Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

About The Author

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

“You’ve always disliked me, haven’t you?”

“No,” Lindsay said slowly. “Not always. When I first went to work for you, I…I admired you very much.” He didn’t need to hear how everyone had drooled over him, the good-looking tycoon who ruled from the regal splendor of the tenth floor. The day Daniel brought his daughter to a board meeting, for instance, had been the stuff of legend.

“So when did all that change?” Daniel’s gaze had never faltered from her face.

She raised her glass in a mocking salute. “Well, you did fire me, remember?”

KATHLEEN O’BRIEN, who lives in Florida, started out as a newspaper feature writer, but after marriage and motherhood, she traded that in to work on a novel. Kathleen likes strong heroes who overcome adversity, which is probably the result of her reading—when she was younger—all those classic novels featuring tragic heroes. However, being a true romantic, she prefers her stories to end happily!

Mistletoe Man
Kathleen O’Brien

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

LINDSAY BLAISDELL held her breath as the helicopter hit another air pocket, dipping and tilting like a carnival ride. Groaning as its metal belly missed a treetop by inches, she shut her eyes miserably. What on God’s earth was she doing up here? She’d always detested flying, even in a comfortable jumbo jet. But flying through a snowstorm in a tiny, cruelly cold helicopter, just for the joy of meeting with the arrogant Mr. Daniel McKinley—well, that was torture in a class by itself.

And, to put it bluntly, he wasn’t worth it. She hadn’t seen the man in three years, but she hadn’t forgotten him. The thirty-ish wunderkind president of the McKinley Corporation, he’d been smart, stubborn and, at six-foot-two with curling black hair and icy blue eyes, perhaps justifiably self-satisfied. He had been a ruthless businessman, a relentless boss and, by all accounts, a wretched husband. No candidate for sainthood. Not even for the local Mr. Nice Guy.

All in all, she thought bitterly as the helicopter dipped again, he darn sure wasn’t worth dying for.

Snowy treetops lunged toward her, their branches reaching with white, grasping fingers, and the pilot let loose a manic chuckle, as if he and the wind were engaged in a friendly wrestling match. Just the kind of can-do, zealous overachiever Lindsay would have expected Daniel McKinley to employ. Reluctantly the pilot righted the copter at the last minute, having avoided a crash by approximately the breadth of two snowflakes.

As the horizon straightened out, Lindsay swallowed the acrid taste of her morning coffee—which hadn’t even tasted all that great going down—and relaxed her hold on the briefcase she clutched against her pounding heart. When she felt reasonably sure she wasn’t going to be ill, she decided that she hated two things above all others: helicopters, and helicopter pilots who thought near-death experiences were exhilarating.

“There it is,” the pilot yelled over the roar of the rotor. He jabbed his forefinger earthward, still grinning. “McKinley’s place.”

Lindsay peered down and, as the treetops thinned out, a redwood ski lodge appeared just twenty yards below them. McKinley’s place. Massive, elegant and handsome, it claimed this mountain with a silent dominance.

Handsome. Elegant. Domineering. Why did that sound more like McKinley himself than his house? Perhaps, she mused, there was something she hated more than daredevil pilots. She hated arrogant men who sat, enthroned in mountain fortresses, expecting the world to come to them. Even when the weather was wicked and unwelcoming. Even when it was nearly Christmas, and he had to realize that most people wanted to be at home, wrapping presents by the fire.

Suddenly, shoved by an invisible gust, the copter lurched sideways, and branches made awful screeching sounds against the window. Lindsay started and, looking over, saw that the pilot’s grin had flattened out. He gripped the controls tightly, fighting the currents that buffeted his little craft.

“Is everything okay?” she asked. The question was pointless, and the pilot didn’t bother to answer her. She held her breath again as the helicopter began its wobbling descent. The winds were much stronger now than when they had left Denver’s little executive airfield. She hoped this guy was at least half as good as he thought he was.

It seemed to take forever, but finally the helicopter found the ground. It rocked crazily as it landed, like a top bobbling to a stop, and when the motion ceased both pilot and passenger sat speechless, breathing deeply, staring wordlessly at the silent, dark lodge before them.

After a long moment the pilot finally spoke. “Pretty damn bleak, ain’t it? Don’t know what in hell anyone would want to come here for this time of year.”

Lindsay had no answer for that. She didn’t know, either. She certainly wouldn’t have come here by choice. The house did look bleak, its roof shrouded in white, snow creeping up the corners in wind-driven drifts. Dead, almost. As if it waited for someone who would never come back.

But then she shook herself, annoyed. A “dead” house, indeed! She was imagining things simply because she knew about the tragedy that had occurred here three years ago.

No, the only reason this house was so silent was that Daniel McKinley, for all his wealth, didn’t have enough manners to come outside to greet his guest.

Scowling, she unhooked her seat belt. He hadn’t changed at all, had he? He had always been a heartless son of a gun. Didn’t he know the weather had turned nasty? If he didn’t care about her safety, wasn’t he at least concerned about whether his expensive copter-toy might have wrapped itself around a Douglas fir?

Suddenly the double doors of the lodge opened, and two men emerged onto the wide front porch. Lindsay peered through the dim light, but the swirling white air was like bad reception on a television set, and all she could see were two tall, male figures. Frustrated, she opened the door and slid out, sinking ankle deep in snow and dropping her briefcase as she tried to steady herself.

“Curses!” She knew stronger words, gratifying Germanic words that would have fit the occasion much better, but she had long ago trained herself, for Christy’s sake, not to use them. She bent over to retrieve the case, dragging her coat hem through the snow. It was old snow, wet snow, she discovered, lifting the briefcase and the coat simultaneously. A very cold, very slushy snow. “Double-dog-curse the man.”

By the time she was fully upright again, her hair was sticking to her cheeks, and one of the men she had seen on the porch was standing at her side. “Can I help you?” His voice was solicitous, with a hint of a Southern accent, and she knew instantly that it wasn’t Daniel McKinley. She’d never forget the deep timbre of McKinley’s voice.

“Gosh, I’m sorry,” the man was saying. “If we’d known it was you…I mean that you were a woman…” He sounded flustered, and he fumbled for her briefcase, nearly dropping his own case in the process. “I mean, Daniel said he was expecting someone named Robert.”

Lindsay tried to ignore the anxiety that surfaced at his words. It was true, of course. Daniel had, quite rightly, been expecting Robert Hamilton, owner of Hamilton Homes, to be on this helicopter. She knew Daniel wouldn’t be pleased to have to deal with a mere assistant in Robert’s place. And when he found out who the assistant was, when he found out it was Lindsay…

But that couldn’t be helped now. She peeled a hank of half-frozen hair from the edge of her mouth and swallowed a lump of cold air as the second man—Daniel himself—began walking toward the helicopter. Her fingers twitched nervously inside her gloves.

