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The Magic of a Family Christmas
SUSAN MEIER
Christmas wishes and a diamond ring! My name is Harry. I’m six. My Christmas wish is for my new mum, Wendy, to marry so I can have a for ever family. With her little foster son Harry to care for, Christmas suddenly sparkles again for secretary Wendy Winston.The only fly in the ointment is her gorgeous new boss Cullen Barrington, who insists on playing the part of Scrooge! When they are all stranded together in an ice storm, Wendy sets about showing them just how magical a family Christmas can be…
“Okay, Cullen!” Harry said, handing him a cookie. “You paint this one. It’s a bell.”
“I see that.”
“So paint it.”
“With frosting,” Wendy qualified. “But you should also wash your hands first.”
He was going to say no. He’d never done anything like this in his life and he was too old to start now. But just the mention of the word frosting squeezed his heart. Unable to catch every word said about him, Harry had repeated what he’d thought he heard and called himself a “frosting child.” He was a sweet little boy, left in the hands of a cold, sterile system. How could Cullen turn away the request of a child who’d just lost his mother?
“Okay.”
Wendy smiled. Cullen’s heart tripped over itself in his chest. Now that they were in a comfortable environment he’d begun thinking of things a little more normally. But that wasn’t necessarily good. Instead of envisioning off-the-wall images like sparkling angels when he looked at her, he was now thinking how he’d like to kiss the lips that had pulled upward into a smile.
But that was wrong. They’d be working together for the next weeks. Visions of angels were one thing. Actually wanting to kiss his temporary employee was another.
Susan Meier spent most of her twenties thinking she was a job-hopper—until she began to write and realised everything that had come before was only research! One of eleven children, with twenty-four nieces and nephews and three kids of her own, Susan has had plenty of real-life experience watching romance blossom in unexpected ways. She lives in Western Pennsylvania with her wonderful husband Mike, three children, and two over-fed, well-cuddled cats, Sophie and Fluffy. You can visit Susan’s website at www.susanmeier.com
The Magic of a Family Christmas
BY
Susan Meier
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk/)
For the people at Gardners Candies
in Tyrone, Pennsylvania!
Thanks for a great tour and your help with this story!
Merry Christmas!
For my mom,
who was the inspiration for Harry’s Christmas cookie.
Prologue
“I’VE hired a nurse.”
“Really?” Wendy Winston tried to sound surprised by her next-door neighbor’s announcement, but she wasn’t. Betsy’s cancer hadn’t responded to treatment. Wendy had been able to help Betsy struggle through the aftereffects of the initial round of chemotherapy, but her friend needed real care now. Care beyond what a neighbor could provide.
“I appreciate all the help you’ve given me over the past few weeks, but I’ll bet you’ll be glad for the break.”
Fluffing the fat pillow before she slid it under Betsy’s head, Wendy laughed. “You think I’ll be glad to go back to an empty house?”
Betsy frowned. “I’ve always wondered why you didn’t move back to your family in Ohio after your husband died.”
She shrugged. “Memories mostly. It seemed too abrupt just to leave when he died. I needed time to process everything.”
“It’s been two years.”
“I also have a job.”
“No one stays away from family for a job.”
She grinned at Betsy. “Would you believe I can’t sell that monstrosity I call a house?”
Betsy laughed.
“One of these days I’ll have the kitchen and bathrooms remodeled and then I can put it on the market and go.”
Even Wendy heard the wistfulness in her own voice so she wasn’t surprised when Betsy said, “It makes you sad to think of leaving.”
“Four years ago I settled here with the assumption that Barrington would be my home. I can’t shake the feeling that this is where I belong. No matter how alone I am.”
“Why didn’t you and Greg ever have kids?”
“He wanted to be done with his residency before we even tried.”
“Makes sense.”
Wendy smiled sadly.
“But it didn’t make you happy.”
“If we’d done what I wanted and had a child I wouldn’t be alone right now.” She sighed. “Not that I only wanted a child to keep from being lonely. It was more than that. My whole life I longed to be a mom. But what Greg wanted always came first. Some days I struggle with that.”
“That’s one of those tough choices that happens in a marriage. Nobody’s fault.”
