by BETH KERY
“I don’t know. I love the idea of the preventative project I told you about for returning vets with substance abuse issues related to PTSD and depression, and it seems like a wonderful place to work. I’m going over there tomorrow to have Colleen show me around. Afterward, I’m going to help Eric out with an unexpected rush of intake exams,” Deidre said, referring to Colleen’s physician boyfriend, Eric Reyes, whom Deidre strongly suspected would be her fiancé very soon. “The Family Center is running on a skeleton staff during the holiday season. I’ve kept my nursing license active in Michigan, so it worked out great.”
“That’s wonderful,” Mari enthused, dark eyes sparkling with the excitement of future plans.
Deidre laughed. “Don’t plan on writing me a paycheck yet. I feel like I’m being tossed around by fate at the moment. My future seems so uncertain right now.”
She suddenly realized that if Nick didn’t contest the will, she’d be in a position to fund the project at the Family Center and many more like it. Funny, she’d never really thought of that possibility until now. It just all seemed so unlikely, so incongruous. She—a billionaire.
“Deidre? Are you okay?” Mari asked.
She blinked, realizing she was frowning. She laughed and kissed Riley’s cheek when the little girl crawled into her lap and used Deidre’s shoulders to pull herself into a standing position. Riley squealed and giggled when Deidre gave her a big hug. She’d never been so flattered and moved in her life when Marc and Mari had asked her to be the little girl’s godmother. They’d even made Riley’s middle name the same as Deidre’s.
“I’m sorry,” she said, bouncing Riley on her knee. “I’m really not myself lately.”
“Understandable,” Mari soothed. “You’re life has been turned upside down within a matter of months. You should take some time off for rest and reflection. But I’m still thinking about Christmas. Will you go to Brigit’s?” she asked delicately. “I know how much she wants you to come.”
Deidre sighed, guilt and defiance sweeping through her in equal measure. She was growing increasingly familiar with the feeling, since she had experienced it in distilled form every time she’d noticed her mother had called her cell phone yesterday. She’d left every call unanswered. “I don’t know. Maybe,” Deidre murmured noncommittally. In truth, she wasn’t sure what she’d do for Christmas. She didn’t know if she was ready to return to the Kavanaugh house on Sycamore Avenue or to make amends with Brigit.
Marc joined them a minute later. He held up an envelope.
“Lincoln DuBois’s will,” he told Deidre. “I guess Nick Malone dropped it off at the front desk while we were at lunch. I’ll look it over, then have a friend of mine who specializes in estate law go over it with a fine-tooth comb. I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”
“That’d be great. Thank you, Marc.”
Marc eyed her worriedly. “Please don’t agree to anything Nick asks of you until you talk it over with me. I’m not crazy about leaving Harbor Town while he’s here. I don’t trust him. It’s just our luck that Liam left town for his honeymoon the day after Malone arrived,” Marc said, referring to Liam’s job as the Harbor County police chief.
Deidre gave her brother a teasing grin. “There’s no need for you to worry. Nick’s presence here may be strange, but I hardly think he’s going to resort to criminal activity.”
“Do you have any interest whatsoever in running DuBois Enterprises?” Marc asked, his expression remaining serious.
“Look at it like this. If an alien landed in your front yard and asked you if you’d like to run their planet, what would you say? That’s pretty much how I feel about this whole situation. I know absolutely nothing about business. Sure, I’d like to learn something about Lincoln’s company, understand it better, but run it?” Deidre asked wryly, glancing from Marc to Mari.
“Just the fact that you’re interested in DuBois Enterprises says something. Don’t let Malone influence you. You’re still in shock about everything that’s happened to you. He might take advantage of that.”
“Come on, Marc. You know as well as anyone I can take care of myself.”
“We’re talking about a hell of a lot of money here, and ten times as much power. It’s not a world we’re accustomed to, Dee. Who knows what people will do when the stakes are so high?”
