The Baby Beneath the Mistletoe Read online

  Angelo laughed. “I said handle it, not her.”

  Tony’s frown deepened. “Handling it means handling her.”

  Still squatting over the blueprints, Tony looked down at them again. Heading up an operation was nothing new to him. He’d been in charge of enough of them at his old company, and coming back to work for Marino, McClellan & Conrad was essentially like coming home again, at least for the most part. But he’d been at the top of his game before. Now he had trouble pulling his thoughts together for more than a few minutes at a time, trouble moving from the beginning of each day to the end of it.

  It never seemed to get any better.

  He’d returned to Bedford, to his roots, at the very insistent request of his aunt Bridgette. The rest of the family had been 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 a
s 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 shoved his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “Permanently?”

  He’d been trying to get rid of her from the first. “For the weekend.”

  “Pity.”

  “Make you a deal,” she proposed. “You save your pity, and I’ll save mine.” She saw the blueprint spread out on the floor. Was he using it as a floor mat now? She wouldn’t put it past him. “Now, what’s your problem—other than the obvious?”

  Tony squared his shoulders and grabbed the paper from the floor, all but holding it up before her nose. “Unless someone rewrote the laws of physics when I wasn’t looking, you’re still as wrong about this now as you were this morning when I brought it up.”

  There was enough electricity crackling in the room to keep an entire city lit up for a year, Shad thought. Catching Angelo’s eye, he nodded ever so slightly. They were in agreement. Time to retreat. Shifting positions with Mikky, he backed up toward the door. Angelo was already there.

  “Well, we’ll leave you two to your negotiations,” Shad said more to Mikky than to Tony.

  Tony opened his mouth in protest, but never got the chance. Angelo was way ahead of him.

  “We’ll see you at dinner on Sunday.” Rather than becoming a thing held only in childhood memories, dinner at his mother’s house was a tradition that had strengthened as the years went by and as their numbers had doubled and continued to increase. “If you’re free,” Angelo couldn’t resist saying to Mikky, “maybe you’d like to come, too. Ma always says there’s room for one more at the table. Tony can give you the address. Can’t you, Tony?”

  Stunned at what he felt was an outright act of betrayal, Tony clamped his lips together. Why were his cousins bailing out on him this way, looking so smug about it? Didn’t they see that the last thing he needed now was someone like Mikky Rozanski?

  Some family they were.

  Mikky waited until Angelo and Shad had left and the door to the trailer was closed before turning toward Tony again.

  The invitation from the man’s cousins had made her feel warm. In contrast, any exchange with Tony just made her feel hot. Hot under the collar and braced to go the full fifteen rounds of a championship fight in which she had to be the winner in order to survive in this field. She couldn’t afford to look as if she didn’t know what she was doing. Word spread too fast in the architectural community, and although the number of female architects was growing, there were still not enough to make her feel comfortable and at ease. Sometimes she felt as if she were carrying the standard for all women in the male-dominated field.

  God, but the man did look formidable when he was annoyed, she thought, her eyes quickly sweeping over him. She couldn’t help wondering what his face looked like when it was relaxed, or when he was laughing. She had yet to see him even attempt a smile. Something told her that it would not be an unpleasant sight, but she doubted if she’d ever get to witness it firsthand.

  It didn’t matter. She wasn’t here to make friends, just a good reputation.

  Vowing to keep her own temper in check no matter what, she looked at Tony expectantly. She wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible because she didn’t want to be late for the movie she’d promised to catch with her brother, Johnny. “Well?”

  Tony didn’t like her tone. She’d walked in on a meeting he’d had earlier with Mendoza, the foreman, taking him to task for changes she’d discovered he was about to make on her design. She’d had the nerve to all but order him to take another look before he struck out so much as a single line.

  He’d been on the phone most of the morning, tracking down a shipment of conduit wiring that had mysteriously gone astray and hadn’t had time to go over their newest bone of contention at length. But he didn’t feel he had to. Right was right, no matter how thoroughly it was examined.

  “ ‘Well’ nothing, you know what I have to say.”

  He folded the blueprints back so that the design was showing on both sides and indicated the area they were coming at from opposite ends. How could she not see how obvious the problem was?

  Talking as if he were explaining it to a slow-witted child, he said, “You can’t have the mezzanine sticking out this far. It jeopardizes the integrity of the floor joist here, not to mention the ridge beam.” Stopping, he began to deliberately point out the long, straight lines below the roof. “That’s this—”

  Mikky curbed the urge to swat his hand away from the blueprints. “I know where the ridge beam is.” Mikky had no doubt that if she were a man, Marino wouldn’t have been talking down to her that way.

