The Baby Beneath the Mistletoe Read online

  “Somebody put up a sprig of mistletoe here.”

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Books by Marie Ferrarella

  Books by Marie Ferrarella writing as Marie Nicole

  Letter to Reader

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  “Somebody put up a sprig of mistletoe here.”

  Mikky raised her eyes to look at it. “You know, I hear it’s bad luck to go against tradition.”

  “Guess this means I have to kiss you.”

  “Guess so,” she whispered as Tony lowered his lips.

  Feeling dazed, Mikky drew her mouth slowly away from his. For a man who was trying to keep his emotional distance, he’d certainly leapt over the chasm when he kissed her.

  Mikky took a deep breath. “I don’t know about you, but that’s one tradition I think the world should really keep.”

  “Michelle...”

  “Shh.” She placed her fingertips to his lips to still them. “I’m not asking you for anything, just to enjoy the moment.”

  “You really are something else, aren’t you?”

  Mikky looked at him significantly. “Not better, not worse, just something else.” It was up to Tony to realize just what that actually meant to him.

  Dear Reader,

  The end of the century is near, and we’re all eagerly anticipating the wonders to come. But no matter what happens, I believe that everyone will continue to need and to seek the unquenchable spirit of love...of romance. And here at Silhouette Romance, we’re delighted to present another month’s worth of terrific, emotional stories.

  This month, RITA Award-winning author Marie Ferrarella offers a tender BUNDLES OF JOY tale, in which The Baby Beneath the Mistletoe brings together a man who’s lost his faith and a woman who challenges him to take a chance at love...and family. In Charlotte Maclay’s charming new novel, a millionaire playboy isn’t sure what he was Expecting at Christmas, but what he gets is a very pregnant butler! Elizabeth Harbison launches her wonderful new theme-based miniseries, CINDERELLA BRIDES, with the fairy-tale romance—complete with mistaken identity!—between Emma and the Earl

  In A Diamond for Kate by Moyra Tarling, discover whether a doctor makes his devoted nurse his devoted wife after learning about her past.... Patricia Thayer’s cross-line miniseries WITH THESE RINGS returns to Romance and poses the question: Can The Man, the Ring, the Wedding end a fifty-year-old curse? You’ll have to read this dramatic story to find out! And though The Millionaire’s Proposition involves making a baby in Natalie Patrick’s upbeat Romance, can a down-on-her-luck waitress also convince him to make beautiful memories...as man and wife?

  Enjoy this month’s offerings, and look forward to a new century of timeless, traditional tales guaranteed to touch your heart!

  Mary-Theresa Hussey

  Senior Editor, Silhouette Romance

  Please address questions and book requests to:

  Silhouette Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  THE BABY BENEATH THE MISTLETOE

  Marie Ferrarella

  To

  Mary-Theresa Hussey,

  for reuniting me with

  the Marino-McClellan Clan.

  Thank you.

  Books by Marie Ferrarella

  Silhouette Romance

  The Gift #588

  Five-Alarm Affair #613

  Heart to Heart #632

  Mother for Hire #686

  Borrowed Baby #730

  Her Special Angel #744

  The Undoing of Justin Starbuck #766

  Man Trouble #869

  The Taming of the Teen #839

  Father Goose #869

  Babies on His Mind #920

  The Right Man #932

  In Her Own Backyard #947

  Her Man Friday #959

  Aunt Connie’s Wedding #984

  †Caution: Baby Ahead #1007

  †Mother an the Wing #1026

  †Baby Times Two #1037

  Father in the Making #1078

  The Women in Joe Sullivan’s Life #1096

  ‡Do You Take This Child? #1145

  The Man Who Would Be Daddy #1175

  Your Baby or Mine? #1216

  **The Baby Came C.O.D. #1264

  Suddenly ... Marriage! #1312

  ‡‡One Plus One Makes Marriage #1328

  ‡‡Never Too Late for Love #1351

  The Baby Beaneath the Mistletoe #1408

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  *Holding Our for a Hero #496

