Presents, Passion and Proposals: The Billionaire's Christmas Gift / One Christmas Night in Venice / Snowbound with the Millionaire

Presents, Passion & Proposals

Carole Mortimer

Jane Porter

Catherine George

www.millsandboon.co.uk

About the Author

CAROLE MORTIMER was born in England, the youngest of three children. She began writing in 1978 and has now written over one hundred and fifty books for Harlequin Mills & Boon. Carole has six sons, Matthew, Joshua, Timothy, Michael, David and Peter. She says, “I’m happily married to Peter senior; we’re best friends as well as lovers, which is probably the best recipe for a successful relationship. We live in a lovely part of England.”

Look for an exciting new novel from Carole Mortimer, Jordan St Claire: Dark & Dangerous, available from Mills & Boon® Modern™ romance in January 2011.

Dear Reader,

What a wonderful time of year this is! A time for the giving and receiving of gifts but most of all a time for caring and sharing and being with those we love.

I love to read books with a seasonal flavour, but I love writing them even more! It is an absolute joy for me to write a book with a Christmas setting and to indulge my love of the holiday season by having two of my characters fall in love with each other. I hope you enjoy reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Merry Christmas!

Carole Mortimer

Chapter One

NICK glowered through the windscreen from inside the warmth and comfort of his heated car as the rain and sleet fell heavily outside, in no hurry to find a gap in the slowly moving vehicles that would allow him to edge back into the morning rush hour of bumper-tobumper traffic. Having dropped his daughter Bekka off at school for the day, he was too immersed still in the memory of their last conversation before Bekka had climbed, sulking, out of the car.

‘It’s not fair, Daddy! Just because my birthday is on Christmas Day…Why can’t I have someone over on my birthday like the other girls do?’

‘Because—’

‘Because “everyone is busy with their own families on Christmas Day,”’ Bekka parroted—a reminder that this was the excuse Nick had been giving her for the past week.

‘I’m taking you and three of your friends bowling and then out for a meal on Saturday instead—’

‘I want to invite someone over on my actual birthday,’ Bekka had maintained stubbornly. ‘It’s just one little guest, Daddy. Just one,’ she wheedled.

‘But—’

‘And I already know that Mrs Morgan isn’t busy on Christmas Day with her own family because she doesn’t have one!’ Bekka had announced triumphantly.

Why couldn’t his eight-year-old daughter be totally consumed by self-interest, as most of her friends seemed to be? Nick now fumed inwardly. Why did it have to be his daughter who took in all the abandoned kittens, stray dogs, injured birds—and now widowed schoolteachers—whom Bekka knew happened to be spending Christmas alone?

He and Bekka did okay together, didn’t they? Nick questioned with a frown.

Bekka had lived with her mother after Janet and Nick divorced three years ago, and Nick had been trying to be both mother and father to Bekka since Janet had died ten months ago. To be there for Bekka as much as he could when business interests already took up so much of his time. And he tried—even if he didn’t always succeed!—to spend the weekends doing things that Bekka wanted to do.

Surely he didn’t have to give up the peace and quiet of his Christmas Day, too, in order to entertain an elderly, probably bewhiskered widow, so bereft of family and friends no one else was willing to invite her to join them for the holidays?

No, of course he didn’t.

Nick’s heart sank again as he remembered Bekka’s last petulant shot. ‘Mummy would have let me do it!’ And then she’d slammed the car door and disappeared through the rain and sleet into the school building. Seven words. Seven little words guaranteed to guilt Nick into agreeing to whatever hare-brained scheme Bekka had come up with this time. Seven little words that meant Nick now possessed three thoroughly spoilt cats who thought they owned him, rather than the other way around, and an anti-social dog who more often than not tried to keep him out of the house rather than intruders. Plus a hamster one of Bekka’s friends had had to get rid of because she was allergic, and, of all things, a rat that Bekka had literally saved from the jaws of one of the spoilt cats.

Add in a goat and some ducks and they could open up a damned petting zoo!

