Millionaire's Christmas Miracle (13 page)

Taylor was on her feet before he got the last word out of his mouth. “Dance! Oh, spin! Mama?” she said, coming at Amy with her arms wide open to be picked up.

Amy stood and picked up Taylor. “Sure, sweetie, spin.”

Quint had the baby back in position, tummy-down on his arm. “What does she want?”

“She thinks you were serious about dancing. So she wants to spin. That’s how we dance.”

Amy let Taylor wrap her tiny legs around her waist, then hugged her with one hand, and held her hand with the other. Together, they twirled around the room to the music, with Taylor laughing with delight. She looked back and saw Quint dancing with Travis, but going slower, with large, lazy circles accompanied by some jiggling. The crying was gone, the music was all around and the storm outside was forgotten.

When the song finally ended, Amy all but fell back onto the couch, hugging Taylor to her, laughing. “This was like a New Year’s ball.” She tickled Taylor. “And you could be the princess of spinning.”

Quint crossed to the radio and turned it down when the news came on, then came over to sink down on
the couch. Taylor started to bounce up and down on her lap. “More spin!”

“In a minute, sweetie,” she said, gasping from breathlessness and laughter.

She looked at Quint. “Spin? Peeze. Pop spin?”

Amy rested her head against the back of the couch, and shifted to look at Quint. He was grinning, easing a sound-asleep Travis onto his chest as he slid lower on the couch. “I do popcorn, not spinning,” he said on a chuckle. “Popcorn’s easier.”

“Dumping it on me is the easy part,” Amy murmured.

That brought a crinkling of his eyes. “Oh, lady, you’re so right.”

Taylor crawled off Amy and would have climbed into Quint’s lap, so Quint twisted toward Amy, slid Travis over to her and turned to pull Taylor onto his lap.

“Nice move,” Amy said.

“That’s high praise, coming from the master,” he said, tickling Taylor.

“The master?” She laid Travis on her chest and sank lower on the couch. “Not quite.”

“Spin!” Taylor crawled higher on Quint, putting her little hands on either side of his face. “Peeze. Pop, peeze.”

“Popcorn?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Spin.”

“How about you spin the bear?” he suggested.

She scrambled back and off his lap, and ran to grab the bear from where she’d left it. She had it by its leg, then turned and spotted the popcorn. She crossed
to the mess, plopped down in the middle of it, and picking up a handful of popcorn, she pushed it against the bear’s sewn mouth.

“Nice move again,” Amy murmured. “Now if you could only get her to pick up that mess.”

“That’s a thought,” he murmured, then slipped down off the couch onto the floor. He reached for the empty popcorn bowl and picked up a handful. “Wow, look at this,” he said, and Taylor turned. He let the popcorn fall one kernel at a time out of his hand and down into the bowl. “Wow, is that great?”

Taylor watched him for a moment, then came closer, dropping the bear on the floor. She picked up a single kernel, looked at Quint, then dropped it in the bowl. “Way to go, girlie,” he said with a grin. “How about another one?”

Before long Quint moved back, using the couch as support while he watched the little girl plunk one kernel after the other into the bowl.

“Oh, that was a beautiful thing to behold,” Amy murmured.

“I wish I could claim it as my idea, but I think it started with Tom Sawyer painting that fence. Make a kid think you’re having fun, and they want to do it. Now, I can just sit back and watch.”

She chuckled. “If you keep this up, I’ll start thinking you’ve been lying.”

“I don’t lie,” he said softly.

“Okay, what do you call that thing with the suit? ‘It’s off the rack,’ you said. Sure.”

“Okay, I readjusted the facts.”

She chuckled at that. “The same way you did about
kids. You readjusted to hide the fact that you’re terrific with kids and they think you’re terrific.”

“Let’s not get carried away,” he muttered and got to his feet to cross to the hearth and coax the fire to new life with more wood.

Taylor lost interest in the popcorn and came over to the couch, climbing up by Amy and putting her head on her lap. Amy smoothed her hair softly, but watched Quint crouching in front of the hearth, holding his hands out to the warmth. If she closed her eyes, she could almost believe this was a real family. Her, Taylor, the baby. She closed her eyes for real, blocking out the sight of Quint. But he was in the picture. Part of it. A huge part of it.

That confusion was coming back, blotting out the soft comfort that had begun to grow in the room. She glanced down at Taylor and saw she was fast asleep. Travis was lying on her stomach sucking on his pacifier. Then she looked at Quint. The ease and peace she felt with the children dissolved, and she felt her whole being tense. She saw the way his shoulders tested the cotton of his shirt, the way he put the poker on the hearth, then raked his fingers through his hair before he stood and turned to her.

The man could tip her world with a word or a look. And that look was there now, making her tense. He studied her intently for what seemed forever before he said, “What are you thinking about?”

