A Miracle for Christmas (Harlequin Romance)

by Grace Green

  A moment ago, his intention had been to take this alluring creature to bed without delay; now he found his desire annihilated by an unexpected blossoming of tenderness. And in addition—of all things!—a wild burst of chivalry.

  The sensation was head-spinning.

  He’d realized from the beginning that if he were ever to kiss the lips of this beautiful enchantress he would be lost. What he had never guessed was that without even one kiss, she would have the power to ensnare his heart.

  His heart, by heaven!

  Panic was a knifepoint aimed straight at that most vital of organs. He shrank from it. He needed time. Time to think. Retreat was called for. A definite and immediate retreat, to give him an opportunity to strengthen himself against such an alarming turn of events.

  ‘Yes.’ Stephanie let her head drop; rested a cheek gently against his chest, over his shirt. ‘I’d like to see your place. A nightcap sounds good, and...mmm...’

  She sighed, and her warm breath drifted up to him. Wine-scented breath. He’d noticed her having a few glasses during the evening; not many, but he guessed she wasn’t too used to liquor. There was a dreamy quality to her that hadn’t been there earlier, during dinner. She pressed her cheek more closely to his chest, curled the fingertips of her left hand into his shoulder, flexing them, the way an adoring kitten might knead with its soft paws. He gritted his teeth as desire surged to the surface again and punched him in the gut—desire that was even more powerful, more intense than before, and mightily challenged his newfound feelings of tenderness, protectiveness and chivalry.

  Grimly, he tightened his resolve and clenched his jaw.

  ‘You sound sleepy.’ He hardly recognized his voice; it had become as thick as clotted cream. ‘Perhaps you’d like to take a rain check—you can see my place some other time.’

  She moved her head in a negating movement; he felt the ridge of her cheekbone rub against his nipple. He sent up a prayer for strength. ‘You’re sure?’

  She slipped her hand from his shoulder, and curved it tenderly around his nape. ‘I’m sure.’ She slipped her other hand free and twined it around his neck. ‘Very sure.’

  He’d really done it. How could he—without appearing the worst sort of cad—extricate himself from this position he’d put himself in? Vaguely he noticed that the lights had dipped and the hall had become shadowy dark. The band was playing the final bars of the nostalgic love song; the mood it had created so sentimental he felt himself wallowing in it like a moonstruck teenager. Miraculously he managed to restrain himself from dragging his pliant partner to the nearest corner and having his sweet way with her—but even as he congratulated himself on his self-control, she delved her fingers into his hair and snuggled even closer.

  Calling on every ounce of fortitude he had available, he swooped her around as the band played its finale, and when the music faded away, he drew her hands from around his neck. Holding them lightly in his, he said, with what he hoped looked like a natural smile, ‘My place, then.’

  Stephanie wandered starry-eyed across the living room of McAllister’s apartment, toward the huge wall of windows overlooking the city. The view was outstanding, but her mind was not upon it All she could think of was McAllister himself, who was at present in the kitchen, making coffee.

  She had expected he would offer her a nightcap, but he hadn’t. Coffee, he’d said firmly, and she hadn’t argued. After all, she’d already had a glass—or two—of wine during the evening. It had only added to the giddy excitement she’d been feeling.

  She had thought that excitement would dissipate when they left the reception hall and stepped out into the brisk March night. Instead it had escalated, so that all she could feel now was a heart-pounding anticipation and the very odd feeling that she was walking on top of a glorious pink cloud.

  She knew what she had let herself in for, by agreeing to come here; but she no longer had any control over herself, where McAllister was concerned. Any qualms she might have had had been annihilated by the desire that had welled up inside her as they’d danced, desire that now pulsed feverishly in her blood.

  She shivered, and touched her fingertips to the cold pane of glass in front of her as she reached the window.

  ‘Stephanie?’

  She turned. Her host was walking in through the arched doorway, a teal blue ceramic mug of steaming coffee in each hand. He had taken off his jacket and his bow tie, and opened the top button of his shirt. She could see the shadow of black hair at his throat.