No, he had to draw the line somewhere, Nick decided firmly, and, whether Bekka liked it or not, inviting an elderly widow—a complete stranger, to boot—to join them next week on Christmas Day, was going to be it!

Having settled that situation to his satisfaction, Nick pressed his foot gently down on the accelerator to manoeuvre out into the traffic so that he actually reached his office some time this morning after all.

At that exact moment a huddled pedestrian chose to step off the pavement in front of his car!

The first indication Beth had that the car parked at the end of the school driveway was now actually moving came as she stepped off the pavement, hunched down in her duffle coat, the hood pulled low over her face to keep off the worst of the rain and sleet, and felt the slight bump of impact against her hip!

It wasn’t a painful or hard bump, but it did succeed in knocking Beth off balance, causing her to stagger slightly as she tried to prevent herself from toppling over. A battle she totally lost as the heel of one of her boots slid on the icy surface of the tarmac.

She fell down on her bottom—hard. Straight into one of the deep puddles that had formed at the side of the road.

Great. Not only was her outer clothing soaked through, but now her trousers and underwear were awash too!

‘Are you okay?’ demanded a gruffly concerned disembodied voice from amidst the blinding weather.

‘Apart from my injured pride, you mean?’ Beth muttered, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. ‘Yes, I’m absolutely fine,’ she assured the man ruefully.

‘What the hell did you think you were doing, stepping off the pavement in front of me like that?’ His shock at the near-disaster obviously assuaged, he obviously took this as an invitation to vent his own emotions. ‘Damn it, woman, I could have killed you!’ he added accusingly as his firm grasp on Beth’s arm pulled her easily to her feet.

‘I find that very hard to believe, when you were only driving at about five miles an hour!’ Beth drawled dryly, halting her attempts to wring the worst of the rainwater from the hem of her coat as she finally looked up at the man from beneath the wet bangs of her dark auburn hair.

And then looked again.

As any woman with red blood in her veins would have done!

Even on a winter morning, with the sleet and rain continuing to fall down relentlessly, soaking her even more than she already was, and with her dignity in tatters.

Well, if she was going to be knocked down, Beth decided fatalistically, it might as well be by a man so gorgeous he should have one of those sexy calendars dedicated just to him! He was certainly ruggedly handsome enough to play the lead in one of those action movies Beth enjoyed so much.

He was probably aged in his mid-thirties, and at least a foot taller than Beth’s diminutive five feet two, with slightly overlong dark hair curling damply about chiselled features of such hard masculine beauty they were mesmerizing: pale eyes—blue or grey? Beth couldn’t tell—a long and aristocratic nose, high cheekbones, and a sensual mouth above a sculptured jaw.

As for his hard and muscled body…

She was soaked through. Had been hit by a car and had fallen down in the road, which was undoubtedly going to make her late for work. Yet still Beth couldn’t help but admire the ruthless good looks of the driver of the car that had knocked her down!

What did that tell her?

That it was time her self-inflicted solitude came to an end, probably…

‘Look, I’ve assured you I’m perfectly okay,’ she said briskly, at the same time extracting her arm from that firm grasp. ‘You, on the other hand, are getting very wet.’ Beth frowned as she realised that the man wasn’t even wearing an overcoat, and that his dark and expensively tailored business suit was now as wet as her own clothing. ‘Please get back into your car—’

‘We’ll both get in my car,’ Nick decided impatiently, and as he once again took the woman’s arm with the intention of pulling her towards his Mercedes.

A move she instantly resisted. ‘I make it a rule never to get into the car of a man I don’t know!’

Nick turned back to her, taking in her appearance at a glance; the hood of the blue duffle coat was pulled over dark auburn hair that lay in wet tangles about a pale face dominated by huge blue eyes and freckles and all her clothing was absolutely soaked through—including the sodden black boots on her feet.

‘Will you just get inside?’ he asked impatiently as the woman still hung back once he had wrenched the passenger door open. ‘It may have escaped your notice but we’re causing a traffic jam!’ he added, with a pointed glance at the row of cars lining up behind his.

