Millionaire's Christmas Miracle Read online

  The box moved as the cries increased

  Quint crouched down, shocked to see a baby in the box. Acting on twenty-year-old instincts, he reached for the baby and its pacifier. Straightening, he cradled the child in his arm and offered the pacifier. The cries stopped.

  He looked around the garage, but no one was there. He tried the back door to the child-care center. Locked.

  Within a few minutes, the door opened and Amy was there.

  “What are you—?” Her words cut off as her eyes widened. “That’s a baby,” she said. “Who…where did you get a baby?”

  “Outside your door.”

  She eased the baby out of his arms, then cuddled it to her. She was meant to be a mother. The gentleness in her, the caring, was almost tangible. “I don’t understand.”

  Quint’s chest tightened and his mouth felt dry. “That makes two of us.”

  Dear Reader,

  Welcome to Harlequin American Romance, where you’re guaranteed upbeat and lively love stories set in the backyards, big cities and wide-open spaces of America.

  Kick-starting the month is an AMERICAN BABY selection by Mollie Molay. The hero of The Baby in the Back Seat is one handsome single daddy who knows how to melt a woman’s guarded heart! Next, bestselling author Mindy Neff is back with more stories in her immensely popular BACHELORS OF SHOTGUN RIDGE series. In Cheyenne’s Lady, a sheriff returns home to find in his bed a pregnant woman desperate for his help. Honor demands that he offer her his name, but will he ever give his bride his heart?

  In Millionaire’s Christmas Miracle, the latest book in Mary Anne Wilson’s JUST FOR KIDS miniseries, an abandoned baby brings together a sophisticated older man who’s lost his faith in love and a younger woman who challenges him to take a second chance on romance and family. Finally, don’t miss Michele Dunaway’s Taming the Tabloid Heiress, in which an alluring journalist finesses an interview with an elusive millionaire who rarely does publicity. Exactly how did the reporter get her story?

  Enjoy all four books—and don’t forget to come back again in December when Judy Christenberry’s Triplet Secret Babies launches Harlequin American Romance’s continuity MAITLAND MATERNITY: TRIPLETS, QUADS & QUINTS, and Mindy Neff brings you another BACHELORS OF SHOTGUN RIDGE installment.

  Wishing you happy reading,

  Melissa Jeglinski

  Associate Senior Editor

  Harlequin American Romance

  MILLIONAIRE’S CHRISTMAS MIRACLE

  Mary Anne Wilson

  To Taylor Anne Levin

  The real miracle in my life…

  XOXOXO

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Mary Anne Wilson is a Canadian transplanted to Southern California, where she lives with her husband, three children and an assortment of animals. She knew she wanted to write romances when she found herself “rewriting” the great stories in literature, such as A Tale of Two Cities, to give them “happy endings.” Over a ten-year career, she’s published thirty romances, had her books on bestseller lists, been nominated for Reviewer’s Choice Awards and received a Career Achievement Award in Romantic Suspense. She’s looking forward to her next thirty books.

  Books by Mary Anne Wilson

  HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE

  495—HART’S OBSESSION

  523—COULD IT BE YOU?

  543—HER BODYGUARD

  570—THE BRIDE WORE BLUE JEANS

  609—THE CHRISTMAS HUSBAND

  652—MISMATCHED MOMMY?

  700—MR. WRONG!