  ‘Wonderful,’ she breathed, moving toward him.

  ‘The aroma of the coffee?’ He arched a dark brow.

  ‘That, too.’

  She thought she saw him gulp. But before she could be sure, he’d sidestepped her and crossed to the coffee table in front of the marble hearth, and deposited the mugs.

  When he turned again, she was right behind him.

  There was a determined glow in her eyes that set warning lights flashing even more frantically in his brain. ‘How do you like your coffee?’ he asked, backing away in the direction of the kitchen. ‘Do you take cream or sugar?’

  ‘Black,’ she said.

  ‘I...excuse me while I fetch some sugar...’

  He fled. In the kitchen, he rummaged in the nearest cupboard. Sugar, he muttered, where the hell is the sugar. Not that he used it, but he’d desperately needed to get away from her, just till he—

  ‘You don’t take sugar.’

  He whirled around. She was leaning against the doorjamb.

  She wrinkled her delightful little nose at him. ‘You just take cream.’

  ‘You’re right. I don’t...regularly take sugar in my coffee...I mean. But sometimes at night, when I feel a bit... well, listless, for want of a better word, I take sugar to...you know...boost my energy.’

  He was babbling and he knew it.

  She floated across the floor toward him. Floating was the only way to describe how she approached. She’d taken off her shoes, and her nyloned feet were soundless on the tiles, her hips swaying in a way that made a mockery of his attempts to control his body’s instant reaction to her tantalizingly sexy come-on. She stopped right in front of him, and reached up to snap the cupboard door shut.

  ‘I don’t think we need to worry about your energy level,’ she said softly, raising her hands to weave her hair from her face. She tilted her lips up to his, her eyelashes drooping over eyes that had lost their twinkle and become cloudy. Her expression was sultry, her mouth a passionate pout. Take me! She didn’t say the words. She didn’t have to.

  He wanted her, more than he had ever wanted anything in his life. He wanted to haul her into his arms, and smother her with kisses. He wanted to sweep her off her feet, and carry her to his bed. He wanted to run his fingers through those brown silk curls, the way she had done, seconds ago.

  He yawned—a wide yawn, a noisy yawn, an artificial but what he prayed was a convincing yawn—and twisted his features in an exaggeratedly sheepish grimace.

  ‘Lord,’ he muttered, rubbing a hand over his nape in a gesture that denoted embarrassment, ‘I’m bushed. Steph, I’m going to have to cut our evening short. If I don’t drive you home right now, I’ll be falling asleep over the wheel.’

  He made sure his eyes didn’t quite meet hers, and as an added precaution kept his lids at half-mast in the hopes that the long lashes would shadow his irises, which he guessed would be hazy with the desire raging through him.

  For a moment her face was blank. He knew he’d taken her by surprise. He could almost read her thoughts.

  He was rejecting her.

  Stephanie stared at McAllister dazedly, her lips fallen apart, her eyes wide open. She had thrown herself at him, in the belief that when he’d invited her back to his place, their goal was one and the same. To make love.

  She had been wrong. She had misinterpreted the invitation. Mortification sent a surge of blood flooding up her neck to transform her cheeks to scarlet beacons.

  She turned on h
er heel and stalked out of the kitchen. Her shoes were lurched drunkenly together by the sofa. Flicking them upright with her toes, she slipped them on. She scooped up her purse, and with her nose in the air, turned to McAllister, who had followed her through.

  ‘Since you’re so tired,’ she said in a proud voice, ‘I’ll call a cab.’

  He started to protest. She ignored him. There was a telephone on one of the end tables; she lifted it, and with her back presented squarely to him, dialed the number of a local cab company.

  ‘What’s the address here?’ she asked with a disdainful glance over her shoulder.

  ‘Look, I’ll drive you home—’

  The dispatcher came on at the other end of the line.

  ‘The address, please,’ Stephanie repeated stubbornly.

  McAllister shrugged. And gave her the address.

