Millionaire's Christmas Miracle (10 page)

“He’s a smart one,” she murmured, then looked up at Quint. “And he’s a wet one.”

“He’s not alone in that,” Quint admitted as he picked up the diaper bag and set it on the bed by her. “How do you want to do this tonight? There’s the bed here, and I can find some pillows and linen to make a bed on the floor for Taylor so that she can be near you. But what about him?”

She laid Travis on the bed and started to take the damp sleeper off him. “He can sleep with me.”

Lucky kid, Quint thought before he caught himself. “Good, fine. How about his formula?”

She motioned to the diaper bag. “I got a lot of the pre-made formula that we had at the center, enough for a couple of days and the rest of what his mother left. If you could put them all in the refrigerator and heat one up, that would be great. And after he’s asleep, could you show me where the kitchen is so I can heat them up myself if he wants something during the night?”

“Sure,” he said, reaching into the bag to find packages of formula. “What about Taylor? Milk, juice, something to eat?”

“I have some things for her in her bag, too.”

“There’s more stuffed animals in the closet, if she wants to play with them.”

“Thanks,” Amy said as she reached for a disposable diaper.

He headed through the house to the kitchen, heated the bottle, then went back to the bedroom. Amy was
sitting on the floor holding a clean, dry baby in one arm and feeding Taylor some orange concoction out of a jar with her free hand.

She looked up at him. “Great timing. This is done. Could you wipe Taylor’s face and give her a bottle out of her bag?” She dropped the spoon in the empty jar, then held it up to him and motioned with her head to the Raggedy Ann bag by the bed. “It’s in there.”

He took the empty jar and gave her the bottle he had just heated. Travis took to it eagerly. Quint rummaged with one hand in the bag and found a soft cloth and pink bottle. “This one?” he asked Amy.

She glanced at it, nodded and spoke to Taylor. “Mr. Gallagher has your bottle, love.”

The little girl looked at him, scrambled to her feet, literally running over the bear in the process of getting to Quint. “Pink baba!”

“You bet,” he said. He wiped her face then gave her the bottle. She then turned and went to Amy. She dropped down on the floor, put her head on her mother’s leg and sprawled out, totally relaxed as she drank her juice. “I didn’t think to ask, but is Taylor in diapers, too?”

“For now, she is. She’s almost trained, but with all of this going on, I’m not pushing it.”

He went closer to Amy and the babies and hunkered down to her eye level. “Okay, diapers, bottles. Is there anything else that you need for the kids?”

She shook her head. “No. They’ll both be going down soon.”

“And how about you? What do you need?”

She rested her head against the foot of the bed and
sighed slightly. “I’ve got warmth. We’re dry and safe. I’d say that about covers it.”

“Lady, you’re far too easy,” he murmured.

Her dark eyes met his. “What more could I want?”

“Food? Wine? You name it.”

She smiled slightly, but there was a real shadow of weariness in the expression. “Maybe, but I’ll take a good night’s sleep instead.” She glanced down at Travis. “Although I’ve got a feeling that sleeping might not be on the agenda tonight.” She hesitated, then sat up straight. “Your phone?”

“You need to make a call?”

“No, your cell phone. Remember I put that number on the note?”

“Oh, sure. I’ll get it and bring it in here…just in case.”

“Thanks.”

He glanced at Taylor; her eyes were starting to flutter shut. Travis seemed content to eat and be cuddled. “Since you’ve got everything under control here, I’ll get the phone and see what there is to eat.” He stood, backing away from a scene of such domestic peace that it literally made him uncomfortable. It was far too endearing to him at that moment. “If you need anything, there’s some clothes of Meg’s in the closet, not much, but maybe something you can use. Although you’ll probably swim in them.” The lights flickered, then steadied. “False alarm,” he murmured. “And if the lights do go out, we’re on propane for heat, so we’ll be okay. We might be in the dark, but we’ll be warm.”