  “Fine. Then you also know that if you eliminate the mezzanine—”

  “I am not going to eliminate the mezzanine.” The man was nothing short of a shark, she thought, her temperature rising despite all her promises to herself. With unerring instinct, he was going for an area vital to her style. Mikky had worked hard to incorporate that into her design. The music-and-arts complex was the jewel in the five-building setting.

  Blowing out an angry breath, he looked at her. “What do high school students need with a mezzanine?”

  Now he was talking nonsense. “What does anyone need with pleasing shapes and sleek lines? Why five buildings? Why not just make everything into a great big ugly box?” Realizing her voice had gone up, Mikky stopped using hand gestures to underscore her words and attempted to rein in her irritation. “Because it’s more aesthetic this way, that’s why.”

  Tony had no idea why, when she mentioned pleasing shapes and sleek lines, his eyes had been drawn to Mikky’s own form. They were talking—arguing—about a building. A building that wasn’t going to go up if it had to be according to her design.

  There was absolutely no reason for him to notice that when her voice went up an octave, her breasts strained against the plum-colored sweater she was wearing. Who the hell wore colors like that to a construction site, anyway? he thought in irritation. “Aesthetic?” He spat out the word. “They’re there to learn, not philosophize.” He believed in solid, utilitarian construction, not gingerbread and sugar that melted in the first rain. And this kind of design was wasted on the audience it was to have. “Kids that age haven’t got enough in their heads to philosophize about, anyway. All they think about is having fun, nothing else.”

  Memories clawing at him, Tony turned away to collect himself. Everything kept going back to that, to the moment his life had been irrevocably shattered.

  Mikky watched his back, saw the silent struggle being waged, saw the tension in his shoulders. She knew his story. Had asked around after their first meeting. He’d struck her as a walking ice palace, and she’d wanted to know why. She’d had one of her brothers, an investigative reporter on the staff of the L.A. Times, nose around for her. Johnny had come across a story in the Denver Post. Marino’s wife and three-year-old son had been killed in a car crash, both dying instantly when a teenage driver, drunk and out joyriding with his friends, had slammed into their car. Marino had been away at an engineering conference at the time.

  Sympathy was something that came as naturally to Mikky as breathing. Even sympathy for someone who kept biting her head off. She figured he had issues to work out. But she wouldn’t have him do it at her expense.

  Her voice softened. “Look, I’m sorry about your wife and little boy—”

  His head snapping up, Tony looked at her sharply, his eyes
dark and dangerous. She’d jabbed a long, narrow pin deep inside an open wound. She had no business even approaching it.

  “Thanks.” The word was covered with so much frost, Mikky thought she was in danger of losing all feeling in her extremities. “But I’d appreciate if you didn’t mention them. This has nothing to do with them.” He looked at the blueprint. “These are teenagers. They’re supposed to be attending school to learn. All they need are classrooms, not mezzanines or enclosed atriums or cascading waterfalls—”

  She was trying to be understanding, but he was pushing her to the limit. This was her work he was criticizing so cavalierly. Like a mother coming to her child’s defense, Mikky felt her adrenaline beginning to rise. The whole point of the design was to come up with something that was in keeping with the larger scheme of things within the city. Bedford was on record as a planned community—a place where everything was a celebration of shapes and colors, that strove also for balance and harmony within the community. Was he determined to ruin that just for the sake of argument?

  The Southwoed High complex was going to be the first building block to forge her reputation and as such was of tantamount importance to her. This was her first solo baby, and she meant to do right by it. And have it do right by her.

  Maybe that made her a tad overprotective of the design. But she’d made absolutely certain she’d been right in her calculations—that there were no faults, no surprises—and she was going to stick to her guns come hell or high water.

  Or a man named Tony Marino.

  “Then, why don’t we just build a little red schoolhouse and be done with it?” she challenged.

  “Don’t get sarcastic with me.”

  Far from being intimidated, Mikky fisted her hands on her hips, anger bubbling inside of her at a breathtaking speed. Its very advent took her by surprise. While no one had ever accused her of being easygoing, she’d never been one to overheat quickly, either. But there was something about Marino that lit her fuse. “Then don’t get belligerent with me. I’m just trying to do a job, same as you.”