Millionaire Under the Mistletoe / His High-Stakes Holiday Seduction: Millionaire Under the Mistletoe / His High-Stakes Holiday Seduction. Emilie Rose

She looked at her mother in surprise.

      Flo normally gave all her bills to Miranda to pay—she was hopeless at organizing her finances. Though it tended to require the conjuring up of money from nowhere—often hard-worked overtime—to meet them.

      Miranda felt sick. “Please, not more overdue bills that I don’t know about.”

      Snagging up the corner of the file, Miranda caught sight of the name of an exclusive department store on the bill under the envelope. “Hemingway’s?”

      Guilt glinted in Flo’s dark eyes. “I needed a new coat.”

      Miranda pulled out the piece of paper and then blanched. “What was it? Mink?”

      “Don’t be silly, darling.” Her mother whipped the bill out from between her nerveless fingers. “There were also a few fripperies for my winter wardrobe. Your father wouldn’t have wanted to see me dressed in rags.”

      “Dad isn’t here anymore—and we don’t have his income.” She spied another bill from the same store, dated the previous month. “Pans? You told me your friend Sorrell gave those to you.”

      Her mother flushed, an ugly stain on her pale skin. “I’ll deal with the bills, Miranda.”

      “How?”

      Putting her hands on her hips, Miranda considered her mother. Apart from the allowance Callum paid her mother—the amount Miranda had been led to believe came from the carefully invested residue of her father’s estate—Flo had no income.

      “I’ll make arrangements, darling. Don’t worry about it. I’m not useless.”

      Arrangements? Dread curled in Miranda’s stomach. “What kind of arrangements?”

      “I’ll call up Hemingway’s and have them grant me an indulgence—they’ve done it before.”

      “Done it before?” asked Miranda, trying to make sense of why the store would grant her mother an extension on her accounts.

      “Yes—last time they even gave me a bigger credit limit.”

      Miranda stared at her vague, sweet mother with mounting horror. “Increased your credit limit when you aren’t paying your bills? Why would they do that?”

      Flo looked abashed. “Because of Callum, of course.”

      “Because of Callum?” She must sound like the village idiot the way she kept repeating her mother. “What does Callum Ironstone have to do with your accounts?”

      “He originally settled all our accounts after your father died. It was part of our agreement,” Flo said defensively. “Everyone knows who the Ironstones are. Things were so difficult at the time—don’t you remember? He used to pay the accounts I sent him until you took over.”

      Her mother fluttered her hands like a delicate butterfly but Miranda refused to be diverted. “I don’t remember. It must have been in that agreement you never showed me,” she said grimly. “Are you telling me you’ve extended your credit on the basis of Callum’s name?” It was too horrible to contemplate.

      “Well, it’s not costing him anything,” Flo said defiantly.

      “But it will if you don’t pay. I can’t believe these stores have let the balances run on for so long.”

      “I call them regularly—I’m hardly some debtor they think is about to abscond. They know Callum will look after me.”

      This was getting worse and worse. Miranda snatched the account back, and studied it, before looking back at her mother in despair. “The interest is running at a prohibitive rate.”

      “I don’t think all the stores charge such high rates, darling.”

      All the stores? “There are more?” Miranda stared at her mother, aghast.

      So much for her stubborn determination never to be beholden to Callum again. There was no money to pay these accounts. Callum would be contacted by the stores eventually to be told that her mother was shopping on his credit.

      Unless of course Hemingway’s decided to institute legal action to recover the debt.

      The shame of it.

      “Oh, dear Lord, Mum. What have you done?”

      It was the following afternoon—her day off—and after a spending the day walking aimlessly around the city, her brain in turmoil, Miranda finally decided to take action about her mother’s revelation.

      Even if Callum had paid off her parents’ accounts after her father’s death, he could hardly have intended her mother to continue using his name to lever credit. The time had come to see him and lay all the dead cats on his boardroom table, she decided with mordant humor. Adrian and Flo would have to put up with whatever repercussions followed.

      She could no longer continue deceiving him.

      Miranda paused at Trafalgar Square. Years ago Flo had sometimes brought her and Adrian here to feed the pigeons, and each Christmas, they’d come to admire the lights and Christmas tree. The pigeons had long since been discouraged, but the Christmas tree still stood. And the fountain Adrian had almost fallen into one icy winter’s day.

      So when her cell phone rang and she heard Callum’s distinctive voice, Miranda was hardly surprised. She sank down on a bench near the fountain. To her annoyance her “Hi” was more than a little breathless.

      “Been making any brandy snaps lately?”

      His lighthearted comment made her want to cry. That teasing humor wouldn’t last once he heard what her mother had been up to. “Not enough.”

      That reminded her that she needed to organize some overtime. There were Flo’s accounts to pay. On the spur of the moment she said rashly, “I don’t suppose you have more work for me?”

      The pause echoed in her ears.

      She shut her eyes. Stupid. She opened them and gazed blindly at the tall tree decorated with vertical rows of light on the other side of the fountain. “I mean real work. I don’t want a donation.”

      “I know you don’t. I was thinking.”

      She tried not to notice how low his voice was…how sexy…or how it sent shivers down her spine.

      “Maybe we could meet and talk about people I know who might be able to give you work,” he said.

      It wouldn’t be a date. And little as she wanted to be in his debt, what harm was there in using his social network to further her own ends? It wasn’t as if she was taking money from him.