She shrugged, looking away from him and down at the babies. She wasn’t going to share her thoughts with him. That level of intimacy didn’t belong here, not with him. That was treacherous territory, so she
generalized enough to keep her real thoughts out of it. “Just how strange life can be. About the new year. Life. What about you?”

He shook his head and raked his fingers through his hair. “No quid pro quo on this,” he muttered.

“That’s not fair,” she said.

“Life isn’t fair.”

She wouldn’t argue with that.

He asked, “What now?”

That same question echoed in her. What now? But her thoughts had nothing to do with the next hour or even the next day. Or why she wanted to have him sit by her again and just be there. Suddenly, the life she thought she had a vision of wasn’t there either. That life with her and Taylor, just the two of them, had blurred and twisted, leaving a gaping hole in it. And she knew that hole wasn’t the one left by Rob’s death.

She didn’t understand, and she swallowed hard, trying to ease a tightness that was creeping into her throat. “I…I don’t know,” she said with complete honesty. She didn’t have a clue what her life would be like when she walked away from here, when Travis went wherever he’d go, or when Quint was just an acquaintance at work again.

He came closer, towering over her. “Can we put the kids down now, or is it too early?”

The kids? Of course. He wasn’t thinking about life and why it suddenly didn’t make any sense. “No, it’s not too early.” She glanced at the clock on the mantel, shocked to see that it was almost ten o’clock.

“Okay,” he said as he gently picked up a sleeping Taylor. “Can you get Travis?”

“Sure, I just hope he doesn’t start crying again.” She eased up, maneuvering the boy into her arms, and even though he started making loud sucking sounds on his pacifier, he didn’t waken. She eased to her feet, then followed Quint through the house and back to her room. The light was on in there, and it was only a few minutes before Quint had Taylor settled on the bed. She placed Travis on the bed, as well, surrounded by pillows.

She tugged a receiving blanket over the baby and realized how tiny and vulnerable he looked, and how much she’d grown to care about him in the short time he’d been with her. She leaned down, brushed a kiss on his cheek, then stood back. She couldn’t keep him, she knew that, but it didn’t stop her from aching at the prospect of handing him over to someone else. She took an unsteady breath, startled when Quint touched her on the shoulder.

“Don’t do this to yourself,” he whispered near her ear.

“Do what?” she asked, not taking her eyes off the baby.

“Get so attached to him.” Quint reached to touch the baby’s cheek, and she trembled, feeling a sense of impending loss so oppressive she wondered how she could breathe. She turned away from the bed and walked out of the room without a clue where she was going to go.

Quint had decided to leave Amy alone. He’d looked at her across the room when he’d been fixing the fire, and known that he had to leave her alone. Every atom in his being responded to her. And every atom in his being knew that it was wrong.

He followed her out of the bedroom and almost bumped into her. She’d stopped in the middle of the hallway, just standing there, hugging her arms around herself and he could see her trembling. Everything in him wanted to touch her and hold her, but he kept his distance.

“You know Travis has to go…either to the police or back to his mother.”

“Of course,” she said, rubbing the flats of her hands on her arms as if trying to find some warmth in the world. “I don’t need you to remind me of that.”

He didn’t know what to say. “Of course you don’t.”

She took a breath. “Did…did you turn on the intercom?”

“It’s on.”

“I need to get the phone. I left it in the den.”

“I’ll get it for—”

She cut him off with a vague wave of her hand as she headed back toward the kitchen. “I’ll do it,” she said without looking back at him.

He was going to do the smart thing and go to his room, close the door and get through the night. But he didn’t. He couldn’t get that sight of her trembling out of his mind, and he went after her. By the time he caught up to her, she was by the couch picking up the phone.

“Anyone you want to call is either washed out or treading water,” he said.

He knew he’d startled her when the phone almost slipped out of her hand. But she caught it and pulled it to her chest, as if protecting it. “I wasn’t going to call anyone,” she said in a low voice. “But it needs to be charged. The battery’s low. You can charge it, can’t you? If she calls, she has to be able to get through.”

He didn’t have to ask who “she” was. “You said the lines are full, so she probably can’t get through right now anyway. Meanwhile, I’ve got a charger for it in my room. No problem.”

“Good,” she said, brushing past him to go through the kitchen.

He felt as if he was playing catch-up with her, turning and heading off again, catching up to her in the hallway to the room where the kids were sleeping. She paused long enough to glance inside at the children, then continued down to his room, one more door down and on the opposite side of the hallway.

She was inside before he got there, and as he went in the door, he saw her standing in the middle of the dark room, the room he’d had since he was a boy, waiting for him. He flipped on the light, then crossed to the long, low dresser that sat under the shuttered windows on the back wall. He turned and held out his hand to Amy for the phone. She dropped it in his hand, and he put it in the desk charger.

