The Baby beneath the Mistletoe. Marie Ferrarella

quick to throw in their support, each inviting him to stay with them. He’d agreed to come out because it had been an almost unconscious, lastditch attempt on his part to leave the land of the walking wounded and reenter the land of the living.

      Turning down their offers, he’d leased an apartment for himself and tried to make a new start.

      But it wasn’t working, not really. He didn’t belong here any more than he had back in Denver, his home for the past eight years.

      He didn’t belong anywhere in this world, now that Teri and Justin weren’t in it.

      Hopelessness began to spread long, icy fingers over him again, reclaiming him for its own. Freezing everything inside him.

      He didn’t want to repay Angelo and Shad for their kindness by screwing up. It wasn’t right.

      Tony sat back on his heels, talking to both of them, looking at neither. “Maybe you’d be better off if I just bowed out of this.” He sighed, feeling drained. “I have a feeling that I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.” He was almost sure of it. He turned toward Angelo. “Maybe you—”

      Angelo hated seeing him like this. Tony had always been equal to every challenge. But death had a way of changing all that. “Sorry, I’ve got the Carmichael project on my hands.”

      Tony looked to the other man. “Shad?”

      Shad already had his hands up, warding off the request Tony was about to make. “I’m handling the Gaetti development over at the north end of the city.”

      Tony thought of the third member of the company. Emotionally shut off, he hadn’t really taken the time to get to know Angelo’s wife, but he knew her name wouldn’t be on the logo if she wasn’t first class. Which was why he didn’t belong here.

      Raising a brow, he looked toward Angelo again. “Allison?”

      Angelo shook his head. “Besides handling the triplets,” he said, pride and respect evident in his voice, “she’s working on that next phase of the Winwood homes south of here.”

      Tony had forgotten about that. If he’d been in form, he thought ruefully, he would have remembered. Remembered everything. Still...

      “Is there anyone else you can give this to?”

      “Sorry, buddy. Ma and Dottie don’t do construction and Frankie’s too busy taking classes at UCI in between fighting off girls,” Angelo said, mentioning Shad’s stepson. It had been a disappointment when he’d discovered that Frankie, though incredibly adept at the work, had absolutely no interest in joining the family firm when he finally graduated from college at the end of this spring. “So there’s nobody left to helm this thing, but you. There’s no time to go scouting around for a new member.”

      Shad clamped a hand on Tony’s shoulder. “I’m afraid the family honor and reputation are both in your almost uncallused hands.”

      A very decisive knock on the trailer door tabled any further discussion among them. Shad felt Tony stiffen beneath his hand, a fatigued soldier suddenly going on the alert because he’d heard what he assumed was the approach of the enemy just outside his foxhole.

      Tony wasn’t kidding about the fireworks between them, Shad thought. But fireworks could be either destructive or celebratory, depending on the way circumstances arranged themselves. A little guidance was in order here.

      Being closest to the door, Angelo rose to his feet to open it. The smile that came to his lips was automatic. He had always appreciated beauty, whether in the lines of a well-constructed edifice, the multi-hued rays of a sunrise, or a striking woman. Which was now the case.

      At five-one and barely a hundred pounds, Michelle Rozanski lit up any space she occupied and, at least in Angelo’s opinion, looked like an unlikely candidate to be a driven architect. In his experience most architects were bespectacled, slightly hunched men who spent a good deal of their time leaning over elongated desks and squinting at tiny white lines inscribed on blue paper. The computer had only changed the angle at which they squinted.

      Mikky, as everyone called her, looked as if she should have a beribboned, noisy tambourine in her hand, a wide, colorful skirt swirling about her slim hips and an ankle bracelet made of entwined, fresh-cut flowers resting just above her bare feet. Despite the short, elfinlike hairstyle she wore, the word gypsy, sprang instantly to his mind when he looked at her. Architect didn’t even remotely venture into the picture.

      But she was a good one, if he were to believe her reputation. Certainly good enough to catch the eye and the fancy of most of the members of Bedford’s city council. It was Mikky’s lofty design for the new fifteenacre high school that had won out over more than seventy-five other bids from far more prestigious firms.

      Of course, just because the design, with its five very different buildings surrounding a gardenlike center, was aesthetically appealing, it wasn’t necessarily doable, he thought. He’d learned that more than once. What Tony had just pointed out to them was evidence of that. But that was a bone he figured his cousin was just going to have to chew on himself. As far as Angelo was concerned, it would undoubtedly do Tony good.

      He needed to feel his blood rushing in his veins again, not have it all but congeal there.

      

      Mixed signals assaulted Mikky the moment she stepped into the trailer. From the partners of the company, she felt an aura of genial accord. That, she had to admit, was a fairly new sensation. Accustomed to having to wage what amounted, at times, to a fierce battle to win respect on every project she undertook, she was surprised and pleased at Angelo’s and Shad’s reactions to her. But then, she’d heard they were fair men who knew their stuff. It didn’t hurt that the third member of their firm was a woman, either.

      There was no question in Mikky’s mind that Shad and Angelo were men she could certainly work with. There was no macho challenge in their eyes when they looked at her, or worse, a feeling that she was being undressed and dissected. Even in this day and age, it wasn’t an uncommon thing for her to come up against this sort of sexual bias. And, though she had to admit that Tony Marino rankled her down to her very toes, at least he wasn’t guilty of that sort of insulting behavior, either.

      The insults, both implied and vocalized, took another form. Tony Marino was blatantly in contempt of her intelligence. To Mikky that was a far greater offense. She’d worked hard to get to where she was, struggled every inch of the way for her schooling and to acquire a position with a prestigious firm. Once she’d gotten there, she’d had no respite. Even in these supposedly enlightened times, there were those who thought she’d slept her way to her position.

      It was butting up against that lie that had finally given her the courage to hand in her resignation to Finch, Crown & Ferguson, a company that had been around for nearly eighty years, and begin her own company. The fact that her rendition of the new high school had won out over so many others told her that she had made the right decision in sticking to her guns and to her dreams.

      And no sexy-looking, hard-bodied, small-minded construction boss in form-fitting jeans was going to make her believe otherwise, she thought fiercely, her eyes shifting to him now.

      If Tony Marino wanted to fight her every step of the way to get “her” building up, well then so be it. She was up to the war. Thrived on it, even. Mikky came from a large family where fighting was as much a part of the day as breakfast.

      Shad shook Mikky’s hand in greeting. “To what do we owe this honor?” Behind him, he heard Tony murmur something under his breath. Shad smiled to himself. Any reaction besides passive was a good one.

      Mikky drew herself up to her full height, refusing to be intimidated by the fact that when Tony got to his feet, she was surrounded by three men who were almost a foot taller than she was. She felt her determination and talent made up the difference in physical stature.

      “I came because I was summoned.” Her eyes shifted to Tony. “What is it now, Marino? I hope this won’t take long. I was getting ready to leave.”

      Tony