Five
Phoebe was tempted. So tempted. Leo stood facing her, legs planted apart in a stance that said he was there to stay. Wearing an expensive quilted black parka and aviator sunglasses that hid his every emotion, he was an enigma. Why had a virile, handsome, vigorous male found his way to her hidden corner of the world?
What was he after? Healing? Peace? He had the physique of a bouncer and the look of a wealthy playboy. Had he really been sick? Would she be committing a terrible sin to lay this burden on him from the beginning?
“That’s ridiculous,” she said faintly. “I’d be taking advantage of you. But I have to confess that I find your offer incredibly appealing. I definitely underestimated how exhausting it would be to take care of a baby 24/7. I love Teddy, and he’s not really a fussy child at all, but the thought of adding all this…” She flung out her arm. “Well, it’s daunting.”
“Then let me help you,” he said quietly.
“I don’t expect you to actually do the work yourself.”
He pocketed his sunglasses and laughed, making his rugged features even more attractive. “No worries there. I’m aware that men are known for biting off more than they can chew, but your cabin, or what’s left of it, falls into the category of catastrophe. That’s best left to the experts.”
She stepped past him and surveyed the large bed with the burgundy-and-navy duvet. “This was supposed to be your room. I know you would have been comfortable here.” She turned to face him. “I’m sorry, Leo. I feel terrible about shortchanging you.”
He touched her arm. Only for a second. The smile disappeared, but his eyes were warm and teasing. “I’m pretty happy where I ended up. A gorgeous woman. A cozy cabin. Sounds like I won the jackpot.”
“You’re flirting,” she said, hearing the odd and embarrassingly breathless note in her voice.
His gaze was intent, sexy…leaving no question that he was interested. “I’ve been admonished to stop and smell the roses. And here you are.”
Removing her coat that suddenly felt too hot, she leaned against the door frame. The odd sensation of being inside the house but having the sunlight spill down from above was disconcerting. “You may find me more of a thorn. My sister says that living alone up here has made me set in my ways.” It was probably true. Some days she felt like a certified hermit.
Once a social animal comfortable at cocktail parties and business lunches, she now preferred the company of chipmunks and woodpeckers and the occasional fox. Dull, dull, dull…
Leo kicked aside a dangerously sharp portion of what had been the dresser mirror. “I’ll take my chances. I’ve got nowhere to go and nobody to see, as my grandfather used to say. You and Teddy brighten the prospect of my long exile considerably.”
“Are you ever going to tell me why you’re here?” she asked without censoring her curiosity.
He shrugged. “It’s not a very interesting story…but maybe…when it’s time.”
“How will you know?” This odd conversation seemed to have many layers. Her question erased Leo’s charmingly flirtatious smile and replaced it with a scowl.
“You’re a pain in the butt,” he said, the words a low growl.
“I told you I’m no rose.”
He took her arm and steered her toward the front door. “Then pretend,” he muttered. “Can you do that?”
Their muted altercation was interrupted by the arrival of the insurance agent. The next hour was consumed with questions and photographs and introducing Leo to the agent. The two men soon had their heads together as they climbed piles of rubble and inspected every cranny of the doomed cabin.
Phoebe excused herself and walked down the path, knowing that Allison would be ready to go home. As she opened the door and entered the cabin, Teddy greeted her with a chortle and a grin. Envy pinched her heart, but stronger still was happiness that the baby recognized her and was happy to see her.
Given Phoebe’s background, her sister had been torn about the arrangement. But Phoebe had reassured her, and eventually, her sister and brother-in-law gave in. Dragging a baby across the ocean was not an easy task in ideal circumstances, and facing the disposal of an entire estate, they knew Teddy would be miserable and they would be overwhelmed.
Still, Phoebe knew they missed their small son terribly. They used FaceTime to talk to him when Phoebe went into town and had a decent phone signal, and she sent them constant, newsy updates via email and texts. But they were so far away. She suspected they regretted their decision to leave him. Probably, they were working like fiends to take care of all the estate business so they could get back to the U.S. sooner.
