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Quint crouched down, shocked to see a baby in the box. Acting on twenty-year-old instincts, he reached for the baby and its pacifier. Straightening, he cradled the child in his arm and offered the pacifier. The cries stopped.
He looked around the garage, but no one was there. He tried the back door to the child-care center. Locked.
Within a few minutes, the door opened and Amy was there.
“What are you—?” Her words cut off as her eyes widened. “That’s a baby,” she said. “Who…where did you get a baby?”
“Outside your door.”
She eased the baby out of his arms, then cuddled it to her. She was meant to be a mother. The gentleness in her, the caring, was almost tangible. “I don’t understand.”
Quint’s chest tightened and his mouth felt dry. “That makes two of us.”
Dear Reader,
Welcome to Harlequin American Romance, where you’re guaranteed upbeat and lively love stories set in the backyards, big cities and wide-open spaces of America.
Kick-starting the month is an AMERICAN BABY selection by Mollie Molay. The hero of The Baby in the Back Seat is one handsome single daddy who knows how to melt a woman’s guarded heart! Next, bestselling author Mindy Neff is back with more stories in her immensely popular BACHELORS OF SHOTGUN RIDGE series. In Cheyenne’s Lady, a sheriff returns home to find in his bed a pregnant woman desperate for his help. Honor demands that he offer her his name, but will he ever give his bride his heart?
In Millionaire’s Christmas Miracle, the latest book in Mary Anne Wilson’s JUST FOR KIDS miniseries, an abandoned baby brings together a sophisticated older man who’s lost his faith in love and a younger woman who challenges him to take a second chance on romance and family. Finally, don’t miss Michele Dunaway’s Taming the Tabloid Heiress, in which an alluring journalist finesses an interview with an elusive millionaire who rarely does publicity. Exactly how did the reporter get her story?
Enjoy all four books—and don’t forget to come back again in December when Judy Christenberry’s Triplet Secret Babies launches Harlequin American Romance’s continuity MAITLAND MATERNITY: TRIPLETS, QUADS & QUINTS, and Mindy Neff brings you another BACHELORS OF SHOTGUN RIDGE installment.
Wishing you happy reading,
Melissa Jeglinski
Associate Senior Editor
Harlequin American Romance
Millionaire’s Christmas Miracle
Mary Anne Wilson
www.millsandboon.co.uk
To Taylor Anne Levin
The real miracle in my life…
XOXOXO
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mary Anne Wilson is a Canadian transplanted to Southern California, where she lives with her husband, three children and an assortment of animals. She knew she wanted to write romances when she found herself “rewriting” the great stories in literature, such as A Tale of Two Cities, to give them “happy endings.” Over a ten-year career, she’s published thirty romances, had her books on bestseller lists, been nominated for Reviewer’s Choice Awards and received a Career Achievement Award in Romantic Suspense. She’s looking forward to her next thirty books.
Books by Mary Anne Wilson
HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE
495—HART’S OBSESSION
523—COULD IT BE YOU?
543—HER BODYGUARD
570—THE BRIDE WORE BLUE JEANS
609—THE CHRISTMAS HUSBAND
652—MISMATCHED MOMMY?
700—MR. WRONG!
714—VALENTINE FOR AN ANGEL
760—RICH, SINGLE & SEXY
778—COWBOY IN A TUX
826—THAT NIGHT WE MADE BABY
891—REGARDING THE TYCOON’S TODDLER*
589—HART’S DREAM
895—THE C.E.O. & THE SECRET HEIRESS*
637—NINE MONTHS LATER…
899—MILLIONAIRE’S CHRISTMAS MIRACLE*
670—JUST ONE TOUCH
THE TEXAS TELL-ALL
Dec. 24, 2001
Last night’s holiday reception at LynTech Corporation was an interesting mix of powerful entrepreneurs, investors and parents whose main concern is the corporation’s thriving day-care center, Just For Kids. And just as the party was heating up, in walked Quint Gallagher, the hotshot consultant from New York, who turned a number of female heads (including mine!). Word has it that the devilishly good-looking Mr. Gallagher has returned to his hometown of Houston in an effort to revitalize LynTech. However, business seemed the last thing on the millionaire’s mind as he and sexy single mom Amy Blake, coordinator of Just For Kids, talked and flirted the whole night through. The twenty-year age difference between the two hardly seemed to matter, and even this reporter could see the sparks flying! My prediction? Mr. Gallagher’s return to Texas will prove to be very strategic in matters of business…and of the heart.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Prologue
Houston, Texas, December 23
“Come on, Dad, you’re single, rich, a great catch. You need to find someone and—”
“Okay, Mike, that’s enough.” In the back of the limousine, Quint Gallagher cut off his son’s words coming over the cell phone. “I’m here to work tonight. It’s a reception, a business function, not a singles’ party. Everyone, including me, will have an agenda with them and they’re all business.”