Deidre laughed. “I said almost the exact same thing to Colleen yesterday.” Her expression sobered as she studied her brother. “Marc—I’m worried about what could happen with your campaign if news gets out about the will. When things go public, there’s a good chance the truth about Mom and Lincoln’s affair, not to mention a lurid rehashing of the car crash, is going to show up in the papers. The Kavanaugh name could be dragged through the mud all over again.”
Mari gave a small groan and looked at her husband anxiously. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“It’s not like the Kavanaughs haven’t been on the receiving end of bad press before,” Marc reminded both of them, pausing to stroke his wife’s shoulder in reassurance. After Derry had caused the car wreck due to drunk driving, his name and reputation had been battered by the press. The Kavanaugh family had suffered by association. “As a matter of fact, my opponent in the Cook County prosecutor race brought up Dad’s responsibility for the wreck, trying to use it for fuel. I’m used to mudslinging on the campaign trail.”
“But it could ruin your chances for a win,” Deidre protested.
Marc and Mari exchanged a significant glance.
“Marc’s right,” Mari said resolutely. “You have enough on your mind as it is without worrying about the outcome of Marc’s race.” When Marc swung his giggling daughter into his arms and changed the subject, Deidre took the hint and didn’t belabor the topic, although she was far from being reassured.
She’d promised to pick up Liam and Natalie’s mail while they were on their honeymoon in Turks and Caicos. By the time Deidre returned to Cedar Cottage later that afternoon, the snow had picked up. It wasn’t enough to make conditions hazardous yet, but Deidre was glad to be getting home.
Would Nick show up here at the cottage to take her to dinner, she wondered as she went into the cottage. He hadn’t called, but that wasn’t too surprising, given the fact she’d never told him her number. She supposed she should, given their strange, probably impermanent partnership at DuBois Enterprises.
She took a hot bath and dressed in a pair of jeans and a favorite soft, cotton cable-knit sweater. To her dismay, she found herself spending way too much time on her makeup, accentuating the color and shape of her eyes with liner and subtle eye shadow. When she realized what she was doing, she irritably threw the makeup in a bag and stalked out of the bathroom.
What was she doing, primping for Nick Malone?
She was convinced she was indifferent to his arrival when a knock came at her door a little after six o’clock.
She was entirely uncaring about seeing him, that is, until she opened her front door and saw him standing on the dim porch, snow dusting his hair and jacket, and holding the trunk of a perfectly shaped, six-foot pine tree and a huge bag from Shop and Save.
“I thought you might like a Christmas tree,” he stated simply.
She blinked in amazement, transferring her gaze from the tree to his face. She was stunned. Had he noticed last night—that flash of longing she’d tried to hide when they’d talked about childhood Christmases? Had he noticed months ago, at The Pines, when she’d conversed with Lincoln?
She knew he had when she looked into his somber eyes, knew it down in her very bones.
“I hope it’s okay,” he said quietly. “What do you say, Deidre? A truce? Just for one night?” he added when she didn’t speak.
She dazedly realized she’d just left him standing there at the front door, gaping at him.
“I...well...all right. I mean...
it is a great tree.” His face lit up at her flustered response. She gave him a sheepish grin. It was hard to frown at Nick when he flashed those dimples.
He gave the pine a good shake to remove the few snowflakes that had settled on the upper boughs.
“One of the reasons I got this one was that it was beneath a canopy and completely dry...at least until I carried it to the car,” he explained, knocking off a last few stubborn flakes with his gloved hand.
Without thinking Deidre stepped forward and brushed snow off his shoulder, going up on tiptoe to swipe her hand through his dark brown hair. The strands felt thick, soft and chilled beneath her fingers. He glanced at her in surprise. His face was close. He had little flecks of black interspersed in the silver-gray of his irises. His lashes were very thick….
She cleared her throat and stepped back, banging her hip clumsily on the door.