Wendy turned away. “Yeah.” She wouldn’t burden Betsy with stories of how her late husband had been so focused and determined that he frequently didn’t even listen when she talked. She didn’t want to give Betsy any more to worry about or the wrong idea. She had loved Greg and missed him so much after he died that she had genuinely believed she would never be happy again. But because he was so selfabsorbed, their marriage was far from perfect.
Silence stretched out in Betsy’s sunny bedroom as Wendy walked around the room tidying the dresser and bedside tables.
“You know, it won’t be the nurse’s job to read Harry a story or tuck him in at night,” Betsy said, referring to her six-year-old son.
Wendy turned from the dresser.
“So if you want to keep coming over to do that, I know it would make Harry happy. He loves it when you read to him.”
Wendy smiled. “I love it, too.”
Chapter One
WENDY Winston twisted the key to silence her small car and turned to the boy on the seat beside her. Six-year-old Harry Martin blinked at her from behind brown-framed glasses. A knit cap covered his short yellow hair. His blue eyes were far too serious to be those of a child. A thick winter coat swallowed his thin body. His mittened hand clutched a bag of toy soldiers.
“I’m really sorry to have to bring you to work.”
He pushed his glasses up his nose. “S’okay.”
She wanted to say not really. It wasn’t okay that he’d be forced to sit and play with his plastic soldiers for God only knew how long while she worked. It wasn’t okay that he’d lost his mom. Or that Betsy’s lawyer had been out of town when she’d died. It had been four weeks before Attorney Costello had finally called to tell Wendy that Betsy had granted her custody of Harry in her will, and another few days before social services could pull him out of his foster home and give Wendy custody—and then only temporarily.
Regardless of what Betsy’s will said, Harry’s biological father’s rights superseded her custody bequest. But no one knew where Harry’s dad was, so, for now, Wendy had a child who needed her, and, for the first time in two years, she had someone to anticipate Christmas with. Though social services was searching for Harry’s dad, Wendy believed she and Harry could have as long as a month to shop, bake cookies and decorate. If it killed her she would make it the best month before Christmas this little boy had ever had.
She smiled. “I promise I’ll make this up to you.”
“Can we bake cookies?”
Her heart soared. It seemed that what he needed done for him was what she needed to do. They were the perfect combination. Maybe fate wasn’t so despicable after all.
“You bet we can bake cookies. Any kind you want.”
Wicked wind battered them with freezing rain as they raced across the icy parking lot to the executive entrance for Barrington Candies. Juggling her umbrella and her purse as they ran toward the door, she rummaged for her key, but before she found it, the right side of the glass double doors burst open.
Cullen Barrington stood in the entryway. Six foot three, with black hair and eyes every bit as dark, and wearing a pale-blue sweater that was probably cashmere, the owner of Barrington Candies was the consummate playboy. He was rich, handsome and rarely around, assigning her boss Paul McCoy the task of managing the day-to-day operations of the company while he handled the big-picture details from the comfort of his home in Miami. Cullen was also so tight with money that no one in the plant had gotten a raise since control of Barrington Candies had been handed to him by his mother.
Scrooge.
That’s what she’d taken to calling the man who’d summoned her to work on a Saturday afternoon. Even though he’d surprised everyone with his offer to fill in for her boss so Mr. McCoy could take an extended Christmas vacation, Wendy wasn’t fooled into thinking he’d changed his ways and become generous. Though he’d probably called her in today to prepare before he took over on Monday morning, he’d paid no thought to the fact that she would lose her day off. She’d lose precious minutes with Harry. She’d lose the chance for them to enjoy whatever time they had together, and maybe even the chance for her to show him life wasn’t entirely bad, just parts of it.
Even if, some days, she didn’t quite believe that herself.
Occupied with her thoughts, she slipped on the ice and plowed into Cullen. She braced her hand on his chest to stop her forward momentum and it sank into the downy cashmere covering the hard muscle of his chest. His body was like a rock.
Confused, because she thought all rich men were soft and pampered, she looked up. He glanced down. And everything inside Wendy stilled. She swore the world stopped revolving. As dark as moonless midnight, his eyes held hers. Her femininity stirred inside her.