  714—VALENTINE FOR AN ANGEL

  760—RICH, SINGLE & SEXY

  778—COWBOY IN A TUX

  826—THAT NIGHT WE MADE BABY

  891—REGARDING THE TYCOON’S TODDLER*

  589—HART’S DREAM

  895—THE C.E.O. & THE SECRET HEIRESS*

  637—NINE MONTHS LATER…

  899—MILLIONAIRE’S CHRISTMAS MIRACLE*

  670—JUST ONE TOUCH

  * * *

  THE TEXAS TELL-ALL

  Dec. 24, 2001

  Last night’s holiday reception at LynTech Corporation was an interesting mix of powerful entrepreneurs, investors and parents whose main concern is the corporation’s thriving day-care center, Just For Kids. And just as the party was heating up, in walked Quint Gallagher, the hotshot consultant from New York, who turned a number of female heads (including mine!). Word has it that the devilishly good-looking Mr. Gallagher has returned to his hometown of Houston in an effort to revitalize LynTech. However, business seemed the last thing on the millionaire’s mind as he and sexy single mom Amy Blake, coordinator of Just For Kids, talked and flirted the whole night through. The twenty-year age difference between the two hardly seemed to matter, and even this reporter could see the sparks flying! My prediction? Mr. Gallagher’s return to Texas will prove to be very strategic in matters of business…and of the heart.

  * * *

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Prologue

  Houston, Texas, December 23

  “Come on, Dad, you’re single, rich, a great catch. You need to find someone and—”

  “Okay, Mike, that’s enough.” In the back of the limousine, Quint Gallagher cut off his son’s words coming over the cell phone. “I’m here to work tonight. It’s a reception, a business function, not a singles’ party. Everyone, including me, will have an agenda with them and they’re all business.”

  “Bummer,” Mike murmured.

  Quint could almost see his twenty-two-year-old son sitting in his apartment in Los Angeles, probably with clutter all around from his move last month. “Yeah, bummer,” he echoed. “But it’s part of the package with LynTech and something you’ll learn at your job.”

  “I’m never going to be like that,” Mike said. “My work isn’t my life. It’s so I can live life.”

  “So you’ve told me many times,” Quint said as he stretched his legs out and slipped lower on the leather seat, enjoying the roominess of the limousine as he tried to ease muscles still tight from the long flight in from New York.

  “I mean it. You did your thing the way you wanted to, but I’m not doing it that way. I wish you weren’t anymore. You’ve got all the money you’ll ever need, and you could just cut loose and have some fun. Why don’t you start by ditching the reception and going somewhere else?”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “Dad, I hate to say this, but you need to get a love life, to—”

  Quint cut that off right away. “What did you call for, besides checking on my love life?”

  “So, you do have a love life, huh?” Mike murmured.

  “That’s none of your business.” He and Mike had always talked about anything, but right now, Quint was setting the limits. He wasn’t about to go into this with his son. There had been women over the years; they’d come and gone, but he’d kept them separate from his real life as a single father to his only child Mike, and from his work. He’d never introduced those women to Mike, because he hadn’t wanted to have another woman do what Mike’s mother had done—walk out. It had been a conscious decision on his part to stay free of that possibility ever becoming reality again, and now it was a habit that fit him well, just not to get involved. “Now, are you going to tell me why y
ou called?”

  “Okay, okay. Since you aren’t going to come out here for Christmas and Grandma and Granddad are going to Florida for the holidays, I was going to head up to Tahoe for some skiing. I just wondered if you had Joe Kline’s number so I could see if we could use his condo? I can’t find it anywhere.”

  Quint passed the cell phone to his other ear and looked past his reflection in the tinted window to the night streets of Houston glittering with Christmas decorations. “I don’t have it with me, but you can get it from his son, Dane. He’s listed.”

  “Great, thanks.”

  “Who’s the ‘we’ in ‘we could use his condo?”’

  “A friend.”

  “Okay, fair enough,” he murmured. “Just be careful, have fun and leave—”

  “—it the way we found it,” Mike said, completing the sentence for him.

  “You read my mind.”

  “Now, that’s an easy job. Just think work and responsibility.” Before Quint could counter that, Mike asked, “So, are you going to be out at the ranch or what?”

  “I’m staying at the Towers Hotel in the city. It’s just easier than being all the way out at the ranch.”

  “How’d you convince Grandma that you weren’t staying with them now that you’re back in Houston?”