  *Heroes Great and Small #501

  *Christmas Every Day #538

  Callaghan’s Way #601

  *Caitlin’s Guardian Angel #661

  ‡Happy New Year—Baby! #686

  The Amnesiac Bride #798

  Serena McKee’s Back in Tome #808

  A Husband Waiting to Happen #842

  Angus’s Lost Lady #853

  This Heart for hire #919

  ††A Hero for All Seasons #932

  ††A Forever Kind of Hero #943

  ††Hero in the Nick of Time #956

  Silhouette Desire

  ‡Husband: Optional #988

  Silhouette Special Edition

  It Happened One Night #597

  A Girl’s Best Friend #652

  Blessing in Disguise #675

  Someone To Talk To #703

  World’s Greatest Dad #767

  Family Matters #832

  She Got Her Man #843

  Baby in the Middle #892

  Husband: Some Assembly Required #931

  Brooding Angel #963

  #Baby’s First Christmas #997

  Christmas Bride #1069

  Wansed: Husband, Will Train #1132

  Wife in the Mail #1217

  Silhouette Yours Truly

  ‡The 71b. 202 Valentine

  Let’s Get Momnty Married

  Traci on the Spot

  Mommy and the Policeman Nest Door

  **Desperately Seeking Twin...

  The Offer She Couldn’t Refuse

  ΔFiona and the Sexy Stranger

  ΔCowboys are for Loving

  Δ Will and the Headstrong Female

  Δ The Law and Ginny Morlow

  ΔA Match for Morgan

  Silhouette Books

  ‡In The Family, Way

  Silhouette Christmas Stories 1992

  “The Night Santa Claus Returned”

  Fortune’s Children

  Forgonen Honeymoon

  World’s Most Eligible Bachelors

  ‡Detective Dad

  ‡The Baby of the Month Club: Baby Talk

  †Baby’s Choice

  ‡The Baby of the Month Club

  **Two Halves of a Whole

  ‡‡Like Mother, Like Daughter

  *Those Sinclairs

  ††ChildFinders, Inc.

  ΔThe Cutlers of the Shady Lady Ranch

  Books by Marie Ferrarella writing as Marie Nicole

  Silhouette Desire

  Tried and True #112

  Buyer Beware #142

  Through Laughter and Tears #161

  Grand Theft: Heart #182

  A Woman of Integrity #197

  Country B
lue #224

  Lasr Year’s Hunk #274

  Foxy Lady #315

  Chocolate Dreams #346

  No Laughing Matter #382

  Silhouette Romance

  Man Undercover #373

  Please Stand By #394

  Mine by Write #411

  Getting Physical #440

  Bundles of Joy

  Dearest Reader,

  One of my very favorite photographs of my daughter Jessi is when she was five months old. She’s wearing her jammies and is sitting in her infant seat, right under the Christmas tree. She looks like a Christmas present. I thought of that photograph when I began writing this book. But with one change. Because babies are really more like something you’d want to find underneath your mistletoe—one look at their cute faces and you just want to cover them with kisses (at least I do). But like Christmas presents, you unwrap them, never knowing what you’ll find.

  In writing this story, I revisited the family I used in my first family saga for Silhouette Romance. The Marino-McClellan family is a little unconventional, because it features a married couple who already had one son but went on to adopt a foster brother and sister. They’re like so many families these days. No longer are families just Mom, Dad, two and a half kids and a dog. What has resulted in all this is the understanding that, essentially, to be a family, all you really need is love. Once you have that, the rest is easy. At least, that’s what my protagonists discover.

  Here’s wishing you love, now and always.

  Love,

  Chapter One

  “She’s driving me absolutely crazy,” Tony Marino said.

  Shad McClellan and Angelo Marino, two-thirds of Marino, MeClellan & Conrad Construction Company, exchanged grins at their cousin’s very vocal, very intense complaint. Tony, Angelo thought, finally had a little color in his face and more than a little emotion in his voice. It was about time and in his opinion, a very good sign.

  Technically, Antonio Marino was only Angelo’s cousin, at least in terms of blood. But on that long-ago day when Angelo’s parents had thrown open their door and their hearts to two motherless children, Shad and his younger sister Dottie, Angelo had embraced both Shad and Dottie as his equals and his siblings in every sense of the word but legal. There were some things that transcended legalities and rules. Like love.

  Heaven knew Tony could certainly use a little love himself right now. Or maybe a lot, Angelo amended, given what Tony had been through in the last year.

  “Driving you crazy, huh? I take it you don’t mean that in a good way.”

  “Good way?” Tony echoed with an incredulous, dismissive snort. That’ll be the day.

  Trying to curb his temper, Tony ran a restless hand through the black mop of hair that stubbornly insisted on falling into his eyes, much the way it had when he was a boy. But that boy would never have thought his heart could have been so completely and painfully ripped out of his chest as it had been a little more than a year ago.

  Lines about his mouth, mirroring the ones etched into his soul, deepened as he thought of the short, opinionated architect who could make herself heard above a hurricane. She had become, in an incredibly short period of time, the total bane of his existence. Tony didn’t need to be saddled with this problem. It was all he could do to remember to put one foot in front of the other. To get through each day. Overseeing the construction project was hard enough without having to deal with her.

  “Good and Michelle Rozanski do not belong in the same sentence.” Tony rolled his own words over in his head. “Same sentence? Hell, they don’t belong in the same zip code.”

  Wanting to show his cousins just what he was up against, Tony began rifling through the chaotic disorder on the tiny, scarred metal desk, looking for the blueprints that they were supposed to be using to build Bedford’s newest high school.

  Shad glanced at Angelo again. This was the most emotion any of the family had seen Tony display since they had first coerced him to leave Denver and stay with them in Bedford. His sister had been right. Throwing Tony headlong into a brand-new project for the company had been the right thing to do. Dottie had known that he needed to have his mind on something other than his pain.