“Bummer,” Mike murmured.
Quint could almost see his twenty-two-year-old son sitting in his apartment in Los Angeles, probably with clutter all around from his move last month. “Yeah, bummer,” he echoed. “But it’s part of the package with LynTech and something you’ll learn at your job.”
“I’m never going to be like that,” Mike said. “My work isn’t my life. It’s so I can live life.”
“So you’ve told me many times,” Quint said as he stretched his legs out and slipped lower on the leather seat, enjoying the roominess of the limousine as he tried to ease muscles still tight from the long flight in from New York.
“I mean it. You did your thing the way you wanted to, but I’m not doing it that way. I wish you weren’t anymore. You’ve got all the money you’ll ever need, and you could just cut loose and have some fun. Why don’t you start by ditching the reception and going somewhere else?”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Dad, I hate to say this, but you need to get a love life, to—”
Quint cut that off right away. “What did you call for, besides checking on my love life?”
“So, you do have a love life, huh?” Mike murmured.
“That’s none of your business.” He and Mike had always talked about anything, but right now, Quint was setting the limits. He wasn’t about to go into this with his son. There had been women over the years; they’d come and gone, but he’d kept them separate from his real life as a single father to his only child Mike, and from his work. He’d never introduced those women to Mike, because he hadn’t wanted to have another woman do what Mike’s mother had done—walk out. It had been a conscious decision on his part to stay free of that possibility ever becoming reality again, and now it was a habit that fit him well, just not to get involved. “Now, are you going to tell me why you called?”
“Okay, okay. Since you aren’t going to come out here for Christmas and Grandma and Granddad are going to Florida for the holidays, I was going to head up to Tahoe for some skiing. I just wondered if you had Joe Kline’s number so I could see if we could use his condo? I can’t find it anywhere.”
Quint passed the cell phone to his other ear and looked past his reflection in the tinted window to the night streets of Houston glittering with Christmas decorations. “I don’t have it with me, but you can get it from his son, Dane. He’s listed.”
“Great, thanks.”
“Who’s the ‘we’ in ‘we could use his condo?”’
“A friend.”
“Okay, fair enough,” he murmured. “Just be careful, have fun and leave—”
“—it the way we found it,” Mike said, completing the sentence for him.
“You read my mind.”
“Now, that’s an easy job. Just think work and responsibility.” Before Quint could counter that, Mike asked, “So, are you going to be out at the ranch or what?”
“I’m staying at the Towers Hotel in the city. It’s just easier than being all the way out at the ranch.”
“How’d you convince Grandma that you weren’t staying with them now that you’re back in Houston?”
“Unlike you, your grandmother understands what work is and how important it is to be close to that work.”
“Obviously you haven’t talked to her since you landed.”
“I called and left a message. What’s going on?”
“I talked to Grandma yesterday and she’s worried about you. She thinks you should take advantage of being on your own again, that you should find some nice girl and settle down.”
Quint narrowed his hazel eyes at his own reflection in the tinted windows, a man with gray-streaked dark hair brushed back from a face that was all planes and angles, dominated by a full mustache. Hardly a “kid” a mother had to worry about. “She’s wasting her time on that line of thought.” He’d settled down once and lived to regret it. He’d never regret having Mike, and if he’d been able to have the same child without ever having had Gwen in their lives, he wouldn’t have hesitated for a minute. But it didn’t work that way. “I’m too old to buy into that scenario anymore.”