“Daniel!” The man at her side sounded amused. “Your guest has arrived, but I’m afraid it’s no Robert.” He tilted his head at Lindsay. “Perhaps a Roberta?”

“Lindsay,” she corrected, but her voice was husky, nervous. She cleared her throat.

“Roberta Lindsay?” The man’s smile broadened.

Lindsay shook her head. “No,” she said, trying to read Daniel’s expression through the snow, trying to see if he recognized her. “Lindsay Blaisdell.” She squared her shoulders and put out her gloved hand. “Hello, Mr. McKinley.”

“Miss Blaisdell. What a pleasant surprise.” But he didn’t look surprised—he didn’t even look annoyed, which he must have been, especially if he connected this Lindsay Blaisdell with the one he had fired three years ago. But of course, like all good businessmen, he was a master at hiding his emotions.

“Robert wasn’t able to come after all,” she began, already absurdly defensive, especially considering she was answering a question he hadn’t even asked. “He’s not here.”

Daniel smiled. “Evidently,” he said mildly. He turned to the man with the briefcase. “Well, I think we did a good day’s work, Steve. I trust you’ll have a smooth trip back. Wind’s up, but my pilot is very good.”

“He’s very sick,” Lindsay was surprised to hear herself speaking again, but Daniel’s indifference to her presence was somehow galling and she felt an overwhelming urge to make him notice her. How dare he turn his back on her? “His appendix burst.”

Daniel turned slowly, dark brows raised over his quizzical blue gaze. “My pilot?”

Lindsay flushed. He’d noticed her, all right. Noticed her making a fool of herself. She had always felt gauche and tongue-tied around Daniel McKinley, but, darn it, she’d been only twenty then, and ridiculously innocent. Besides, he had no power over her anymore. She didn’t work for him. He couldn’t just summarily fire her for making a stupid comment. He’d already done that.

“No, of course not your pilot,” she said quickly, nearly stammering anyway. “Robert.” When he still looked quizzical, she tried again. “Mr. Hamilton.”

“Yes, of course.” He was smiling again, and she knew he was making fun of her. “Mr. Hamilton, who isn’t here.” He reached across her shoulder to open the helicopter door. “You must tell me all the details as soon as we get inside. But first we have to get Steve in the air. He has a closing in Denver in less than an hour.”

She backed out of the way, biting her lips together to keep from saying anything else idiotic, and watched with mute envy as Steve climbed into the chopper. Taking her elbow, Daniel eased her back even farther as the rotor began to turn, whipping the snow into a frenzy of white, stinging needles. He kept his hand on her arm, and for an uncomfortable moment, as she watched the helicopter rise through the trees, his grip felt like a chain, holding her hostage here, alone with him in this godforsaken outland.

At the last minute Steve waved, his gloved salute barely visible through the thickening snow. And then he was gone. Free. She listened to the disappearing whine of the copter with a sinking heart. Whoever Steve was, wherever he was going, she suddenly would have given a month’s pay to trade places with him.

The fire was huge, dancing orange and red inside a stone hearth that must have been twelve feet across, and deliciously hot. Lindsay sat quite close to it, wriggling her tingling fingers and toes nervously, and surveyed the room into which Daniel McKinley had just escorted her.

It was really three rooms, she saw—a living room, with the cushioned couch in front of the fire, where she now sat thawing; an office, with the intricately carved desk on which Daniel had perched to reach Robert’s paperwork; and a dining room, with a table big enough to seat twelve comfortably.

It was intensely masculine, yet somehow beautiful. Though the room was at least fifty by sixty, she estimated, soft throw rugs with colorful Indian designs spanned the distances easily. On either side of the hearth, huge windows made a picture postcard of the snowy mountainside, and over in the corner a scented Jacuzzi hummed and bubbled.

The fire dominated all of it, casting its warm, amber glow over deep brown wood floors, beamed ceilings, paneled walls, carved banisters. Even the rich mahogany furniture seemed to be alive with the hint of moving light, creating a surprising sense of intimacy.

Surprising, she thought, and unwelcome.

Intimacy, however brief, with Daniel McKinley was not on her Christmas wish list. And it undoubtedly wasn’t on his, either…if men like him ever indulged in such nonsense. He had been courteous but remote as he walked her in, sat her by the fire, poured her a cup of coffee, inquired about her comfort. He had never mentioned the awkward fact that she had once worked for him. But of course he remembered. The fury she’d seen in his eyes the day he had fired her wasn’t likely to die in three short years.

No, she didn’t wish for intimacy—just for a clean conclusion to the negotiations that had brought her here. And, of course, she wished that he would get off the telephone.

It was driving her crazy to see him sitting on the edge of the desk, the telephone hooked between his ear and shoulder, leafing idly, distractedly, through the loan securitization documents, which she knew were the most important papers she had delivered. It was in those documents that he would find his answer: would he buy Hamilton Homes, thereby saving poor Robert’s neck…or would he decide to let his option expire?

But the blasted telephone wouldn’t stop ringing. She had to fight the urge to walk over and unplug the cord from the wall jack. She’d been here thirty minutes, her nerves on edge, mentally rehearsing the lines that would surely persuade Daniel that, in spite of the iffy deals Robert had cut, he could, should, must, buy Hamilton Homes. All in vain. Of those thirty minutes, Daniel had probably spent twenty-eight on the phone.

“Sorry,” he said as, finally concluding the call, he dropped the handset back into its cradle. He had said that five times now, after every interruption.

“That’s all right.” Her answering murmur wasn’t quite as gracious as it had been the first couple of times. Over the past thirty minutes the view through the massive picture windows had grown steadily more opaque, thick with snow. Tall pines were tossing fretfully, bullied by ever-stronger winds. It made her feel slightly sick to think of getting back into that little helicopter.

“Mr. McKinley,” she began, emboldened by her sense of urgency. If the winds kept growing more and more intense, would even Daniel’s wildman pilot dare to fly? “Mr. McKinley, I’d be glad to answer any questions you might—”

A loud noise interrupted the flow of words, and her voice strangled on a shocked gasp as suddenly, from some hidden recess in the rear of the lodge, a huge, glowering man dressed all in black appeared in front of the fire. Her throat went dry. Who—? She had been so sure that she and Daniel were the only two people left on this snowswept mountain.