This man might be handsome as sin, Beth acknowledged as she reluctantly slid onto the passenger seat, but—that brief concern for having knocked her over aside—his manners certainly left a lot to be desired.

It was a deliciously warm and dry car, she realised within seconds of having the door slammed closed behind her. Warm, dry, and spaciously decadent, with pale blue leather upholstery and walnut veneer.

Although it seemed slightly less so once the darkly frowning driver had climbed in behind the wheel!

‘There really is no need—What are you doing?’ Beth voiced her alarm as he restarted the engine.

‘I’m getting us off the road and out of everyone else’s way, of course!’ An icy grey gaze raked over her scathingly before he turned the car round in the driveway and pulled over to the other side of the road, parking, and allowing the row of cars behind them to move out into the crawling traffic.

Of course. Obvious, once she thought about it. If she’d thought about it. Which Beth hadn’t.

She was surprised she could still function at all when she felt so numbed from walking to work in the icy rain and sleet for the past fifteen minutes!

Beth repressed a shiver as she pushed the wet hood of her coat back off her hair. ‘I really am okay, you know. Wet and cold, obviously, and my dignity is certainly bruised. But otherwise I’m unharmed.’

‘I doubt it’s only your dignity that’s bruised…’ her reluctant rescuer drawled wryly.

Beth turned to give him a frown; was this man—now that he was assured of her well-being—actually laughing at her?

Nick could see exactly how wet and cold the woman beside him was now that the hood of her coat no longer hid her face; her teeth were chattering and her cheeks had taken on a slightly blue tinge. ‘I’ll drive you home so that you can take a hot shower and change into some dry clothes,’ he offered briskly.

‘That won’t be necessary, thank you,’ the woman refused primly. ‘I’m going to be late for work as it is—’

‘Aren’t we all?’ Nick muttered, knowing there was no way that he was going to make his nine-thirty appointment now. ‘But you can’t possibly go into work like that—’

‘Of course I can,’ she dismissed as she pulled the hood back over her hair—only to give a grimace at its uncomfortable dampness. ‘I have some dry things I can change into once I get into school.’

‘You work at St James’s…?’ Nick eyed her sharply as he reassessed her appearance.

She was young, probably in her early to mid-twenties, and wore little or no make-up. Small gold studs in pierced earlobes. The clothes he could see—blue duffle coat, black trousers, black boots—looked serviceable rather than fashionable or designer label. Her gloveless hands were long and slender, the nails kept short, the fingers completely bare of rings.

Probably one of the catering staff. Or perhaps she helped out in the classroom, Nick decided. If it was the former she no doubt had a kitchen uniform she could change into while her own clothes were drying on a radiator somewhere.

‘It’s your call.’ He nodded abruptly, checking there was no traffic behind him before pulling out to drive back down to the entrance to the main school building.

This whole incident could have been so much worse, Nick acknowledged gratefully. He had been too distracted by the memory of that earlier unsatisfactory conversation with Bekka to even notice this woman stepping off the pavement in front of his car. Until he’d heard that telling thump, that was.

He glanced at the woman beside him briefly. ‘I’ll give you my business card—just in case you suffer any ill-effects from the accident later on today and need to contact me.’

Beth eyed the man beside her uncertainly, eyeing the expensive cut of his suit and the gold watch on his wrist bearing a discreet but very distinctive crest. The air of wealth made her wonder if he was a parent of one of the pupils at the school. She liked her job at St James’s. Enjoyed working at the private school for girls more than she would ever have believed possible when she had reluctantly accepted the position almost a year ago.

Having grown up as an only child of loving parents in a small village in the east of England, and having been educated at that same village school, Beth’s experience of private schools had been nil when she’d decided to make this move to London just over a year ago.

At the time Beth had thought she needed to get away—that after all that had happened a complete change of scenery was called for. She just hadn’t realised how completely different London was going to be from the village life she had known.