When Allison left, Phoebe held Teddy and looked out the window toward the other cabin. Leo and the insurance agent were still measuring and assessing the damage. She rubbed the baby’s back. “I think Santa has sent us our present early, my little man. Leo is proving to be a godsend. Now all I have to do is ignore the fact that he’s the most attractive man I’ve seen in a long, long time, and that he makes it hard to breathe whenever I get too close to him, and I’ll be fine.”
Teddy continued sucking his thumb, his long-lashed eyelids growing heavy as he fought sleep.
“You’re no help,” she grumbled. His weight was comfortable in her arms. Inhaling his clean baby smell made her womb clench. What would it be like to share a child with Leo Cavallo? Would he be a good father, or an absent one?
The man in question burst through the front door suddenly, bringing with him the smell of the outdoors. “Honey, I’m home.” His humor lightened his face and made him seem younger.
Phoebe grinned at him. “Take off your boots, honey.” She was going to have to practice keeping him at arm’s length. Leo Cavallo had the dangerous ability to make himself seem harmless. Which was a lie. Even in a few short hours, Phoebe had recognized and assessed his sexual pull.
Some men simply oozed testosterone. Leo was one of them.
It wasn’t just his size, though he was definitely a bear of a man. More than that, he emanated a gut-level masculinity that made her, in some odd way, far more aware of her own carnal needs. She would like to blame it on the fact that they were alone together in the woods, but in truth, she would have had the same reaction to him had they met at the opera or on the deck of a yacht.
Leo was a man’s man. The kind of male animal who caught women in his net without even trying. Phoebe had thought herself immune to such silly, pheromone-driven impulses, but with Leo in her house, she recognized an appalling truth. She needed sex. She wanted sex. And she had found just the man to satisfy her every whim.
Her face heated as she pretended to be occupied with the baby. Leo shed his coat and pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket. “Here,” he said. “Take a look. I’ll hold the kid.”
Before Phoebe could protest, Leo scooped Teddy into his arms and lifted him toward the ceiling. Teddy, who had been sleepy only moments before, squealed with delight. Shaking her head at the antics of the two males who seemed in perfect accord, Phoebe sank into a kitchen chair and scanned the list Leo had handed her.
“Ouch,” she said, taking a deep breath for courage. “According to this, I was probably right about the bulldozer.”
Leo shook his head. “No. I realize the bottom line looks bad, but it would be even worse to build a new cabin from the ground up. Your agent thinks the settlement will be generous. All you have to provide is an overabundance of patience.”
“We may have a problem,” she joked. “That’s not my strong suit.”
Teddy’s shirt had rucked up. Leo blew a raspberry against the baby’s pudgy, soft-skinned stomach. “I’ll do my best to keep you out of it. Unless you want to be consulted about every little detail.”
Phoebe shuddered. “Heavens, no. If you’re foolish enough to offer me the chance to get my property repaired without my lift
ing a finger, then far be it from me to nitpick.”
Teddy wilted suddenly as Leo cuddled him. What was it about the sight of a big, strong man being gentle with a baby that made a woman’s heart melt? Phoebe told herself she shouldn’t be swayed by such an ordinary thing, but she couldn’t help it. Seeing Leo hold little Teddy made her insides mushy with longing. She wanted it all. The man. The baby. Was that too much to ask?
Leo glanced over at her, hopefully not noticing the way her eyes misted over.
“You want me to put him in his bed?” he asked.
“Sure. He takes these little forty-five-minute catnaps on and off instead of one long one. But he seems happy, so I go with the flow.”
Leo paused in the hallway. “How long have you had him?”
“Two weeks. We’ve settled into a routine of sorts.”
“Until I came along to mess things up.”