Amy watched Quint leave, the door closing softly
behind him, and then it was just her and the children. She was hungry, and she was tired. Thankfully she saw that Taylor was starting to settle and Travis was already sleeping again. She put the bottle down on the floor, then pushed herself to her feet and went to the bed. She tugged the quilt back and laid the sleeping baby on the bed. He sighed, wiggled, then settled with another sigh. She framed the baby with pillows, took a throw off the footboard and spread it for Taylor.

Standing back, she stretched, easing the tightness in her shoulders and arms, then stepped out of her shoes and nudged them halfway under the bed. Turning, she crossed to an archway that opened to a vanity on one side and sliding mirrored doors on the other of a pass-through to the bathroom. She slid back one door and looked into a nearly empty closet. There were clothes, but not many. A robe of white terry cloth, some folded tops on a side shelf, jeans on another shelf, a couple of sweatshirts and a jacket on hangers and one pair of well-used boots that looked sizes too big for her on the floor.

Thank goodness she’d thought to grab the extra set of clothes she kept at the center for emergencies. But she could use the robe. She reached for it, then went into the bathroom, a large room with a deep tub, a shower stall with clear glass and a vanity along one wall under high windows. She left the door open to hear the kids and turned on the water in the shower. She tugged the bands out of her hair, loosening it from the braids, then shook it out. The shower was getting warm now, and she stripped off her clothes,
laid them on the vanity, then neatly folded the Super Dude T-shirt she’d worn under her clothes. She twisted a towel around her hair to keep it as dry as she could, then stepped into the stall under the gentle spray of warmth.

She stood there for a very long time, just letting the water flow over her body, taking off the chill that the storm had brought with it. This was a far cry from what she’d thought she’d be doing tonight. And she’d never dreamed that she’d be in a shower at Quint’s family home.

She started singing “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” to distract her thoughts from Quint, but stopped when she stumbled over the reindeer’s names. She could never get them right. “Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and…Donner.” No that wasn’t it, she knew, and realized it was time to get out when she couldn’t even remember if there was a Blitzen in the group.

She turned off the water, stepped out onto the floor mat and tugged the towel off her hair to dry herself. She wiped at her skin with the softness of the terry cloth, and looked up to see herself in the mirrors. Behind her, she caught the reflection of the open door and Travis on the bed.

The baby was sleeping soundly and she could see that Taylor had turned on the floor, pulling the bear with her and hugging it to her in sleep. She tossed the towel on the vanity, then reached for the robe and slipped it on. At the same time she pulled it around her, she saw a flash behind her in the mirrors. She looked up, expecting to see Taylor up or Travis stirring.

Instead, she saw Quint behind her, near the doorway, a changed man in jeans, an unbuttoned chambray shirt and his hair combed straight back from his face, emphasizing the sharp angles of his features. Quint. Watching her. And she had no idea how long he’d been there.

She turned, tugging the belt of the robe around her waist and trying to tie it, but her fingers felt as awkward as her face felt hot from embarrassment. She was so used to having the door open, keeping that contact for Taylor available at all times, that she hadn’t even thought to close the bathroom door. And she hadn’t heard Quint come in. She prayed that he’d just walked in.

“You…you startled me,” she managed to say, going toward him, making herself not cross her arms on her breasts.

“Sorry. I brought you the cell phone,” he said, and held it out to her.

She looked at the phone for a long moment before she could move closer to take it from him. “Thank you,” she murmured.

“The food will be ready in five minutes. Nothing fancy. Soup, bread, wine, coffee—decaffeinated, of course. Is that okay?”

“Yes, yes, sure,” she said, relief flooding over her. He hadn’t seen a thing. He hadn’t been there watching her. She pushed the phone into the pocket of her robe. “I’ll be there in a minute,” she said, relaxing just a bit.

“Go through the archway and the kitchen is to your left.”

Quint turned, went to the door, but instead of leaving, he turned back to her for a moment and that smile was there. “Vixen,” he said.

“Pardon me?”

“You know, Dasher and Dancer and Comet and—” he paused, the smile growing just a bit “—Vixen,” he said, then left.

