Millionaire Under The Mistletoe

Eight

Everything was packed and ready to take to Fairwinds. There was some baking that with Flo’s help Miranda had prepared in advance, a selection of herbs and spices that she never traveled without-and extras that she intended to gift to the family-as well as a plethora of laborsaving devices and utensils.

Unfortunately it had been raining since they’d opened presents, making it impossible for her to stack it all outside, and now Callum was due to collect her.

Deciding she had to get moving, regardless of the weather, she kissed her mother goodbye and moved to hug Adrian.

He pecked her on the cheek. “I’ll give you a hand with all your junk.” Picking up her overnight bag, he held the front door open for her. “I’ll make a second trip for the bigger boxes.”

Miranda smiled her thanks up to him. “What would I do without you?” she said teasingly, then realized it was true-she loved her brother, would do whatever she could to protect him.

Outside the rain had eased off. Droplets dripped from the eaves, while the wind whistled through the bare branches of the lone potted silver birch.

“Look after Mum,” she told her brother on the step.

Adrian set down her bag. “I will.”

He was back in a jiffy with her boxes and stacked them at the bottom of the steps beside her luggage. “It’s going to snow again,” he said, studying the sky.

“Maybe.” Miranda squinted at the heavy clouds overhead. “Remember how we used to make snowmen in winter? With an old pair of Dad’s gumboots? Once we borrowed Mum’s pink scarf and she was so cross.”

Adrian chuckled beside her. “Remember the time you pulled my carrot nose out and gave it to Troubadour? We had such a snowball fight after that.”

“You stole the horse’s carrot. And anyway, you started it. You put a handful of snow down my shirt.” Miranda grimaced. “You hooligan.”

“And you clobbered me with your riding crop, so I hit you back.”

“And then Dad came and gave you a lecture about how boys should behave with honor always.” A lump thickened her throat. “I’d forgotten about that. We were a right royal pair of brats sometimes.”

Adrian stopped laughing. “Miranda-”

His eyes were full of turbulence, and her heart sank. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry to have to add this to everything, sis.”

Oh, no. What had her talk of honor provoked? “What? What’s happened now?”

Adrian flinched.

She tried to temper her impatience. “Callum will be here any minute. Tell me.”

“The panel beater who fixed the car-”

“What did he do wrong?” That was the last thing they needed. Had the car been shoddily repaired. Or worse?

“Nothing-he fixed it. The car’s been back at work for days-otherwise it would’ve been missed.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“He’s threatening to tell my supervisor I borrowed the car without permission unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Unless I pay him more money.”

She stared at her brother aghast. “This man’s blackmailing you?”

“He says if I pay him, he’ll stay quiet.”

“You’re actually considering paying this lowlife hush money?”

Adrian shrugged. “I don’t exactly have a choice.”

“And where exactly-” she said with emphasis “-is the money going to come from? Please tell me you’re not going to rob a bank-that would hardly be honorable.”

He recoiled at her sarcasm, then shot her a quick look. “I thought-”

Miranda shook her head and said grimly, “No, you can unthink that idea right now. I’m not giving you the money. Not even as a loan. If you pay him once, it will never end.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” Adrian had gone pale beneath his freckles.

“Report him to the police. But first come clean to Callum about what you did-it’s hardly as bad as extortion.”

Adrian looked horrified. “I can’t.”

“You must.” At the glimpse of ghostly gray in her peripheral vision she added flatly, “He’s here. Why don’t you talk to him now?”

The sight of Callum’s Daimler pulling up at the curb caused Adrian to blanch further. “Please, sis, I’m begging you-don’t tell him.”

“He should know.”

His eyes darted around. “Not now. Not yet. I need time to think about what I’m going to say-and I really should be going to work.”

His eyes pleaded with her.

After a moment, Miranda caved in. “Okay, but you must tell him-otherwise you’ll leave me no choice but to do it myself.”

She shuddered at the thought of it.

“As soon as you get back,” he promised, giving her a sick smile. “I don’t want to spend Christmas in jail while you try to arrange bail.”

“It won’t come to that.” At least she hoped not. But she still shivered as Callum got out of the car and came round to greet her.

Her brother acknowledged Callum with none of his usual confidence and quickly sidled away, saying, “Drive carefully, and have a merry Christmas both of you.”

Despite the fact that there had been heavy snows a few days earlier, the roads were clear and they were making good time.

Callum glanced over at the woman beside him.

Apart from a few monosyllabic answers, Miranda hadn’t spoken much in the past three hours. After trying to engage her in conversation a couple of times, he’d shrugged and flooded the car with music, negating the need for conversation.

Right now she was scribbling in a notebook, a frown of concentration wrinkling her brow.