For a moment the stranger just stood there, his oversize features shifting eerily in the shadows cast by the fire. Lindsay swallowed hard, staring in spite of herself. He was very old, she sensed, though still a giant of a man. His pronounced, overhanging brows were wild and white, and his hair, which tumbled nearly to his shoulders, was as colorless as the snow.

A flashing glint caught Lindsay’s eye, and she dropped her numbed gaze to the man’s hands. But, on the left side, there was no hand. Instead, just beyond the intense black of his work shirt, a metal hook glistened in the firelight, sharply curved and lethal.

She was glad she was sitting down, because suddenly the muscles in her legs went limp. She looked toward Daniel, too stunned to speak.

To her surprise he was smiling. “This better be important, Roc.” His voice was stern, but it was a mock severity. He flipped one of the document’s pages over casually and kept reading while he talked. “Look at Miss Blaisdell’s white knuckles. She’s frustrated by all these interruptions, I deduce, and holding on to her temper with a superhuman effort. She’s eager to finish this deal and get back to civilization.”

The huge man turned his glower in Lindsay’s direction. “Sick of you already, is she? Well, it’ll curdle her guts to hear my news, then.” He turned back to Daniel. “Landwer called. Seems your chopper’s got a rattle, and he’s scared to fly until he finds out where it’s coming from.” He lifted his hook and scratched behind his ear disgustedly. “Yellow-belly wimp-guts.”

“Roc, you really are an animal.” Settling the papers onto his lap, Daniel shook his head. “My apologies, Miss Blaisdell. Mr. Richter here is my caretaker, and I suspect he’s been alone in the wilderness far too long. He’s discarded what few manners he ever had.”

But Lindsay wasn’t even thinking about the man’s rough language. She was too horrified by his message. “There’s something wrong with the helicopter? It’s not coming back?” She stood up, her hands still twisted together, and went to the window, as if she might be able to summon the absent vehicle herself.

But, of course, all she saw was the ever thicker curtain of snow. She turned. “Mr…Roc,” she said as steadily as she could. “Did the pilot say how long it would take to find the problem?”

The big man guffawed. Reaching his good hand out, he grabbed a poker and gave the firewood a rough stirring. The flames roared to new life.

“Don’t hold your breath. Landwer couldn’t find his rump with a compass.”

“Roc.” This time Daniel’s voice was pitched low and held an unmistakable reprimand.

The giant grinned, and the sight transformed his ugly face into something surprisingly sweet. “Sorry, Danny Boy, but it’s true. If the lady flew up here with him she already knows what a baggage-smasher he is. Don’t worry, miss,” he added with another of his amazing smiles. “I’ll fix something special for dinner to make it easier to stomach old Daniel here.”

“Dinner?” Lindsay’s voice rose. “But, Mr. McKinley, I have to get back before that. My sister…Christy’s too young to be alone.” She took a deep breath. She mustn’t panic. There had to be a way out of this mess. She racked her brain. “Don’t you have another helicopter?”

Daniel smiled wryly. “Sorry. We’re just a one-chopper operation up here. Chintzy, I know, but somehow we’ve limped by so far.”

“But there must be a car? Or a truck or something?”

“We do have a Jeep,” Roc began, but Daniel interrupted, slapping the documents down on the desk crisply.

“No driving,” he said. “It’s too dangerous. Besides, Landwer will probably have the rattle vanquished in no time. Don’t accept Roc’s estimate of my pilot’s abilities, Miss Blaisdell. Roc used to fly for me before his accident, and he’s never been very charitable toward his replacement.”

Roc was obviously insulted. He stuffed the poker back into its rack with a terrible clatter. “Listen, Danny Boy, you know bloody well you’d be better off with a couple of carrier pigeons. But what do I care? You and Landwer deserve each other. Anyhow, the Jeep’s ready to go, like it is every winter. I could take her—”

“I said no driving.” Daniel’s earlier lighthearted irony was conspicuously absent. “Go into the kitchen and fix us a good lunch, Roc. Miss Blaisdell will leave when Landwer has repaired the copter. Not before.”

Roc left the room as quietly as he came, allowing his anger to show only in the rigidity of his broad back. Lindsay, who had been watching the astonishing interchange in silence, finally moved forward. What an infuriating man Daniel McKinley was! His tone couldn’t have been more peremptory if both she and Roc had been his children.

“Mr. McKinley, I really do have to be home before dark tonight. My sister is only twelve years old, and I haven’t made any provisions for her care—”

Daniel shrugged one broad shoulder toward the desk. “Feel free to use the telephone.”

Lindsay narrowed her eyes. “There’s no one to call. I must get home before tonight.”

Daniel unfolded himself from the desk, his movements slow and full of coiled, repressed power. His blue eyes were icier than ever.

“You’ll leave when I say it’s safe, Miss Blaisdell.” He looked her up and down, as if assessing her capacity for resistance. “Look, let’s get a couple of things straight. Your boss insisted on this eleventh-hour document delivery, not I. I was content to wait until the new year to purchase Hamilton Homes. I will, in point of fact, survive perfectly well if I don’t buy Hamilton Homes at all.” He met her gaze directly. “Which is more than we can say for your boss, isn’t it?”

“That’s not the point,” she began, but he raised a finger to quiet her words.

“It’s the truth,” he said. “Now let’s be even more honest, shall we? You don’t like me. I remember our last encounter with crystal clarity, and I’m well aware that you’d prefer to be anywhere but here. However, here you are, and you must have known the risk you were taking. Winter in these mountains is notorious. If you’ve been caught by it, we’ll just both have to live with that.”

Her cheeks were burning, but she refused to be intimidated. “My sister needs me, Mr. McKinley,” she repeated stubbornly. “I don’t think you understand—”

“No, damn it, it’s you who doesn’t understand.” He put his hand on her back and with a rough motion turned her toward the picture window. “Look out there. We have a path that leads to Roc’s apartments. It’s newly paved, and it’s lined with tulips in the spring. Can you see it? Can you even begin to guess where it is?”

She looked, desperately scanning the blank white ripples of mounded snow for anything that resembled a path, but she could find nothing.

“No, of course you can’t.” She tried to turn away, but his palm was still hard against her back, forcing her to face the window. She didn’t dare to speak. He suddenly seemed so intense, almost angry, and she wasn’t sure why. Was it because they had finally mentioned the past, that day three years ago when she had uttered one unforgivable sentence?

“You have no idea how treacherous this pretty snow can be,” he said, his voice deeper now, almost hypnotic. “It distorts distances, erases landmarks. Take one wrong step, and you can sink into a pocket ten feet deep. Lose your way once, for even ten seconds, and it’s virtually impossible to reorient yourself.”