“Why don’t you rewrite the scenario and forget the ‘settling down’ part? Just find some sexy woman and go with the flow? Let it happen. Relax. Chill out.”
“God, you sound like some hedonistic hippy,” he said. “And any lady my age isn’t into the party scene. She’s sitting at home with her grandchildren.”
Mike laughed at that. “Dad, you’re not old. You’re only 49. Besides, who says you need someone your age? You know what they say—if you’re in this world at the same time, age doesn’t matter. So go with that.”
“If you say, ‘let it all hang out’ I’m hanging up on you,” Quint said.
Mike laughed again. “Okay, okay, I won’t, but can’t you ditch that reception and go party?”
“You go to Tahoe and have a great time, and I’m going to work at a job that’s going to be a killer.”
“I’ll bet you’re even thinking of working on Christmas.”
Without Mike around and with his parents away, Quint would be alone. “It’s just another day.”
“What about on your birthday?”
Quint seldom thought about birthdays, and this one was no exception. “It’s just another day,” he repeated.
“It’s New Year’s and it’s your birthday.”
“Why waste a perfectly good day?”
“I don’t think you remember how to have fun,” Mike said, then chuckled ruefully. “I guess, with it being Christmas and all, I was hoping for a miracle.”
“I don’t need a miracle. I’m fine.”
“I hope so,” Mike murmured, then said, “Merry Christmas, Dad.”
“Merry Christmas, son,” Quint said, then turned off the phone and slipped it into one of the inside pockets of his tuxedo.
Mike would learn soon enough that there were no miracles in this life. Quint had learned that the hard way.
Chapter One
Four hours later
Quint left the gold and silver shimmer of the huge room on the corporate level at LynTech behind him. He closed the doors on the Christmas music and chatter blending in a strange rhythm and went out into the broad corridor. If he hadn’t quit smoking years ago, he would have lit up and let the acrid smoke fill his lungs, perhaps dispersing the frustration and sense of wasted time that dogged him at these events. And with jet lag mixed in, he was ready to make his escape.
He’d needed to make contact, to get a sense of the place, a sense of the people, but it was time to leave. He nodded to a couple going in, got a blast of the noise as the doors opened, then there was just the quiet of conversation farther down the hallway as the doors closed. He looked in that direction and saw three or four people waiting by the elevators. Robert Lewis, the founder of LynTech, and a dapper man with white hair, was deep in conversation with his daughter, Brittany, a stunning woman with flame hair and exquisite green eyes. To her right stood Matt Terrel, one half of the CEO position at LynTech, a sandy-haired man the size of a linebacker. Wedged between Brittany and Terrel and hugging both of them, was the nine-year-old boy who had been hanging around all evening, Anthony, in a miniature tux.
The four people looked happy enough, very close, but he wasn’t about to get near them. He’d talked to Robert earlier that evening to discuss his original vision for LynTech, but had ended up hearing all about his problems with Brittany. Right then the elevator arrived and the doors slid open.
Anthony grabbed Brittany and Matt by their hands, tugging them into the elevator, followed by Robert who turned as the doors started to close. Quint caught the older man’s eye long enough to see Robert smile at him, then the barrier shut and Quint was alone in the corridor.
He headed down past the bank of elevators and went directly to the exit door for the stairs. He pushed it back, and his dress shoes tapped on the metal stairs as he headed down to the bottom floor. He was a bit amazed at the congeniality he’d just witnessed, considering the mood Robert had been in an hour ago. Back then, he’d been very upset over Brittany’s attitude and actions.
“My Brittany just can’t focus, she can’t seem to settle,” the man had said. “She runs here and there. She’s started so many university courses, so many majors that it’s ludicrous, then she just walks away. I’d hoped that getting her to come to work here would help, and I thought it had, but now…” He’d shaken his head as if he’d lost all hope. “I’ve tried, but I admit that I’m at a loss.”