“Come in,” she said breathlessly, opening the door wider to make way for Nick and his heartwarming gift, all the while hoping she wasn’t making a huge mistake by letting him into the cottage...by inviting him into her life.
Chapter Three
They set the tree in the front window where it could be easily admired from the rural road and while curled up on the couch before the fire. Deidre busied herself pulling out all the decorations from the bag while Nick arranged the tree in the base.
“Look at these old-fashioned lights! I love these. They’re so retro,” she said, grinning as she withdrew large, colored bulbs from the bag. Nick removed his head from beneath the tree and glanced back at her. She couldn’t help but notice he was awesome to look at, lying on his side with his back to her, his hands beneath the tree, tightening the screws on the base. His body was long, his hips were lean, his thighs strong-looking. His back muscles flexed interestingly beneath the blue-and-white plaid fitted shirt he wore. She dragged her gaze off the vision of his butt outlined in a pair of jeans.
Her cheeks heated when she noticed his strange expression. Had he noticed where she’d been staring?
“What’s wrong?” she asked when he continued to look at her.
“Nothing. It’s just—Lincoln liked that kind of bulb, too. He never gave a damn about new trends. Not when it came to Christmas. He put up an old-fashioned Christmas tree at The Pines—large, colored bulb lights, garland, tinsel...always the biggest, most gorgeous tree on the lake,” he mumbled. He stuck his head beneath the tree again.
Deidre walked toward him, still holding the box of lights.
“Would Lincoln have the staff put up the tree?”
“The staff helped, but Linc was always in the middle of things. He’d make a party of it,” she heard him say from beneath the boughs. “Sasha, Linea, Otto and Linda joined us last year,” he said, mentioning Lincoln’s chef, administrative assistant, driver and one of his nurses. “Linc insisted on being brought downstairs and overseeing things from his wheelchair.”
“So you were always there for the Christmas decorating ritual?” Deidre asked, running her fingers over the supple needles of the tree.
“Yeah, I usually made a point of trying to clear my schedule to be there.”
She imagined the staff, Nick and Lincoln, the festive mood lightening their spirits, Lincoln directing them on their decorating and encouraging them to partake of food and drink. “Of course, you must have put the tree in front window of the great room. It must have looked fabulous.”
“Yeah. Lincoln was like a kid at Christmastime. I wouldn’t be surprised if he asked the architect to design The Pines with that huge window so that he could get himself a twenty-five-foot pine to put in it every year. How’s that look? Is it straight?” he queried.
Deidre stepped back and walked in a half circle, inspecting the tree—and Nick—beneath it. “It’s perfect.”
He backed out and stood. She waved toward the kitchen. “I bought some hot chocolate earlier. It’s just instant, but—”
“I’d love some.”
“Oh...okay, great, then I’ll just—”
“Here. I’ll start to put on the lights and you get the hot chocolate,” he said, coming toward her. She handed him the box of bulbs. When he didn’t move back and Deidre didn’t immediately head toward the kitchen, a strange combination of awareness of his nearness and awkwardness struck her at once.
“What about music?” he asked.
She started. “Music?”
“Yeah. You know...‘White Christmas,’ ‘Jingle Bells.’”
Deidre laughed. She couldn’t help it. Something about the idea of scowling, bottom-line, business-mogul Nick Malone getting into the Christmas spirit was funny, and yet...right somehow, too.
She ignored his bewildered expression at her laughter and walked toward the bedroom, where there was a radio. “I’ll see if I can’t find a station playing some.
“Was Lincoln responsible for this?” she mused a few minutes later when she walked into the living room with two steaming mugs. “We Three Kings” played softly on the radio while snow drifted down at a lazy pace outside of the window.
“For me bringing over the Christmas tree?” Nick asked as he strung on lights.
“No. For this unexpected proclivity for Christmas spirit in Nick Malone,” she said, turning the handle of his mug so he could grasp it with one hand.
He took a sip, studying her from over the rim.
