A Billionaire for Christmas

by Janice Maynard

  Suddenly, she remembered what she had wanted to ask Leo before last night when everything ended so poorly. “Tell me,” she said. “Would you object to having Christmas decorations in the house?”

  “That’s a strange segue, but why would I object?” he asked. “I’m not a Scrooge.”

  “I never thought you were, but you might have ethnic or religious reasons to abstain.”

  “No problems on either score,” he chuckled. “Does this involve a shopping trip?”

  “No. Actually, I have boxes and boxes of stuff in the attic. When I moved here, I wasn’t in the mood to celebrate. Now, with Teddy in the house, it doesn’t seem right to ignore the holiday. I wasn’t able to take it all down on my own. Do you mind helping? I warn you…it’s a lot of stuff.”

  “Including a tree?”

  She smiled beseechingly. “My old one is artificial, and not all that pretty. I thought it might be fun to find one in the woods.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Well, of course. I own thirty acres. Surely we can discover something appropriate.”

  He lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “We?”

  “Yes, we. Don’t be so suspicious. I’m not sending you out in the cold all on your own. I have one of those baby carrier things. Teddy and I will go with you. Besides, I don’t think men are the best judge when it comes to locating the perfect tree.”

  “You wound me,” he said, standing and clutching his chest. “I have excellent taste.”

  “This cabin has space limitations to consider. And admit it. Men always think bigger is better.”

  “So do women as a rule.”

  His naughty double entendre was delivered with a straight face, but his eyes danced with mischief. Phoebe knew her cheeks had turned bright red. She felt the heat. “Are we still talking about Christmas trees?” she asked, her throat dry as the Sahara.

  “You tell me.”

  “I think you made yourself pretty clear last night,” she snapped.

  He looked abashed. “I never should have let things go that far. We need to take baby steps, Phoebe. Forced proximity makes for a certain intimacy, but I respect you too much to take advantage of that.”

  “And if I take advantage of you?”

  She was appalled to hear the words leave her mouth. Apparently her libido trumped both her pride and her common sense.

  Leo’s brows drew together in a scowl. He folded his arms across his broad chest. With his legs braced in a fighting stance, he suddenly seemed far more dangerous. Today he had on old jeans and a cream wool fisherman’s sweater.

  Everything about him from his head to his toes screamed wealth and privilege. So why hadn’t he chosen some exclusive resort for his sabbatical? A place with tennis courts and spas and golf courses?

  He still hadn’t answered her question. The arousal swirling in her belly congealed into a small knot of embarrassment. Did he get some kind of sadistic kick out of flirting with women and then shutting them down?

  “Never mind,” she said, the words tight. “I understand.”

  He strode toward her, his face a thundercloud. “You don’t understand a single damn thing,” he said roughly. Before she could protest or back up or initiate any other of a dozen protective moves, he dragged her to his chest, wrapped one arm around her back and used his free hand to anchor her chin and tip her face up to his.

  His thick-lashed brown eyes, afire with emotion and seemingly able to peer into her soul, locked on hers and dared her to look away. “Make no mistake, Phoebe,” he said. “I want you. And Lord willing, I’m going to have you. When we finally make it to a bed—or frankly any flat surface, ’cause I’m not picky—I’m going to make love to you until we’re both too weak to stand. But in the meantime, you’re going to behave. I’m going to behave. Got it?”

  Time stood still. Just like in the movies. Every one of her senses went on high alert. He was breathing hard, his chest rising and falling rapidly. When he grabbed her, she had braced one hand reflexively on his shoulder, though the idea of holding him at bay was ludicrous. She couldn’t manage that even if she wanted to. His strength and power were evident despite whatever illness had plagued him.

  Dark stubble covered his chin. He could have been a pirate or a highwayman or any of the renegade heroes in the historical novels her sister read. Phoebe was so close she could inhale the warm scent of him. A great bear of a man not long from his bed.

