Bride Under the Mistletoe: The Magic of a Family Christmas. SUSAN MEIER
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believed she would never be happy again. But because he was so self-absorbed, their marriage was far from perfect.
Silence stretched out in Betsy’s sunny bedroom as Wendy walked around the room tidying the dresser and bedside tables.
“You know, it won’t be the nurse’s job to read Harry a story or tuck him in at night,” Betsy said, referring to her six-year-old son.
Wendy turned from the dresser.
“So if you want to keep coming over to do that, I know it would make Harry happy. He loves it when you read to him.”
Wendy smiled. “I love it, too.”
WENDY Winston twisted the key to silence her small car and turned to the boy on the seat beside her. Six-year-old Harry Martin blinked at her from behind brown-framed glasses. A knit cap covered his short yellow hair. His blue eyes were far too serious to be those of a child. A thick winter coat swallowed his thin body. His mittened hand clutched a bag of toy soldiers.
“I’m really sorry to have to bring you to work.”
He pushed his glasses up his nose. “S’okay.”
She wanted to say not really. It wasn’t okay that he’d be forced to sit and play with his plastic soldiers for God only knew how long while she worked. It wasn’t okay that he’d lost his mom. Or that Betsy’s lawyer had been out of town when she’d died. It had been four weeks before Attorney Costello had finally called to tell Wendy that Betsy had granted her custody of Harry in her will, and another few days before social services could pull him out of his foster home and give Wendy custody—and then only temporarily.
Regardless of what Betsy’s will said, Harry’s biological father’s rights superseded her custody bequest. But no one knew where Harry’s dad was, so, for now, Wendy had a child who needed her, and, for the first time in two years, she had someone to anticipate Christmas with. Though social services was searching for Harry’s dad, Wendy believed she and Harry could have as long as a month to shop, bake cookies and decorate. If it killed her she would make it the best month before Christmas this little boy had ever had.
She smiled. “I promise I’ll make this up to you.”
“Can we bake cookies?”
Her heart soared. It seemed that what he needed done for him was what she needed to do. They were the perfect combination. Maybe fate wasn’t so despicable after all.
“You bet we can bake cookies. Any kind you want.”
Wicked wind battered them with freezing rain as they raced across the icy parking lot to the executive entrance for Barrington Candies. Juggling her umbrella and her purse as they ran toward the door, she rummaged for her key, but before she found it, the right side of the glass double doors burst open.
Cullen Barrington stood in the entryway. Six foot three, with black hair and eyes every bit as dark, and wearing a pale-blue sweater that was probably cashmere, the owner of Barrington Candies was the consummate playboy. He was rich, handsome and rarely around, assigning her boss Paul McCoy the task of managing the day-to-day operations of the company while he handled the big-picture details from the comfort of his home in Miami. Cullen was also so tight with money that no one in the plant had gotten a raise since control of Barrington Candies had been handed to him by his mother.
Scrooge.
That’s what she’d taken to calling the man who’d summoned her to work on a Saturday afternoon. Even though he’d surprised everyone with his offer to fill in for her boss so Mr. McCoy could take an extended Christmas vacation, Wendy wasn’t fooled into thinking he’d changed his ways and become generous. Though he’d probably called her in today to prepare before he took over on Monday morning, he’d paid no thought to the fact that she would lose her day off. She’d lose precious minutes with Harry. She’d lose the chance for them to enjoy whatever time they had together, and maybe even the chance for her to show him life wasn’t entirely bad, just parts of it.
Even if, some days, she didn’t quite believe that herself.
Occupied with her thoughts, she slipped on the ice and plowed into Cullen. She braced her hand on his chest to stop her forward momentum and it sank into the downy cashmere covering the hard muscle of his chest. His body was like a rock.
Confused, because she thought all rich men were soft and pampered, she looked up. He glanced down. And everything inside Wendy stilled. She swore the world stopped revolving. As dark as moonless midnight, his eyes held hers. Her femininity stirred inside her.
That confused her even more. She hadn’t felt anything for a man since her husband’s death, and Cullen Barrington was the last man on the planet she wanted to be attracted to. A playboy from Miami? No thanks. She’d glimpsed him a time or two in the four years she’d been working for his company and never felt anything but distaste at the way he treated his employees. She had no idea what was going on with her hormones, but it had to be an aberration of some sort.
She stepped away, and as the door swung closed behind her a bell rang.
Funny, she didn’t remember a bell being on that door.
She turned to investigate and sure enough someone had tied a bell to the spring mechanism at the top of the door. Probably Wendell, the janitor, making sure he’d be alerted if one of the executives sneaked in to check up on him.
“Why did you bring your little boy?”
She pulled off her mittens. “Oh, I don’t know. Because I wasn’t supposed to be working today? Because it’s such short notice that I couldn’t get a sitter?” She shrugged. “Take your pick.”
His gorgeous eyes narrowed. He obviously didn’t like her speaking so freely with him.
Wendy almost groaned at her stupidity. A single woman who might get custody of a little boy couldn’t afford to be fired!
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you. It’s just cold and I had things to do. So tell me what you want to work on and we can get started.”
“I’d like to catch up on what’s been going on, so I’ll need production schedules and the financials. Once you help me find those, you can go home.”
He didn’t smile. Didn’t give any reason at all for her heart to catch at the smooth baritone of his voice, but it did. Her entire body felt warm and soft, feminine in response to his masculinity.
She stepped back. She did not want to be attracted to him. It had taken her two long, miserable years to get over Greg’s death. And she refused to go through the misery of loss again by being attracted to a playboy who—as sure as the sun rises every day—would dump her.
Of course, she might not be attracted to Cullen as much as she was simply waking up from the sexual dead. It had been two years. And she had been feeling like her normal self for at least three months. Maybe this was just a stage?
She peeked at Cullen, knowing that beneath that soft sweater was a very hard male body. Something sweet and syrupy floated through her. Moving her gaze upward, she met his simmering dark eyes and knew she could get lost in them.
She swallowed. Nope. Not a stage. It was him. She was attracted to him.
He turned to walk back to the office. Following him, she caught Harry’s hand and brought him along with her.
“As far as the financials go, I don’t want those fancy reports that go out in the annual statement. I want the spreadsheets. The nuts and bolts.”
She stopped with a frown. She had access to everything, but if he was looking for the whys behind the line entries, she couldn’t help him. “Why didn’t you call Nolan, the accountant?”
He faced her. “Are you saying you can’t get me the financials?”
“No.