Millionaire's Christmas Miracle (4 page)

“I’ll let security know, and if you give me a number
where I can reach you, I’ll take a look and get back to you.”

He started to tell Olson to call the hotel, but he was stopped by the man saying, “Sir, could you hold for a minute?”

“Sure,” Quint murmured, and he heard a muffled conversation for a moment, then the man was back on the line.

“Good news. Mrs. Blake in the day-care center has your wallet.”

Relief was there, but so was a certain tightness in his chest. “What?”

“She told Walt, the security guard, that she’d found it, and if you called, to tell you that she’ll bring it in tomorrow and put it in the security safe. You can get it from there.”

There wasn’t anything he couldn’t live without until tomorrow, but he should probably call her anyway. “Do you have a phone number for Mrs. Blake?”

“Oh, no sir. That’d be in personnel and I don’t have any access to that. But she’ll bring it in, and they’ll put it in the safe. Just ask at the front desk and they’ll tell you where to go.”

He wouldn’t have to see her again. He should be relieved by that, but instead he found himself muttering, “Thanks, that’s great,” hanging up and motioning to the bartender to refill his drink. He didn’t have a clue why he felt vaguely let down and restless. He’d put another drink on his tab, then he’d go up and work.

“M
AMA
,” the child’s voice, edged with a whine, said, getting Amy’s attention immediately. She was
on her feet, hurrying into the bedroom where she found Taylor in her crib, standing, arms out to be picked up.

Amy scooped up the child and cuddled her to her chest as she walked back out into the living room of the tiny apartment. She avoided the only mirror in the room, a small square over the desk by the door. She didn’t need to see herself to know she looked like death warmed over. No makeup, her hair in a ponytail and dark circles under her eyes from being up half the night with a sick child. That night after her fiasco with Quint had been followed by a day of waiting in the pediatrician’s office, picking up medicine and trying to comfort Taylor.

“She’s fine, Mrs. Blake, just teething and a bit of a cold, but nothing serious,” the doctor had told her, a doctor who had been through this before with the two of them.

When Taylor got sick, Amy overreacted and she knew it. She sank down in the old rocking chair, felt Taylor snuggle in with her, and she rested her head on the back of the chair. As she closed her eyes, she caught a red flash out of the corner of her eye and turned to see the message light blinking on the answering machine.

She hadn’t even thought to check messages today. She maneuvered Taylor to her other arm and reached to press the Play button.

“Amy, it’s Jenn.” Jenn, Rob’s sister, was the only relative she or Taylor had, and Jenn worried about the two of them. “Thanks for letting me know what the doctor said. If you two aren’t up for Christmas tomorrow,
we can postpone. Tay-bug won’t know the difference if we put it off for a day or two until she feels better. I’ll call or drop by later to check on you two. Love you both.” There was a beep, then a date/ time stamp that showed the message had been left almost four hours ago. Another message started.

“This is Quint Gallagher.” She must have started at the sound of that deep drawling voice, because Taylor whimpered slightly, then resettled in her arms.

“I was told you had my wallet and would be bringing it back to LynTech today, but I haven’t been able to track you down or find my wallet. Could you call and let me know what’s going on?” He left a number and an extension that she knew was on the top floor in the executive suites. “I’ve got a dinner appointment, and I’d appreciate a call before five. If not, call this number.” He gave another number, then there was a hesitation before he ended with, “I’ll be waiting for your call.”

The beep came, then a date/time stamp and she looked at the wall clock by the tiny kitchen alcove. Six o’clock now and he’d called about two hours ago. She should have checked the messages, but she seldom got any that were important. And she hadn’t called LynTech because this was normally vacation and anyone she might have talked to, was gone. The wallet was in the bottom of her purse and she hadn’t even thought about it.

She kept rocking, then knew that she had to try and contact Quint. She eased Taylor more onto her right arm, grabbed the phone with her left hand and caught the receiver between her ear and shoulder. Awkwardly,
she dialed the company number, then the extension, but it clicked over, said that the person hadn’t set up a voice mail system yet, then it clicked off. She hung up, dialed the second number and it rang at the same time as her doorbell sounded.

“Great,” she muttered, trying to get to her feet, balance a now-sleeping Taylor on one arm and the phone with the other hand. “Just a minute,” she called out, wishing that Jenn would just use her key. “I’ll be right there,” she called again, as she crossed to the couch and gently put Taylor on it. The baby rolled onto her side and pulled her knees up to her tummy, then Amy reached for a juice bottle she’d put there earlier and gave it to her. Taylor held it, but didn’t drink it as she settled back into sleep.

