Kitabı oxu: «Bride Under the Mistletoe: The Magic of a Family Christmas»

For the people at Gardners Candies in

Tyrone, Pennsylvania!

Thanks for a great tour and your help with this story!

Merry Christmas!

For my mom, who was the inspiration

For Harry’s Christmas cookie painting!

PROLOGUE

“I’VE hired a nurse.”

“Really?” Wendy Winston tried to sound surprised by her next-door neighbor’s announcement, but she wasn’t. Betsy’s cancer hadn’t responded to treatment. Wendy had been able to help Betsy struggle through the aftereffects of the initial round of chemotherapy, but her friend needed real care now. Care beyond what a neighbor could provide.

“I appreciate all the help you’ve given me over the past few weeks, but I’ll bet you’ll be glad for the break.”

Fluffing the fat pillow before she slid it under Betsy’s head, Wendy laughed. “You think I’ll be glad to go back to an empty house?”

Betsy frowned. “I’ve always wondered why you didn’t move back to your family in Ohio after your husband died.”

She shrugged. “Memories mostly. It seemed too abrupt just to leave when he died. I needed time to process everything.”

“It’s been two years.”

“I also have a job.”

“No one stays away from family for a job.”

She grinned at Betsy. “Would you believe I can’t sell that monstrosity I call a house?”

Betsy laughed.

“One of these days I’ll have the kitchen and bathrooms remodeled and then I can put it on the market and go.”

Even Wendy heard the wistfulness in her own voice so she wasn’t surprised when Betsy said, “It makes you sad to think of leaving.”

“Four years ago I settled here with the assumption that Barrington would be my home. I can’t shake the feeling that this is where I belong. No matter how alone I am.”

“Why didn’t you and Greg ever have kids?”

“He wanted to be done with his residency before we even tried.”

“Makes sense.”

Wendy smiled sadly.

“But it didn’t make you happy.”

“If we’d done what I wanted and had a child I wouldn’t be alone right now.” She sighed. “Not that I only wanted a child to keep from being lonely. It was more than that. My whole life I longed to be a mom. But what Greg wanted always came first. Some days I struggle with that.”

“That’s one of those tough choices that happens in a marriage. Nobody’s fault.”

Wendy turned away. “Yeah.” She wouldn’t burden Betsy with stories of how her late husband had been so focused and determined that he frequently didn’t even listen when she talked. She didn’t want to give Betsy any more to worry about or the wrong idea. She had loved Greg and missed him so much after he died that she had genuinely 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.”

CHAPTER ONE

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. I have them. Everything is in my filing cabinet. But—”

She stopped talking. First, his eyes were simmering sexily again and her whole body began to hum—which made her want to groan in frustration. Second, she was making this harder than it had to be. All she had to do was find a few documents for him. The faster she found them, the sooner she’d be at home making cookies.

She squeezed Harry’s hand. “I can get you anything you need.”

“Thank you.”

Cullen turned and resumed his walk to the executive suite. Wendy and Harry scurried behind him.

In her office, she stripped off her coat and removed Harry’s. Cullen stood patiently by her desk as she rummaged through her purse for the key to the filing cabinet. Walking over, she noticed the door to her boss’s office was open. Papers were strewn across his desk.

“Oh, you’re already working?”

Cullen nodded. “I typed a few letters. But there isn’t a printer in the office. I’m guessing I have to send my things to a remote printer, but I’m not sure which one is which.”

“E-mail them to me and I’ll print them.”

“Why don’t you just come to the computer with me and show me which printer to send them to?”

Okay. So he didn’t want her to see what he’d written. No big deal. Whatever he wanted to print was probably personal. Not her business. She not only got the message; she also agreed. The less she knew about this man and the faster she got away from him, the better.

She unlocked the cabinet, pulled out the accordion file that contained the backup documentation for the financials for the year that had passed and handed it to him.

He glanced at the packet, then back up at her. Her stomach flip-flopped. His eyes were incredible. Dark. Shiny. Sexy. And the perfect complement to his angular face. He had the look of a matador. Strong. Bold. Everything about him was dramatic, male.

“Is the forecast in here?”

With a quick shake of her head, she rid herself of those ridiculous thoughts, not sure where the heck they kept coming from but knowing they were absolutely wrong. She returned her attention to the open drawer and pulled the file folder for the five-year plan. “Here you go.”