“Don’t worry, everything will go like clockwork.”

“I’m not worried.” But the way she gnawed the end of her pencil refuted the statement. And so did the closed, withdrawn expression that had been etched on her face since he’d collected her earlier.

“Try to relax, my family won’t bite.”

“If you say so.”

Callum fell silent.

She must be nervous. That would explain her behavior. They’d spoken several times over the past few days. At first she’d made panicked calls to him about logistics, but each time they’d spoken, she’d sounded more and more like the Miranda he knew. Smart. Confident. Totally together. After consultation with his brothers, and with his parents’ housekeeper, he’d approved all the menus she’d produced-and given her carte blanche to buy whatever she needed.

With the housekeeper’s help, Miranda had decided to employ three women from the local village to help with the birthday party, and to hire the majority of the crockery and cutlery needed from a firm in Ambleside. Much of the produce would come from local suppliers, too, which she’d already organized.

As late as last night, there’d been no problem. So why was she so withdrawn and tense now?

Or was he imagining problems where none existed? Callum shrugged his concern off. It could be that Miranda simply wasn’t a morning person-he’d teased her about that before. Or maybe she needed sustenance.

So fifteen minutes later he pulled off the M6 and headed for an inn set well back from the main road.

She looked up with surprise as he turned into the car park. “Where are we?”

He gestured to a large sign in front of the inn. “The Rose and Thorn.”

She groaned. “That much is evident-I can see the sign.”

His mouth twitched as he sensed her rolling her eyes.

Switching off the motor, he unclipped his seat belt. “I often break the journey here. They serve a good breakfast.” He went round to her side and opened her door. “If you don’t want breakfast, my mother swears by their cream teas.”

She hesitated.

“Come on.” Miranda was shivering as the cold air drifted into the warmth of the Daimler. “There’s a warm fire inside,” he coaxed as she drew her red scarf more tightly around her neck and emerged from the car in a flurry of denim and a bright red woolen coat.

Inside the dining room, the low wooden beams and a fire in the hearth gave the inn a welcoming ambience. Once a plump, smiling woman had taken their orders, Callum watched Miranda’s gaze settle on a large Christmas tree in the corner. Her shoulders sagged imperceptibly.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

Miranda shook her head.

“Don’t fob me off.” He waited, but she still said nothing, though shadows lingered in her eyes. “This is me, Callum. When have you ever not been able to tell me exactly what you think?”

She gestured to the Christmas tree. “This will be the first time I haven’t been with my family for Christmas.” She slanted him a glance from under long, dark lashes and the expression in her melting eyes caught at something deep in his chest. “Nothing you can do about that.”

He exhaled in relief. “That’s all?”

“All? What do you mean ‘all’?” The fire was back in her eyes. “No one is as important to me as Mum and Adrian. Since Dad died we’ve always roasted a Cornish hen-a turkey is too big for the three of us-and prepared all the trimmings. And this year I won’t be there.”

Callum cursed silently as he filled in the unspoken blanks. There probably hadn’t been sufficient money for a turkey after her father’s death. Remorse tugged at him that Miranda would be missing out on precious time with her family because of him.

Because he was prepared to go to any lengths to get her back in his bed.

God, he’d been selfish. If she ever learned how he’d manipulated her, she would be furious. So she had better never learn the truth.

The egg and bacon pie they’d both ordered from the special-of-the-day board arrived, distracting them both for a few minutes.

She continued with a wan smile. “Next year Adrian will probably be gone-out making his own life.”

“That happened for a while with my family. It’s part of growing up. But Adrian will return to the fold.” He thought of his own family. “These days all my brothers go home for Christmas each year. It’s rare that one of us doesn’t make it.”

“Four boys! Your poor mother. It couldn’t have been easy. Isn’t Hunter your stepbrother?”

At the glint of curiosity in her eyes, he explained, “Hunter and Jack are my half brothers. Dad married Mother after his first wife died. He already had Hunter and Jack. Then he and Mother had Fraser and me.”

“I knew you were the youngest, but I wasn’t sure who were your real brothers-you all seem so close.”

“We are close. Hunter and Jack are every bit as much my brothers as Fraser is. And Dad had a busy job so most of the task of bringing us up landed on Mum.” He waited for Miranda to make a comment about how privileged they all were, but she didn’t. “Once Dad retired, Mother was very relieved. She’s always wanted to live in the country-although I don’t think she expected it to be quite so wet in winter.”

Miranda’s eyes were full of longing. “I can understand that-I wouldn’t care about the wet though.”

She’d grown up in the country, he knew. “You miss it, don’t you?”

“I have fond memories of living there. Just the-” she broke off “-the ending wasn’t so nice.”