  She licked her lips, trembling enough that she was glad of his support. “Define behave.” She kissed his chin, his wrist, the fingers caressing her skin.

  Leo fought her. Not outwardly. But from within. His struggle was written on his face. But he didn’t release her. Not this time.

  The curse he uttered as he gave in to her provocation was heartfelt and earthy as he encircled her with both arms and half lifted her off her feet. His mouth crushed hers, taking…giving no quarter. His masculine force was exhilarating. She was glad she was tall and strong, because it gave her the ability to match him kiss for kiss.

  Baby steps be damned. She and Leo had jumped over miles of social convention and landed in a time of desperation, of elemental reality. Like the prehistoric people who had lived in these hills and valleys centuries before, the base human instinct to mate clawed its way to the forefront, making a mockery of soft words and tender sentiments.

  This was passion in its most raw form. She rubbed against him, desperate to get closer. “Leo,” she groaned, unable to articulate what she wanted, what she needed. “Leo…”

  Nine

  He was lost. Months of celibacy combined with the uncertainty of whether his body would be the same after his attack walloped him like a sucker punch. In his brain he repeated a frenzied litany. Just a kiss. Just a kiss, just a kiss…

  His erection was swollen painfully, the taut skin near bursting. His lungs had contracted to half capacity, and black dots danced in front of his eyes. Phoebe felt like heaven in his arms. She was feminine and sinfully curved in all the right places, but she wasn’t fragile. He liked that. No. Correction. He loved that. She kissed him without apology, no half measures.

  Her skin smelled like scented shower gel and baby powder. This morning her hair was again tamed in a fat braid. He wrapped it around his fist and tugged, drawing back her head so he could nip at her throat with sharp love bites.

  The noise she made, part cry, part moan, hit him in the gut. He lifted her, grunting when her legs wrapped around his waist. They were fully clothed, but he thrust against her, tormenting them both with pressure that promised no relief.

  Without warning, Phoebe struggled to get away from him. He held her more tightly, half crazed with the urge to take her hard and fast.

  She pushed at his chest. “Leo. I hear the baby. He’s awake.”

  Finally, her breathless words penetrated the fog of lust that chained him. He dropped her to her feet and staggered backward, his heart threatening to pound through the wall of his chest.

  Afraid of his own emotions, he strode to the door where his boots sat, shoved his feet into them, flung open the door and left the cabin, never looking back.

  * * *

  Phoebe had never once seen Teddy’s advent into her life as anything but a blessing. Until today. Collecting herself as best she could, she walked down the hall and scooped him out of his crib. “Well, that was a short nap,” she said with a laugh that bordered on hysteria. Teddy, happy now that she had rescued him, chortled as he clutched her braid. His not-so-nice baby smell warned her that he had a messy diaper, probably the reason he had awakened so soon.

  She changed him and then put him on a blanket on the floor while she tidied his room. Even as she automatically carried out the oft-repeated chores, her mind was attuned to Leo’s absence. He had left without a coat. Fortunately, he was wearing a thick sweater, and th
ankfully, the temperature had moderated today, climbing already into the low fifties.

  She was appalled and remorseful about what had happened, all of it her fault. Leo, ever the gentleman, had done his best to be levelheaded about confronting their attraction amidst the present situation. But Phoebe, like a lonely, deprived spinster, had practically attacked him. It was no wonder things had escalated.

  Men, unless they were spoken for—and sometimes not even then—were not physically wired to refuse women who threw out such blatant invitations. And that’s what Phoebe had done. She had made it abysmally clear that she was his for the taking.

  Leo had reacted. Of course. What red-blooded, straight, unattached male wouldn’t? Oh, God. How was she going to face him? And how did they deal with this intense but ill-timed attraction?

  A half hour later she held Teddy on her hip as she put away the abundance of food Leo’s chef friend had sent. She decided to have the chimichangas for lunch. They were already prepared. All she had to do was thaw them according to the directions and then whip up some rice and salad to go alongside.