“Great.”

Cullen took the folder from her hands and stepped back. He’d thought that bringing in Paul’s administrative assistant would make his life easier, but this woman wasn’t at all what he’d been expecting. For a widow, she was young and incredibly good-looking. Long, loosely curled red hair fell to the shoulders of her thick green cable-knit sweater. Her cheeks had become pink in the cold, accenting the green of her eyes. Low-riding jeans hugged a shapely bottom.

He wasn’t sure what the heck had happened when she’d fallen into his arms after she’d slipped on the ice. Their eyes had met and he’d felt a jolt of something so foreign it had rendered him speechless. He couldn’t blame it on the fact that she was attractive. He knew hundreds of gorgeous women. Women even prettier than she was. He couldn’t say it was because she was sexy. He knew sexy women. And he couldn’t say he’d felt a jolt because he was happy to see her. He didn’t know her.

But whatever the hell that jolt was, he was smart enough to ignore it.

He was also taking that damned bell off the door. The whole point of having an executive entry was so the workers didn’t know when he was there or he wasn’t!

“Come on. Show me how to send these letters to a remote printer.”

She followed him into the office of the current company president and her little boy followed her.

“What’s your name?”

“Harry.”

Cullen couldn’t help it; he laughed. “Like Harry Potter?”

“No, like my grandpa.”

He turned to Wendy Winston. “So your father was a Harry?”

“No, his grandfather’s name was Harry.”

Confused, Cullen stopped and faced them again. He looked from Wendy to Harry and back to Wendy again. They didn’t look a thing alike. So the kid probably resembled his dad which meant that Grandpa Harry had been her late husband’s dad. Whatever the deal, he really didn’t care. He was trying to make light conversation so the afternoon would go more smoothly. If they wanted to play guessing games, he wasn’t interested.

He turned and walked behind the desk, falling into the uncomfortable desk chair. With a few keystrokes he minimized his letters and left a blank screen. He rose and motioned for Wendy to take a seat in the chair.

“Show me which printer to send these to.”

She sat. “Okay. Well, you just do all the things you need to do to print—” Using the mouse, she clicked the appropriate icon to get the print menu.

When the print menu popped on the screen, he leaned down to get a closer look. The scent of something floral drifted to his nose. With a slight movement of his eyes, he took in her shiny red hair—more the color of cinnamon than autumn leaves—then let his gaze drift down to her shapely breasts.

Damn it! Why did he keep looking at her?

“Once you get this screen, you scroll to the top, click this menu to get the available printers, and choose this printer.Your documents will be sent to the printer by my desk.”

He cleared his throat. “Okay. I get it. Thank you. You can go now.”

She rose from the desk chair and caught Harry’s hand. “I can leave?”

“Yes. All I wanted were the financials and production reports, and to know which printer was closest.” He plopped down on the chair again and she turned to go but another thought struck him. “Wait!”

She faced him.

“You aren’t leaving town, are you?”

She laughed and he frowned. The last review in the personnel file for Wendy Winston had described her as quiet and unassuming, but extremely capable. He’d never know that from her behavior today. Of course, the way he kept staring at her, his attention continually caught by parts of her body he normally wouldn’t look at with an employee, wasn’t normal either. All because she’d fallen into his arms.

So maybe that brush had affected her as much as him? And maybe he should just ignore the way she was acting?

After a few seconds of silence, she gasped. “Oh, you weren’t kidding about my leaving town?”

“Why did you think I was kidding? Everybody else in this company is out of town.”

She gaped at him. “Because it’s the holiday! People are going to parties and visiting friends and relatives for Thanksgiving!”

“Right.” Because his holiday had been uneventful he’d almost forgotten it altogether. He looked down at his papers, then back up at her. “I’m not Scrooge. I’m just trying to make sure I don’t lose my source for information.”

She pulled in a breath. Her breasts rose and fell. Realizing he was staring, he jerked his eyes upward, cursing himself for acting like a horny teenager.

“No, Harry and I are staying in town. Even weekends.”

“Great.” Forcing his mind off her sweater and to the mission he was here to accomplish, he rubbed his hands together over the keyboard. “I’ll call you if I need you.”

