Millionaire's Christmas Miracle Read Free Page B

was threatening him with murder a few minutes ago.”
    “Well, sure, but I didn’t want him dead.”
    That brought unexpected laughter from the man as he crouched right in front of her. She looked into those eyes and saw they were a rich hazel filled with flashing humor. “I’ll take your word for that, but either way, neither one of us committed raticide.”
    “Raticide?”
    “The murder of a rat? I thought that was going to happen when you threw the thing at me, right before you attacked me.”
    “Attacked you?” She scrambled backward, grabbing at the tree trunk to get to her feet. But as she stood, he was on his feet, too, right in front of her. “No way. You’re the one who scared the bewaddle out of me by sneaking up on me like that.”
    A grin came with her words, a grin that stunned her when she realized how seductive an expression it was. She was more tired than she’d ever dreamed. “Bewaddle?” he asked. “Lady, you’re definitely going to have to define bewaddle for me.”
    She brushed at her hair as it tangled around her face, regretting taking it out of the clips when she’d thought she was leaving. “Bewaddle is…well,” she began with a shrug. “It means you really scared me so badly that I…I wasn’t responsible for what I did, and I wasn’t attacking you, I was trying to save poor Charlie.”
    “So, bewaddle made you throw a rat at me?” he asked with mock seriousness. “And saving him meant you attacked me?”
    “Oh, for Pete’s sake, I never—” She remembered what she was doing to begin with, before this man ripped into her world and turned it and her on their collective ears. “If you weren’t lying on Charlie, then where is he?” She turned from the grin and scanned the center.
    “If he’s not dead, he’s loose,” the man said.
    She glanced back at him, at that smile that seemed a permanent fixture, and immediately regretted her next words. “And it’s all your fault.”
    She turned from him, embarrassed to be so petty at the moment, and she wasn’t prepared for him totouch her. His fingers pressed heat to her arm, and she jerked back and around to face him again. “Lady, we should all be thankful you aren’t sitting on any jury trying me,” he drawled. “Hell, you’d give me the death penalty for jaywalking.”
    She barely knew him, but she knew for sure that she’d never vote to stop whatever time he had left on earth. “I’m sorry,” she said. “This has just been the most awful evening. There was so much work and so many people crawling out of the woodwork asking the dumbest questions. I tried, I even made a gingerbread family thing, and that drove Charlie crazy. He loves gingerbread. And my dress…” She brushed the tear in the skirt. “It’s not even mine, I mean, my—” She bit her lip, not about to explain anything else to this man. A stranger. She didn’t even know his name. “Listen Mr….?”
    “Gallagher, Quint Gallagher.”
    She stared at him. Quint Gallagher? Oh, no! Gallagher, the planner, the man brought in from New York by Matt Terrel to map LynTech’s future. The man who, so she’d heard, had refused to go on one of the tours of the center they’d arranged for this reception. And she’d thrown a rat at him, knocked him over and accused him of killing that same rat. “Oh, Mr. Gallagher, I didn’t know.”
    “Stop. Let’s just start all over again.” He held out his hand. “I’m Quint Gallagher.”
    She would gladly start all over again, but when she slipped her hand into his, she knew that whatever was spooking her tonight was just getting worse. She had to try twice to say her own name. “Blake…Amy.”
    “What goes first?” he asked, his gaze flicking over her as he kept his hold on her hand.
    She drew back on the pretext of smoothing the dress she’d borrowed from her sister-in-law. “Amy…that’s first.”
    “Amy Blake. And you’re here because…?”
    “I was giving tours of the center to the people