“But Roc would be driving,” she said quietly. “We’d be in a car.”

“Roc is seventy-four years old, Miss Blaisdell, and he has one hand. He’s hardly anyone’s superhero. You could drive in circles until you run out of gas and then walk in circles until you’re so exhausted you can’t think straight.”

“But—”

“Would that help your little sister?” He lifted her hand, lightly squeezing her fingertips between his thumb and forefinger. The nerves tingled, and a rapid pulse tnpped against the pressure. “In fifteen minutes your hands and feet would be numb.” He lifted her hand and cupped it against her cheek. “You wouldn’t be able to feel your own face.”

She shivered suddenly, thinking of that bitter cold, of fingers that would never again feel such warmth as this…

He dropped his hand. “And then you would die, Miss Blaisdell. It’s as simple and as terrible as that.”

She turned, but, looking at him, she suddenly didn’t know what to say. His full mouth was downturned and weary. His eyes looked haunted, seeming to stare right through her. And finally she knew what he had really been talking about. Not her death, but another’s. Another car that had foolishly tried to leave this mountain during a blinding, numbing snowstorm. A car that hadn’t, horribly, even been found for two whole days. A car that, when found, had held the frozen bodies of a beautiful woman and her little girl…

“I’m sorry,” Lindsay said, her throat thick and aching with emotions she had no right to express. No right, really, even to feel. “Of course you’re right. I’ll stay.”

Roc brought them lunch in the office area, and while they ate the surprisingly delicious fare—a light, creamy soup and a platter full of fresh fruits and hunks of cheese—Daniel finished studying the documents pertaining to Hamilton Homes.

Lindsay and Roc chatted quietly while Daniel read. Within a very few minutes, Lindsay found herself growing accustomed to Roc’s odd looks and earthy language. She even forgot about his hook, until, with a twinkling wink, he speared the last chunk of cheddar cheese with it and plopped it into his mouth. Lindsay blinked, and then, as if he’d done something quite clever, both of them laughed out loud.

Daniel looked up, frowning, his concentration broken, but Roc just laughed harder. “Go back to your homework, Danny Boy. Can’t you tell the lady and I are busy?”

And with no more than a wry twist of his mouth, Daniel did just that. Lindsay tried to relax. Roc was so natural, so uninhibited, treating Lindsay, whom he had known for approximately an hour, exactly the same way he treated Daniel—it really was impossible not to like him.

Daniel was another matter. Lindsay kept sneaking glances at him, wondering what he thought of the financial details he was learning about Hamilton Homes. It wasn’t all good news, not by any means. She tried to read the set of his mouth, the angle of his body, but it was hopeless. She didn’t know him well enough. She found herself distracted by the play of winter’s odd bluehued sunlight against the black of his hair.

“You wouldn’t know it now,” Roc said, breaking into her abstraction with a plaintive voice, “but twenty years ago I was a great deal more handsome than our Danny Boy. I was a big man, a man’s man, not puny like this fellow here.”

“I’m six-two, you old liar,” Daniel said without taking his eyes from the documents.

Roc chortled. “Puny, like I said.” He stretched out, black jeans covering limbs as long and thick as tree trunks. “Me, I’m not an inch under six-five, and if I’d met you twenty years ago I’d have swept you off your feet, Miss Lindsay.”

Daniel made one last note on the papers, and, sighing, he let the pen drop to the desk. “Don’t you have some caretaking to do, Roc? Big man’s man like you? Wood to chop? Roofs to shingle? Dishes to wash?”

“Nothing wrong with a man washing dishes,” Roc said defensively, lumbering to his feet. “Still, I’d better go,” he whispered to Lindsay as he gathered the empty bowls and munched the last of the grapes. “Danny here can’t stand the competition.”

When he was gone, Lindsay took a deep breath and, folding her hands in her lap, faced Daniel with the stoic air of a witness taking the stand. For Robert’s sake, she had to pull this off. Dear, gentle, improvident Robert, lying in a hospital room right now, impotently worrying, wondering how her interview was progressing.

She waited for the first question, the first scathing comment about what a financial mess Hamilton Homes was in. But the thick silence lengthened uncomfortably. Daniel merely sat with his elbows on his desk, looking contemplatively at her over his steepled fingers, until she felt such tension in her chest that she thought she might scream.

“I know the figures look bad,” she said, unable to bear the loaded silence another minute. “Robert’s been having some problems lately.”

“Evidently,” he murmured, his lips against his fingertips.

“Well, don’t you have any questions?” She had come armed with facts and proposals, with explanations for Robert’s errors and suggestions for how to redeem them. She’d certainly never pictured the interview going like this, with Daniel McKinley sitting there, bored or sleepy or just plain indifferent, his blue eyes half closed, his syllables short and ironic. “Don’t you want to know exactly how this happened, what went wrong?”

He smiled behind his fingers, but Lindsay wasn’t sure it was a pleasant smile. “I know what happened.” When she raised her brows skeptically, his smile broadened and he leaned back in his chair. “Actually, I knew before I even opened these documents—what I’ve read here has merely confirmed what I already suspected.”

“Oh, really?” His tone, so full of a natural, unassumed arrogance, annoyed her. She tightened her hands in her lap. “Why don’t you tell me, then?”

“All right.” He laced his fingers behind his head, a posture that made his shoulders seem even more impossibly broad. “I’d say it boils down to the three main problems. First, Robert Hamilton hired too many people, paid them too much, with luxurious benefits, and he could never bring himself to trim away any of the dead wood or lay off unnecessary positions, even during the recession. Your payroll is hopelessly bloated for a company in these financial straits.”

Her cheeks stung. She had been telling Robert things just like that for years. “Well, being too generous is hardly a sin, is it?”

He ignored her comment, putting one ankle over his knee to get more comfortable. She noticed that his legs were almost as long as Roc’s, though they were lean and muscular beneath the fine wool of his trousers, and didn’t resemble tree trunks by any stretch of the imagination.

“Second—he’s been building houses in all the wrong places, trying to provide single family homes in areas where the income ratios make apartment living far more logical. Then, in order to sell the places, he’s had to make extremely questionable loans. Now there’s a huge percentage of defaults which he’s refusing to call in. Instead of turning over these houses, trying to salvage his investment, he’s carrying these people for months at a time.”

She bit her lip. It was true. But it was part of Robert’s incredible goodness that he couldn’t bring himself to turn a desperate family out onto the streets. Though she had been warning him for months that he couldn’t be the Great Provider for long if he let his own company go under, now that Daniel McKinley was criticizing him in that dry, disinterested voice, she suddenly felt absurdly defensive.