The phone at her ear rang one more time, then was answered. “Gallagher.”

She hesitated with her hand on the coldness of the doorknob and had to swallow once to find her voice. “This is Amy Blake,” she began and tugged back the door.

“So it is,” Quint said, over the phone, but he was right in front of her in her doorway. Dressed in a dark blue business suit that set off his tanned skin and graying hair, he had a cell phone pressed to his ear and that shadow of a smile playing around his lips.

Startled, she lost her grip on her phone and it fell to the floor between them.

Quint knew he was staring, that Amy was flustered as she scrambled to get the phone she had dropped. Then she was standing with it in her hand, and he didn’t move. He just took in the scene in front of him.

Amy looked for all the world like a teenager in an oversize gray sweatshirt with long sleeves that almost covered her hands. Her jeans were worn, her hair pulled back from her face in a ponytail, exposing freckles that he’d never even noticed the night before. She wasn’t wearing a hint of makeup, her dark eyes were shadowed, as if she was very tired, but that only emphasized the translucence of her skin and a type of beauty that didn’t owe a thing to artifice.

He lifted his phone slightly as he closed the front on it. “I guess I don’t need this anymore.”

“What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice breathless and low.

He slipped his phone in his jacket pocket, not about to tell her he didn’t have a clue why he’d finally driven here instead of sending a messenger or letting it go until she phoned him back. Wrong thing to do, he could admit now. If she’d been provocative the
night before in her ruined dress and with the mistletoe overhead, she was downright disturbing right now. “My wallet?” he finally said.

The color in her face deepened, making the freckles stand out even more. Her tongue touched her lips quickly. “Oh, yeah, sure,” she muttered. “Shoot, I forgot. Let me get it for you.”

She turned and went back into the apartment, and he hesitated, then followed her. As Amy crossed the room, grabbing at toys and discarded clothes, gathering them in her arms on the way, he glanced around.

The inside was a lot more “homey” than the outside of the building. He’d circled the block twice before parking in front of a series of apartment buildings in a low-rent section of the city, buildings from the sixties, three stories, with flat roofs and not much landscaping except for a few shrubs here and there and narrow strips of what should have been green grass, but was just brown. The whole place had seemed depressing, old, poorly kept and reeking of disinterest, with just a few Christmas touches in sight.

But in here, despite the clutter, the tiny size and obvious lack of luxury, it seemed invitingly warm. Odd, unmatched furniture crowded the space, along with a stack of laundry on a side chair, a TV on top of a low bookshelf, and a small Christmas tree decorated with popcorn garlands and colored paper chains sitting in front of a window covered by shades. It had an angel at the top.

“Excuse the mess,” she was muttering as she dropped the things in her arms in a pile on the floor by the Christmas tree, then went into what looked like
a kitchen alcove ahead and on the left. “I meant to bring the wallet to work today, but I didn’t go, and I just totally forgot about it,” she said disappearing from sight.

It was then that he noticed the child curled up in a ball on the sofa to the left. She was a tiny thing for a two-year-old, in pink sleepers lying with her back to him. Wisps of feathery dark hair were damp and clinging to her flushed skin. “She’s sick?” he asked.

“Teething and a bit of a cold,” Amy called from the kitchen. She appeared with a purse in her hands, setting it on a half wall between the kitchen and living area. She waved a hand at him as she opened the purse and started to rummage inside. “Sit down if you’d like,” she said as she went through her purse.

He looked at an overstuffed chair that faced the couch, alongside a wooden rocking chair. The upholstered chair was filled with what looked like clean laundry, so he crossed to the rocking chair, sat down and looked back at Amy, who was literally turning her purse upside down to let the contents fall on the divider. “It’s here,” she muttered. “I remember seeing it.”

He glanced from her to the child. “Is she why you didn’t come into work today?”

“Pretty much,” she muttered, then turned with his wallet in her hand. “Success,” she said and crossed to hand it to him.

“Thanks for finding it,” he said as he took it.

She stood over him, tucking a strand of hair that had worked its way out of her ponytail behind her ear. “Sure, no problem.” She glanced at the child,
then back at him. “Go ahead,” she said, motioning to his wallet. “Look in it. Everything’s there, including the money.”