  An hour passed, then two. She only looked out the window a hundred times or so. What if he was lost? Or hurt? Or sick? Her stomach cramped, thinking of the possibilities.

  * * *

  Leo strode through the forest until his legs ached and his lungs gasped for air. It felt good to stretch his physical limits, to push himself and know that he was okay. Nothing he did, however, erased his hunger for Phoebe. At first he had been suspicious of his immediate fascination. His life had recently weathered a rough patch, and feminine companionship hadn’t even been on his radar. That was how he rationalized his response to Phoebe, even on the day they’d met.

  But he knew it was more than that. She was a virus in his blood, an immediate, powerful affliction that was in its own way as dangerous as his heart attack. Phoebe had the power to make his stay here either heaven or hell. And if it were the latter, he might as well cut and run right now.

  But even as he thought it, his ego and his libido shouted a vehement hell, no. Phoebe might be calling the shots as his landlady, but when it came to sex, the decision was already made. He and Phoebe were going to be lovers. The only question was when and where.

  His head cleared as he walked, and the physical exertion gradually drained him to the point that he felt able to go back. He had followed the creek upstream for the most part, not wanting to get lost. In some places the rhododendron thickets were so dense he was forced to climb up and around. When he finally halted, he was partway up the mountainside. To his surprise, he could see a tiny section of Phoebe’s chimney sticking up out of the woods.

  Perhaps Luc had been right. Here, in an environment so antithetical to Leo’s own, he saw himself in a new light. His world was neither bad nor good in comparison to Phoebe’s. But it was different.

  Was that why Phoebe had come here? To get perspective? And if so, had she succeeded? Would she ever go back to her earlier life?

  He sat for a moment on a large granite boulder, feeling the steady pumping of his heart. Its quiet, regular beats filled him with gratitude for everything he had almost lost. Perhaps it was the nature of humans to take life for granted. But now, like the sole survivor of a plane crash, he felt obliged to take stock, to search for meaning, to tear apart the status quo and see if it was really worthy of his devotion.

  Amidst those noble aspirations, he shamefully acknowledged if only to himself that he yearned to be back at his desk. He ran a billion-dollar company, and ran it well. He was Leo Cavallo, CFO of a textile conglomerate that spanned the globe. Like a recovering addict, his hands itched for a fix…for the pulse-pumping, mentally stimulating, nonstop schedule that he understood so intimately.

  He knew people used workaholic as a pejorative term, often with a side order of pitying glances and shakes of the head. But, honest to God, he didn’t see anything wrong with having passion for a job and doing it well. It irritated the hell out of him to imagine all the balls that were being dropped in his absence. Not that Luc and the rest of the team weren’t as smart as he was…it wasn’t that.

  Leo, however, gave Cavallo his everything.

  In December, the prep work began for year-end reports. Who was paying attention to those sorts of things while Leo was AWOL? It often became necessary to buy or sell some smaller arms of the business for the appropriate tax benefit. The longer he thought about it, the more agitated he became. He could feel his blood pressure escalating.

  As every muscle in his body tensed, he had to force himself to take deep breaths, to back away from an invisible cliff. In the midst of his agitation, an inquisitive squirrel paused not six inches from Leo’s boot to scrabble in the dirt for an acorn. Chattering his displeasure with the human who had invaded his territory, the small animal worked furiously, found the nut and scampered away.

  Leo smiled. And in doing so, felt the burden he carried shift and ease. He inhaled sharply, filling his lungs with clean air. As a rule, he thrived on the sounds of traffic and the ceaseless hum of life in a big city. Yet even so, he found himself noticing the stillness of the woods. The almost imperceptible presence of creatures who went about their business doing whatever they were created to do.

  They were lucky, Leo mused wryly. No great soul-searching for them. Merely point A to point B. And again. And again.