  “Unlike you, your grandmother understands what work is and how important it is to be close to that work.”

  “Obviously you haven’t talked to her since you landed.”

  “I called and left a message. What’s going on?”

  “I talked to Grandma yesterday and she’s worried about you. She thinks you should take advantage of being on your own again, that you should find some nice girl and settle down.”

  Quint narrowed his hazel eyes at his own reflection in the tinted windows, a man with gray-streaked dark hair brushed back from a face that was all planes and angles, dominated by a full mustache. Hardly a “kid” a mother had to worry about. “She’s wasting her time on that line of thought.” He’d settled down once and lived to regret it. He’d never regret having Mike, and if he’d been able to have the same child without ever having had Gwen in their lives, he wouldn’t have hesitated for a minute. But it didn’t work that way. “I’m too old to buy into that scenario anymore.”

  “Why don’t you rewrite the scenario and forget the ‘settling down’ part? Just find some sexy woman and go with the flow? Let it happen. Relax. Chill out.”

  “God, you sound like some hedonistic hippy,” he said. “And any lady my age isn’t into the party scene. She’s sitting at home with her grandchildren.”

  Mike laughed at that. “Dad, you’re not old. You’re only 49. Besides, who says you need someone your age? You know what they say—if you’re in this world at the same time, age doesn’t matter. So go with that.”

  “If you say, ‘let it all hang out’ I’m hanging up on you,” Quint said.

  Mike laughed again. “Okay, okay, I won’t, but can’t you ditch that reception and go party?”

  “You go to Tahoe and have a great time, and I’m going to work at a job that’s going to be a killer.”

  “I’ll bet you’re even thinking of working on Christmas.”

  Without Mike around and with his parents away, Quint would be alone. “It’s just another day.”

  “What about on your birthday?”

  Quint seldom thought about birthdays, and this one was no exception. “It’s just another day,” he repeated.

  “It’s New Year’s and it’s your birthday.”

  “Why waste a perfectly good day?”

  “I don’t think you remember how to have fun,” Mike said, then chuckled ruefully. “I guess, with it being Christmas and all, I was hoping for a miracle.”

  “I don’t need a miracle. I’m fine.”

  “I hope so,” Mike murmured, then said, “Merry Christmas, Dad.”

  “Merry Christmas, son,” Quint said, then turned off the phone and slipped it into one of the inside pockets of his tuxedo.

  Mike would learn soon enough that there were no miracles in this life. Quint had learned that the hard way.

  Chapter One

  Four hours later

  Quint left the gold and silver shimmer of the huge room on the corporate level at LynTech behind him. He closed the doors on the Christmas music and chatter blending in a strange rhythm and went out into the broad corridor. If he hadn’t quit smoking years ago, he would have lit up and let the acrid smoke fill his lungs, perhaps dispersing the frustration and sense of wasted time that dogged him at these events. And with jet lag mixed in, he was ready to make his escape.

  He’d needed to make contact, to get a sense of the place, a sense of the people, but it was time to leave. He nodded to a couple going in, got a blast of the noise as the doors opened, then there was just the quiet of conversation farther down the hallway as the doors closed. He looked in that direction and saw three or four people waiting by the elevators. Robert Lewis, the founder of LynTech, and a dapper man with white hair, was deep in conversation with his daughter, Brittany, a stunning woman with flame hair and exquisite green eyes. To her right stood Matt Terrel, one half of the CEO position at LynTech, a sandy-haired man the size of a linebacker. Wedged between Brittany and Terrel and hugging both of them, was the nine-year-old boy who had been hanging around all evening, Anthony, in a miniature tux.

  The four people looked happy enough, very close, but he wasn’t about to get near them. He’d talked to Robert earlier that evening to discuss his original vision for LynTech, but had ended up hearing all about his problems with Brittany. Right then the elevator arrived and the doors slid open.