“Safe and sound and charging just…” His voice trailed off as he turned and found her looking around the room. Her gaze skimmed over the bed his dad had made out of trees from the property, with peeled-trunk posters at all four corners, the mussed linen of sheets and the patchwork quilt his mother had made. The shelves held everything from yearbooks to model planes to comics. Not exactly a mature room, but a room that was comfortable for him when he returned home.

“I told you, my mother tends to keep rooms the way they were back in the dark ages,” he said.

She glanced at him. “I’d love it if Taylor someday could go back home and find the room she grew up in.”

She was twisting her wedding ring nervously and it hit him just how much she’d lost when her husband died, little things and big things. Gone. And he grieved for it for her. From the first, he’d been fighting his attraction to Amy, knowing how wrong it was, how out of time it was. He could manage dating. He could manage that just fine. But what was going on now was beyond anything that mundane and shallow.
Grief for her. Needing to ease her pain, needing to believe that someday she’d have what she wanted.

She looked past him at the phone lying on the dresser. “If it’s charging can you still get calls?”

“Sure.” She never stopped twisting the ring. “No problem. And I’ve got voice mail. We’re covered.”

“Good…good.”

There was a faint whimper over the intercom and Amy turned immediately toward the speaker by the door. There was another soft sound, and she headed out of the room.

When she left, he felt a huge amount of tension leave with her. The room’s air became more breathable, and it seemed to expand. There was another sound on the intercom, Amy’s voice, a whisper that was barely audible.

“It’s okay, love, it’s okay,” soft and gentle, and whatever relief he’d felt at her going shattered at the sounds on the intercom. “I’m here. You’re okay.” Words he wanted to say to her. “Shhhh, you’re fine.”

He stared at the intercom and could almost see Amy bending over the children, soothing and comforting them when she needed it so much herself. The lights flickered, settled into a steady glow again, then flickered and went out completely. There was total silence all around, then he turned to go to Amy. He went out the door, took two steps and ran right into softness and heat and the scent of roses. Amy.

He reached out, and his hands found her, her arms, holding her, keeping her steady, and she was holding him. Safe. And for that moment in the dark, he truly thought that he could make the world right for her.
That he could take away her pain. That he could be there for her.

In some way she was doing that for him. She was settling his world, taking away a void that seemed to surround him, and she was there.

He held her more tightly, pressed a kiss to the top of her head and felt her tremble. There were no words, no questions, just the two of them standing in the dark, holding each other. It was enough. It was total. She was an anchor for him, a solid rightness in a world that had little definition for him anymore.

And he couldn’t let go. He couldn’t step back and say mundane, polite words. He couldn’t stop. He skimmed his hands up her back, then in the deep shadows, he framed her face with his hands. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else could. He lowered his head to find her lips.

Maybe if she hadn’t responded, if she hadn’t opened her lips in invitation and slipped her arms around his neck, if she hadn’t arched toward him, he might have stopped at a kiss. But there was no stopping when he tasted her and his kiss was answered with an explosive passion that matched his own, a passion that had been locked deep inside him since the first time he saw her.

He lifted her higher, kissing her with the hunger of a starving man. He’d been starving all his life until her. Until this moment. He felt her presence filling him, giving a sense of completion in his soul with her in his arms, as heady as it was frightening. It was new and incredible and as fathomless as what he felt for her.

He lifted her higher and her legs circled his waist, twining around him, and he carried her back into his room, into the softness of the shadows, to the bed he’d had since he was a boy. Together they tumbled into the coolness of the mussed linens, never losing contact. As they lay side by side in the shadows, he tasted her and explored her.

The only sounds were her soft moans, their quick breathing. He felt her hands on him, working their way under his shirt, skin against skin, heat and desire mingling in a fire that threatened to consume him.

But he welcomed it. He went with it. He touched her, skimming his hand along her arm, then to her middle, finding the zipper on her sweatshirt, fumbling to undo it, as awkward as a teenage boy in the back of a car. Then the cotton of a T-shirt was pushed up and the delicate lace of her bra was too much of a barrier for him. He shifted her up, taking off her clothes, slipping them free and pushing them away until there was skin against skin. She trembled, then gasped when he cupped her breast, his thumb and forefinger finding her nipple. It immediately peaked and hardened, and her gasp turned to a deep moan, low in her throat.

He shifted, tasting her breast, skimming his hand lower, spanning her middle, then pushing the tips of his fingers under the waistband of her jeans. The fastener popped, the zipper lowered and he felt the top of her panties. He wasn’t sure how he did it, but the jeans were tugged free, tossed into the shadows, then the panties were gone. He found her center and she cried out, a muffled sound of intense pleasure that
sent him reeling. She arched toward him, pressing herself against his palm, and he moved slowly, the need to be in her beyond reason.