  “It can’t be as bad as all that,” Shad commented.

  A lot he knew, Tony thought darkly. Neither he nor Angelo had had any more to do with the feisty pain in the butt than exchange a few words at the initial meeting at city hall. They certainly hadn’t had to endure her incessant contradictions at every opportunity. Bad didn’t come anywhere near explaining the day-to-day work environment. He’d thought his association with the architect would begin and end with that brief meeting at city hall to accept the blueprints. He hadn’t realized the meeting would be only the beginning—the beginning of constant daily warfare in which his side appeared to be sustaining the most casualties. He never knew when she could come flying in through the trailer door with another bone to pick, another change to argue. He’d taken to locking it, just to claim a little peace of mind.

  “It’s worse,” Tony snapped. Where the hell was that blueprint? The one of the second floor off the high school’s music-and-arts complex. He’d just had it. Tony shoved more papers aside. “She has an opinion on everything.”

  “Most women do,” Shad deadpanned, trying to hide his grin behind his hand. This was looking very promising. When Tony had first arrived on his aunt Bridgette Marino’s doorstep a little over two months ago, he’d been a shell of the young man who had worked long summers beside them at one construction site after another. The light and laughter that had always been in his cousin’s green eyes had completely vanished.

  Now at least there was something there. Granted, anger wasn’t the greatest emotion, but it was better than nothing. It meant he was coming alive again, beginning to react to things around him instead of just sleepwalking through each day.

  Knocking over an oversize, red-bound book, Tony continued searching. “Not like this.”

  Frustrated, he glanced up at the other two men. “She thinks she’s right—” Then Tony bit off a curse as another falling book narrowly missed his toe. He’d never been a very organized person, but in the past thirteen months he’d found himself facing nothing but chaos everywhere he turned. Which was just the way he felt inside.

  “At the risk of repeating myself,” Angelo said amiably. “Most women do.”

  Most women, but not Teri, Tony thought, the memory bringing with it the sharp, deep stab of pain. Teri, with her quiet, unassuming soul So quiet and unassuming that at times he’d all but had to coax responses out of her. She’d always been more than willing to bow to his wishes, uncontested.

  He supposed in a way that had spoiled him. It certainly hadn’t prepared him to deal with a blue-eyed, sharp-tongued wrecking ball who was unshakably convinced that everything she said was etched in stone somewhere, residing on the same shelf as the Ten Commandments.

  “Maybe,” Tony said. “But not like this.” Finding what he’d been searching for, shoved under the stained blotter, of all places, he pulled it out and made a futile attempt to smooth the long, curled paper out on top of his desk. “Have either of you taken a close look at these blueprints of hers?”

  His patience in drastically short supply, Tony gave up trying to flatten out the paper on the cluttered surface and rounded his desk. Beckoning his cousins forward, Tony crouched down, placing the blueprint on the floor and spreading it out there.

  Tony wasn’t sure just where to begin. Aesthetically pleasing, the proposed complex for the high school had more than one trouble spot. Several sections of the buildings appeared to, for all intents and purposes, simply defy the laws of physics. He stabbed a finger at what appeared to be the worst offense. He singled out the king post beneath the glass section of the roof.

  “There, look at that. The woman actually thinks that’s possible.”

  Shad and Angelo looked and saw the inherent flaw. Tony was right, at least to some extent. It would take a little compro
mising on both parts to work around the problem. But both men felt that Tony was up to it, given time. Relative or not, no matter how much their hearts went out to him in his time of emotional turmoil, neither Shad nor Angelo would have handed him the assignment if they hadn’t thought him equal to it. After all, he was a damned good civil engineer.

  Since they had begun expanding their firm, merging with Conrad & Son when Angelo’s wife, Allison, came aboard, they’d had more new business than Salvator Marino could ever have conceived of when he’d originally started the small company. Then the company had been restricted to remodeling and upgrading bathrooms. Now there were no such restrictions on their expertise. More than one of the newer shopping malls in Southern California bore the stamp of their labor.

  Nodding his head as if he were commiserating with Tony, Angelo looked at the man beside him and said, “Handle it.”

  “I’ve been trying to handle it.” Tony knew he wasn’t the type to complain at the slightest provocation, but there was just something about this woman that seemed to set him off. Maybe it was how she looked at him—smug, determined, ready to cut him down to size. Or maybe it was just that he’d jumped in when he should have started out wading. Maybe this was too much of a project to take on, and he shouldn’t have agreed to do it.

  He was tired, he told himself. Too tired to be reasonable tonight. Maybe things would look better on Monday.

  “If I try to handle it anymore,” he said to his easygoing cousin, “my fingers will be wrapping around her throat.” Unconsciously he rubbed his thumbs along his forefingers. He had to admit the thought had some merit to it.