The Christmas Secret

Selling your home?

Looking to get top dollar in today’s competitive real estate market?

Call Samantha Elliott at READY SET SOLD 1-800-555-SOLD www.Ready-Set-Sold.net The card was identical to the one Ms. DeAngelo had given him, except for where it said Call Samantha Elliott.

“I’m one of the owners of Ready Set Sold. We’ve been hired to get this house ready to sell. Is this …?” Her voice trailed off the way it often had, leaving her thoughts unspoken.

His fear downgraded to anxiety. She didn’t know his secret. That’s not why she was here. “It’s my grandmother’s house. It was. She left it to me.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. About your grandmother, I mean. Not the house.” She glanced back at the street, then at her watch. “Um … I’m meeting my business partners here. I guess I’m early. I can wait …” A car door slammed and Sam looked relieved. “Oh, good. Here’s Claire.”

Right. Claire. The woman he’d met earlier in the week walked briskly up the front sidewalk and climbed the stairs, confident in spite of her high heels. Sam, he noticed, was wearing work boots. Toes reinforced with steel, no doubt. Just like her heart.

Claire extended her hand. “Mr. Harris. Hello. Nice to see you again. I see you’ve already met our carpenter, Samantha Elliott. Kristi Callahan, our interior decorator, should be here any minute.”

He accepted her handshake. “Please, call me AJ. Mr. Harris is my father.”

Sam’s blue eyes went icy at the mention of the old man. He couldn’t fault her for that.

An old white minivan in desperate need of a muffler pulled up and sputtered to a stop behind the dark blue truck and the silver-gray sedan already parked in front of the house. All three vehicles had the Ready Set Sold logo on their doors.

The third woman joined them, and Claire introduced her. “AJ Harris, this is Kristi Callahan, decorator extraordinaire.”

AJ was suddenly overwhelmed with a feeling of being … overwhelmed. This was a bad idea. A very bad one. Not in a million years would he have hired this company if he’d known Sam was one of the owners. He should have done his homework, checked out their website, something. Instead he had been swayed by Claire DeAngelo’s no-nonsense approach and businesslike demeanor. Her company would take care of everything and he would walk away with enough cash for him and his son to start a new life, well away from the woman who had just barged into his old one.

“We’ll do a walk-through this morning,” Claire said. “After we’ve done the inspection, we’ll prepare a list of the repairs and upgrades needed and come up with a design plan for staging the house.”

It all sounded so easy, except he knew now those repairs would be done by Sam.

“Should we get started?” Claire asked.

He looked at Sam again and felt himself drawn into her soft, doe-eyed gaze. She was beautiful and he hated her for it. He wanted to say no, he’d changed his mind and would come up with another plan for selling the house, yet his latent curiosity wanted to keep her here. Find out if maybe she had changed. It was foolhardy and dangerous, but he hadn’t felt this alive since the last time he’d been with her.

He stepped aside, allowing the three women into his home and Samantha Elliott back into his life.

Samantha reluctantly followed her two business partners inside. She really needed to pay more attention to the business end of the company. If she had, she would have known they’d been hired by Andrew James Harris of the Seattle Harris family, and she could have put a stop to it before he signed the contract. The last time she’d worked for him had not ended well, and this new undertaking had disaster written all over it.

Still, she assured herself, the past was the past and there was no way AJ could discover the secret she’d buried with it. The only other person who knew the truth was her mother, and anyone acquainted with Tildy Elliott would never believe the story. They would assume it was simply one of the many delusions that governed Tildy’s life.

You’ll be okay, Sam told herself. Besides, Claire and Kristi always had her back. If the situation got out of hand, she’d convince them to hire another carpenter for this job. That meant she’d have to tell them about her ill-fated affair with AJ Harris, but she wouldn’t have to tell them everything.

Now, with AJ within arm’s reach and as unattainable as ever, she was still struggling to overcome the shock of having him open the door. Three years ago she had been desperately in love with him, thought they were perfect together. Her sorry excuse for a life had made it easy to relate to his tall, dark and tortured disposition. What little they had shared about their pasts had forged a deep, emotional connection between them … or so she’d thought at the time. But he was AJ Harris of the Seattle Harrises and she was Samantha Nobody. A reality his father had zeroed in on in the cruelest way possible and one that AJ had agreed with, leaving her to cope with the aftermath of their affair … alone.

“Let’s start right here in the foyer,” Claire said. “The millwork is in unbelievably good condition and it’s never been painted. The whole house is like this, right?” AJ nodded.

“What do you think, Kristi? I know the current trend is to paint the trim, but the natural wood suits this old craftsman architecture.”

Kristi, camera in hand, was already taking photographs. “I agree. Once the wallpaper’s been stripped and we give the walls a fresh coat of paint—I’m seeing ivory or off-white—this room will feel brighter and more spacious. I love this old oak hall tree, too. It should stay but we’ll get rid of a lot of the clutter and replace all these scatter mats with a runner.” She lowered her camera for a moment. “I love this banister. With the holidays coming, I’ll stage the house for Christmas.” She looped the camera strap around her neck and made a wide, sweeping gesture at the staircase. “Faux greenery, big red velvet bows—it’ll be stunning.”