Amy checked the kids in passing, making sure that they were still asleep, before she hurried after Quint. As she stepped out into the hallway, rolling up the robe’s sleeves that fell well past her hands, she caught a glimpse of Quint disappearing to the left through the archway.

She was vaguely aware of the fragrance of fresh coffee brewing in the air, and the coolness of smooth tile under her bare feet, then she was in a kitchen, a huge room, probably as big as her entire apartment. There were stone walls, butcher-block counters and a massive table set in the middle of the space, but all she truly focused on was Quint.

He was standing to the left, in front of the stove, lifting the lid of a pot and allowing steam to escape into the air. “Excuse me,” she said, breathless as she stopped a few feet from him.

He cast her a slanting glance as he reached for a large wooden spoon and started stirring the contents of the pot. “Not hungry now?” he asked.

“No…yes…I’m hungry, but that’s not…” She
took a deep breath and made herself get the right words. “You were in the bedroom, weren’t you?”

“I brought in the cell phone,” he drawled, putting the lid back and laying the spoon on a plate on the counter.

“And I was in the shower.”

He turned to her, and she knew that he knew exactly what she meant. There was something in his eyes, a look that made her want to pull the robe even closer at her throat. “Seems you were.”

She bit her lip. “You…I…” She exhaled, not about to say what she wanted to ask. Not from this man. “Never mind,” she muttered.

He studied her intently, then came closer to her. His still-damp hair was curling slightly, and the planes and angles of his face seemed sharper. The mustache definitely hid a lot of his expression, and she wished it didn’t. “Lady,” he said softly. “I told you before, I don’t play games. And I’m no Peeping Tom or lascivious voyeur.” His eyes flicked over her, down to her hands clutching the robe at her throat, then back to her lips, lingering there long enough to make her tremble slightly. Then he was meeting her gaze with his. “I went in, heard you singing, started to put the phone on the dresser for you, then heard the water stop, the shower open, and the next thing I knew you were in your robe, in front of the mirrors. Is that what you wanted to know?”

“More or less,” she whispered.

“Less, much less,” he murmured.

“Thank you.”

He exhaled, rocking slightly on the balls of his feet,
bringing himself even closer to her. “You should thank me,” he said, his voice touched with a subtle roughness now.

“Why?”

He was silent for a long moment, then his hand lifted and the tip of his forefinger brushed a feathery line along her jaw. “I’m going to be honest with you. Honesty is what you want, isn’t it?”

She wasn’t sure at all that she wanted honesty from him at that moment, because she didn’t want to reciprocate. She didn’t want to tell him that she could literally feel his heat around her, or that the feathery touch on her skin was as compelling as anything had been in her life. She didn’t want to tell him that there was a scent about him, something beyond that freshness of soap and water, and she didn’t want to tell him that he scrambled her thought processes just by being there.

She was thankful that he didn’t wait for her answer. His finger traced the sweep of her jaw to her chin and stilled on her skin there. “Since I’ve met you, you’ve made me crazy, partly because you never stop, you never let me catch my breath before something else happens that literally takes away what breath I have left. You’ve challenged all of my rational thinking.”

He could have been talking about her, about what he did to her, and she stayed very still.

“The thing is, if things were different, if I was a lot younger, if I had any desire to start all over with kids, you’d be right at the top of my list of places to start.” He drew back, breaking the contact with her as he spoke. “But things are what they are. I’m going
to be fifty tomorrow. I’m too old to start changing diapers and heating bottles again, and my life’s been this way for far too long.” His eyes narrowed and his voice dropped to a rough whisper. “You don’t want any sort of relationship, and, once you do, you want six kids to go with it.” He lifted her left hand, and, never looking away from her eyes, he found her wedding ring. “If you ever stop being married, that is.”

While he talked, something in her had been tightening. The truth. That’s what he was saying. But when he touched her wedding ring, the truth turned to bewilderment. She’d forgotten the ring, for the first time in what seemed forever. And she hated herself for that. She hated him for making her forget for even a fleeting moment, and she jerked her hand back from him.

“You’re crazy,” she whispered hoarsely, but
she
felt crazy. Disturbed. Irrational. Hurting in a place that she couldn’t even look at. Deep in her being.