That confused her even more. She hadn’t felt anything for a man since her husband’s death, and Cullen Barrington was the last man on the planet she wanted to be attracted to. A playboy from Miami? No thanks. She’d glimpsed him a time or two in the four years she’d been working for his company and never felt anything but distaste at the way he treated his employees. She had no idea what was going on with her hormones, but it had to be an aberration of some sort.
She stepped away, and as the door swung closed behind her a bell rang.
Funny, she didn’t remember a bell being on that door.
She turned to investigate and sure enough someone had tied a bell to the spring mechanism at the top of the door. Probably Wendell, the janitor, making sure he’d be alerted if one of the executives sneaked in to check up on him.
“Why did you bring your little boy?”
She pulled off her mittens. “Oh, I don’t know. Because I wasn’t supposed to be working today? Because it’s such short notice that I couldn’t get a sitter?” She shrugged. “Take your pick.”
His gorgeous eyes narrowed. He obviously didn’t like her speaking so freely with him.
Wendy almost groaned at her stupidity. A single woman who might get custody of a little boy couldn’t afford to be fired!
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you. It’s just cold and I had things to do. So tell me what you want to work on and we can get started.”
“I’d like to catch up on what’s been going on, so I’ll need production schedules and the financials. Once you help me find those, you can go home.”
He didn’t smile. Didn’t give any reason at all for her heart to catch at the smooth baritone of his voice, but it did. Her entire body felt warm and soft, feminine in response to his masculinity.
She stepped back. She did not want to be attracted to him. It had taken her two long, miserable years to get over Greg’s death. And she refused to go through the misery of loss again by being attracted to a playboy who—as sure as the sun rises every day—would dump her.
Of course, she might not be attracted to Cullen as much as she was simply waking up from the sexual dead. It had been two years. And she had been feeling like her normal self for at least three months. Maybe this was just a stage?
She peeked at Cullen, knowing that beneath that soft sweater was a very hard male body. Something sweet and syrupy floated through her. Moving her gaze upward, she met his simmering dark eyes and knew she could get lost in them.
She swallowed. Nope. Not a stage. It was him. She was attracted to him.
He turned to walk back to the office. Following him, she caught Harry’s hand and brought him along with her.
“As far as the financials go, I don’t want those fancy reports that go out in the annual statement. I want the spreadsheets. The nuts and bolts.”
She stopped with a frown. She had access to everything, but if he was looking for the whys behind the line entries, she couldn’t help him. “Why didn’t you call Nolan, the accountant?”
He faced her. “Are you saying you can’t get me the financials?”
“No. I have them. Everything is in my filing cabinet. But—”
She stopped talking. First, his eyes were simmering sexily again and her whole body began to hum—which made her want to groan in frustration. Second, she was making this harder than it had to be. All she had to do was find a few documents for him. The faster she found them, the sooner she’d be at home making cookies.
She squeezed Harry’s hand. “I can get you anything you need.”
“Thank you.”
Cullen turned and resumed his walk to the executive suite. Wendy and Harry scurried behind him.
In her office, she stripped off her coat and removed Harry’s. Cullen stood patiently by her desk as she rummaged through her purse for the key to the filing cabinet. Walking over, she noticed the door to her boss’s office was open. Papers were strewn across his desk.
“Oh, you’re already working?”
Cullen nodded. “I typed a few letters. But there isn’t a printer in the office. I’m guessing I have to send my things to a remote printer, but I’m not sure which one is which.”
“E-mail them to me and I’ll print them.”
“Why don’t you just come to the computer with me and show me which printer to send them to?”
Okay. So he didn’t want her to see what he’d written. No big deal. Whatever he wanted to print was probably personal. Not her business. She not only got the message; she also agreed. The less she knew about this man and the faster she got away from him, the better.
She unlocked the cabinet, pulled out the accordion file that contained the backup documentation for the financials for the year that had passed and handed it to him.
He glanced at the packet, then back up at her. Her stomach flip-flopped. His eyes were incredible. Dark. Shiny. Sexy. And the perfect complement to his angular face. He had the look of a matador. Strong. Bold. Everything about him was dramatic, male.
“Is the forecast in here?”
With a quick shake of her head, she rid herself of those ridiculous thoughts, not sure where the heck they kept coming from but knowing they were absolutely wrong. She returned her attention to the open drawer and pulled the file folder for the five-year plan.