  After relaying it to the dispatcher, Stephanie hung up. With what she hoped looked like a great deal of aplomb, she moved to the coffee table, picked up one of the blue ceramic mugs and took a sip.

  ‘You may not be the host with the most,’ she said in a cool tone, ‘but you do make a good cup of coffee.’ She forced herself to look at him while she spoke... then wished she hadn’t. He had that same anguished expression on his face as he’d had when they were dancing. He hadn’t said what was wrong then; had glossed over it with an attempt at humor. Was he sick? Was that why he wanted her gone?

  She frowned. Put down her mug.

  ‘Is there something the matter?’ she asked. ‘I mean, other than just being tired. You look...you look as if you’re in pain...?’

  He looked very uncomfortable. And his smile was strained. ‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ he said, shifting from one foot to the other. ‘It’s just a sort of—’ he cleared his throat ‘—malaise... that overtakes me once in a while. I’ll be all right after a good night’s sleep.’

  ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’

  She saw his Adam’s apple twitch. ‘No.’ Sweat sheened his brow, his upper lip. ‘Not a damned thing.’

  ‘Are you sure? I don’t mind staying if there’s anything at all I can do to—’

  The buzzer went.

  ‘Your cab.’ McAllister took in a deep breath, crossed the room, lifted a hand as if to place it in the small of her back...and dropped it again. ‘I’ll see you down to the foyer,’ he said gruffly.

  Moments later, they were in the elevator. The ride down took only seconds, and then they were stepping out into the foyer. Outside, beyond the plate glass doors, Stephanie could see the driver. He was standing with his hands in his pockets, his cab in the road behind him, engine idling.

  She looked up into McAllister’s face. ‘I’m really sorry you’re not feeling up to par.’

  ‘No cause to worry. I’ll be fine.’ His voice had a raspy edge. In the periphery of her vision, Stephanie saw the cabbie turn away, stroll toward his vehicle and open the back door.

  McAllister walked her outside. They stood together for a moment on the sidewalk. The strains of a favorite country and western song drifted to her from the cab’s radio...and McAllister’s musky scent drifted to her, too, catching her totally off guard. It hurtled her, with rocket speed, back to her previous state of wild arousal. All she wanted at that moment was to rip off his clothes, and her own, and beg him to take her, then and there, on the sidewalk. And to hell with his low energy level—she had enough energy for both of them!

  ‘Good night, then,’ she said.

  She turned away, but before she had taken even one step, she found herself hauled back by a pair of muscular arms. For a second their eyes met, his aflare with passion, hers wide with surprise. And then his mouth was on hers in a kiss so urgent and desperate she felt as if she was being ravished. Sweetly ravished... thoroughly ravished...and so very expertly ravished that every erotic nerve ending in her body jumped up and applauded. She yielded helplessly, and heard a moan come from her own throat, a moan that was part agony, part ecstasy.

  There was nothing wrong with this man’s energy level.

  She felt the power in the caress of long fingers over her back; felt the pressure of hard thighs against her own; and felt the violent trembling of his strong body. But even as she drowned in the resurgence of her own frenzied desire, he made a ragged sound and released her.

  ‘Go,’ he ordered huskily. ‘Go now. And for pity’s sake don’t ever wear that perfume again. At least, not when you’re near me.’ He brushed a kiss over her brow, shook his head and as she stared at him in mindless confusion, he took her arm and walked her...almost pushed her...across to the cab.

  ‘But I thought,’ she whispered, ‘you didn’t want—’

  ‘I want,’ he growled. ‘More than you could possibly imagine. Who the hell do you think is responsible for the agony I’ve been suffering the past couple of hours? But wanting...and surrendering to that want... are two different things. You, my sweet love, need more from a relationship than I’m prepared...or able...to give. And though I’m sorely tempted to take what you so generously offer, there’s a price to pay for giving in to that kind of temptation. For me, that price is too high.’

  He folded her into the back seat of the cab, and slammed the door shut. He paid the cabbie, and then touched his hand to his brow in a brief salute to her, as the vehicle pulled away from the curb.