“If you’re fishing for compliments, forget it. You’ve already earned your keep, and it hasn’t even been twenty-four hours yet.”
He flashed her a grin. “Just think how much you’ll love me when you get to know me.”
Her knees went weak, and she wasn’t even standing. “Go put him down, Leo, and behave.”
He kissed the baby’s head, smiling down at him. “She’s a hard case, kiddo. But I’ll wear her down.”
When Leo disappeared from sight, Phoebe exhaled loudly. She’d been holding her breath and hadn’t even realized it. Rising to her feet unsteadily, she went from window to window closing the curtains. Darkness fell early in this mountain holler, as the old generation called it. Soon it would be the longest night of the year.
Phoebe had learned to dread the winter months. Not just the snow and ice and cold, gray days, but the intense loneliness. It had been the season of Christmas one year when she lost everything. Each anniversary brought it all back. But even before the advent of Leo, she had been determined to make this year better. She had a baby in the house. And now a guest. Surely that was enough to manufacture holiday cheer and thaw some of the ice that had kept her captive for so long.
Leo returned, carrying his laptop. He made himself at home on the sofa. “Do you mind giving me your internet password?” he asked, opening the computer and firing it up.
Uh-oh. “Um…” She leaned against the sink for support. “I don’t have internet,” she said, not sure there was any way to soften that blow.
Leo’s look, a cross between horror and bafflement, was priceless. “Why not?”
“I decided I could live my life without it.”
He ran his hands through his hair, agitation building. His neck turned red and a pulse beat in his temple. “This is the twenty-first century,” he said, clearly trying to speak calmly. “Everybody has internet.” He paused, his eyes narrowing. “This is either a joke, or you’re Amish. Which is it?”
She lifted her chin, refusing to be judged for a decision that had seemed entirely necessary at the time. “Neither. I made a choice. That’s all.”
“My sister-in-law would never have rented me a cabin that didn’t have the appropriate amenities,” he said stubbornly.
“Well,” she conceded. “You’re right about that. The cabin I rent out has satellite internet. But as you saw for yourself, everything was pretty much demolished, including the dish.”
She watched Leo’s good humor evaporate as he absorbed the full import of what she was saying. Suddenly he pulled his smartphone from his pocket. “At least I can check email with this,” he said, a note of panic in his voice.
“We’re pretty far back in this gorge,” she said. “Only one carrier gets a decent signal and it’s—”
“Not the one I have.” He stared at the screen and sighed. “Unbelievable. Outposts in Africa have better connectivity than this. I don’t think I can stay somewhere that I have to be out of touch from the world.”
Phoebe’s heart sank. She had hoped Leo would come to appreciate the simplicity of her life here in the mountains. “Is it really that important? I have a landline phone you’re welcome to use. For that matter, you can use my cell phone. And I do have a television dish, so you’re welcome to add the other service if it’s that important to you.” If he were unable to understand and accept the choices she had made, then it would be foolish to pursue the attraction between them. She would only end up getting hurt.
Leo closed his eyes for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he said at last, shooting her a look that was half grimace, half apology. “It took me by surprise, that’s all. I’m accustomed to having access to my business emails around the clock.”
Was that why he was here? Because he was too plugged in? Had he suffered some kind of breakdown? It didn’t seem likely, but she knew firsthand how tension and stress could affect a person.
She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and crossed the room to hand it to him. “Use mine for now. It’s not a problem.”
Their fingers brushed as she gave him the device. Leo hesitated for a moment, but finally took it. “Thank you,” he said gruffly. “I appreciate it.”
Turning her back to give him some privacy, she went to the kitchen to rummage in the fridge and find an appealing dinner choice. Now that Leo was here, she would have to change her grocery buying habits. Fortunately, she had chicken and vegetables that would make a nice stir-fry.
Perhaps twenty minutes passed before she heard a very ungentlemanly curse from her tenant. Turning sharply, she witnessed the fury and incredulity that turned his jaw to steel and his eyes to molten chocolate. “I can’t believe they did this to me.”
