Millionaire's Christmas Miracle (12 page)

He started to pace again. “Anything you want to make,” he said.

“It’s a deal. My New Year’s Eve special, if you have the ingredients?”

“That depends what it is. There’s steaks in the freezer, but nothing fresh. Mom cleaned the refrigerator out when she left.”

“Chili, good old-fashioned chili, with lots of cheese. Do you have cheese?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t know if there’s chili, either.”

“I’ll fake it,” she said and headed for the pantry, but stopped at the entrance to the storage area to turn back to him. “Do you have popcorn?”

“That, I know we have, but why?”

“Popcorn on top of chili is fantastic,” she said, just before ducking into the pantry.

“Whatever you say,” he murmured as he patted the baby’s back. He’d forgotten it was New Year’s Eve tonight. Another year. Something he hardly ever celebrated. Now he was doing it with a woman who was making chili and popcorn, a colicky baby, a toddler who was fascinated by pots and pans, and a backlog of work that normally would have driven him crazy until he completed it. Odd, he thought. For the first time in years, he wasn’t in any rush to get to work.

A
MY NOT ONLY MADE
chili, she found some fantastic salsa that Quint’s mother must have canned. Hot and heavy with cilantro. Perfect flavor. And the popcorn. While she cooked, Quint walked with Travis and kept an eye on Taylor. A New Year’s Eve unlike any she’d spent, but she found herself actually enjoying cooking and popping popcorn.

“What drink goes with chili?” Quint asked as he came over to the stove where she stood.

“Got any beer?”

“No. Is that what you drink with it?”

“Me? I…no, I…I never drink beer.” She stumbled slightly as she remembered how Rob loved beer with chili. “I don’t like the taste of it,” she said, averting her thoughts. “Actually, milk would be good, but with no milk, I guess we’re down to water.”

“How about champagne?” he offered.

She looked up at Quint, Travis draped over his arm, sleeping heavily, and his eyebrow lifted slightly. “Champagne and chili?” she asked.

“Sure, why not? Start a new tradition.”

She didn’t want to do that, not with this man. “Whatever you want,” she murmured and turned back to the stove.

She sensed him moving away from her, but she didn’t look up to see where he was going. She just knew he’d left the kitchen. When he came back, Travis was not in his arms. But a bottle of champagne was in his hands. “Where’s the baby?” she asked.

“Sleeping on your bed in his pillow fortress. I think I could have put him down twenty minutes ago.” He lifted the champagne for her to see. “One
thing my dad keeps around is a bottle of champagne for special occasions. I think your chili constitutes a special occasion.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.”

“I do, but let’s say it’s for New Year’s. Is that special enough for you?”

“Sure, of course,” she said.

He moved past her to cupboards on the far side of the room and she heard the clink of glasses before he turned with two crystal flutes in his hand. “And he keeps these two glasses for just such an occasion. Champagne just doesn’t go in canning jars.” He glanced at the pot of chili. “How much longer?”

“Five minutes,” she said, turning back to stir the pot.

“Can Taylor eat chili?”

“No. Actually, I saw some canned spaghetti in the pantry, no doubt saved for special occasions, which this is, so I guess we can break open a can of that for her?”

She thought she heard him murmur, “Touché,” but when she turned, he was putting the glasses on the table and holding the champagne bottle as if he was going to take the wire off to uncork it.

“I don’t suppose it’s tradition to drink champagne warm, is it?” she asked.

He shook his head as he slowly rotated the bottle with his hand on the top. “It’s chilled. Dad keeps it in his office in a small refrigerator. I’ll have to remember to replace it before they get back from Florida.” There was a pop that caught Taylor’s attention for half a second before she went back to playing with
her doll. “Success,” he said and slowly poured two glasses of the bubbly amber liquid into the flutes. “Age has its benefits, and one is practice at uncorking champagne.”

He crossed with the glasses in his hands and held one out to her. “Happy New Year, Amy Blake.”

She took the flute and fingered the cool glass. “Happy New Year,” she echoed and took a sip of the bubbly liquid.

The phone in her pocket rang and she quickly put the flute on the counter and took the phone out. She held it, then looked at Quint and held it out to him. “You answer it.”

He took it, pushed the button and pressed it to his ear. “Quint Gallagher.”

She almost held her breath until he smiled and said, “I’d wondered if you’d call all the way from Florida.”

His parents. She turned from him, crossed to the pantry and found the can of spaghetti. While she cooked, she half listened to Quint talking and laughing on the phone. Then, as she spooned the spaghetti into a bowl for Taylor, she heard Quint wish the caller a happy New Year and say goodbye.

