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

Her eyes held a luminosity that twisted his gut into knots.

      “Uh…” He gulped in air.

      “Because you slept with me?” A puzzled frown furrowed her brow as she lifted the ring from the bed of velvet and caressed it with her fingertips. “No. That’s not right. You had the ring before you slept with me. So…”

      This was not going as he’d planned. He could see her thinking, coming to the Lord knew what conclusion.

      Ah, hell. “Not you,” he muttered.

      “What?” Her full attention zeroed in on him again.

      “I wasn’t going to propose to you.”

      An indecipherable expression flashed across her face. “Then who?”

      He saw the moment she put it together. Her eyes went dark and blank. “Petra.”

      He nodded slowly, uneasy at the way Miranda was looking at him.

      “You asked Petra to marry you last night.” She dropped the ring back into the box and the lid snapped shut, the sound loud in the early morning silence. Then she stood up and he heard the box skip across the stainless steel bench.

      He flinched. Miranda thought—

      “Hang on,” he said urgently, leaping to his feet.

      But she ignored him. Swinging on her heel, she marched across the kitchen, her heels tap-tapping a furious tattoo on the matte wooden floor.

      “Hey, you don’t understand.” He reached out to restrain her as she stomped past.

      She turned her head and gave him a contemptuous glare. His hand fell away.

      “Oh, I understand too well. You asked the daughter of a new major shareholder to marry you. She had the sense to refuse, so you slept with the hired help—” she spat out the last two words “—in a fit of pique.” She punctuated her conclusion by marching to the door into the house and slamming it behind her.

      A click followed.

      Callum skidded after her, only to find she’d locked the door from the hall side. By the time he’d rushed out the back door, through the mews, and around to the front of the row of town houses, Miranda was gone.

       The beastly two-timing jerk.

      Miranda was still fuming when she arrived at The Golden Goose shortly before noon on Sunday. Fortunately Flo had accepted her arrival home in the clothes she’d gone out in last night with no questions, glossing over Miranda’s stuttered excuse about working late.

      Her mother’s skirting the issue hadn’t soothed her as much as it should’ve. Nor did it help that Gianni, the longtime chef, was glowering at her over the chopping block while Mick, the manager, danced around muttering that she was late—even though Miranda knew she’d walked in the door at five minutes to midday.

      The final straw came when Mick cornered her later to say that her commitment was lacking. She’d left early last week, and now she was late and she was to take this as a warning. In these tough times, he expected more.

      Gianni gave her a sly grin as she passed him, confirming where the heart of the problem lay. She wished she could reassure him, tell him that she had no ambitions to take over his job. But she knew that would only make him rush to tell Mick about her lack of commitment.

      She was screwed.

      By the time she got home late that night, Miranda was ill-prepared for the sight of an ostentatious bunch of long-stemmed pink roses that must’ve cost some joker a fortune.

      And she suspected she knew who the joker might be.

      “An admirer from last night?” Flo arched a finely penciled eyebrow. “I thought you said it was work.”

      “Must be a thank-you,” Miranda bit out, ripping off the still-sealed envelope and pocketing it to get it out of her mother’s line of sight.

      “So considerate.” Flo touched the blooms with reverent fingers. “They’re beautiful. I watered them. Why don’t you put them in your bedroom?”

      And be stuck looking at a reminder of last night’s calamity? No, thanks! Stalking away, Miranda wished she hadn’t said they were a thank-you; now she couldn’t even throw the wretched flowers away.

      “Someone rang for you earlier.”

      Miranda froze in the doorway, but didn’t turn around. “Who?”

      “A man. He had a rough voice. It was strangely familiar,” said Flo slowly.

      Miranda stifled an anxious groan. “Did he leave a name?” She prayed not. Her mother didn’t need to know she’d been fraternizing with the Ironstones.

      “No. He said he’d catch you on your cell phone.”

      Her cell phone had been off while she worked. “Thanks, Mum.”

      After setting down the unopened white envelope on the dressing table in her room, Miranda made for the bathroom the three of them shared. After she’d showered the odors of The Golden Goose away, she changed into a flannel nightie and brushed her teeth.

      Climbing into bed, she finally picked up her cell phone and switched it on. The message light flashed. She stared at it for long seconds.

      No. She had no intention of giving in to curiosity and checking to see if Callum had left her a message. The man had dominated her thoughts far too much already. And she was not about to let him cause her another sleepless night.

      Setting the phone on the bed stand, she turned the lamp off, refusing to let herself dwell on the reason why she’d slept so little last night…

      Chapter Four

      Miranda was wakened the following morning by banging on her bedroom door. She’d barely opened her eyes before Adrian barged in.

      “Phone.” He held out the handset. “Callum.”

      Her heart sank. She wished fervently she hadn’t been too cowardly to check her cell phone the night before. Now she was at a decided disadvantage. “Thanks.”

      Adrian hovered in the doorway, clearly curious. But an older-sister scowl caused him to roll his eyes and depart. When his footfalls finally faded, she lifted the handset to her ear. “Yes?”

      “What happened to good morning?” Callum sounded delighted.

      She squinted at her bedside clock. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

      “Although now that I think about it, you didn’t greet me yesterday, either. Maybe you’re not a morning person.”

      He had that right. But nor did she want any reminder about waking in his bed yesterday morning. “What do you want?”

      “Now there’s a leading question.” He’d lowered his voice to a husky drawl and at once a rush of heat filled Miranda. Oh, heavens! She couldn’t let herself respond to Callum with such unfettered sensual delight.

      She tamped it down. “Oh, please, it’s too early in the morning for sexual innuendo.”

      He laughed. “Definitely not a morning person. I apologize for calling so early.” That must be a first. “I’m flying out to New York this afternoon,” Callum continued more briskly, “and my schedule this morning is hellish.”

      Miranda suppressed the urge to cheer at the thought of Callum over three thousand miles away—it would give her time to recover from the turmoil that sleeping with him had caused her.

      He was still talking rapidly. “I’ve got tickets for Les Misérables on Saturday night. Do you want to go? We can have dinner afterward.”

      “You called me to invite me on a date?” she