He wasn’t even thinking about the wallet. “I trust you.”

“Okay, can I offer you something? Coffee or tea? I mean, you had to come all this way and everything.”

“No, thanks.” He was going to say she must have plans for Christmas Eve, but that sounded ludicrous. A sick child. That was her plan.

“Good, good,” she said, hesitated, then turned and scooped the laundry out of the overstuffed chair, and moved it to the coffee table that was partially filled with wooden blocks and some small plastic animals. She plunked down in the chair, twisted to face him and tugged her feet up to cross her legs. “So, you’re doing okay at LynTech?”

“Fine. Settling in at work.”

“And…” She waved a hand vaguely. “Houston? You like it? I heard you were from New York.”

“I was born here.” He slipped his wallet in the inside pocket of his suit coat. He should be going, he should be saying goodbye and getting out of her way, but he wasn’t anxious to leave just yet. Since he’d walked away from her the night before, he’d had a strange sense of being alone. Singular. He’d even tried to call Mike to connect with him, but had missed him. He’d worked until the small hours of the morning.

The feeling had persisted all day, and it hadn’t faded at all until Amy had opened the door. He could
just talk for a few minutes, then go to dinner. Just a few minutes.

“So, that explains the accent,” she said.

“Accent?”

“Okay,
twang
would be a better word, definitely Texan, though.”

It was her voice that had lingered with him, but not because of any accent. There was something in it. He didn’t know what, but it touched something in him. “Lady, I just talk,” he said with a shrug, “but you, on the other hand, have no discernable accent at all.”

That made her smile, and the simple action had the same effect on him as the sun coming out after a long, gray, cold rain. Brilliant, warm and so welcome. “That’s because I’m homogenized,” she said. “I’ve lived all over and sort of mixed any local accents up together, so they come out as nothing, sort of like colors.”

“What?”

“You know, you mix up all the colors and you get black. And most people don’t think of black as a color, but it’s the combination of every color in the spectrum. An absolute of colors, a…” She bit her lip. “Sorry, I’m so used to talking to kids, explaining everything, that I forget when I’m around adults.”

He had to go, because all he could think about when she was talking was her hair, black hair, but with glints of colors, rich, deep colors. He stopped that thought, and said the first neutral thing he could think of. “Charlie’s fine.”

She looked puzzled, then her eyes widened. “Oh, Charlie. How would you know how he is?”

This was definitely safe territory. “I went down looking for you earlier and he was in the cage sleeping. Safe and sound.” He wouldn’t mention the half hour he wasted in personnel getting the secretary to let him get a look at her files. That had only been accomplished by a call to Matt Terrel, one of Lyn-Tech’s CEOs. “But you were nowhere in sight and no one seemed to know what was going on.”

“I never went in at all today,” she said with a shrug, that smile completely gone, and something else hit him dead center. He hadn’t realized how much he missed a woman who could smile…really smile. “With Taylor sick and one thing and another, the day just went.” She pressed her hands to thighs covered by the faded denim of her jeans. “Didn’t you say in your message that you had a date or something tonight?”

The word
date
threw him for a second, then he shook his head. “A dinner appointment. Not a date. I’m too busy with work for that, and even if I wasn’t, I told you last night, I’m way out of practice playing that sort of game.”

She narrowed her eyes on him, an intensity suddenly there. “You think that having a relationship is a game?”

He’d said the words offhandedly, for something to say that wouldn’t make things complicated, but he sensed a complication coming on. “What would you call it?”

She shrugged. “If it’s just for the moment, I guess it is a game, but not if it’s forever.”

“What is it if it’s forever?” he asked.

“It sure isn’t a game,” she said and was on her feet, heading toward the kitchen. “I need some tea,” she was saying over her shoulder. “How about some tea?”

He heard some clinking of dishes, then water running. The next thing he knew she was back looking at him over the half wall. “I put on some water for tea or coffee. Both are instant, and the coffee’s decaffeinated. Changed your mind?”

“No, I haven’t. I need to get going,” he said, finally standing and making a move he should have made a lot sooner.

She took a deep breath, and he wished that she’d smile again. He hated that look on her face now, almost a pained look. “Sure, of course, business and things,” she said.

“You probably have things to do…for Christmas Eve,” he said.

She glanced at her daughter sleeping on the couch, then back at him. “Yes, I do have things to do,” she said softly.