Callum knew her home had been auctioned off after her father’s suicide-along with most of the furniture and valuables. He’d done what he’d could to help patch up the shambles of her parents’ finances but it hadn’t been enough.

“I think one of the worst things was saying goodbye to Troubadour.”

“Troubadour?”

“My horse. I’d had him since I was thirteen and he was rising three. I loved that horse.”

Another loss.

Her father. Her home. Her horse.

Everything she’d loved. Everything dear and familiar to her. Gone.

Callum fell silent and dug into the bacon and egg pie as if he was waging a battle.

“Look, I don’t know how we got into such distressing topics.” She made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “It’s too depressing-especially so near to Christmas.”

He laid down his knife and fork. “I think we do need to talk about it,” he said gently. He wanted to reach out and touch the hands he suspected would be ice-cold despite the warmth of the inn’s fire.

“I’d rather not.” She inhaled audibly, and gave him a very fake and, to his mind, a very brave smile. “It’s not practical to live in the country. London is where the work is.”

Her deliberate changing of the subject warned Callum that the past still affected her deeply.

Would she ever be able to let it go?

A restless edginess shook him. He faced the fact that she might never do so. And that would leave them forever estranged. The realization was akin to looking down into a long, dark tunnel, one without a glimpse of day at the other side.

He wasn’t ready to exist in perpetual darkness. He’d find a way to see the sunlight on the other side. Because the notion of never holding her again, never making love to her, was one he wasn’t ready to accept.

It left him with no choice. She was going to hate him for reopening the wounds, but if he didn’t, he might as well kiss any chance of having her back in his bed goodbye now. Without resolving the past, they had no future.

However, now was probably not the best time to address it. Taking the conversational olive branch she’d offered, he gestured around. “The big money might be in London, but surely there are enough places like this where you could have the country lifestyle you want?”

“Maybe, but I never wanted to be an innkeeper-” she pulled a face that he found rather endearing “-or a café owner. I’d be perfectly happy catering for an array of the rich and famous.”

He laughed but his eyes remained fixed on her. “Is that what you really want?”

Her lips firmed. “What I really want isn’t possible, so I live with what is.”

She wanted her father back. “Look, about your father-”

“You’ve already apologized. Let’s leave it there.” She glanced down, her lashes forming dark shadows against her creamy skin, and her body had gone very still.

Callum couldn’t leave it-it pervaded their whole relationship.

Three years ago he’d been appointed to the board as financial director after returning from five years of working in Australia. He’d worked all hours, day and night, to get on top of the chaos after his predecessor-a good friend of his father’s-had resigned with a colon cancer scare. The cruel whispers of nepotism had infuriated Callum-particularly as he didn’t want to hurt his father’s friend with the truth.

Callum had been unknown and unproven, and that had fueled his fierce desperation to prove to his brothers, to the management team and to the skeptical naysayers that he could do the task his father had set upon him.

He’d probably gone over the top.

He’d certainly adopted a take-no-prisoners management style.

How best to explain the climate against which his actions had played out? Whatever he said was going to sound like justification for his arrogance.

He chose his words carefully. “If I could have that time of my life over again, I would have handled things differently.”

Miranda met his gaze. “Handled things differently? You mean you would’ve done a decent job of investigating before you issued a statement to the press that damaged a good and honorable man, before you called the police in to arrest my father?” The eyes that had seduced him were full of pain. “The humiliation of that was what killed him.”

“Wait a moment!” He leaned forward. “Even if no statement had been made to the press, your father would still have been arrested-just perhaps not so publicly.”

Her expression grew closed, shutting out anything he could say. “My father didn’t steal anything from your company,” she bit out.

She still believed her father had done nothing wrong. Callum sighed. “Miranda, you need to face the truth.”

“It’s not the truth. Let’s just agree to disagree.” She picked up her bag and rose to her feet.

God, but this woman was stubborn!

He snagged her elbow as she tried to force her way past his chair and pulled her to him. Ignoring the startled looks from the only other couple in the dining room, two gray-haired women, he murmured close to her face, “Your parents were living way beyond their means. I can only assume your father meant to pay back the money he took.”

She tossed the gold, tousled hair that always gave him bedroom fantasies. The gesture made him want to haul her into his arms. He wasn’t sure what he’d do next-shake some sense into her…or kiss her stupid.

“He never took it-he left us letters telling us that.”

“Letters?”

Callum had never heard anything about any letters.

“Before he shut himself up in the garage and gassed himself, he wrote letters to me and Adrian and Mum telling us that he loved us. He said he could never have done such a thing-that he’d been convincingly framed for his predecessor’s mistakes, and that the humiliation of living with it was too much for him. He apologized for being weak.”