She grabbed a spoon and went to where Taylor sat with the pots and pans. She didn’t fight being fed, and, as Amy spooned the food into her daughter’s mouth, she sensed Quint coming up behind her. “My mother,” he said. “She heard about the storm and wanted to check on what was going on here.”

“Does she know we invaded her house?”

“I didn’t go into it, but I have a feeling that Mike called her and mentioned the situation.”

Amy fed Taylor the last of the spaghetti, then stood to get something to wipe her daughter’s face. Quint was there, inches from her, and, overwhelming for a moment, he took the dish from her. She ducked past him, grabbing a cloth off the counter, then went back to crouch by her daughter and wipe away the remnants of the spaghetti sauce. “You’ll have to thank her for me when she gets back,” she said, standing, ready to get around him quickly to get back to the stove.

But as she straightened and turned, the world seemed to explode. There was a huge roaring sound, unlike any thunder she’d ever heard, a surge of light all around them, then everything went black.

There was silence for what seemed like forever to Quint, then noise was everywhere. Crashing thunder, Taylor yelling for her mama, Travis screaming, and Amy gasping when she ran right into him. Her hands were on his chest, then gone, and he could barely make her out as she turned from him. Gradually he could see a bit more, shadows and movement, then Taylor was quiet and in a flash of brilliance through the windows, he saw Amy with her daughter in her arms.

“What’s going on?” she asked as she moved back to where he stood, Travis still screaming through the darkness.

“Probably a lightning strike on a transformer,” he said. The baby’s cries seemed to echo. “I’ll go and get Travis. You stay here, then we’ll see what we can find for light.”

“Can you see to go back there?”

“No problem,” he said and headed back into the deeper shadows of the house toward the bedroom. Within a minute, he had the baby and was heading back to the kitchen. There was a low glow coming
through the door as he approached it, and when he stepped through, he saw that Amy had turned on all the burners of the gas stove. The flames gave enough light to make out the surroundings and played softly across her face. Haunted dark eyes, shadows at her throat, almost an ethereal image.

“Good idea,” he said as he positioned the baby into the football hold again. “I’ll start a fire in the den and we can eat in there.” He rummaged in the drawer by the range with his free hand, and found a book of matches along with a small flashlight. He snapped on the light. It was weak, but it worked. “We can find our way, at least,” he said as he flashed the light around the room. “Let me get you all in the den, get the fire going, then I can figure out what to do from there.”

The plan was good, but he never got a chance to do it the way he’d laid it out. He got Amy and Taylor to the couch in the den, but when he gave Travis to Amy, the baby started to scream. Nothing she did could get him to stop, and he screamed all the while Quint rushed to get the fire started. Once he had it going and a few candles lit on the mantel, he went back to the kitchen to turn off the stove. Then he sat by Amy on the couch.

She didn’t say a thing, just turned and handed the boy to him. He got Travis “in position,” tummy-down, draped over his forearm, then stood, started walking with him, jiggling him softly, and the crying died off. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he murmured.

“Another miracle,” Amy said. “And how ironic.”

He jiggled the baby as he looked down at Amy,
the firelight even more enhancing to her than the gas flame in the kitchen had been. Her bottom lip was shadowed, looking full and inviting, too inviting. “How so?”

“You—the ‘I’m too old for this, and I’m over kids big-time’—seem to be the only one who can stop him crying.” There was a smile mingled with the shadows that played across her face. “Ironic, huh?”

“Perverse,” he muttered and turned to walk around the room.

“Quint?” she called after him.

He spoke without turning on his way around the pool table. “What?”

“Your cell phone. Where did you leave it after talking to your mother?”

He glanced back at her, cursing the fact that even distance couldn’t make her less desirable. He stayed where he was. “In the kitchen by the stove. I’ll go and get it.” He jiggled Travis who was sucking noisily on his pacifier. “I’m up anyway, and walking is what I do best.”

Her soft laughter followed him from the room and was gone by the time he picked up the cell phone and slipped it in his shirt pocket. He spotted his champagne glass and refilled it. He drank half of the second glass, then headed back into the den.

Amy was cuddling with Taylor on the couch, her feet drawn up under her and her head resting on the leather back. She glanced at him, shadows hiding any expression. “You have it?”

He crossed to her and took the phone out of his pocket, holding it out to her. “It’s all yours. I don’t
think anyone else will be calling. It’s New Year’s Eve and people will either be stranded or partying.”