  Stephanie slumped back in her seat, feeling as if every bone in her body had turned to porridge. Blindly she stared ahead. He wanted her. She hadn’t been wrong about that after all. But he wasn’t into strings and commitment—and that was why he had rejected her.

  Oh, damn! Tears smarted behind her eyes. Why did the man have to be so damned honorable! Easier by far had he been a scoundrel, because the kind of hunger from which he was suffering, was no more tormenting than her own.

  It wasn’t until after she was home, and had stood under the spray of an ice-cold shower for five minutes, that sanity returned and as it did, she finally realized the enormity of what she’d almost done. The sheer horror of it made her actually cry out. The noise woke Janey, who came and hammered on the bathroom door, yelling at the pitch of her voice, ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes,’ she shrieked back, ‘I’m fine.’

  And thank heaven for that! As she switched off the shower and wrapped a huge fluffy towel around herself, she shuddered...and knew the shudder wasn’t only a reaction to the icy water. It was a reaction to the thought of how this evening might have ended. Had McAllister not been a gentleman, it could well have been another story, for carried away by the sheer happiness of the day—by the music, and the wine, and the charisma of her escort—she had come close to making the biggest mistake of her life.

  Had she slept with him, it would have meant saying goodbye to all her dreams, because she knew that one night with Damian McAllister would never have been enough.

  And what she wanted from him was so much more.

  For the rest of the week, she didn’t have time to fret over the traumatic incident. At least, not during the day. Joyce had taken time off to entertain some out-of-town wedding guests so Stephanie was alone in the store and a steady stream of customers kept her on the hop. But the evenings...oh, the evenings; they were something else. McAllister strode boldly into her thoughts, no matter how hard she tried to block him out. And when she went to bed, hoping that in sleep she’d be free of him, he gate-crashed her dreams with an arrogance that made her tremble.

  But though he inhabited her dreams, he didn’t come back into her life. She saw nothing of him during the month that followed, heard nothing of him till around the middle of April, when Joyce said one morning, in an offhand tone,

  ‘The McAllister has gone to Aspen for Easter, with the Whitneys. Marjorie says Tiffany Whitney is looking very pleased with herself these days...’

  Stephanie felt as if someone had poured a jug of acid over her heart. ‘Really?’ She pretended to be engrossed in the toys she was rearranging on a shelf.

  ‘That poor man.�
�� Joyce sighed. ‘Somebody should do something about it.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Setting him straight, of course. That woman will never be able to have a genuine relationship with a man—she’s in love with only one person—herself! She is exactly the opposite of the kind of woman The McAllister needs. According to Marjorie, her boss has quite lost his head and doesn’t know what he’s doing!’

  Fortunately, at that moment the doorbell pinged, and saved Stephanie from having to make a response. But when she turned to greet the customer, and saw who that customer was, her relief turned swiftly to apprehension.

  ‘Tony.’ Carefully, she put down the gray felt rat she’d been holding. ‘What...can I do for you?’

  Joyce muttered, ‘Excuse me!’ and looking as if she’d just sucked a lemon, stomped off into the back room.

  Tony came straight to the point.

  ‘I’m planning to sell this building, Stephanie. I thought I should tell you now, rather than wait till your lease comes up for renewal at the end of the month.’

  She gasped, but he barged right on.

  ‘My buyer wants the whole block, and I should prefer to sell the whole block. However, since it would be disastrous for your business if you had to relocate—there’s absolutely nothing available for rent in this area now—that part of my deal is something that’s open to negotiation. What’s the matter, Stephanie? You’ve become quite white.’

  White? Every drop of blood seemed to have drained from her face. She had taken it for granted that her lease would be renewed at the end of the month; Tony had told her last year that he’d decided to keep the building permanently. What on earth had changed his mind?

  ‘Let’s have dinner,’ he went on smoothly. ‘If we put our heads together, I’m sure we can come up with a solution to your problem.’ His nostrils sucked inward as he inhaled. ‘Of course, if we were still engaged, I’d never have allowed such a situation to occur. You, er, follow my drift?’