Quint had never been the sort that people opened up to and confided in, partly because he wouldn’t have done that with someone else. He’d learned to keep his distance to make working with people easier, and he really had no answers for anyone’s personal life. With the exception of Mike, he’d made a mess out of his personal life.
His hand skimmed over the coldness of the metal handrail as he rounded the corner on the stairs. He’d told Robert to do what any parent did—his best. That was when the conversation had gone beyond what he wanted to discuss. “I’ve tried, but how I wish her mother was still alive.” Robert had exhaled, a sound that was more of a sigh tinged with a shadow of sorrow. “I think I missed having her mother there more than Brittany did.” Yes, sorrow. “I heard you’d raised your boy alone, so you understand.”
Quint kept going down, level by level. Robert’s comment had struck an unexpectedly still-raw nerve in Quint. Whatever mistakes he had made with Mike wouldn’t have been righted if Gwen had stuck around. But Robert had obviously loved his dead wife. Quint couldn’t relate to that and had been unnerved that the old bitterness about what had happened so many years ago had reared its ugly head.
He went down more quickly, the movement doing nothing to stop the thoughts that came to him in a rush. Plunging into a hurried marriage with Gwen when she’d informed him she was pregnant had begun the nightmare. Then there had been that long year when Michael had been born and Gwen had realized that not only did she not like being a wife or mother, but she wasn’t even going to go through the motions. She’d left with little more than a glance back and a thin explanation about being worried she’d end up hating both him and Michael if she stayed.
Before Robert had been able to say the usual when Quint had told him he was divorced—how sorry he was to hear about Gwen leaving, and how sorry he was that Quint had had to raise Michael alone—Quint had pleaded jet lag and gone to get another drink, which hadn’t helped at all. And neither had the next drink. That’s when he’d known he’d had to get out of there. He was ditching the party, just as Mike had suggested, but he wasn’t going to “find some sexy woman and go with the flow.”
He slowed slightly. Instead of celebrating Christmas, he was going to work on the company prospectus and start his planning. Being brought in as a growth consultant meant a lot of research. Instead of getting crazy for the New Year, he’d probably have an early dinner, get his files in order and ring the New Year in studying financial profiles. He wouldn’t be looking for any miracle beyond the miracle of helping a faltering, previously family-owned business become a viable, thriving corporation.
He reached the lobby level, and stopped, took a deep breath, once, twice, then pulled back the door and stepped out into a side area off the main reception space. He glanced past the elevators, past the glitter of Christmas that seemed to be everywhere in gold and silver, and saw clusters of people waiting for their cars to be brought around to the front. Limos lined the curb out in front and a bar had been set up near a stunning Christmas tree.
He spotted several people he’d been introduced to during the evening in the crowd, but he had no desire to renew any conversation with them. So, turning his back to the crowds, he discovered a hallway that seemed to lead to the rear of the building and probably a secondary exit. He’d head out that way, forego the company-provided limousine and grab the first taxi he spotted to get back to the hotel.
“If you do that, you’ll be sorry, Charlie. I swear, you’ll pay and you’ll pay big-time. And that’s a promise!”
The voice seemed to come out of nowhere, and even though it wasn’t terribly loud, it came to him over the drone of voices behind him. Maybe it was the passionate intensity in every word, he didn’t know, but it made him stop and turn to see where it was coming from.
There were double doors across from the elevators, one true blue, one bright red, and both shared a rainbow logo splashed across them—Just for Kids. It had to be the new location for the company child-care center, a place he’d avoided earlier when tours were being formed to see the facility.
“Charlie, you’re vermin!” the voice said and he could tell it was coming from beyond the red door, which was slightly ajar. He couldn’t hear whether or not Charlie was defending himself, but he could definitely hear the woman. “If I let you live, and at this point in time, that’s a big if, you’re going to pay for this.”
He went closer to the door. The voice, touched with a slight huskiness even through the frustration and anger, was starting to intrigue him…really intrigue him. There was the promise of murder and mayhem in the words, but the voice could have been sexy if the words had been different. That thought was shattered when he eased back the red door and glanced inside the facility as the woman ground out, “You rat! You miserable rat!” Not sexy at all at that moment.