“What about B.J. and Matt’s wedding? Maybe I should call B.J. and see what’s happening and if they’re still able to get married.”

“Go ahead,” he said and stood in front of her. “Is Travis asleep?” he asked.

She sat up a bit, looked at Travis, then up at him. “I think so.”

He exhaled a sigh. “Okay, I’ll put him down here by you, then go and get our food.”

She tugged a throw that was over the back of the couch down to the seat and spread it out. He eased the baby off his arm onto his back on the throw, and Amy piled the excess of the throw, making a barrier between Travis and the front of the couch. His pacifier bobbed furiously, then slowed until the baby sighed softly.

“Success,” Quint breathed and looked up at Amy close to him. “If he starts crying—”

“He’s all yours,” she said.

“Perverse,” he muttered again and headed to the kitchen, flashlight in hand. He needed distance from more than the possibility that Travis would start crying again. He needed to breathe without feeling as if he could inhale Amy. And he needed to remember that there was nothing that could be done about his feelings for her. It didn’t matter if you loved someone or not, it didn’t matter.

He stopped in his tracks just inside the heavy shadows of the kitchen. Love? He shook his head. No. It couldn’t be that. Fate couldn’t be so cruel as to let
him finally figure out what love was, then make it impossible for him to have it, even to experience it. He pushed that idea away and crossed to the stove. Lust, need, loneliness: he could deal with all of those emotions. He could get over those emotions. But he knew that only a fool would love a woman who was half his age and still in love with her dead husband. And it would hurt like hell. He wouldn’t let that happen.

A
MY SANK BACK
in the couch as Taylor laid her head on her lap, then dialed B.J.’s number at the loft. It took forever to connect, then it didn’t even ring before a message came on that all lines were full and to try again later. She hit End and laid the phone down, then smoothed Taylor’s silky hair while she listened to Quint moving around in the other room. There was the bang of pots and pans that rivaled Taylor’s play earlier in the day. The clink of dishes, then a clash of metal on something hard, a muttered oath, then silence. Just as she was about to call out to make sure he was okay, he came into the room carrying a tray.

He put everything down on the coffee table the way he had at breakfast, and as he passed out the dishes of chili, he said, “A pan I didn’t see that was on the floor.”

“Excuse me?”

“The crash, the bang.”

“It sounded bad,” she said as he put a bowl of popcorn on the table by the chili bowls.

“Sorry, no cheese, but at least we have popcorn. And I brought these in, too.” He set down the champagne
bottle and their glasses. She eased a sleeping Taylor off her lap and onto the couch so she could eat her chili. She was starving.

When Quint sat on the floor in front of the couch and reached for his bowl, Amy did the same, slipping down off the couch onto the floor. She put a handful of warm popcorn on the chili, then reached for one of the spoons Quint had brought in with him. Before she could take her first mouthful, she sensed Quint watching her, and she looked over at him. “Was there something else?”

He stirred his chili with the spoon. “No, nothing else.” He took a spoonful of chili and ate it.

Amy looked away from him, away from the face of flickering shadows and eyes that were unreadable. She ate in silence, sipped champagne and tried to avoid thinking about the man at the table with her.

“What about the wedding?” Quint asked, breaking the silence so suddenly it startled her as she sipped the last of her champagne.

“The wedding? Oh, I couldn’t get through. The lines were full.”

“Another product of this storm,” he said, reaching for a handful of popcorn. As he let it drop on top of his chili, he looked back at her. “The lines to the house aren’t working, either. I checked in the kitchen.”

“What a New Year’s Eve,” she murmured as she set her empty dish on the table and sat back, wrapping her arms around her legs and resting her chin on her knees. “I’m sorry that your plans for tonight are gone.
I seem to have a terrible habit of interfering with your plans.”

“I didn’t have any plans,” he said.

She turned to him, unable to believe that he didn’t have people standing in line to celebrate with him. “No date?”

“I told you, I don’t date.”

“You never said why.”

He shrugged and his shirt parted slightly. “Until recently I would have said that I didn’t have time, didn’t want to, didn’t believe in it and I’ve never been good at it.”

“And now?”

“Now? It’s different.”

“Why? And don’t say it’s because you’re old.”

“I am.”

“You’re not.”

“I’m going to be fifty.”

“So am I,” she said.

“What?”

“All things being equal, I’ll be fifty in twenty years.”

