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That Maddening Man
Debrah Morris
Ellin Bennett had a daughter to raise, a career to save and a newspaper to run. Rescuing a stranded Santa Claus from the roadside was not on her To-Do list. Worse yet, "Santa" was none other than sexy Jack Madden, schoolteacher and part-time writer for Ellin's paper. The man's smile could stop traffic…dangerous for a single mom temporarily stuck in Smallsville!A wife and daughter were not tops on Jack's Christmas list. He'd been a content bachelor until he met Ellin. Getting her to settle down would be no easy task, but this small-town hunk was about to give his sophisticated editor a crash course on love…and family.
“You’re making fun of me, Jack Madden,” Ellin accused.
“I’d never do that, Ellin Bennett.”
His words were spoken as softly as a lover’s caress. For a crazy moment, she longed for his touch on her skin, the brush of his full lips against hers. She was mesmerized by a need so intense, it caused a physical ache.
Holy guacamole! What was she thinking? “It’s getting late. I need to put Lizzie to bed.”
She stood up and leaned over to lift her sleeping daughter from his arms. She heard his sharp intake of breath when her hair swung down and brushed his cheek.
Her eyes met his. For one heart-stopping minute she knew he meant to kiss her. And she was stunned to realize how much she wanted him to….
Dear Reader,
Summer’s finally here! Whether you’ll be lounging poolside, at the beach, or simply in your home this season, we have great reads packed with everything you enjoy from Silhouette Romance—tenderness, emotion, fun and, of course, heart-pounding romance—plus some very special surprises.
First, don’t miss the exciting conclusion to the thrilling ROYALLY WED: THE MISSING HEIR miniseries with Cathie Linz’s A Prince at Last! Then be swept off your feet—just like the heroine herself!—in Hayley Gardner’s Kidnapping His Bride.
Romance favorite Raye Morgan is back with A Little Moonlighting, about a tycoon set way off track by his beguiling associate who wants a family to call her own. And in Debrah Morris’s That Maddening Man, can a traffic-stopping smile convince a career woman—and single mom—to slow down…?
Then laugh, cry and fall in love all over again with two incredibly tender love stories. Vivienne Wallington’s Kindergarten Cupids is a very different, highly emotional story about scandal, survival and second chances. Then dive right into Jackie Braun’s True Love, Inc., about a professional matchmaker who’s challenged to find her very sexy, very cynical client his perfect woman. Can she convince him that she already has?
Here’s to a wonderful, relaxing summer filled with happiness and romance.
Happy reading!
Mary-Theresa Hussey
Senior Editor
That Maddening Man
Debrah Morris
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Books by Debrah Morris
Silhouette Romance
A Girl, a Guy and a Lullaby #1549
That Maddening Man #1597
DEBRAH MORRIS
Before embarking on a solo writing career, Debrah Morris coauthored over twenty romance novels as one half of the Pepper Adams/Joanna Jordan writing team. She’s been married for twenty-four years, and between them, she and her husband have five children. She’s changed careers several times in her life, but finds she much prefers writing to working. She loves to hear from readers. Please contact her at P.O. Box 522, Norman, OK 73070-0522. If you would like an autographed bookmark, please send a SASE with your request.
Contents
Chapter One (#u240f73da-bb6b-5dc9-bf6b-063a8d5a57fa)
Chapter Two (#u20a0b55f-1de4-5869-a7a9-16b9890f487b)
Chapter Three (#u51f2b6f3-e74d-5aa7-a5c8-383e7a128d62)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
Ellin Bennett was a risk-taker by nature, but not quite reckless enough to drive these hills at the posted speed limit. Her gloved hands tightened on the wheel as she steered the sleek Japanese import along the narrow two-lane highway. There were moments when daring was the way to go, but this was not one of them.
She passed another Watch For Deer sign. Was it a warning? Or an invitation to enjoy the local wildlife? Should she be wary of big-eyed creatures blundering into her path? Or look out for friendly loiterers in the woods? After eleven years in Chicago, living in the Ozarks would take some getting used to.
“But, Mommy, Santa Claus won’t know where to find me.”
“Sure he will, Lizzie.” Ellin glanced in the rearview mirror and smiled. Strapped into a state-of-the-art booster seat, her four-year-old daughter wore a fuzzy pink coat, a gaudy rhinestone tiara and a worried frown.