“It’s hard doing it alone, isn’t it?” he asked before he measured his words, and whatever pain he thought he’d inflicted on her before with his glib talk about dating and games, was nothing compared to the literal flinch he caused this time.

He was floored, absolutely undone by her pained expression, but didn’t know what to do about it. “Well, it isn’t what I planned,” she said in a low voice, then forced the suggestion of a smile. But there was no light in her eyes this time. No reality to the expression.

He knew something about Amy Blake at that moment, even though he’d only known her a day. She’d loved her husband completely, and for her being alone wasn’t a relief, but something to endure, to survive. Just the opposite of what it had been for him with Mike, because he had never known the kind of love that could cause that kind of sorrow. He truly doubted that it came to more than a handful of people in this world, but she’d had it.

“Thanks for finding my wallet.” Mundane words that sounded awkward in his own ears.

“Thanks for checking on Charlie,” she said.

“No problem. That rat and I…well, I think we bonded.” Thank goodness that brought a slight smile that seemed real, as if he had finally done something to ease her tension. “We understand each other.”

“Good, that makes up for me wishing awful things on him last night, I guess.”

A sharp whistling cut through the apartment, and Amy hurried back into the kitchen again. As she disappeared, Quint caught movement out of the corner of his eye, turned and saw the little girl stirring. She stretched a hand over her head, and the next thing he knew, she was twisting around, toward the edge of the couch, and he knew that she was going to fall off. He moved quickly, getting to her right when she started to tumble over the edge. He made a grab for her, literally catching her in midair when she started the fall, then he straightened with her in his arms.

He shifted her until she was upright in his arms, and she was stunned for a moment. She twisted around, with a juice bottle safely in one hand, looking
at him with eyes as dark as her mother’s, and bleary from sleep. Gradually they widened, and he could almost see her realizing that a strange man was holding her. As that thought materialized, she stiffened, and with her free hand, she touched his chest, then straight-armed him, trying to get back as far as she could from him.

Her flushed face puckered up, and the crying began. She was overly warm, miserable from being sick and being scared awake. And the cries built to screams. Quint might have been years away from dealing with a toddler, but the old habits kicked in. He knew better than to try and pull her against him, but instead rubbed his hand up and down on her back, jiggling her slightly and speaking in a low, soft voice that was almost obliterated by her cries.

“Okay, okay, it’s okay. Shhhh, it’s okay. You didn’t go boom. You’re just fine. It’s okay.”

He heard Amy behind him and caught a glimpse of her, almost touching his left arm. “What happened?”

The baby’s cries were faltering, and he could feel her relaxing just a bit. A hiccup shook her little body, then a sniffle and a shudder and she was quiet, but still braced with her hand pressed against his chest.

“She’s just like her mother,” he said, and realized how true it was, from the eyes to the way she had of frowning slightly as she stared at him to ending up in his arms.

“What did she do, throw a rat at you?” Amy asked.

“No, she’s got a problem with falling. She almost rolled off the couch.”

“Nice catch,” Amy murmured. “For hating kids, you’re awfully good with them.”

Quint looked at the tiny human being in his arms. “I don’t hate kids,” he said. “I’m just past that. Way past it.”

“Been there, done that?”

He looked at Amy. “Years ago,” he murmured to remind himself that this scene wasn’t his, and it wasn’t something he wanted. No matter how appealing the woman was, she had a hell of a lot of baggage that came right along with her.

He started to turn to give the child to her mother so he could get out of there, but when he tried to do that simple thing, it backfired. The minute he moved, the child let out a squeal, stiffened again, and there was a flash of movement, something struck him in the chin, then cold wetness was everywhere.

That’s when he saw the bottle again, but now it was almost empty, the top was gone, and what looked like orange juice was all over him. He could feel it trickling down his cheek and onto his chest through his shirt. Amy took the child, talking quickly. “Oh, heavens, Taylor, look what you did,” she was saying as she reached with a free hand for a towel in the laundry on the coffee table. She dabbed at her daughter who had the liquid in her hair, on her face, and staining her pink sleepers.

Perversely, Taylor was smiling now, enjoying the mayhem she’d loosed on him, and she was threatening to upend the rest of the bottle onto the floor. But
Amy was too fast for her. She grabbed the bottle, then set the little girl down on the floor by the couch. “No, no, no. No more mess,” she said sternly, took one last swipe at the little girl’s face with the towel, ruffled her hair, then straightened up and turned to Quint.