“He realizes he’s been far too lenient, Mr. McKinley,” she said, ready with her prepared speech, though suddenly she felt little hope that she could make this ruthless businessman appreciate how Robert Hamilton’s idealism worked. “But, you see, he built his development in response to what he saw as a dire need for adequate housing among these plant workers. It was a tremendous success at first. Frankly, if there hadn’t been layoffs, the idea might well have worked.”

She took a deep breath. “I wish you could see the subdivision now, Mr. McKinley. These people aren’t deadbeats. They’ve planted trees and gardens. They’ve started their children in schools. Believe me, they will pay as soon as they can, and you know that this economic downturn won’t last forever. Robert was willing to dig into his own pockets, hoping against hope that he could find a way to let these people keep their homes until the economy improved.”

“Yes, Robert is a prince among men, I’m sure,” Daniel interjected dryly. “But now what? Now we come to the third and perhaps most troubling problem in this misguided troika—he’s taken out high-interest loans to cover his debts, and he’s secured those new loans with the few good properties he still owns. If he defaults, he’ll lose every profitable asset Hamilton Homes possesses, and the company will consist of a couple of hundred families who are busily planting marigolds in yards they can’t pay for.”

He leaned forward and tapped the thick pile of documents. “And then, Miss Blaisdell, Robert Hamilton won’t be able to sell this company for enough cash to buy a pair of gardeming gloves.”

Lindsay opened her lips to contradict him, but somehow no words would come. Again an uncomfortable silence blanketed the room. While she searched for the perfect answer, she touched her hair, tucking it behind her ear, wishing she had brushed it after that harrowing helicopter ride. She must look completely mussed and flustered. Which, of course, she was. Where had all her carefully crafted speeches disappeared to? Daniel hadn’t said anything that Lindsay herself hadn’t told Robert a thousand times. Why did hearing it from this man give the criticism so much authority, so much power to crush Robert’s good intentions to dust?

“There is one thing I do want to ask you, though,” Daniel said suddenly, and though his eyes were still narrowed, they no longer looked bored. They looked focused, probing.

“What is it?” She lifted her chin, ready.

“Why are you here?” He raised a hand to hold off her murmur of surprise. “I mean really why are you here? You must have known that the odds of persuading me to buy this business were about a million to one. And I suspect that you would rather jump naked into a river of hungry crocodiles than come begging for special favors from me.”

For a minute she stared at him, irritated by his confident assurance that she hated being here, that she was still afraid of him. He raised one brow and waited.

“Perhaps you’re right,” she finally said with all the equanimity she could muster. She had known he’d find a way to bring up the past, and she was ready for it. “But crocodiles, however hungry, rarely have enough liquid capital to pull off a deal like this.”

“I see.” He almost smiled. He leaned back again slowly. “Right. But you’re very young, attractive, capable. Why not go get yourself another job and leave Robert Hamilton to suffer the fate of all misguided martyrs?”

What a question! She stiffened, her short-lived poise evaporating. “Hamilton Homes is special to me, Mr. McKinley. Robert Hamilton is special to me. He’s been my employer for three years. He hired me when I was unexpectedly…out of work.”

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

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.

It wasn’t her face. She still had the face of a teenage Madonna, her dark blue eyes set wide apart and tranquil, her mouth full, upturned, serene, her expression one of unassailable innocence.

No, the difference was in her body, he decided. Seen like this, with her back to him, the honeyed firelight trickling along her hip and thigh, which were outlined by her skirt as she leaned against the desk, she looked sexy as hell. Her hips, in particular, were a work of art. Erotic art, straight out of a bad boy’s dreams. And a grown man’s palms would cup perfectly around them, just where the swell began to flare out from her narrow waist.

Which brought him to Robert Hamilton. Or did it? Daniel gripped his coffee mug tightly, letting the heat burn into his palm. Though her shocked denial had rung true, still…something, somebody had to account for the way that body moved. Its sensuality was definitely awakened.

“Christy, honey, I’d better go now. This is long distance, and I’m using Mr. McKinley’s telephone.”

Lindsay looked at him over her shoulder, her face sheepishly apologetic, and instantly his emotional kaleidoscope refocused, innocence again dominating the picture. With her lower lip between her teeth and her brows knitted in the middle, she looked like a child herself, a nervous kid who was worried that she might have irritated the grown-ups.

He waved her concern away with an upturned hand, suddenly annoyed with himself. He took another swig of coffee, burning his throat with an ill-advised gulp. Oh, hell, what did it matter anyway? Maybe she was as pure as those snowflakes out there. Or maybe she and Hamilton were sleeping together twice a day, as regular as flossing. He, for one, didn’t give a damn.

“I’m sorry that took so long,” she said suddenly, and he looked up to see that she had cradled the receiver. Sighing, she rubbed the back of her neck with one hand. “I think this must be the onset of adolescence. She argues with me about absolutely everything.”

“Yes, I hear the teenage years can be fairly hairraising,” he said politely. “I assume Christy doesn’t consider going to her grandparents’ house exactly a trip to Disneyland.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Lindsay said, still kneading her neck. “Come to think of it, the old place does bear a slight resemblance to the Haunted Mansion.” She walked over to stand near him by the fire, her upraised hand resting behind her head, her loosened braid spilling in thick, dark waves over her arm. “But you’re right, of course. Christy doesn’t feel comfortable with her grandmother. Even before our parents died, we were never—” she seemed to be looking for the right word “—very close.”

“Well, maybe we’ll get lucky, and the storm will pass through quickly,” he said. He hoped it would, and not just for her sake. For three years now he had spent the winters up here alone. The snowbound days were the best. Cut off from work, friends, television, telephone and sometimes even Roc, he could sink numbly into the brooding silence. It felt right, this frozen prison. It was the only time he didn’t have to pretend to anyone, and he wouldn’t welcome having Lindsay Blaisdell as a cellmate. “You may be able to get home before she’s out of school tomorrow.”

“Oh, good heavens, yes! I have to get home by tomorrow,” she exclaimed, wide-eyed, as if she hadn’t considered the possibility that this could go on longer than twenty-four hours. “It’s only four days till Christmas!” She added the last as if that fact alone decided the matter.

He hesitated, hardly able to credit the ingenuous faith he heard in her voice. Apparently she still believed that Fate intervened to protect the dreams of the innocent. Usually such naiveté made him impatient—he had made a religion of facing difficult truths, and he insisted that those around him do the same.

Natural disasters didn’t pause for Christmas dinner. The storm front might stall right over them, trapping them here for days, only to be followed by treacherous winds, buried roads, ice storms, downed trees and power lines, a hundred dangers that would make escape impossible. She might be smarter to plan on celebrating New Year’s Eve with her little Christy.