“I told you, Mommy. I’m not Lizzie today.”
“So sorry, Your Highness. I meant Princess Lizzie, of course.” She atoned for the breach of protocol like a chastened vassal. After all, it was her fourth reminder.
“But how will he find me?” the child persisted. “He doesn’t know we moved in with Grammy.”
“Sure he does, honey. Santa Claus knows everything.” Ellin wasn’t exactly filled with Christmas spirit this year, but she couldn’t let her cynicism spoil her little girl’s illusions.
“But Grammy doesn’t have a chimbly.” Normally sunny and easygoing, Lizzie had developed an alarming number of worries since the move. Most of which involved the coming holiday.
“That won’t stop Santa.”
“He can’t leave presents if there’s no chimbly to come down.”
“Of course he can,” Ellin assured with a sigh. “He’s magic.”
“When are we getting a Christmas tree?” Lizzie twirled her princess wand absently.
“Soon, baby, soon.” Ellin watched the twisting road and the ditch looming close beside it.
“Today?”
“Maybe.” The absence of a propped-up conifer in the living room was a big source of preschool anxiety.
“Don’t say maybe.” Lizzie’s little pink lips puckered into a pout. “Say yes.”
“We’ll see.” The phrase was straight out of Lesson One of the Mommy Handbook and usually had the desired pacification effect. But not today.
“Santa won’t like it if we don’t have a Christmas tree,” Lizzie warned with arch authority. “He’ll be all mad.”
“No, he won’t. Santa can’t get mad at princesses. The tooth fairy won’t allow it.” Hearing a slurping sound, Ellin glanced at the useless pile of hair on the seat beside her. Pudgy, her grandmother’s aptly named Yorkie-Pomeranian was idly gumming the strap of her leather handbag.
“Give me that.” She yanked her Kate Spade original out of harm’s way. Wrinkling her nose in distaste, she plucked a clump of fawn-colored fur off the upholstery, hit the window button and flicked it onto the gray winter landscape. Not only was Pudgy missing several important teeth, he was going bald.
Her grandmother actually missed the quivering mass of canine nerves and had requested Pudgy’s presence at the nursing home’s Christmas party today. If neurotic shedding was any indication, Ida Faye’s longtime companion missed her, too. Mrs. Polk, the forward-thinking administrator of Shady Acres Care Center and a vocal proponent of pet therapy, thought the visit might hasten the eighty-year-old’s recovery from hip surgery.
“Do you know where the angel is, Mommy? The one with the shiny dress that goes on top of the tree?”
“She’s safe in a box in Grammy’s garage.”
“The twinkle lights, too? And the sparkly snowmen?”
“Yes, dear. They’re all safe.” Giving up the town house on Lake Michigan had been difficult, but it was especially traumatic for Lizzie. She’d cried when the movers crated their belongings for storage and wouldn’t stop until Ellin agreed to haul a box of favorite holiday decorations all the way to Arkansas. Her daughter had Christmas on the brain and was convinced that moving had somehow upset universal order at the North Pole.
“Can I see ’em when we get home?” she asked suspiciously.
“Sure, no problem.” Despite her reassuring mommy-face, Ellin wasn’t too happy about being uprooted either. Although temporary, her new job was a good example of an old axiom.
Be careful what you wish for.
Journalism dreams born during her stint on the Whitman Junior High Tattler had evolved into a do-or-die goal in college. Determined to be a managing editor before age thirty-five, Ellin had sacrificed. Struggled. Run the fast track in sensible two-inch heels and leaped over the limp bodies of the less dedicated. Along the way, she’d slowed down enough to marry, have a baby and get divorced, never taking her eyes off the prize.
She’d advanced quickly. The past six months she’d worked as an assignment editor at a respected Chicago newspaper. Her career had been right on track—until the whole thing derailed onto an unexpected siding. In a rush to make deadline and Lizzie’s first dance recital, she violated a basic law of journalism. She approved a reporter’s story without verifying it. Any first-year journalism student would have known better.
“Mommy, is Rudolph a boy or a girl?”
“I’m sure Rudolph is a girl, princess.” Surely, only a female with a superwoman complex would attempt to zip around the world in one night, dragging an overweight elf and a sleigh full of toys.
