One Night Before Christmas: A Billionaire for Christmas / One Night, Second Chance / It Happened One Night

“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 lifting 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 trust 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.”

He held out a chair for her and then joined her at the table. Phoebe had taken pains with the presentation. Pale green woven place mats and matching napkins from a craft cooperative in Gatlinburg accentuated amber stoneware plates and chunky handblown glass goblets that mingled green and gold in interesting swirls.

She poured each of them a glass of pinot. “There’s beer in the fridge if you’d prefer it.”

He tasted the wine. “No. This is good. A local vintage?”

“Yes. We have several wineries in the area.”

Their conversation was painfully polite. Almost as awkward as a blind date. Though in this case there was nothing of a romantic nature to worry about. No will he or won’t he when it came time for a possible good-night kiss at the front door.

Even so, she was on edge. Leo Cavallo’s sexuality gave a woman ideas, even if unintentionally. It had been a very long time since Phoebe had kissed a man, longer still since she had felt the weight of a lover’s body moving against hers in urgent passion. She thought she had safely buried those urges in her subconscious, but with Leo in her house, big and alive and so damned sexy, she was in the midst of an erotic awakening.

Like a limb that has gone to sleep and then experienced the pain of renewed blood flow, Phoebe’s body tingled with awareness. Watching the muscles in his throat as he swallowed. Inhaling the scent of him, warm male and crisp outdoors. Inadvertently brushing his shoulder as she served him second helpings of chicken and rice. Hearing the lazy tempo of his speech that made her think of hot August nights and damp bodies twined together beneath a summer moon.

All of her senses were engaged except for taste. And the yearning to do just that, to kiss him, swelled in her chest and made her hands shake. The need was as overwhelming as it was unexpected. She fixated on the curve of his lips as he spoke. They were good lips. Full, but masculine. What would they feel like pressed against hers?

Imagining the taste of his mouth tightened everything inside her until she felt faint with arousal. Standing abruptly, she put her back to him, busying herself at the sink as she rinsed plates and loaded the dishwasher. Suddenly, she felt him behind her, almost pressing against her.

“Let me handle cleanup,” he said, the words a warm breath of air at her neck. She froze. Did he sense her jittery nerves, her longing?

She swallowed, clenching her fingers on the edge of the counter. “No. Thank you. But a fire would be nice.” She was already on fire. But what the heck...in for a penny, in for a pound.

After long seconds when it seemed as if every molecule of oxygen in the room vaporized, he moved away. “Whatever you want,” he said. “Just ask.”

* * *

Leo was neither naive nor oblivious. Phoebe was attracted to him. He knew, because he felt the same inexorable pull. But he had known her for barely a day. Perhaps long enough for an easy pickup at a bar or a one-night stand, but not for a relationship that was going to have to survive for a couple of months.

With a different woman at another time, he would have taken advantage of the situation. But he was at Phoebe’s mercy for now. One wrong move, and she could boot him out. There were other cabins...other peaceful getaways. None of them, however, had Phoebe. And he was beginning to think that she was his talisman, his lucky charm, the only hope he had of making it through the next weeks without going stark raving mad.

The fire caught immediately, the dry tinder flaming as it coaxed the heavier logs into the blaze. When he turned around, Phoebe was watching him, her eyes huge.

He smiled at her. “Come join me on the sofa. We’re going to be spending a lot of time together. We might as well get to know each other.”

At that very moment, Teddy announced his displeasure with a noisy cry. The relief on Phoebe’s face was almost comical. “Sorry. I’ll be back in a minute.”

While she was gone, he sat on the hearth, feeling the heat from the fire sink into his back. Beneath his feet a bearskin pelt covered the floor. He was fairly certain it was fake, but the thick, soft fur made him imagine a scenario that was all too real. Phoebe...nude...her skin gilded with firelight.

The vivid picture in his mind hardened his sex and dried his mouth. Jumping to his feet, he went to the kitchen and poured himself another glass of wine. Sipping it slowly, he tried to rein in his hunger. Something might develop during this time with Phoebe. They could become friends. Or even more than that. But rushing his fences was not the way to go. He had to resist the temptation to bring sex into the picture before she had a chance to trust him.

Regardless of Phoebe’s desires, or even his own, this was a situation that called for caution. Not his first impulse, or even his last. But if he had any hope of making her his, he’d bide his time.

His mental gyrations were interrupted by Phoebe’s return. “There you are,” he said. “I wondered if Teddy had kidnapped you.”

“Poopy diaper,” she said with a grimace. She held the baby on her hip as she prepared a bottle. “He’s starving, poor thing. Slept right through dinner.”

Leo moved to the sofa and was gratified when Phoebe followed suit. She now held the baby as a barricade between them, but he could wait. The child wasn’t big enough to be much of a problem.

“So tell me,” he said. “What did you do with yourself before Teddy arrived?”

Phoebe settled the baby on her lap and held the bottle so he could reach it easily. “I moved in three years ago. At first I was plenty busy with decorating and outfitting both cabins. I took my time and looked for exactly what I wanted. In the meantime, I made a few friends, mostly women I met at the gym. A few who worked in stores where I shopped.”

“And when the cabins were ready?”

She stared down at the baby, rubbing his head with a wistful smile on her face. He wondered if she had any clue how revealing her expression was. She adored the little boy. That much was certain.

“I found someone to help me start a garden,” she said. “Buford is the old man who lives back near the main road where you turned off. He’s a sweetheart. His wife taught me how to bake bread and how to can fruits and vegetables. I know how to make preserves. And I can even churn my own butter in a pinch, though that seems a bit of a stretch in this day and age.”

He studied her, trying to get to the bottom of what she wasn’t saying. “I understand all that,” he said. “And if I didn’t know better, I’d guess you were a free spirit, hippie-commune, granola-loving Earth Mother. But something doesn’t add up. How did you get from stockbroker to this?”

* * *

Phoebe understood his confusion. None of it made sense on paper. But was she willing to expose all of her painful secrets to a man she barely knew? No...not just yet.

Picking her words carefully, she gave him an answer. Not a lie, but not the whole truth. “I had some disappointments both personally and professionally. They hit me hard...enough to make me reconsider whether the career path I had chosen was the right one. At the time, I didn’t honestly know. So I took a time-out. A step backward. I came here and decided to see if I could make my life simpler. More meaningful.”

“And now? Any revelations to report?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Are you mocking me?”

He held up his hands. “No. I swear I’m not. If anything, I have to admire you for being proactive. Most people simply slog away at a job because they don’t have the courage to try something new.”

“I wish I could say it was like that. But to be honest, it was more a case of crawling in a hole to hide out from the world.”

“You don’t cut yourself much slack, do you?”

“I was a mess when I came here.”

“And now?”

She thought about it for a moment. No one had ever asked her straight-out if her self-imposed exile had borne fruit. “I think I have a better handle on what I want out of life. And I’ve forgiven myself for mistakes I made. But do I want to go back to that cutthroat lifestyle? No. I don’t.”