Those were the facts, whether she liked them or not. But, strangely, the words wouldn’t come. He found himself curiously reluctant to burst that bubble of guileless innocence. It was really a rather pretty thing, though useless, of course…and doomed, too, like an exquisite ice sculpture sparkling under a noonday sun.

And so he didn’t speak. A moment of silence stretched into two, then three, as she toyed abstractedly with her braid and he sipped at his coffee.

In a moment she sighed and, letting go of her hair, seemed to straighten herself and return to business.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll need to telephone Robert, too,” she said, her manner crisp, as if she regretted her lapse into such a personal discussion. “He’ll be wondering when I’m coming back. I’ll be glad to charge it to his calling card—”

Daniel shifted against the cushions. Obviously she was uncomfortable with being obliged to accept the hospitality of a man she disliked. He understood the reluctance to put herself in his debt, but this was absurd. What would be next—offering to pay for her meals? “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “Call direct. I’m quite sure my company won’t go bankrupt over a few extra long-distance bills.”

She smiled coolly. “Sorry. It’s just that over at Hamilton Homes, you see, we worry a lot about things like that.”

“Yes,” he agreed, glancing at the stack of documents. “I suppose you do.” But she was still smiling, and he realized that her comment had been mildly sarcastic. So—she wasn’t quite as naive as all that, was she?

She drew a deep breath. “Mr. McKinley—”

“Daniel,” he corrected. “We’re living together, remember?”

“Yes…Daniel.” But she swallowed the last syllable, and he knew she felt funny saying the name. Well, that was only natural, he supposed. If she still worked for him, he would never have invited her to use his first name. And he suddenly wondered whether, if he made the clearly mad move of buying Hamilton Homes, she would be his employee once again.

“When I call Robert,” she was saying, “he’s going to want to know where the negotiations stand. I know you said there was only one chance in a million that you would ever accept this deal—”

“Right.”

She met his gaze directly, though a certain rigidity in her posture made him wonder if she were as tranquil as she’d like him to believe.

“Is that still your position?” She took a deep breath. “You’ve seen the papers now. Has anything in those documents changed your mind?” Her gaze finally flickered. “Or anything in our discussion?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “As I told you—I haven’t learned anything from those papers that I didn’t know before,” he said. “And I haven’t heard you say anything I hadn’t heard you say before, either, have I?”

She shook her head slightly. “I suppose not.”

“So, no. Nothing has changed. The odds were one in a million before you got here, and they remain one in a million now.”

“Are you sure?” She turned her deep, wide gaze on his face, her eyes studying his searchingly. “You see, Robert really can’t afford to cherish hopes that are worthless. If there isn’t even that one remote chance in a million, we’ll need to pursue other options.”

“Other options?” He let his skepticism seep into the words.

She flushed, but her voice was firm. “Yes. So I hope you’ll be honest, and you won’t hold out false hope just so that things won’t be so awkward while we’re stuck here together.”

“Awkward?” Putting his coffee mug back on the end table, he stood up. The motion brought him within a foot of where she stood, and he could smell the sweet floral scent of her perfume, which had been released by the warmth of the fire. He felt a sudden flare of irritation toward Robert Hamilton for letting her venture out into the corporate jungle to do his dirty work for him.

“I’m not afraid of ‘awkward’, Lindsay,” Daniel said bluntly. “In fact, where business is concerned, I thrive on it.” He gestured toward the telephone. “So go on-call Robert and tell him the fates have given him a reprieve. It’s a million to one right now, but you’ve got until this blizzard passes to improve the odds.”

Half an hour later, Lindsay followed the rhythmic sounds of a pounding ax until she came to the source of the noises, a small woodshed just outside the kitchen door. Assuming that she would find Roc splitting logs, she eased open the door just a few inches and poked her head out.

To her surprise, though, it was Daniel, not Roc, and immediately all other thoughts slipped out of her mind like rain down a windowpane. No longer in the suit and tie he’d been wearing when she first saw him, he now wore jeans and a blue-striped shirt, the sleeves of which had been rolled up above his elbows to allow a greater range of motion.

He didn’t seem to notice the cracked door. His attention was focused on the large, squat cylindrical log that stood on some sort of pedestal in front of him. His legs were planted with a squared-off determination, and his bare arms were raised high and to one side. They seemed to hold just a second, and then, with a sudden, violent grace, they swept down, burying the head of the ax several inches deep into the log. Bracing one boot- clad foot on the pedestal, he worked the ax free and then set up a new log and prepared to strike again.

And again, and again. Lindsay was mesmerized, watching as those powerful arms swung up and down, the head of the ax winking in and out of the pale light that filtered through the cracks in the boarded walls of the shed.

It was obviously strenuous work. Though his breath condensed in the frigid air, and snowflakes blown in through the open door dusted the curls on his head, still Daniel was damp from his exertions. Sweat beaded along the gold-ribboned muscles of his forearms and ran in rivulets along the column of his throat. Lindsay shivered, her senses confused by the startling discordance of moist heat against this chilling cold.

Shutting her eyes, she gripped the doorknob, awash with a sense of her own inadequacy. She was a city girl, a Southerner by birth who had never spent a winter north of Phoenix, where she and Christy now lived. She found it disturbing in some primitive way, this display of brute force aligned against nature. And somehow humbling. Never before had she appreciated what was required to create the firewood that crackled so merrily in her Christmas hearth. Now she saw that each log must be wrenched, unwilling, from the massive forest that covered this mountainside.

“How’s Robert?”

She opened her eyes, and when her focus returned she saw that Daniel had set down his ax and was standing, his foot propped on the pedestal and his arms folded over his knee, looking at her. Though he still gleamed with sweat, he wasn’t even breathing heavily. He was, she thought, no stranger to hard work in spite of his immaculately groomed business persona.

“He’s okay,” she said. “Still groggy, though. They’re giving him a lot of pain pills, I think.”

Daniel wiped his brow, then raked his fingers through his hair. When he brought his hand down, his fingertips were damp with melted snow. “Did you tell him about the blizzard?”

She nodded, reluctant to discuss that part of her conversation. Robert had been horrified to hear that Lindsay was trapped on the mountain with Daniel McKinley. He had berated himself so unmercifully for putting her in that predicament that Lindsay had been almost unable to calm him down. Only her promise that she’d be extremely careful had helped at all. So promise she had, though she wasn’t sure exactly what Robert wanted her to be careful of.