Amy was lost and found. She fell into a place with Quint where the world was kept at bay; a place where she could just be…with Quint. Guilt and reality had no standing there, just need and feeling. Everything else was on the outskirts, hovering around the fringes, but as long as Quint was there, as long as he was touching her and kissing her, nothing could hurt her.

She went to that place, she relished that place and when Quint’s hands explored her and found her, she struggled to stay as close to him as she could. She would have melted into him, if she could have. She would have let him flow into her soul if it were possible. She touched him, felt the sleek heat of his skin, the brush of his mustache as he took her nipple in his mouth. She arched toward him as floods of ecstasy flowed around her and through her.

In the next heartbeat, coolness took the place of heat, and she opened her eyes, reaching out, but her hands closed on empty air. She looked up and relief left her dizzy when she saw that Quint hadn’t left. He was there, near her, shadows on shadows, but she could see him moving, then he was back with her, his clothes gone, and she felt him against her. Her arms went around him, holding on to him for dear life, and that’s what it was to her at that moment in time. Her life. Her breath. Her ability to live.

He shifted and was over her, his legs between hers, his strength against her, testing her, but not penetrating,
and his voice, rough with need, whispered around her, “Tell me to stop if you want me to.”

She touched his face, brushed the mustache with the ball of her thumb, then found his lips and she felt an unsteadiness there. “No, don’t stop,” she breathed, “please, please, don’t stop,” and she lifted her hips to him, aching to feel him inside her.

He trembled, then with exquisite slowness, he slipped into her, filling her, joining with her in a wonder that brought the burning of tears to her eyes. He was still for an eternity, and she was certain if he did anything else, she’d shatter into a million pieces. But slowly, ever so slowly, he moved, and with each stroke, she knew that there was another place to go to, a place of oneness that would blot out every pain in her life.

Her hips began to mimic his actions, lifting toward him, accepting each thrust. Feelings built in a blinding fire of sensations, higher and higher. And when she thought it was possible to die from pleasure, the world fell away and it was just her and Quint and a completeness that was indescribable. Just her and him. Two. One. She let go and soared, over and over again, until a culmination was there, perfect and awesome. Then the fall back to earth. But she wasn’t alone. She was with Quint.

He didn’t leave her until they shifted onto their sides, facing each other, and she snuggled into his embrace. His chin rested on her head, his heart beat against her hand, and she felt every breath he took. He shifted more toward her, one arm around her, his other hand resting on her hip. And she didn’t dare
breathe in case everything fell apart. She could feel it teetering, then he pressed a kiss to her hair and she closed her eyes tightly.

Later. Later she’d think, she’d feel, but for now, she had this. She knew it was a time out of time, but it was hers. And she wouldn’t give it up by letting reality intrude right now.

Q
UINT NEVER SLEPT
. He held Amy, so close to saying I love you that he quite literally thought he’d said it. She was asleep, holding to him, and he couldn’t say a thing. Except he was sorry. Sorry that he was weak and so needy. That he’d thought only of himself and those needs. This was all wrong, all so selfish of him. It was his fault, so he held her and he kept his words to himself and he knew that when they got out of this bed, it was over. And he’d have to make it okay for her any way he could.

He was startled when the overhead light flashed on, flickered, then stayed on. Trying not to wake Amy, he stretched as far as he could to the right, finding the light switch on the wall with the tip of his finger and flicking it off. But the darkness hid everything, and he didn’t want that now. He shifted, turned on the low light on his side of the bed, then raised himself on one elbow and looked down at Amy.

Amy in soft shadows. Amy sleeping. Amy with tangled ebony hair tumbling around her naked shoulders. He saw everything about her. The stubborn curls at her temple, the bottom lip that looked slightly swollen from their kisses, her lashes making dark arcs on her cheeks, a soft sighing breath she took every once
in a while. Her hand on his stomach, her legs tangled with his and her breath brushing his skin.

His body began to respond and he shifted lower until he was by her again, but staring up at the ceiling. She was everything that wasn’t his. Everything that he’d remember and regret not having again. Everything that another man would have someday when she could move on. There was no jealousy of that man now, just regret that he’d come into her life at the wrong time for both of them.

She sighed and he held her more tightly to him as a spark of foolish hope started in him. Maybe what Mike had said to him was right, that being in the world at the same time was all that mattered. He could do whatever Amy wanted. He could love Taylor…he already did. The child and the mother. So easy. So very easy. And he could protect them and care for them both and make things as right as he could for them.

He closed his eyes, letting that idea settle into him.

A
MY WOKE
in an instant when a noise drew her out of sleep as surely as if it had been a crashing roll of thunder. Taylor making soft noises, little sounds that she made sometimes, sounds that either meant she was waking, or that she was restless, but would settle herself.