“You assumed I’d be a Scrooge, I guess.”
“All I have to go on is precedent.”
A shiver went through her at the sound of his deep, gravelly laughter.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said, handing the cup back to her after a moment. “I have a lot of really good memories from Christmases at The Pines. After we met, Linc invited me over every year for the decorating party and also on Christmas Eve. When I got older, he was always encouraging me to lighten up at that time of year...enjoy the holiday...try to reflect on what it was I was working so hard for. What about you?”
She set his mug on the mantel and glanced back at him. “What do you mean?”
He shrugged and resumed his task. “How’d you get to like Christmas so much?”
“My family was always big on Christmas,” Deidre said, poking through the bag and beginning to unwrap some garland. “Although as a kid, I might have been the most avid Kavanaugh Christmas devotee.” She glanced up to see his gaze was on her face even as his hands moved in the branches. “I adored Christmastime. It was just...” She shrugged sheepishly. “Magical.”
He said nothing as he continued to string on the lights, but she didn’t have the impression of being dismissed for her whimsy.
“You’re really going to miss Lincoln, aren’t you?” she asked softly after a moment. He paused in his actions and met her stare.
“Yeah,” he said. “I really am.”
Deidre admitted to herself that Nick had known her guard would be breached by the gift of the Christmas tree. She should have been alarmed by that knowledge. But it was difficult to think of him as her enemy as they sat on the couch, admiring the pretty, glowing tree they’d decorated together while snow fell outside the window. A big band rendition of “Winter Wonderland” played on the radio and the fire kept the room toasty.
Her respect for him grew as she drew him out about his work at DuBois Enterprises. Lincoln had informed her that Nick was a brilliant business leader—instinctively knowing when to strike aggressively, but also understanding when caution and restraint were required. Nick clearly considered himself a servant to the larger cause of a healthy, vibrant business.
The truth was, she was having a nicer time than she’d experienced in years spending the evening with Nick. He could potentially turn on her tomorrow. She would fight him if he tried to contest the will on the grounds that she’d coerced Lincoln. She didn’t want to run DuBois Enterprises, but she refuse
d to have Nick sully the fact that Lincoln had believed heart and soul she was his child. Lincoln’s revised will was tangible proof of that. She couldn’t let Nick take that from her.
She wouldn’t.
Maybe she was being foolish by not fighting him tonight. Maybe she was being weak. But maybe she just really needed a nice evening with an intelligent, attractive, sexy man.
Even if that man was Nick Malone.
She asked him about the acquisition deal he’d mentioned on the first night he’d come to Harbor Town. He filled her in on the details. The owner of a media company called Vivicor, Inc., had been toying with the idea of selling to DuBois for months now. Nick liked the company’s price and earning potential and wanted to expand DuBois Enterprises’s market share in media. He’d been wooing the owner for close to a year. However, Vivicor was a family-owned company and the president was wavering. Just after Lincoln had died, Nick had received a call from the owner that he was ready to sell on the original terms.
“I’d like to strike while the iron is hot. The owner has been known to stall in the past,” Nick explained as he held up the carton of lemon chicken, offering her more. Deidre shook her head. They’d ordered Chinese and talked almost nonstop as they ate, both of them avoiding potentially volatile topics like Lincoln’s will or the genetic testing. Deidre thought Nick would pursue the topic of acquiring Vivicor, Inc., angling for her agreement to complete the deal, but to her surprise, he changed the subject.
Who knew? Deidre wondered as she watched Nick spoon the last of the lemon chicken onto his plate. Maybe Nick had needed a truce and a nice evening as much as she had.
“Did you ever do what Lincoln requested?” she asked a few minutes later as she sank back into the couch and brought her feet up next to her. “Did you ever reflect on what it was you work so hard for, day in and day out?” she clarified when he arched his brows at her. He gave her a sidelong glance as he chewed. She enjoyed observing the movement of his strong jaw.