Could he have been jealous, worried that she might find herself attracted to Daniel? Well, if that was it, Robert had nothing to worry about. She hadn’t ever been interested in domineering, macho types. And Daniel McKinley looked just as arrogant here, splitting logs in his shirtsleeves, as he ever had in his business suit. She looked at the logs that had fallen so easily under his ax, and she swallowed hard. Maybe more so.

“That looks exhausting,” she said, hoping to change the subject before he asked more about her conversation with Robert. “Can I help?”

He raised his brows, obviously surprised. “Thanks, but it’s under control,” he said. “We were already stocked up, but I thought we’d better have some extra logs lying around in case we lose electricity. Heating three bedrooms will really eat up the wood.”

Three bedrooms. She was the problem, then, the reason that he was laboring out here in the bitter cold. “I’m sorry to be an extra burden—” she began, but he broke in impatiently.

“You’re not to blame for the blizzard.” He picked up the ax and drove it into the pedestal, as if that were its natural storage spot. “You’re just as much a victim of the weather as we are.”

“I know, but…” But what? She didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t say what was really on her mind, that she couldn’t imagine how she was going to get through the next twenty-four hours. All this idle time cooped up with a man with whom the only thing she had in common was a short, disastrous past acquaintance and a mutual distrust. All this artificial intimacy with this intensely male autocrat who didn’t even like her.

She wished Roc would come back from making up the guest room. Or, better yet, she wished she had something to do. Yes, that was the answer. She needed to contribute somehow so that she wouldn’t feel so helpless and dependent.

“How about if I make some dinner?” She cast a quick glance behind her into the large, intelligently arranged kitchen, and her mood lightened at the thought of puttering about in here. It had been ages since she’d had such a luxurious setting—and so much free time—in which to indulge her favorite hobby. The kitchen in her apartment at home was neat and clean, but tiny. And she was always in a flurry, bolting in the door after work and trying to throw something simple together while helping Christy with her algebra.

She turned back to Daniel, but to her dismay he was shaking his head. “Roc will do it,” he said, casually dashing her hopes while he rolled his sleeves down and buttoned them around his wrists. “He’s stocked the pantry for the winter, and he has menus lined up from now until Easter. Believe me, there’s no need for you to worry about the food.”

“But I love to cook,” she said, stepping back to allow Daniel to enter the kitchen. His sleeve brushed her hand as he passed by, and the cotton was cold and damp, raising goose bumps up the length of her forearm. She backed away further. “Maybe Roc would let me help him, at least.”

Daniel bent over the kitchen sink, splashing water on his face, then rubbed it with the nearest kitchen towel. “No,” he said again. “There’s no need for you to worry. Roc should have your room ready by now. Would you like to go upstairs, maybe have a shower and a nap? We usually have dinner about seven, if that suits you. Roc could call you then.”

“A nap?” She couldn’t believe her ears. “It’s only three o’clock in the afternoon, Mr. McKinley—I mean, Daniel.” She smiled, just a little, to soften the intensity of her instinctive outburst. “I haven’t had a nap in the afternoon since I was in kindergarten.”

He looked slightly displeased, and she suddenly wondered uncomfortably whether he’d been trying to get rid of her. Maybe she was being rude—maybe snowbound etiquette demanded that she withdraw obediently to her assigned quarters and at least pretend to sleep for the next four hours.

“There must be things you’d like to do.” His impersonal gaze roamed over her hair, her face, her hands, and she flushed, thinking what a mess she must look. He probably was accustomed to women who were far more concerned with their grooming than they were with cooking dinner. She lifted her chin, meeting his critical survey with just a touch of defiance. She wasn’t an ornamental, trophy female. She was a working woman, and she wasn’t a bit ashamed of it. Still, she tucked her short, unpolished nails behind her back.

“You’re not an employee here, you know,” he said curtly. “You’re a guest.”

Yes, she thought, but an unwanted guest. A guest who had been invited only by the storm. But she didn’t say it, knowing it would sound ungrateful. And she was grateful, of course. Though she would have preferred to be stranded almost anywhere else on earth, she knew how lucky she was not to be out there in that helicopter with that crazy pilot at the controls.

“Still,” she said, “there must be things to do during an emergency like this. I’d like to help.”

“For God’s sake, say yes, man, before the lady decides you’re some kind of chauvinist pig.” Roc appeared in the doorway, and Lindsay, though grateful for his arrival, wondered whether the caretaker knew a labyrinth of secret passages that accounted for these dramatic manifestations.

He ambled into the kitchen, his black garb strikingly dark against the gleaming white tile. “Daniel really isn’t a chauvinist, Miss Lindsay, though I know he’s been talking like a chowderhead. He hires plenty of women at the office, even has a couple of female vice presidents, believe it or not.”

Lindsay thought back and remembered that this was true, though she wasn’t sure why Roc was bringing it up now.

“It’s just that he’s not accustomed to having useful women right here in the house with him,” Roc went on. “Jocelyn, for instance—”

Daniel’s hand moved. “Roc—”

“Jocelyn, for instance,” Roc continued as if there had been no interruption, “could easily have spent four hours tending those talons of hers. Coloring them some DayGlo red that would make a blind man wince. And then she would have wanted Danny Boy here to spoon feed her while the paint dried.” Roc shuddered, as if the memory were too horrible to bear. “Disgusting.”

“That’s enough, Roc,” Daniel said, and though he still leaned up against the counter, apparently relaxed and at ease, his knuckles were pale around the dish towel he held, and every syllable was as sharp as glass. “I don’t think Lindsay’s interested in all that.”

Of course she was interested, though she tried to keep her face bland, noncommittal. What an incredible image Roc had conjured up! She looked at Daniel now, trying to imagine this scowling man sitting on the edge of his wife’s bed, laughingly placing bits of fruit between lovely red lips.

“Well, excuse me for trying to defend your sorry reputation,” Roc said huffily. He stomped over to the pantry and, grabbing the cupboard handle with his hook, flung it open. “If you want Miss Lindsay to believe that in your opinion women spend all day snoozing and scarfing bonbons, it’s no skin off my nose. But I for one would be glad of a little help around here. God knows you’re worthless.”

Lindsay instinctively held her breath, waiting for Daniel’s reaction. If she remembered correctly from her days as his employee, cold, quick annihilation awaited the disrespectful caretaker. But when she glanced over at Daniel, she saw that a grudging smile had begun to tilt the corners of his eyes. Roc wasn’t just an ordinary employee, then, was he? He obviously had a special status and was allowed liberties that no one else would have dared to take.

The smile disappeared as quickly as it came. Daniel tossed the towel onto the counter.

“All right, Lindsay,” he said, his voice betraying neither enthusiasm nor annoyance. “If you want to cook dinner for us tonight, Roc obviously will welcome you into his kitchen. I’m going out to check the furnace.”

