility until you find a place you want to live.” He didn’t mention he wanted that place to be right with him. Patience, he reminded himself.

Lana happily walked into her bedroom and quickly packed up all the clothes she could fit into her one suitcase. She didn’t have more than one because Drew didn’t like to travel so there hadn’t been a need to have multiple suitcases. She was so excited about Victor’s offer she didn’t care about the rest of her clothes. She wanted him so badly, on so many levels that it scared her at times. But, she reasoned as she closed her case and zipped it up, she would take whatever he could offer her and work out the details later. Just one day at a time, she told herself, taking a deep breath.

The living arrangement wouldn’t last. She didn’t even try to convince herself of anything different. Victor was a bachelor and this was only a temporary arrangement. She’d have to be careful and quickly find a new apartment so she wouldn’t get in his way too much. The worst way to end a relationship, so she’d read, was to invade a person’s space. Moving in with Victor definitely qualified as a personal invasion.

One week, she told herself. She’d spend most of her time this week finding a new place and she’d impose on his time as little as possible.

Pulling her suitcase out of the bedroom, she found Victor pacing through the small confines of her apartment. “Do you need your computer?” he asked, quickly walking over to take her suitcase from her fingers. He lifted it as if it didn’t weigh over forty pounds and Lana was again amazed at his incredible strength. A man who worked in an office shouldn’t be so buff, she thought to herself smiling.

“Ummm…” she stopped fantasizing about his muscles when he raised his eyebrows in question. “Yes. I’ll need my computer,” she answered finally and rushed over to shut it down and pack it in the case with the plug and mouse. She stacked