  He envied them their singularity of purpose, though he had no desire to be a hamster on a wheel. As a boy, his teachers had identified him as gifted. His parents had enrolled him in special programs and sent him to summer camps in astrophysics and geology and other erudite endeavors.

  All of it interested and engaged him, but he never quite fit in anywhere. His size and athletic prowess made him a target of suspicion in the realm of the nerds, and his academic successes and love for school excluded him from the jock circle.

  His brother became, and still was, his best friend. They squabbled and competed as siblings did, but their bond ran deep. Which was why Leo was stuck here, like a storybook character, lost in the woods. Because Luc had insisted it was important. And Leo owed his brother. If Luc believed Leo needed this time to recover, then it was probably so.

  Rising to his feet and stretching, he shivered hard. After his strenuous exercise, he had sat too long, and now he was chilled and stiff. Suddenly, he wanted nothing more than to see Phoebe. He couldn’t share his soul-searching and his minor epiphanies with her, because he hadn’t yet come clean about his health. But he wanted to be with her. In any way and for any amount of time fate granted him.

  Though it was not his way, he made an inward vow to avoid the calendar and to concentrate on the moment. Perhaps there was more to Leo Cavallo than met the eye. If so, he had two months to figure it out.

  * * *

  Phoebe couldn’t decide whether to cry or curse when Leo finally came through the door, his tall, broad silhouette filling the doorway. Her giddy relief that he was okay warred with irritation because he had disappeared for so long without an explanation. Of course, if he had been living in his own cabin, she would not have been privy to his comings and goings.

  But this was different. He and Phoebe were cohabiting. Which surely gave her some minimal rights when it came to social conventions. Since she didn’t have the guts to chastise him, her only choice was to swallow her pique and move forward.

  As he entered and kicked off his muddy boots, he smiled sheepishly. “Have you already eaten?”

  “Yours is warming in the oven.” She returned the smile, but stayed seated. It wasn’t necessary to hover over him like a doting housewife. Leo was a big boy.

  Teddy played with a plastic straw while Phoebe enjoyed a second cup of coffee. As Leo joined her at the table, she nodded at his plate. “Your friend is a genius. Please thank him for me. Though I’m sure I’ll be ruing the additional calories.”

  Leo dug into
his food with a gusto that suggested he had walked long and hard. “You’re right. I’ve even had him cater dinner parties at my home. Makes me very popular, I can tell you.”

  As he finished his meal, Phoebe excused herself to put a drooping Teddy down for his nap. “I have a white noise machine I use sometimes in his room, so I think we’ll be able to get the boxes down without disturbing him,” she said. “And if he takes a long afternoon nap like he sometimes does, we can get a lot of the decorating done if you’re still up for it.”

  Leo cocked his head, leaning his chair back on two legs. “I’m definitely up for it,” he said, his lips twitching.

  She couldn’t believe he would tease about their recent insanity. “That’s not funny.”

  “You don’t have to tell me.” He grinned wryly. “I realize in theory that couples with young children have sex. I just don’t understand how they do it.”

  His hangdog expression made Phoebe burst into laughter, startling Teddy, who had almost fallen asleep on her shoulder. “Well, you don’t have to worry about it,” she said sharply, giving him a look designed to put him in his place. “All I have on the agenda this afternoon is decking the halls.”

  * * *

  Leo had seldom spent as much time alone with a woman as he had with Phoebe. He was beginning to learn her expressions and to read them with a fair amount of accuracy. When she reappeared after settling the baby, her excitement was palpable.

  “The pull-down steps to the attic are in that far corner over there.” She dragged a chair in that direction. “I’ll draw the cord and you get ready to steady the steps as they come down.”

  He did as she asked, realizing ruefully that this position put him on eye level with her breasts. Stoically, he looked in the opposite direction. Phoebe dragged on the rope. The small framed-off section of the ceiling opened up to reveal a very sturdy set of telescoping stairs.