She turned and left the office. Though Cullen had thought his attention was on the family business, where it was supposed to be, he couldn’t resist glancing up to watch the sway of her hips as she left.

Because her back was to him, he braced his elbow on his desk and his chin on his closed fist, letting himself watch as he tried to figure this out. He felt bewitched. But he couldn’t be. They hadn’t spent more than ten minutes together. And she wasn’t his type. He liked blondes. And she was a widow. A serious woman, not to be trifled with.

So he wouldn’t trifle. He would be the perfect gentleman for the few weeks he had to run this company, and then he’d leave Barrington, Pennsylvania, and, he hoped, never again even set foot in the town that bore his family’s name.

Wendy hustled Harry into the foyer of her echoing home. Her house was a monstrosity, a five-bedroom, three-bath mansion built in the eighteen hundreds that had been updated with the times, but had gone into disrepair when the last owner had left town and let it sit empty for over a year. She and her husband had purchased it with the idea of turning it into their dream home. They’d gotten as far as ripping out carpeting and finishing the hardwood floors throughout the house, chucking wood paneling in favor of plastered walls and installing a new furnace, roof and windows. But Greg had died before they even touched the bathrooms or the kitchen, which could best be described as early-American. As in Revolutionary War.

She turned up the thermostat to accommodate the howling wind outside and pointed Harry in the direction of the kitchen.

Creamsicle, her fat orange-and-white cat, thumped down the stairs and wrapped himself around her legs in greeting.

She motioned to the cat, diverting Harry’s attention to him. “Harry, this is Creamsicle. Creamsicle, this is Harry.”

The cat blinked. Harry grinned. “You have a cat!”

“Yes, but he’s old and moody, so you have to be nice to him.” She stooped down to pet Creamsicle, who ignored Harry—which was probably for the best. “I seem to remember something about Christmas cookies.”

Harry’s eyes grew as big as her cat’s belly. “Can we make them red and green?”

She began walking to the kitchen. “Hey, if you want to paint stained-glass windows on the church cookies, that’s fine by me.”

“We’re making churches?”

“I have a cutter for a church. One for Santa. An angel.”

She walked to the cabinet by the refrigerator. Her cupboards were knotty pine that actually made her dizzy. Especially when combined with the green-and-white print in the linoleum floor. She’d replaced the busy leaf-print curtains with simple taupe panels, removed the floral wallpaper and painted the walls a soothing sage color. But she hadn’t been able to replace the cabinets or the floor and the floor/cabinet combo sometimes gave her motion sickness.

“Here’s a bell, a wreath, a Christmas tree,” she said, pulling the cookie cutters from the deep drawer. “Let me grab the ingredients for the cookies and we’ll get this show on the road.”

“Don’t you think I should take off my coat first?”

She laughed, walking toward him, as Creamsicle waddled in and took his place on the floor in the corner, watching her and the newcomer.

“I don’t have any kids so I’m going to forget some obvious things every once in a while.” She unzipped his coat and tugged on the sleeve to pull it off then yanked his cap off his head. “Don’t be afraid to remind me!”

“Okay.” He pushed his glasses up his nose.

After stowing his coat and hat in the hall closet, Wendy gathered sugar, vanilla and flour from the cupboards and eggs, butter and milk from the refrigerator. Harry climbed on a chair.

“Oh, no! No sitting for you! You have to help.”

He peeked up at her. “Really?”

“Sure.” She handed him a measuring cup. “Fill that with flour.”

Standing on the chair, he peered into the canister, then back at her. “Fill it?”

“Just dip it in.” She cupped his soft little hand over the handle of the measuring cup and scooped it into the flour to fill it. “See? Like that.”

“Cool!”

“I’m guessing you’ve never baked before.”

He shook his head. “My mom didn’t have time.”

Wendy nearly cursed at her stupid mistake. The last thing she wanted to do was remind him of his mother, but before she had a chance to say anything, the phone rang.

Wendy walked to the wall unit talking. “You never having baked isn’t a big deal. In fact, it will be fun for me to teach you. Something new for both of us.” She lifted the phone receiver. “Hello?”

“This isn’t the right forecast.”

“Oh, hello, Mr. Barrington.”

“This forecast has draft written on it. Every copy in the file has draft stamped on it. Isn’t there a final version?”