Her previous job had been at a large mixed middle school in the town nearest to her village home. It was attended by almost one thousand pupils, and she had been pleasantly surprised to find that she enjoyed the intimacy of working in a school with only three hundred girls.

The only drawback Beth had found was that parents tended to be more involved in a fee-paying school, and that the school and its staff were answerable directly to the governors, who were in turn answerable to those parents.

If the man sitting beside her, in his top-of-the-range Mercedes, really was the wealthy parent of one of the girls attending St James’s, then Beth knew she was going to have to tread carefully. ‘I really am completely unharmed, you know,’ she reassured him lightly. ‘If anything was to blame for the accident then it was my own carelessness in stepping out into the road in that way without looking!’

This woman really was quite beautiful now that she was drying out a little, Nick realised abstractedly. The blue of her eyes was a deep clear periwinkle, and she had a light dusting of freckles on the bridge of her nose, along with a slight flush in her creamy cheeks.

What colour would that dark auburn hair be once it was dry? he wondered. Red, of course. But would it be a bright carrot-red or—?

He was finally going quietly out of his mind…!

Ten months of trying to be both father and mother to Bekka, as well as juggling the demands of his extensive business interests to fit in with that dual role, must finally be taking their toll on him if he was starting to think the dripping wet waif and stray now sitting in his car—probably ruining his upholstery in the process—was in the least attractive!

He straightened abruptly to take his wallet out of the breast pocket of his damp jacket; unlike the woman beside him, Nick would have to go home and change into some dry clothes before going to his office. ‘Here.’ He pushed his business card into the woman’s hand. ‘I expect you to call me if you have any repercussions from your fall,’ he explained impatiently, as, instead of taking the card, the woman looked at him, questioning.

Beth gave the man at her side one last inquisitive look before glancing down at the card he had thrust into her hand, frowning as she read the words embossed in gold in the centre of that card: ‘Nicholas Steele, Steele Industries’, and both a landline and mobile number printed beneath.

Nicholas Steele…

Chapter Two

BETH knew the name Nicholas Steele, of course. Didn’t everyone? The man probably owned or had developed half of London, and he had even merited special mention by Miss Sheffield when Beth attended her initial interview. The headmistress at St James’s explained that the daughter of Nicholas Steele was a pupil at the school, and that, ‘Mr Steele is on the board of governors and also our most influential parent.’ For ‘influential’ Beth had known she should read wealthy!

This man was Nicholas Steele?

Rebekka Steele’s father?

Incredible!

Rebekka was such a lovely little girl, very warm and open, whereas this man—Well, he might still be as gorgeous as sin, but the last few minutes had also shown Beth that he could be arrogant, and there was a definite edge of ruthlessness to those sculptured lips.

‘There won’t be any repercussions,’ Beth declared firmly as she carefully placed the card on top of the dashboard before turning to open the passenger door.

Nicholas Steele’s hand on her arm prevented her from actually getting out of the car.

Beth turned to look at him irritably. ‘Yes?’

The perplexed frown between his brows deepened to a scowl before he slowly released her arm. ‘If you’re sure you’re okay…?’ he muttered gruffly.

She gave an abrupt nod before scrambling quickly out of the car, slamming the door behind her and hurrying into the school building.

‘The bell rang for the start of lessons some time ago, Mrs Morgan.’ Miss Sheffield’s voice rang out disapprovingly across the cavernous hallway.

Beth turned reluctantly to face the middle-aged headmistress. ‘It really is an awful morning, isn’t it?’

The other woman’s mouth tightened. ‘I’m pleased to say that all of my other members of staff seemed to take that fact into account by leaving home earlier than usual to ensure that they arrived on time!’

Maybe so, but then none of Miss Sheffield’s other members of staff had been delayed because they’d been knocked down by the school’s ‘most influential’ parent!

‘Am I speaking to Mrs Morgan?’ Nick prompted tersely when his telephone call was finally answered.

