Millionaire's Christmas Miracle Read Free

color me wrong, very wrong.”
    He smiled as he moved a bit closer, the voice drawing him as surely as the words she uttered. Then there was more movement at the bottom of the tree, and he could have sworn he saw a bare foot coming out of an arched hole in the trunk. It was a foot, then another, coming out soles-first, followed by an expanse of legs tangled in some material that could have been ice blue, but the lights were too low to let him see if he was right or not.
    What he did know was that a woman was backing out of an arched hole in the tree trunk on her hands and knees. She was slowly inching out, showing a swell of slender hips, and all the time muttering. “Well, never again. Once burned, that’s it with me. You’ve run out of chances, Charlie.”
    A narrow waist, then she was out with her back tohim. But he could see that she was tiny, slender, and when she shook her head, hair the color of night tumbled around her bare shoulders and partway down her back. He remembered hearing somewhere that long hair was sexy on a woman, but he hadn’t realized the truth of it until that moment. Sexy. Damn sexy. As sexy as the way the fine material of her dress defined a tiny waist, clung to her hips and the ripped hem tangled with her slender legs.
    Lucky Charlie, he thought, as something stirred in him, something so basic and sexual, that it startled him. He hadn’t felt anything like this for a woman for what seemed ages, if ever. No matter what his son thought, he’d had a personal life, but right then he knew that he’d never let himself really go.
    Just find some sexy woman and go with the flow? Let it happen. Relax. Chill out.
    Looking at the woman, he thought that maybe it was time to just go with the flow, to let whatever happened happen and not look back. He was on his own. He wasn’t protecting anyone anymore. He wasn’t looking for a miracle. He was looking at a woman who stirred him, and he hadn’t even seen her face.
    He would have spoken then, said something to get her to turn so he could see her face. As if on cue, she started to turn, one arm tucked out of sight in front of her. Quint literally felt his breath catch in his chest with anticipation as he took in her profile, the elegant sweep of her throat, a small chin, softly parted lips, a tiny nose, improbably long lashes.
    Then she faced him, her features filled with delicatebeauty that he knew could haunt a man’s dreams. When she saw him, dark eyes widened with shock, and in the next second, she screamed, her hands flew up, and something came flying through the air toward Quint.
    Amy Blake hadn’t known there was anyone else in the day-care center until she’d turned and found a tall, lean stranger, all in black, no more than two feet from where she stood by the tree. The world suddenly moved in slow motion as her first thought was to protect herself. And that meant instinctively thrusting out her hands to ward the man off. That’s when Charlie, the fat black-and-white pet rat, flew out of her hands and sailed through the air, headed right for the stranger.
    Her second thought was that no matter what misery the animal had caused her by getting loose right before she began to close up and leave, she was sending him to his death. His little legs were flailing as he flew through the air, right at the stranger’s chest.
    She lunged in an effort to save the poor animal from meeting a horrible end, and realized the stranger was moving, too, right at her. In a heartbeat he had the rat in both hands, but she couldn’t stop her own momentum any more than he could stop his. She was as out of control as Charlie had been a split second ago, but she wasn’t being caught and rescued. Instead, she hit the stranger, tangling with him, feeling a stinging blow at her forehead, inhaling a jumble of scents, from gingerbread to aftershave, all layered with body heat.
    The momentum kept up, the uncontrolled tumblingwith the man until she hit the ground, felt the