  Anthony grabbed Brittany and Matt by their hands, tugging them into the elevator, followed by Robert who turned as the doors started to close. Quint caught the older man’s eye long enough to see Robert smile at him, then the barrier shut and Quint was alone in the corridor.

  He headed down past the bank of elevators and went directly to the exit door for the stairs. He pushed it back, and his dress shoes tapped on the metal stairs as he headed down to the bottom floor. He was a bit amazed at the congeniality he’d just witnessed, considering the mood Robert had been in an hour ago. Back then, he’d been very upset over Brittany’s attitude and actions.

  “My Brittany just can’t focus, she can’t seem to settle,” the man had said. “She runs here and there. She’s started so many university courses, so many majors that it’s ludicrous, then she just walks away. I’d hoped that getting her to come to work here would help, and I thought it had, but now…” He’d shaken his head as if he’d lost all hope. “I’ve tried, but I admit that I’m at a loss.”

  Quint had never been the sort that people opened up to and confided in, partly because he wouldn’t have done that with someone else. He’d learned to keep his distance to make working with people easier, and he really had no answers for anyone’s personal life. With the exception of Mike, he’d made a mess out of his personal life.

  His hand skimmed over the coldness of the metal handrail as he rounded the corner on the stairs. He’d told Robert to do what any parent did—his best. That was when the conversation had gone beyond what he wanted to discuss. “I’ve tried, but how I wish her mother was still alive.” Robert had exhaled, a sound that was more of a sigh tinged with a shadow of sorrow. “I think I missed having her mother there more than Brittany did.” Yes, sorrow. “I heard you’d raised your boy alone, so you understand.”

  Quint kept going down, level by level. Robert’s comment had struck an unexpectedly still-raw nerve in Quint. Whatever mistakes he had made with Mike wouldn’t have been righted if Gwen had stuck around. But Robert had obviously loved his dead wife. Quint couldn’t relate to that and had been unnerved that the old bitterness about what had happened so many years ago had reared its ugly head.

  He went down more quickly, the movement doing nothing to stop the thoughts that came to him in a rush. Plunging into a hurried marriage with Gwen when she�
�d informed him she was pregnant had begun the nightmare. Then there had been that long year when Michael had been born and Gwen had realized that not only did she not like being a wife or mother, but she wasn’t even going to go through the motions. She’d left with little more than a glance back and a thin explanation about being worried she’d end up hating both him and Michael if she stayed.

  Before Robert had been able to say the usual when Quint had told him he was divorced—how sorry he was to hear about Gwen leaving, and how sorry he was that Quint had had to raise Michael alone—Quint had pleaded jet lag and gone to get another drink, which hadn’t helped at all. And neither had the next drink. That’s when he’d known he’d had to get out of there. He was ditching the party, just as Mike had suggested, but he wasn’t going to “find some sexy woman and go with the flow.”

  He slowed slightly. Instead of celebrating Christmas, he was going to work on the company prospectus and start his planning. Being brought in as a growth consultant meant a lot of research. Instead of getting crazy for the New Year, he’d probably have an early dinner, get his files in order and ring the New Year in studying financial profiles. He wouldn’t be looking for any miracle beyond the miracle of helping a faltering, previously family-owned business become a viable, thriving corporation.

  He reached the lobby level, and stopped, took a deep breath, once, twice, then pulled back the door and stepped out into a side area off the main reception space. He glanced past the elevators, past the glitter of Christmas that seemed to be everywhere in gold and silver, and saw clusters of people waiting for their cars to be brought around to the front. Limos lined the curb out in front and a bar had been set up near a stunning Christmas tree.

  He spotted several people he’d been introduced to during the evening in the crowd, but he had no desire to renew any conversation with them. So, turning his back to the crowds, he discovered a hallway that seemed to lead to the rear of the building and probably a secondary exit. He’d head out that way, forego the company-provided limousine and grab the first taxi he spotted to get back to the hotel.