Mistletoe Man

She paused a moment to let the significance of that comment sink in, and then she went on. “He hired me without any references, and he allowed me the flexibility I needed to keep my family together. I owe him a lot for all that. And I intend to help him in any way I can.”

“So that’s all there is behind this impassioned defense? Gratitude?” He tilted his head speculatively. “I wonder. Could he, perhaps, be more than your employer?”

She narrowed her eyes. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Are you lovers?” He said the word so offhandedly she could hardly believe she had heard him correctly.

“Lovers?” A fire rose in her cheeks. “Of course not!”

She was outraged by the question, and yet her blush was all the more intense because, in a way, Daniel had stumbled closer to the truth than he imagined. Strange as it sounded, she had accepted this desperate mission in part because Robert Hamilton was not her lover. He desperately wanted that title…and more. It was his dream, he had hinted, to be her husband someday. It was because that dream would never come true that she felt obligated to make it up to him somehow.

“No,” she repeated more quietly, trying to quell the stupid blush. “We’re not lovers.” Not that it was any of Daniel McKinley’s business.

Daniel’s mouth twisted in an ironic smile. “You know, I’m almost tempted to believe you. You’re much too young to have a lover if the mere word makes you blush.”

“Tempted to believe me?” She rose to her feet, finally too furious to play this stupid game of insinuation and veiled hostility. “My private life has no bearing on these negotiations, Mr. McKinley, but, just for the record, if I’m blushing it’s anger you see on my cheeks, not embarrassed innocence. I’m not accustomed to having my word doubted, and frankly I don’t appreciate your condescending attitude toward Robert, who has been a very good friend to me, and to a lot of people.”

His lips thinned. “Perhaps if he had spent less time on friendship and more time on his business—”

But that was too much. She broke in heedlessly, her voice cold and contemptuous, finding with fatal certainty the phrase she’d uttered three years ago.

“Not every employer is a money-mad workaholic with no time for personal relationships, Mr. McKinley.”

The instant the words were out, she knew she had crossed some invisible line. She saw him draw his head back slightly, a fighter reacting to a surprise jab. So he remembered, too, she thought—remembered the exact words she had used that day, though he obviously hadn’t expected her to use them again.

Deep beneath her anger, she felt a dull pang of regret for having wrenched open their mutual wound. “More importantly, though,” she said, talking fast, as if hurrying to bury the insult, “you should learn that not every employee is a rat ready to leap overboard at the first sign of trouble.”

The air in the room had gone cold, as surely as if someone had opened a window to the storm outdoors. Daniel was still, frozen except for a subtle whitening around his lips. Her throat felt very dry again, and her heart was suddenly like a stone in her chest. She had, she knew, just put paid to all of Robert’s hopes.

“Perhaps not,” Daniel said quietly, lethally. “But I’m quite sure that, if you think back on my experience as your employer, Miss Blaisdell, you’ll understand why I might have…shall we say.. .underestimated your passion for loyalty?”

It was an emotional bull’s-eye and she felt the shaft of his insult pierce straight through her. Somehow managing not to wince, she bent over his desk and, with fingers that were visibly shaking, began to gather up Robert’s papers.

“Yes, of course, I understand perfectly,” she said, glad that the trembling in her fingers had not penetrated her voice. “If you’ll just please send for another helicopter…I’m sure there must be one somewhere for hire…Robert will pay the fare, whatever it is…and I’ll not bother you any further—”

“Damn it.” Damel put out his hand, staying hers by encircling her wrist with his thumb and fingers. “Lindsay—”

But he never got to finish his sentence. Suddenly Roc was there beside them again, the black of his clothes and the gleam of his hook as startling as ever.

“Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen,” Roc said, clearing his throat loudly, “but I just wanted to report that I’m off to make up the bed in the guest room.”

Daniel’s hand tightened on her wrist. Both of them stared, uncomprehending, at the big man. Lindsay saw that his huge arms were full of pale green linens and creamy white blankets.

“The guest room?” The words were Daniel’s, but they were echoing hollowly in Lindsay’s mind, too. “The guest room? Why?”

“Look out the window, Danny Boy. While you’ve had your nose stuck in those papers, that storm’s been huffing and puffing and trying to blow your house down.”

Like a dazed child, Lindsay turned toward the picture window. Even the trees seemed to have disappeared behind a curtain of white. Not just snow. A blizzard. Oh, my God, she thought. A blizzard.