“Crazy, maybe. But it’s the truth,” he said.

She looked away from him, but succeeded only in lowering her gaze to his bare chest, exposed by the open shirt. She thought for a minute that she saw his heart beating, but maybe it was hers. Maybe it was that thudding in her chest that she felt. She dragged her eyes away, daring to meet his gaze again, but that only made her heart bounce more. His expression was so intense that it startled her, catching her breath in her lungs. “You…you don’t know what I really want or what I…what I’m going to do with my life.”

“I can make a pretty good guess.” He glanced
down at her hands and she realized that she was nervously twisting her wedding ring.

She made herself stop, pressing her palms together, then laced her fingers.

He shook his head. “I never had a good marriage, I told you that. When it was over, I was relieved. I was left with Mike and that was fine with me. I wish I could tell you how to get past yours and get on with your life. I wish I could do that for you.”

Her eyes burned, and she was horrified that his image was blurring in front of her. “I don’t need…” she started, but lost her voice as her throat tightened. She swallowed, but couldn’t make anything work. No words. Nothing. Not even tears. Everything seemed gone. And it was because of this man in front of her.

“Oh yes, you do,” he whispered.

She felt an explosion in her, something snapping, something she’d tried desperately to keep in check for the past two years. But it was free, and it hurt like hell, and he’d done it, and she struck out in a fury. The next thing she knew, he had her by her wrists, and she didn’t have a clue what she’d done until she saw the perfect imprint of her hand on his cheek as it deepened to an ugly red. She’d struck him. She’d hurt him. But he wasn’t touching his face. He held her fast.

As suddenly as the rage had come, it was gone, and she could feel herself literally collapsing. Then the tears came. A blur of life was around her, and she was in Quint’s arms, holding on to him for dear life.

“Oh, God, I’m sorry,” he said, his voice rumbling around her. “I’m so sorry.”

She felt his heart now, really felt it, the heavy thudding, strong and sure. And she had the crazy thought that if she got close enough, his heart would beat for her, too. That she’d feel alive again. That the pain would go away. She looked up at Quint, and the feelings only grew. If she held to him tightly enough, it could work. He groaned softly and lifted his hands to frame her face. His thumbs gently brushed at her cheeks, and she trembled.

The next thing she knew, his lips found hers and the world fell away. The pain eased and dissolved, and, as his tongue teased and tasted her, she slipped into a safe place, a good place, and she eagerly went there. She went to him, holding to him, trying to be closer than was humanly possible. The connection was alive and compelling, a lifeline, a line that gave her life.

And there were tears threatening again, but this time they were tears of relief and tears of need. She felt him lifting her, raising her in his arms, never stopping the kiss, but carrying her, moving with her. And she felt as if all connections to the world were gone, leaving only the two of them, and this place that she wanted to crawl into and never leave. She felt as if she could fly, as if he held her up, and she wasn’t startled when they were lying together. Softness. Coolness at her back, the heat of Quint on her front.

Shadows, heat, need, touch. She answered kiss for kiss, found the bareness of his chest with her hands, then felt skin against skin. His hands on her skin, his hands touching her bare breast, making her whole body ache and arch, yearning toward him, then his
lips moved, finding the spot his hands had just discovered and she moaned, shaking from the intensity of the feelings that flowed through her and around her.

Arching back, lifting to his touch, not caring that the robe was parted, that she was naked to him. Needing his contact, feeling his touch, sensing him moving, pressing the hardness of his desire barely contained by his jeans against her thigh. Her hands skimmed lower, finding the snap at his waistband, and she tugged awkwardly, trying to take away the barrier.

But before she could manage it, there was a noise, a shattering sound that seemed to cut through the fantasy they were fashioning, a sharp, shrill noise that she couldn’t place. Then she knew. The phone. Quint’s cell phone. It was ringing. And reality crashed in around her. Whatever fantasy she’d willed to happen was dissolving, and she twisted, realizing she was on a couch of some sort in the shadows, and that the storm was beating on glass close by.