The two days since Bekka’s initial request for her biology teacher to be invited to their home on Christmas Day—correction, on Bekka’s birthday, which just happened to be Christmas Day!—had been decidedly uncomfortable ones for Nick, as his daughter had brought the subject up every time the two of them were together. Initially wheedling and cajoling, Bekka had soon become whining and tearful as Nick had steadfastly refused to give in to her pleas.

The frosty drive in to school this morning, the last day of term, had been the final straw as far as Nick was concerned. To the extent that Nick had eventually decided to at least telephone the woman; with any luck the widowed Mrs Morgan would have the good sense to refuse the invitation!

Whatever the outcome of this telephone call, Nick knew his Christmas was already shot to hell. Forced into being polite on Christmas Day to some old lady he didn’t know—and didn’t want to know, either!—if the woman accepted. Or given the silent treatment by his daughter if this Mrs Morgan turned down the invitation—because Nick had absolutely no doubt who Bekka was going to blame if her teacher refused to join them!

Wasn’t eight a little young for his daughter to be entering the terrible teens? Or perhaps Bekka was more like Janet, her petulant mother, than he had previously realised…

‘Speaking,’ Mrs Morgan suddenly confirmed gruffly.

And slightly familiarly, Nick recognised with a frown. Had he met Bekka’s biology teacher before? Perhaps during one of the numerous school events he had been expected to attend since becoming a governor of the school two years ago?

‘This is Nick Steele,’ he explained tersely. ‘Bekka Steele’s father—’

‘I know who you are, Mr Steele. Although I’m curious to know how you acquired my private mobile number?’ she prompted suspiciously.

She’s paranoid, Nick decided irritably. Paranoid, with a deeply husky voice that made Nick wonder if she actually did have that moustache and whiskery chin to go with it!

‘Your headmistress very kindly gave it to me—’

‘Miss Sheffield did?’ That soft voice sounded dismayed now rather than suspicious.

‘Once I had explained the reason for my call, yes,’ Nick answered with rising impatience. Really, he didn’t have time for this. He still had several meetings to get through today, before he would be able to leave his office just after lunch so that he could attend Bekka’s Nativity Play this afternoon—thankfully the last school event before it closed down for the holidays.

Which, with his parents flying to America to spend Christmas with his sister, and so not able to help look after Bekka as they usually did, was going to provide Nick with yet another headache.

How had Janet managed? Nick wondered, for what had to be the hundredth time. Although their divorce three years ago had resulted in Janet being more than adequately provided for. Enough so that she didn’t have to juggle a job as well as motherhood, in the way that Nick was trying to juggle his business interests and recently acquired single parenthood.

Get over it, he instructed himself impatiently.

This was just the way it was.

The way it was going to remain.

Nick had no intention of ever remarrying. Things might be hard now, with a constant juggling act of Nick’s time, but Bekka wasn’t going to be with him for ever, whereas a second wife would be!

Hiring a nanny was the obvious answer, of course, but Nick had already tried that—twice—when Bekka had first come to live with him after Janet died. Both those nannies, for different reasons, had been a disaster.

The first nanny, a woman in her fifties Nick had thought would be a perfect surrogate grandmothertype, had turned out to possess the disposition of a drill sergeant. The second, much younger nanny, had been waiting for him naked in his bed when he’d returned late home from work one evening!

As Bekka was actually at school most of the time, and his parents had always been willing to help out with Bekka whenever they could, Nick had decided, after those two disastrous attempts, to dispense with the nanny idea altogether.

‘And exactly what is the reason for your call, Mr Steele?’ Mrs Morgan spoke slowly now.

Get it over with, Nick, he instructed himself impatiently. Ask the woman, make polite murmurings at her refusal, and then just hang up. ‘Bekka would like—Bekka and I were wondering if you would care to spend Christmas Day with the two of us…?’

There was complete silence on the other end of the telephone line. As the woman tried to think up an excuse for refusing, Nick hoped.

‘Are you being serious, Mr Steele?’