She wiped her hands on a dish towel. “What, Leo? What did they do? Who are you talking about?”
He stood up and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “My brother,” he croaked. “My black-hearted, devious baby brother.”
As she watched, he paced, his scowl growing darker by the minute. “I’ll kill him,” he said with far too much relish. “I’ll poison his coffee. I’ll beat him to a pulp. I’ll grind his wretched bones into powder.”
Phoebe felt obliged to step in at that moment. “Didn’t you say he has a wife and two kids? I don’t think you really want to murder your own flesh and blood…do you? What could he possibly have done that’s so terrible?”
Leo sank into an armchair, his arms dangling over the sides. Everything about his posture suggested defeat. “He locked me out of my work email,” Leo muttered with a note of confused disbelief. “Changed all the passwords. Because he didn’t trust me to stay away.”
“Well, it sounds like he knows you pretty well, then. ’Cause isn’t that exactly what you were doing? Trying to look at work email?”
Leo glared at her, his brother momentarily out of the crosshairs. “Whose side are you on anyway? You don’t even know my brother.”
“When you spoke of him earlier…he and your sister-in-law and the kids…I heard love in your voice, Leo. So that tells me he must love you just as much. Following that line of reasoning, he surely had a good reason to do what he did.”
A hush fell over the room. The clock on the mantel ticked loudly. Leo stared at her with an intensity that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. He was pissed. Really angry. And since his brother wasn’t around, Phoebe might very well be his default target.
She had the temerity to inch closer and perch on the chair opposite him. “Why would he keep you away from work, Leo? And why did he and your sister-in-law send you here? You’re not a prisoner. If being with me in this house is so damned terrible, then do us both a favor and go home.”
Six
Leo was ashamed of his behavior. He’d acted like a petulant child. But everything about this situation threw him off balance. He was accustomed to being completely in charge of his domain, whether that be the Cavallo empire or his personal life. It wasn’t that he didn’t tr
ust Luc. He did. Completely. Unequivocally. And in his gut, he knew the business wouldn’t suffer in his absence.
Perhaps that was what bothered him the most. If the company he had worked all of his adult life to build could roll along just fine during his two-month hiatus, then what use was Leo to anyone? His successes were what he thrived on. Every time he made an acquisition or increased the company’s bottom line, he felt a rush of adrenaline that was addictive.
Moving slot by slot up the Fortune 500 was immensely gratifying. He had made more money, both for the company and for himself, by the time he was thirty than most people earned in a lifetime. He was damned good at finance. Even in uncertain times, Leo had never made a misstep. His grandfather even went so far as to praise him for his genius. Given that eliciting a compliment from the old dragon was as rare as finding unicorn teeth, Leo had been justifiably proud.
But without Cavallo…without the high-tech office…without the daily onslaught of problems and split-second decisions…who was he? Just a young man with nowhere to go and nothing to do. The aimlessness of it all hung around his neck like a millstone.
Painfully aware that Phoebe had observed his humiliating meltdown, he stood, grabbed his coat from the hook by the door, shoved his feet in his shoes and escaped.
* * *
Phoebe fixed dinner with one ear out for the baby and one eye out the window to see if Leo was coming back. His car still sat parked out front, so she knew he was on foot. The day was warm, at least by December standards. But it was possible to get lost in these mountains. People did it all the time.
The knot in her stomach eased when at long last, he reappeared. His expression was impossible to read, but his body language seemed relaxed. “I’ve worked up an appetite” he said, smiling as if nothing had happened.
“It’s almost ready. If we’re lucky we’ll be able to eat our meal in peace before Teddy wakes up.”
“He’s still asleep?”
She nodded. “I can never predict his schedule. I guess because he’s still so small. But since I’m flexible, I’m fine with that.”
A Billionaire for Christmas Page 5