“What about Olive?”
“Olive?” Ellin’s brow furrowed.
“You know. Like in the song. Olive the other reindeer.”
Lizzie sang it for emphasis. “Is Olive a girl or boy?”
“All the reindeer are girls.” Had to be. Poor misguided things thought they could have it all.
Ellin had taken responsibility for her mistake, had even tried to point out the irony of the situation to her superiors. A master nitpicker, for once she’d failed to pick enough nit. But they had not been amused. After the public stoning of the overzealous reporter, she’d been called up on the slate-gray Berber and stripped of her parking pass and card key like a court-martialed soldier. Slinking out of the city room in professional disgrace, her first thought was to change her name and move to a third world country.
“Mommy, why doesn’t Mrs. Claus help give out the toys?”
“She doesn’t like to steal Santa’s thunder.” Or she was smart enough to stay home with a cup of hot tea while her old man froze his tail off buzzing around the stratosphere.
She had to stop being so cynical. After all, she’d stepped in a colossal pile of doo-doo and had come out smelling like a nosegay, hadn’t she? Her career had taken a hit, but her life-long dream was coming true. For the next three months she would be acting editor of the Washington Post. And it was still several weeks before her thirty-fifth birthday.
Problem was, it wasn’t The Washington Post, the grand-daddy of all newspapers. Nor was her new home in the nation’s fast-paced capital. It was in Washington, Arkansas, where life moved at the speed of a stroked-out snail. The Washington Post-Ette was a dinky little weekly with a circulation of less than eight thousand that boasted of keeping its fourth estate finger firmly on the pulse of the chicken-raising industry.
According to the owner, its original name was the Post-Gazette, but the “Gaz” had been dropped at some point in its illustrious history. The shortened form was better suited to a toaster snack than to a hard-hitting shaper of public opinion.
For the time being, she could pretty much forget about a Pulitzer.
“Is Christmas really Jesus’ birthday?” Lizzie asked.
“Yes, dear. At least that’s when we celebrate it.”
“So why do I get presents?” Her small forehead wrinkled in confusion. “It’s not my birthday.”
“Remember? It’s one of those tradition things I told you about.” Vague perhaps, but the experts advised against giving children more information than they could handle.
“Oh, yeah.” Keeping the beat with her beribboned princess wand, Lizzie hummed an odd mix of “Jingle Bells” and “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
Pudgy wheezed. Ellin glanced down in alarm, concerned that he might have begun the bucket-kicking process on her watch.
“Mommy! Stop! Stop!” Lizzie shrieked. “It’s Santa.”
Ellin looked back at the road, and her eyes widened in surprise. “Well, I’ll be a partridge in a pear tree.”
It was Santa. Or his body double. Decked out in full St. Nicholas regalia and looking like a Yuletide figment of her little girl’s imagination.
“Stop, Mommy! Santa needs help!” Lizzie was squirming and swinging her wand and issuing directives, all at once. Pudgy had recovered from his coughing fit and bounced up and down on the seat, adding his yip-yappy opinion to the excitement.
Stop? For some guy waving his arms in the middle of the road? No way. Ellin was a city girl and stuck to a strict “No Hitchhikers” policy. She didn’t brake for strangers, not even the jolly old elf himself.
“I don’t think so, princess.” She wouldn’t stop, but she didn’t want to run the guy down. She slowed to give him a chance to get his velvet-covered butt out of the road and noticed a shiny crimson pickup truck angled off the shoulder.
“Maybe Santa needs our help because Rudolph got hurt.” In view of the Watch For Deer signs, Lizzie’s explanation had a certain preschool logic. “Or maybe the sleigh broke down. Stop, Mommy, stop!”
She had to. He gave no indication of moving out of the way. Suspicious, Ellin punched the door locks and lowered the window an inch. Hmm. Given his elfin-based gene structure, Santa was much taller than one might expect. He stepped up to the car and smiled. At least she thought he smiled. It was hard to tell exactly what was going on under that curling white beard.
“I’m sorry to trouble you, ma’am.” His drawl was soft and articulate, a little too down-south for an inhabitant of the polar regions. “But I wonder if you might have a cell phone I could use?”