Her eyes filled with tears, but her pain and anger glittered through the moisture. “The whole charge was a fiction to cover administrative blunders from the financial department. You know that-you’ve already said you were sorry for framing him.”

“No!” Jeez, how had this happened? He couldn’t let her labor under such a misunderstanding. “I never said that. I was apologizing for making your father’s shame so public-I didn’t need to have been quite so gung ho, but my appointment was still fresh and I thought I needed to stamp my authority. I’ve never said his arrest was unjust. I believe people should be held accountable for their actions-”

But Miranda pulled her arm free. “I’m not listening to this garbage. You’re lying! I’ll wait for you at the car.”

By the time Callum stalked out of the Rose and Thorn fifteen minutes later, Miranda’s teeth were chattering.

She supposed it served her right. She could’ve waited in the warm hallway, but she’d been so angry, all she’d wanted was to get out of the space Callum occupied. She’d needed to breathe the clean, crisp air outside to cool down.

Without glancing in her direction, he pointed the key fob at the car and the doors unlocked. She scuttled in and Callum climbed in beside her.

When he didn’t start the car, she swiveled her head to see what the holdup was. And nearly wilted under the blast of his blue gaze.

He said softly, with lethal contempt, “I’m going to say this once more and never again. I would never have a man I believed to be innocent arrested.”

Maybe Callum didn’t know the full extent of it. “The evidence was falsified. He was framed.”

“The written admission from your father was not falsified.”

The quiet menace of his statement silenced Miranda like nothing else could have.

“And no one tampered with the evidence he produced that showed what he’d done with the money he’d misappropriated.”

Her lips parted, but the shock of what he was telling her had frozen her vocal cords. At last she stuttered, “That’s a lie.” It had to be.

A muscle flexed high in his cheek but no emotion crossed his face. “You must believe what you will.”

Bile burned bitterly in the back of her throat as her stomach clenched in fear. She’d been lied to before. In the past few months, her mother and brother had both lied to her, but Callum never had. She’d even believed the lie her mother had been spinning for years about the life insurance policy paying out. Callum had debunked that myth. And he’d been telling the truth.

“You’re lying,” she said without hope.

He looked pained-as if he was hurting. Miranda leaned her head back against the head rest and closed her eyes, shutting him out. A few seconds later the car started, and soon they were back on the main road.

She pretended to sleep, but her mind ticked over.

Callum was nothing if not honest. Even when he’d asked her to marry him, he’d never iced what was essentially a practical request-albeit garnished with lashings of sex-into a romantically pretty proposal.

What if he was telling the truth this time, too?

The hurt that seized her was unbearable. Her father wouldn’t have lied to her. It was important to believe that, to keep faith lest her whole world come tumbling down around her like a pack of fraudster’s cards.

Yet even while she clutched onto that belief, deep within her most secret heart, something withered.

Near the town of Windermere, they turned off onto a road with breathtaking views of the lake dotted with sailing craft tied up for winter. Another turn took them into a narrow lane flanked with low stone walls while snow-covered fields lay beyond.

Their speed had slowed, and Miranda knew they must be approaching their final destination.

Now that they were nearly there, Miranda wished she hadn’t let Adrian’s latest bombshell depress her, since it was that mood that had gotten her into the bridge-burning fight with Callum. There were a thousand questions she wanted to ask as he nosed the Daimler through a set of imposing wrought-iron gates and onto a drive that wound through a park.

She sat up, squinting against the bright light. The snow, the absence of livestock, the leafless trees with their bare crisscrossing branches all gave the landscape a bleak, monochromatic beauty.

Loneliness swept her.

Huddling down, she pulled the scarf Flo had given her for Christmas tighter around her neck.

She already missed the cramped terrace house and the merry music Flo played in the evenings. She longed for the funny, bent Christmas tree Adrian had salvaged after a Boxing Day party a couple of years ago.

Why the hell had she agreed to come? Because of an inexplicable yearning to see the place Callum called home. And, to a lesser extent, for the cash incentive he’d offered.

Because they needed the money.

Miranda gave a silent sigh. It always came back to money. A predicament he had put her family into. If she didn’t maintain that belief, she might go mad. And while she wouldn’t accept his charity, she was going to use every commission, every lead he offered, to get herself out of this financial quagmire.

At least she hadn’t given in to her urge to unload the burden of Adrian being blackmailed. Judging by Callum’s black-and-white statement about accountability, he would expect Adrian to face charges.

Callum was a rigid autocrat who gave no quarter. There was no doubt that he would have her brother convicted of using the car without permission.

Adrian’s concern about spending Christmas in jail was too real to dismiss.