Daniel hadn’t bothered to look. His gaze was steady on Roc, though his hand still manacled Lindsay’s wrist. “No flying?”

“Not unless you want your helicopter to end up a Christmas ornament on the nearest Douglas fir.”

“How long?” Daniel’s words were tight, economical, grim.

“They’re saying twenty-four hours,” Roc reported, rolling his eyes skeptically. “But what do those windbags ever know about it? Could be an hour or a month.”

Daniel turned slowly toward Lindsay, his gaze dropping to their locked hands. He stared in silence a moment, and then a mirthless smile twisted his full lips.

“Well, how about that?” he said, but he didn’t seem to be talking to her. He shook her wrist slightly, and the movement made the papers slide helplessly out of her numb grasp. As the white sheets spilled over the desk, onto the floor, he looked up. Finally their eyes met.

“Perhaps we’d better progress to first names, Miss Blaisdell. It looks as if we’re going to be roommates.”

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_ea1a51dc-5a19-5e3a-aba7-7d36d51e3f55)

DANIEL paced in front of the picture window, trying not to listen as Lindsay talked to Christy on the telephone. The younger girl was obviously all broken up to hear that Lindsay wasn’t coming home. From what he could hear of the one-way conversation, Daniel deduced that she dreaded the thought of spending the night with her grandparents and was putting up quite a fuss.

“Christy, honey, I’m sorry, but you’re just too young to stay alone all night,” Lindsay was saying again. She’d been like a record stuck on that sentence for the past five minutes. Daniel marveled at her patience even while he longed to snatch the telephone out of her hand and tell that spoiled kid to shut up, for God’s sake. There were worse things than an impromptu sleep-over at grandma’s house.

But then he hadn’t ever been very good with kids. Even his own.

Especially his own.

So he refrained from suggesting that a firmer hand might cut down some of the wrangling. Who was he to criticize? And besides, Lindsay looked so wrung out from the battle of wills already. Make that battles, plural-the one with her sister and the one with him. She looked whipped. She clearly wasn’t a born scrapper, was she?

In fact, now that he’d had time to observe her more closely, he began to feel slightly ashamed of the tone he’d taken with her over the Hamilton Homes deal. Was he just so accustomed to playing hardball professionally that he didn’t know when to ease up?

Or was it worse than that? Was it perhaps petty and vindictive…and personal? Was it maybe that he hadn’t been able to resist retaliating for what she had said about him all those years ago?

Looking at her now, with the haze of swirling snow behind her, he could almost see it all happening again.

“McKinley’s wife is missing? Well, I’m not surprised—she probably ran away from him,” Lindsay had blurted angrily to one of the other stenographers that day, clearly unaware that Daniel was standing in the doorway behind her. “Who wouldn’t? Daniel McKinley thinks he’s wonderful, but he’s just a money-mad workaholic.”

In all fairness, Lindsay couldn’t have known the truth. Daniel wouldn’t discover the truth himself for two whole nightmarish days. The roaring void of grief and pain that had opened at his feet had not yet sucked him down into its final black hopelessness. But, maddened by his fear, he had been looking for someone to lash out at, and Lindsay was elected.

“You, there.” His voice had sounded vicious, weird and steely, a half-human, robot voice. “What is your name?”

Everyone in the room had gasped, he remembered. At first Lindsay didn’t answer. Her small, oval face had blanched to a sickening, bloodless white, and her eyes had registered mute horror. “Lindsay Blaisdell,” she had whispered finally.

“Well, you have five minutes to clean out your desk, Miss Blaisdell,” he had ordered in that same alien voice. She was afraid of that voice, he could see that. He was a little afraid of it himself. “You’re fired.”

He passed his hand over his eyes, as if to wipe away the vision. He didn’t want to relive that day. Not now, not ever again. Recalling himself with an effort to the present, he swiveled and paced to the window on the other side of the fire. A safe distance—from there the crackle of the logs muffled Lindsay’s words into unintelligible coos and murmurs. He dropped onto the sofa and watched her.

Lindsay Blaisdell. It was ironic, wasn’t it? Of all the people with whom he could have been snowbound…

He still hadn’t quite recovered from the shock of seeing her climb out of that helicopter. At first he’d thought she hadn’t changed a bit. With her long, dark, braided hair wet and tousled from the snow, her cheeks a bright, wind-stung pink, she had looked very much like the naive woman-child she’d been back then.

But fifteen minutes in her company had changed that impression for good. He took a sip of the coffee Roc had left on the end table and tried to analyze where exactly the change had come from.