“Yes.” She thought for a second, wondering why her final copy wasn’t in the file, but in the end decided it didn’t matter. “I probably have to print you another copy.”

“Great. I’ll see you when you get here.” He paused then added, “And don’t dillydally.”

He hung up the phone.

She sighed. “Harry, do me a favor and put the butter back in the fridge.”

He scooted off the chair and took the butter to the refrigerator. Right behind him with the milk and eggs, Wendy caught the door as he opened it.

“This is so much fun!”

She frowned. “Getting things out and putting them away again is fun?”

“Having somewhere to go!”

“You like going to work?”

“I like going anywhere. My mom didn’t go places.” He frowned then glanced at the floor. “She was sick.”

Wendy stooped down in front of him. Her own pang of loss rippled through her as she remembered Betsy. “I know she was sick. And I’ll bet you miss her. But I don’t think she’d want you dwelling on her.”

“What’s dwelling?”

“Thinking about her when she can’t be here. I’ll bet she’d want you to think happy thoughts this close to Christmas.”

Even as the words came out of her mouth they brought a rush of memory. Her mom had told her the same thing about Greg. That she shouldn’t dwell on him, their plans, their life. She remembered thinking that her mom was right and still being angry that he’d died, had left her when she’d loved him so much, needed him so much. Two years without him had taught her to be stronger, bolder and independent enough never to fall into the trap of needing a man the way she had Greg. But when her mom had said those words, she’d been devastated.

Harry, however, nodded sagely.

She rose and helped him with his coat. After shrugging into her own coat and getting her purse and keys from the table in the foyer, she caught Harry’s hand and led him outside into the driving wind and freezing rain.

Ice now covered tree branches and clung to the mailboxes of the row of older, but well-tended homes. She paused in front of her little blue car, studying the icicles that hung from the door handle. It was so easy for a car to slide on ice. Walking might be safer. “I’m not sure about this.”

“About what?”

“The plant isn’t very far from here. We could actually walk.”

But it was raining. And Harry was a little boy. A simple ten-minute walk for her might not be so easy for short legs.

She frowned. “Never mind. We’ll drive.”

As they waited for the car windows to defrost, she said, “So do you know what you want to be when you grow up?”

“A fireman.”

“That’s a great job.”

“I want to save people.”

Wendy yanked her gearshift out of Park and into Drive. With his mother’s passing so fresh in his memory, there was no way Wendy would let him go down that road. Not this close to Christmas. If nothing else, she intended to give this little boy a break from reality. A few days or weeks of comfort and joy while social services employees hunted for his dad.

“Maybe if you’re good enough with the cookies, you might want to consider being a baker.”

He giggled. “Girls are bakers.”

“Not really.” As they drove to the plant, they talked about the different kinds of jobs he could consider then she took his hand again to help him navigate the icy parking lot. This time she needed her key to get in.

When they arrived in her office, Cullen Barrington was standing by her desk, looking at his watch.

“Five minutes? I told you to hurry, but I didn’t mean for you to be reckless.”

“I wasn’t. I don’t live far.” She rubbed her hands together before removing her coat. “We actually considered walking, but it’s freezing out there.”

“If you think you’re cold, you should be me. In Miami the temperature rarely falls below sixty. I’m lucky that I remembered to bring a winter coat. Even with it I shiver.”

He was trying to make small talk, to be nice, she supposed, to take the sting out of calling her into the office again, and she smiled at him. He returned her smile and her nerve endings shimmered with life and energy, even as her brain filled with silly, romantic notions. Maybe this incredibly handsome man wasn’t a Scrooge after all? Maybe beneath that playboy exterior was a nice guy? Then all these feelings she had of drowning in his dark eyes wouldn’t be wrong. Maybe she’d get to kiss that mouth, be held in his strong arms—

Luckily, he had turned and didn’t see her shaking her head to clear those thoughts. They were ridiculous! Even thinking about getting involved with someone like him was dangerous. He probably practiced being nice to seduce unsuspecting females like her! She needed to keep her feet firmly grounded in her real world. She was strong now, independent, not dreamy as she had been when she’d fallen for Greg. Cullen needed one little thing printed, the forecast, then she and Harry could go home and bake.

She slid onto her desk chair, turned on her computer, hit a few keystrokes and the room went dark.