He looked down a short, wide hallway to the center of the facility where twinkling lights seemed to be everywhere, and the scent of baking gingerbread drifted on the air. He couldn’t see anyone, but the voice was still there, somewhere ahead of where he stood.
“If you move, if you so much as turn, it’s going to be your last move.” The words were lower now, a bit muffled. “My panty hose are history, just ruined.” There was a tearing sound, and the woman gasped, “My dress! Oh, great! Now it’s ruined, too, and it’s not even mine! Jenn is going to be as mad as I am. You’ll have her to deal with after I’m through with you.”
This was none of his business, nothing to him if employees or guests got drunk and made out in the day-care center, then had a horrendous fight. Torn dresses, ruined panty hose and threats of murder—none of that stopped him going farther into the center until he could see that the twinkling lights were draped all over a climbing-frame tree that stood dead in the middle of the huge main room. Massive branches that probably masked climbing trails spread to four corners and into what looked like four separate tree houses suspended under a domed ceiling over the carpeted floor.
He was beginning to feel suspiciously like a voyeur and would have left right then if he hadn’t seen movement high in the center of the tree. It was a quick movement, little more than a flashing image of a woman with dark hair and her back to him. Then she was gone, but the voice was still there, echoing in the gingerbread-tinged air.
“What a waste, the dress, the panty hose, the stupid gingerbread family! I thought it would work. Well, color me wrong, very wrong.”
He smiled as he moved a bit closer, the voice drawing him as surely as the words she uttered. Then there was more movement at the bottom of the tree, and he could have sworn he saw a bare foot coming out of an arched hole in the trunk. It was a foot, then another, coming out soles-first, followed by an expanse of legs tangled in some material that could have been ice blue, but the lights were too low to let him see if he was right or not.
What he did know was that a woman was backing out of an arched hole in the tree trunk on her hands and knees. She was slowly inching out, showing a swell of slender hips, and all the time muttering. “Well, never again. Once burned, that’s it with me. You’ve run out of chances, Charlie.”
A narrow waist, then she was out with her back to him. But he could see that she was tiny, slender, and when she shook her head, hair the color of night tumbled around her bare shoulders and partway down her back. He remembered hearing somewhere that long hair was sexy on a woman, but he hadn’t realized the truth of it until that moment. Sexy. Damn sexy. As sexy as the way the fine material of her dress defined a tiny waist, clung to her hips and the ripped hem tangled with her slender legs.
Lucky Charlie, he thought, as something stirred in him, something so basic and sexual, that it startled him. He hadn’t felt anything like this for a woman for what seemed ages, if ever. No matter what his son thought, he’d had a personal life, but right then he knew that he’d never let himself really go.
Just find some sexy woman and go with the flow? Let it happen. Relax. Chill out.
Looking at the woman, he thought that maybe it was time to just go with the flow, to let whatever happened happen and not look back. He was on his own. He wasn’t protecting anyone anymore. He wasn’t looking for a miracle. He was looking at a woman who stirred him, and he hadn’t even seen her face.
He would have spoken then, said something to get her to turn so he could see her face. As if on cue, she started to turn, one arm tucked out of sight in front of her. Quint literally felt his breath catch in his chest with anticipation as he took in her profile, the elegant sweep of her throat, a small chin, softly parted lips, a tiny nose, improbably long lashes.
Then she faced him, her features filled with delicate beauty that he knew could haunt a man’s dreams. When she saw him, dark eyes widened with shock, and in the next second, she screamed, her hands flew up, and something came flying through the air toward Quint.
Amy Blake hadn’t known there was anyone else in the day-care center until she’d turned and found a tall, lean stranger, all in black, no more than two feet from where she stood by the tree. The world suddenly moved in slow motion as her first thought was to protect herself. And that meant instinctively thrusting out her hands to ward the man off. That’s when Charlie, the fat black-and-white pet rat, flew out of her hands and sailed through the air, headed right for the stranger.