Quint was moving back, taking his heat, and she scrambled away, finally sitting on leather, tugging her robe around her, ignoring the ache in her that made her breasts hurt and her being throb. She fumbled in the pocket of the robe, found the phone and took it out. Her hands were shaking, but she managed to push the key to answer it, and she put it up to her ear.

“Hello?” she said, her voice almost unrecognizable in her own ears.

There was a hesitation, then it seemed as if Quint
was talking to her on the phone, “Ma’am, I’m trying to call Mr. Gallagher?”

No, not Quint, a younger-sounding version of his voice. “Excuse me?”

“This is Mike, his son. Is my dad there?”

His son. Michael. “Yes,” she whispered and turned, finding Quint standing, and making no effort to hide his physical response to what had almost happened between them. She held up the phone, not caring that her hand was shaking. “It’s…for you,” she managed, and almost dropped the phone when he reached for it. “Your son.”

She turned from him, closing her eyes for a long moment, then stood, thankful that her legs could hold her. She’d gone crazy. He wasn’t crazy; she was. She couldn’t even make sense out of what had happened. She barely saw the room Quint had carried her into, a den or a living area, with a series of French windows on one wall, the only barrier between them and the driving storm.

She heard Quint talking, but couldn’t take in the words as she made her way through the shadows to an archway where light spilled into the room. She went through and back into the kitchen, and stopped, with no idea what to do or where to go. She could check on the babies, but she was in no condition to try and cope with them at the moment. She could barely cope with herself. She crossed the cold tiles to the far wall and the windows being assaulted by the storm.

Hugging her arms around herself, she stared out at her expression overlying the night and the fury of the
storm. Her hair was tangled around her face, and her eyes were dark and fathomless. Crazy. She couldn’t even think about what might have happened if Mike hadn’t called. And she’d hit Quint. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d struck anyone. Yes, total craziness. And it was all hers.

Q
UINT WISHED
he could joke with Mike, but humor wasn’t what he was feeling at the moment. Besides a body that couldn’t forget the feeling or sight of Amy, he was filled with anger at himself. He’d never been a user of women, ever, and he wasn’t going to start, no matter how much he physically wanted the woman in the next room.

“So, you took my suggestion and found a woman?” Mike was saying.

“No, we got in trouble with the storm, and that’s all there is to it.” He’d never lied to Mike, but, if any time was right for lies, now was the time. “We’re waiting it out at Grandma and Granddad’s place.”

“You took her home to the ranch?”

“I didn’t have a choice.” He wasn’t going to talk about this anymore with his son. “What’s going on?”

“I know how you hate birthdays and holidays, so I figured I’d call early to wish you a happy birthday and a happy New Year.”

“Thanks,” Quint said, staring at the night through the windows. “How’re you doing?”

“Just great. Great skiing. Lots of powder and packed snow. Wish you were here.”

“Me, too,” he said.

“I won’t keep you from your…rescue mission any
longer. Have fun and be safe,” his son said, then hung up.

Quint pushed the End button, then stood still for a long moment while his body began to ease. That tension had started when he’d walked into the bedroom, seen the sleeping children, heard Amy singing, stumbling over the reindeers’ names, and had then moved farther into the room. He’d told her the truth, as far as it went. He’d heard the shower door open, and that moment before she’d spotted him, he’d seen her.

The high breasts, tiny waist, the swell of her hips, smooth ivory-toned skin, and his body had started to tense. Then she’d pulled the robe around herself, and looked into the mirror and spotted him. He’d tried to get out of there, and now he wished he’d never gone to give her the phone in the first place. Maybe that would have stopped him saying what he’d said and doing what he’d done when she’d started to cry. Maybe none of this would have happened.

He stepped into the kitchen and spotted her at the windows. No, that wouldn’t have stopped anything. The woman literally made him stop thinking. Made him ignore reason. Everything he’d said to her was the truth. There was no way they could be together, but that didn’t stop his response to her. He went toward her, and cleared his throat to let her know he was there. No more sneaking up on her.