“Great idea. What are your thoughts, Sam?”

Sam thought she should make a run for it. Clearly not what Claire had in mind. And as for Christmas … bah humbug. “Taking down the wallpaper will be easy, and I can install a new light fixture, too. This one isn’t original and really doesn’t suit the house.”

AJ, who stood with both hands shoved in the pockets of his black jeans, looked up at the ceiling and studied the out-of-place pendant as though seeing it for the first time. Then he looked at Sam. Their gazes locked and held, and a rush of long-dormant lust uncoiled in her belly.

This was not good.

AJ looked away, but she knew he’d felt it, too. Judging by the way Claire was eyeing them, even she’d picked up on it. Great. Now this would be a hot topic at their weekly business meeting tomorrow morning. Sam wouldn’t have to tell them everything. Only that she and their new client had once had a brief affair followed by a messy breakup.

Kristi, focused on the monitor of her camera and the offending light fixture, was oblivious to everything else. “Got it,” she said. “Okay, that’s it for this room.”

With shaky hands Sam scrawled a reminder on her clipboard to check the storage facility for old light fixtures. She’d picked up several at a demolition sale last winter and one of them might work here.

“We can discuss the living and dining rooms later,” Claire said. “Let’s move on to the kitchen. From what I remember when I was here the other day, that room and the main bath upstairs need the most work.”

Just her lousy luck, Sam thought. Those were the rooms that took the longest to renovate, which meant this job could take a while. She shot another hasty glance at AJ, in time to catch a flash of panic. Hmm. There was something in the kitchen he didn’t want them to see, and Sam knew with absolute certainty it was more than a sink full of dirty dishes. Claire was already on her way, though, so they trooped through the house behind her.

Sam hung back and tried to ignore AJ’s presence while she took in the room. The kitchen wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad, either. The cabinets were dated, but fresh paint and new hardware would fix that. The appliances were relatively new, but the gold-flecked countertop and starburst-patterned linoleum screamed seventies. They definitely had to be replaced.

Kristi was already taking photographs. “There’s way too much clutter,” she said, then she lowered her camera and smiled at AJ. “Sorry, but having all these canisters and gadgets on display makes the room feel much smaller than it is. We want potential buyers to walk in and immediately see a place for their espresso machine instead of thinking their things will never work in here.”

AJ shrugged. “All these things belonged to my grandmother. I would have cleared everything out, but I wasn’t sure what to do with them.”

Kristi flashed a reassuring smile. “That’s what we’re here for,” she said. “By the time we’re finished, it’ll be a brand-new kitchen.” She fingered the floral curtains on the kitchen window. “Vintage. Good shape, too.” Then something outside seemed to catch her attention. “Oh, what an adorable little boy. Is that your son?”

Sam’s heart thundered in her chest. AJ had a child?

Chapter Two

Brimming with anger and overcome with grief, Sam steadied herself by leaning against the door frame.

Breathe,she told herself.Just breathe. You can get through this.

AJ’s nod in response to Kristi’s question was almost imperceptible. He didn’t look at Sam, but she still detected the same raw emotion that had greeted her at the door, along with the panic she’d seen when Claire suggested they come in here.

“How old is he?” Kristi asked. “Three? Four?”

AJ still wouldn’t look at Sam, and she couldn’t have torn her gaze away from him if she tried. “No,” he said. “He’s … ah … just two.”

Two. AJ had a two-year-old son. Which meant he must have a wife. A wife who was probably already married to him when he’d been sleeping with Sam. Which meant he’d been busy getting his wife pregnant while Sam had grappled with the decision to give her son a better life than she ever could.

Oh, God. She couldn’t breathe. Her heart raced as scenes from the past flashed through her mind at a dizzying pace, ending with AJ’s father. James Harris had said his son had a history of getting involved with women like her and then dumping them. She hadn’t believed him, even told him as much, but that hadn’t ended the conversation. He’d said that if she kept seeing AJ, he would put her out of business. Then he’d followed up that threat by saying her mother needed to be institutionalized and asking if she was prepared to do that. Blindsided—how in hell had he found out about her mother?—Sam knew then he wasn’t just a dangerous man, he was evil. Her life was already hard enough, and she thought being in love was supposed to make it easier.

Ending things with AJ had been the easy part. He had accepted it with a dismissive shrug, exactly like the one his father had given her when she said putting her mother in an institution wasn’t an option. Like father, like son? She hadn’t completely believed it then, but she did now.

A month later she suspected she might be pregnant, and by the time she’d moved past the denial and finally saw a doctor, she was further along than she’d realized. She couldn’t abandon her mother, but neither could she raise a child in the unstable environment she’d grown up in. The rest was inevitable.

“He’s adorable. Cute dog, too.” As usual, Kristi was oblivious to the elephant in the room. “He looks tall for his age. Must get that from his dad.”