There was total silence for a moment, then Quint reached forward toward the table. She gasped when popcorn came raining over her. Quint had taken a whole handful of popcorn and thrown it at her. She barely managed not to scream, then she stretched to grab some for herself, but she was too slow. Quint had the bowl, and when she tried to get away, her legs tangled with the leg of the table, and she fell backward onto the carpet. The next thing she knew, the whole bowl was being poured over her.

She lay in popcorn, her hands clutched over her mouth, trying to stop the almost hysterical laughter that was all but choking her. She lay there with Quint standing over her until she could control her laughter, then pushed herself up on her elbows and managed to choke out, “You are so dead.”

“You deserved it,” he said, dropping to his haunches over her. Then he put the bowl down beside her. “And you can clean up the mess, too.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.”

“Mama?”

Taylor was awake, backing down off the couch, toddling over to Amy and unceremoniously plunking down on her stomach. As if it was the most natural thing in the world to find her mommy on the floor covered in popcorn, Taylor looked around, then grabbed some kernels and stuffed them in her mouth.

Quint pushed the bowl closer to the two of them, then leaned closer and brushed at Amy’s hair. She could feel kernels of popcorn trickle out of her hair. “Fifty. Not even close.”

“In time.”

“Yes, well, you’ve got twenty years and I’ve got a day, not even that.”

“Well, old or not, you’re the one cleaning up this mess,” she said, pushing up until Taylor was in her lap, and the popcorn was falling off her. “You did it. You clean it.” She grabbed a handful of popcorn off the floor by her and tossed it at Quint. Taylor squealed when Quint ducked the bulk of the kernels, then picked up a tiny handful and tossed it up in the air.

Quint scooped up a handful of popcorn, but stopped when the baby started crying. “Now see what you’ve done,” he said to Amy with a grin.

“What I’ve done?” she said. “He’s all yours.”

“Oh, no, lady, I think I’ll pick up popcorn. You do the walking and jiggling and pacifier retrieval.”

“Chicken,” she muttered as she twisted to one side to set Taylor on the floor before she stood to go to get Travis. But before she could get there, Quint passed her and scooped him up. With the ease of a pro, he had the baby on his tummy, over his forearm, nestled like a football under his arm. “No one calls me a chicken, lady,” he murmured. “Not even you.”

Without warning there was light, and Amy blinked at the brightness of the overhead fixture that bathed the room in a yellow glow. Taylor clapped, Travis was shocked into silence for a moment and Quint was right in front of Amy. The shadows had made things a bit easier, blurring the lines of his face, the look in his eyes. It had been easy to tease him then. Seeing that crooked grin on his face, the way his mustache twitched with humor, the crinkling of his eyes, shadows were definitely better.

“Great,” she murmured. “We can finally see what we’re doing.”

He glanced at the floor where Taylor sat in the middle of the popcorn mess. “Yes, everything,” he murmured as his gaze met hers. Then Travis started to cry again, and Quint shrugged. “I need to walk, so I’ll go and put out the candles.”

He walked off with Travis and the crying echoed after him. Taylor scrunched the popcorn and Amy
sank down by her. “In the bowl,” she said, picking up a handful of popcorn and putting it in the bowl. Taylor looked at her, reached in the bowl and took out a handful of her own which she proceeded to let trickle out of her fingers back onto the floor.

“Okay, play with it for a while,” Amy said and got to her feet. She looked around, crossed to the bookshelves and flipped on the television. No matter what she did, she couldn’t get anything except a blue screen. Giving up, she turned it off, then saw the radio. She turned it on, fiddled with the tuner and finally found news.

She sat back on the couch, watching Taylor and listening to the updates on the storm. Rain and more rain. Wind. Flooding. Electrical outages. And it was forecast to keep up through New Year’s Day. She reached for the phone again, dialed the loft and got the same message, then hit End.

Quint came back into the room with a quiet Travis. “No luck?” he asked when he saw her with the phone in her hand.

“No, it doesn’t even try to connect.” He crossed with Travis on his arm, and looked down at Taylor and the mess around her. “She’s having fun with it,” Amy said.

“She wouldn’t let you pick it up, would she?”

She shook her head. “Bingo.”

“Well, it’s a cheap, safe toy.”

“And I’m assuming that you have a vacuum cleaner around here?”

“I’m sure we do.”

“Then it’s perfect.”

He was trying to ease Travis off his arm and onto his chest, but it didn’t work; the baby stirred, his face puckered and he started to cry again. It didn’t sound as if his heart was in it, but he wasn’t going to settle.

Quint stood as a song started on the radio, an old song about fate and love. “Music…maybe dancing would help?” Quint murmured.