“Right,” Roc said, his head still buried in the pantry. “Then you can go take a shower and a nap, Danny Boy. If anyone in this kitchen needs to tend to his grooming, it’s you. You smell like the woodpile, boss, and that’s a fact.”

Daniel deliberately postponed his shower for several hours, concentrating on first one chore and then another, as if to prove to Roc that he didn’t mind being grubby and disheveled around Lindsay Blaisdell. Then, when be finally did clean up, he consciously decided to dress down—fresh jeans and a thick blue sweater would be fine. Roc had better understand right now that Daniel wasn’t interested in impressing Lindsay Blaisdell.

He had been the victim of Roc’s matchmaking for three years now, and he knew all the signs. Ever since Jocelyn had died, the caretaker had been indefatigable in his hunt for some sweet young thing to bring home to Daniel.

The younger and sweeter, the better, at least in Roc’s estimation. Apparently he believed that Daniel needed the perfect sugarplum princess as an antidote to Jocelyn, who had been six years older than he, and had been possessed of a sophistication as sharp as the business end of a razor blade.

At first he’d been too numb to notice. But when he’d finally caught on to Roc’s machinations, Daniel had been rather sharp himself. He had no intention of ever falling in love again, he had assured his caretaker, and the few ultra-temporary, mutually satisfying relationships he was interested in couldn’t be honorably offered to these ingenues. These young women were dreaming of fourteen-carat, ring-finger, bells-and-preachers, capital-L-Love, and Daniel was permanently out of the stuff.

But for months Roc had been irrepressible, until finally, in an icy fury, Daniel had found the words to put a stop to the charade.

“Frankly, Roc, I don’t believe I require the services of a pimp,” he had said, narrow-eyed and steely. Roc had, for once, been speechless. In high dudgeon he had stormed off, but he had, to Daniel’s immense relief, finally ceased his maneuvers.

And now, after a blessedly quiet year, apparently Fate had dropped Lindsay Blaisdell like a bomb into the middle of Roc’s best intentions. She met all the criteria. Young—Daniel figured somewhere around twenty-two or -three. Pretty—well, even cold-hearted men who had no interest in capital-L-Love still had eyes in their heads, didn’t they? And as for sweet—well, Roc was clearly already prepared to plop the Miss Sugarplum Princess tiara on Lindsay’s soft dark hair.

The only real problem was that, for the first time, Daniel found himself drawn to the dulcet confection with which Roc was preparing to tempt him. Lindsay’s sweetness wasn’t like that of the others. Those women would have bored him silly in three days flat, their incessant, unrelieved goodness acting like a sickening surfeit of cotton candy. But Lindsay…well, she was a more complicated dish, sweet, but with the suggestion of subtle spices that would please a far more discriminating palate.

But wait…Daniel sat on the edge of the bed, horrified. What insufferable, arrogant nonsense was this?

Disgusted with his own thoughts, he shoved his feet into his loafers with such force that he nearly tore the leather. Who the devil did he think he was, contemplating this perfectly decent young woman as if she were the latest delicacy served up on his table? Had he begun, God help him, to think like Roc?

He ran frustrated hands through his hair and then re fused to comb it again as a dumb but nonetheless gratifying symbolic gesture of renunciation. He descended the stairs, his determination renewed. He was not going to act like the wicked wolf, feasting shamelessly on the honeyed goodness of little Lindsay Blaisdell while she was lost in his snowy forest.

Besides, Lindsay Blaisdell was already on to him, and might not make such easy pickings as all that anyway. She had decided three years ago that Daniel was a self-centered bastard, and he was not going to try to change her mind.

Why should he? She was right.

CHAPTER THREE

DINNER was tense but mercifully uneventful, thanks to Roc, who, as if he sensed Lindsay’s discomfort, kept up a colorful monologue about dirty politics in some country she had never heard of. A country, she suspected, that he had invented on the spur of the moment.

When Roc left the table to do the dishes, forbidding Lindsay to follow him, she had a moment of panic, but without skipping a beat Daniel smoothly segued into a discussion of the weather. Gratefully Lindsay followed his lead, and they managed to make the subject last, though by coffee they were practically down to naming individual snowflakes. As soon as civility allowed, Lindsay excused herself, pleading exhaustion, and fled upstairs.

Her room was large, warm and surprisingly welcoming. The pale green linens Roc had put on the bed matched the flowered drapes, honey-gold wood paneling lined the walls and built-in bookcases, and a small fire was already chattering away in the hearth. Someone had thoughtfully laid an oversize white sweatshirt across the bed, and, not even bothering to wonder who it belonged to, she shrugged out of her uncomfortable business suit gratefully and slipped the sweatshirt on. It came down almost to her knees.

The relief was instant and overwhelming. Her defenses down, the stressful day finally overtook her, and she realized that, though it was only seven o’clock, she could hardly keep her eyes open. She slid under the eiderdown comforter and felt her body relax for the first rime today. She tried to worry about Christy, or Robert, or the future of Hamilton Homes, but she simply wasn’t up to it. Shutting her eyes, she promptly fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

She should have known she’d have to pay for that craven escape, and the bill came due at 3:00 a.m., when she woke with a start, wondering where she was and why she was so cold.

When she remembered, it didn’t make her feel one bit better.

Three o’clock was the most godawful lonesome corner of the night, she decided, sitting up in bed and hugging her pillow against the homesick ache under her breastbone. The fire had burned itself out, one halfcharred log still lying among the pile of sickly gray ashes. Her clothes, which she had so carefully draped across the chair last night, looked weirdly empty, as if their owner had vaporized, leaving them behind.

Worst of all, when she stood up and peered out the window, she saw by the illumination of the yard lights that the blizzard had not subsided at all. If anything, it was whiter and angrier than ever, with snow flying in so many directions at once it was impossible to tell which way the wind was blowing. Her heart dragged at her chest as she reluctantly faced the truth: she probably wouldn’t be going home today, either. She didn’t know how she would face Christy’s tears.

She felt a little like crying herself, though weeping was a weakness she despised and rarely indulged in, at least not since her parents had died. Though she had been only twenty years old at the time, that catastrophe had taught her a lot about survival. She had realized then that happiness was a trophy, not a gift—and that weepers rarely carried the trophy home.

But damn, damn, damn, damn! She pressed her hands over the frigid glass, letting the snowflakes beat their silent tattoo against her palms. She lowered her forehead to the window, too, though she shivered as the cold seeped into her skin. She felt so impotent, trapped here in this luxurious prison when Christy needed her.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.