Tessa Radley: Millionaire Under The Mistletoe

He’d intended to railroad her into agreeing…and not leave any time for second thoughts.

“You don’t think you can do it?” he challenged.

Angry fire kindled in the caramel eyes. “How many people?”

Hiding a grin of triumph, Callum rose to his feet and retrieved a manila folder from the polished expanse of his desk. Returning to the conference table, he dropped the file in front of her. “The details are all in there.”

If he could start Miranda on the road to success, introduce her to some people, perhaps he’d be able to forget the hatred a pair of eighteen-year-old eyes had once held…

Or at least that had been the plan.

But having met Miranda again, he had a suspicion it wasn’t going to be nearly that simple.

Standing behind her, all too conscious of the subtle fragrance of warm vanilla she exuded, Callum watched her elegant fingers flip the file open to the first page of the agreement his PA had prepared. Her shoulders stiffened as she read the figure he proposed to pay for a one-night job.

Satisfaction swept through him. She wouldn’t refuse. His offer was too good. Helping Miranda get started in a business that must presently be nothing more than an impossible dream would be the perfect way to excise the disturbing memory of the wild accusations she’d flung at him.

You killed my father .

Of course he knew he hadn’t, didn’t he? Thomas Owen had killed himself once he realized there would be a trial-where he would almost certainly be found guilty on the overwhelming evidence against him. The courts showed no mercy against employees who stole from their employers. Thomas Owen would have known he was facing prison.

Yet Thomas’s suicide had shaken Callum more than he cared to admit, leaving him haunted by a long shadow of guilt.

A legacy that he was determined to shake.

The black-and-white print on the paper in front of her blurred. Miranda was no longer aware of the maple-wood furniture, or Callum’s spacious office. Instead she experienced again the hot ball of misery that had burned constantly in her chest from the moment her father’s PA had called with the news of her father’s arrest.

Impossible .

But her father’s assistant had insisted it was true: the police had been, and had taken her father away. Miranda needed to get hold of her mother urgently. Callum Ironstone would be issuing a press statement soon.

At barely eighteen, Miranda’s first sighting of Callum Ironstone on television had swung rapidly from interest in the handsome devil with dark hair, a sensual mouth and eyes that held a mesmerizing intensity, to hatred when she’d heard what he had to say. The press statement had been brief but damning.

All of it lies. By the time it came to an end, Miranda was numb with disbelief.

There had been a mistake. Yet Callum Ironstone clearly didn’t believe that. Rage had set in. Her father was not a thief.

Her father was granted bail, and emerged from the courthouse pale, shaken, but determined to clear his name. He had done nothing to justify the indignity the Ironstones had heaped upon him after two decades loyal service. Miranda had been confident it would all be sorted out.

But what followed had been traumatic. And, in the end, Thomas Owen simply gave up. Miranda could still remember the set, serious face of the policewoman who’d knocked on the door to break the news that her father was dead.

Then came the funeral. Miranda’s hands grew clammy and nerves fluttered in her stomach at the memory of the last terrible occasion she’d seen Callum Ironstone-it still made her cringe. Devastated by her father’s death, her white-hot hatred boiling over, she’d confronted him in the stone-walled forecourt of the church.

The men beside him moved to cut her off. But she barged past them. Standing in front of Callum, she inspected him with angry eyes. “How could you take a good man’s life and destroy it?” she’d challenged.

His jaw had set, and his face had grown harder than the marble tombstones in the churchyard. “He stole money from me.”

“So you decided to teach him a lesson and humiliate him?”

A flush seared his carved cheekbones.

A man who resembled Callum-a brother perhaps-stepped forward. “Wait a minute, young lady-”

She brushed him aside, focusing all her emotion on Callum. “You killed him. You know that?” Tears of rage and pain spilled onto her cheeks. “He worked for you for twenty years, you gave him a gold watch, yet you never gave him a chance?”

Her father had been given no opportunity to avow his innocence. Callum had relentlessly pushed the police to the conclusion he’d wanted.

“You’re overwrought,” he said dismissively.

That made the ball of anger swell inside her. “And what’s going to happen to my mother, my brother?” Me? “Now that you’ve destroyed our family?”

Callum gave her a stony stare. He raised a dark, devilish eyebrow and asked sardonically, “Finished?”

She hadn’t been. Not by a long shot. But before she could vent any more he’d cut her off, snapping “Grow up” in a supercilious, condescending way that made her feel childishly inadequate.

Callum’s words had been unkindly prophetic. She’d had to grow up, and quickly. Much as Miranda loved her mother, she knew Flo could never be practical. Overnight Miranda had become the adult in the home. There’d been no choice.

And now that same man was trying offer her money. A bribe?

“No.”

Miranda felt Callum Ironstone start as she spoke. The sensitive skin of her nape prickled. A moment later a pair of bright blue eyes glared down at her. She’d never noticed their color before.

“What do you mean ‘No’?”

Closing the folder with a snap, Miranda slammed it down against the glossy wood. “I mean I have no intention of accepting your blood money.”

“Blood money?” he said softly, dangerously, and his gaze narrowed to an intimidating glitter.

She refused to be cowed. “Yes, blood money for what you did to my father.”

“Your father stole from Ironstone Insurance.”

Miranda shook her head. “You got the wrong man.”

“Give me strength.” Callum made a sharp, impatient sound. “You’re not a child anymore.”

“Stop it!” She put her hands over her ears.

Blue eyes bored into hers.

Feeling foolish, like the immature child he’d accused her of being almost three years ago, she uncovered her ears and dropped her hands out of his line of sight into her lap and curled them into fists.

With hard-won composure, Miranda said, “I’m sure being wealthy beyond belief means you’ve gotten used to throwing money around to make all your problems go away. But not this time. I won’t take a cent.”

His jaw had hardened. A shiver closely allied to fear feathered down her spine as he bit out, “Don’t you think it’s rather late for fine principles?”

Miranda stared at him blankly. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve conveniently forgotten?”

“Forgotten what?”

His lips compressed into an impatient line. “Taking money from me.”

“That’s a lie-I’ve never taken a cent from you.”

She’d die of starvation before she did that. He’d caused her family so much grief.

After the funeral, the house where Miranda had grown up with its apple orchard and paddocks had, by necessity, been sold along with her horse Troubadour and Adrian’s expensive racing bicycles. Her mother had never gotten used to the cramped terrace house in a rundown street south of the Thames that the three of them had moved into. Even with Adrian away during the term at the exclusive boarding school Flo had refused to countenance him leaving, space was tight.