He wanted more than just to hold her. Far more.
What he didn’t want was to move from her.
He eased his arms from her, anyway. Reaching between them, he circled her wrists with his forefingers and thumbs. He brushed his lips to her temple. “Do you have any coffee?”
Amy blinked. Confusion masked the banked yearning in her tone. “Sure.” Her brow furrowed as she looked up at him. “You want coffee?”
“No,” he admitted, his breath warm on her face as he brushed his lips over hers. “It’s just that we need to do something before I kiss you.”
Her heart jerked in her chest. “You just did.”
“That wasn’t a kiss.”
The longing she’d veiled threatened to surface as his smoky grey gaze moved over her face, lingered on her mouth.
“It wasn’t?”
“Not even close,” he murmured.
“Maybe you should show me how it’s done.”
CHRISTINE FLYNN
admits to being interested in just about everything, which is why she considers herself fortunate to have turned her interest in writing into a career. She feels that a writer gets to explore it all and, to her, exploring relationships – especially the intense, bittersweet or even light-hearted relationships between men and women – is fascinating.
Dear Reader,
I believe in the fairy tale.
Really.
That said, I’m not naive enough to believe every prince will be wealthy or ride in on a white horse. I’ve also never heard of a man who has remained consistently charming. I know too many Cinderellas who have to wipe runny noses, work weekends and do laundry. Happily-ever-after isn’t a guarantee. It takes work. I know all that. So why do I believe in something that started out as a myth and became a children’s story? It’s because of what, for me, is at the core of the modern Cinderella tale: that love is often found where a person least expects to find it, and that good things happen to good, ordinary people.
I hope you believe in the fairy tale, too.
Love,
Christine
The Millionaire and the Glass Slipper
CHRISTINE FLYNN
With thanks to Lois Faye Dyer for the premise
and the invitation, to Allison Leigh and Pat Kay
for being such inspirations and to all three of
you for making The Hunt for Cinderella
come to life.
Prologue
J.T. Hunt sat sprawled in a deep, wing-backed armchair in his father’s spacious library, his head resting against the smooth leather. With a highball glass of hundred-year-old bourbon balanced on one thigh, he was trying hard to stay awake.
Beneath the long Tiffany lamp hanging over the pool table, his half brothers Justin, four years younger than his own thirty-eight, and Gray, older by six, killed time playing a game of eight ball. It was obvious from the muttering that Gray hadn’t played in a while. Their other half brother, thirty-six-year-old Alex, watched from a matching armchair a few feet away.
The last time they’d all been together at the Shack, as they’d long ago christened the multimillion-dollar estate on the shores of Seattle’s Lake Washington, had been a month ago. That had been when their father, Harrison Hunt, the billionaire founder of HuntCom, had suffered a heart attack. J.T. couldn’t remember how long it had been for him personally before that. He tended to be the black sheep. The prodigal. Though he was more circumspect than he’d been in his youth, he felt an outsider nonetheless. He only came to the home he’d been raised in when he absolutely had to.
He supposed that was mostly because he felt he had little in common with his tech-genius father and his half brothers, other than his passion for his portion of the business. As director of real estate development and the company’s lead architect, he lived, ate and breathed his work designing the structures that held everything from HuntCom’s thousands of employees, to the products they manufactured and shipped worldwide. The only thing that mattered as much to him as his work was the isolated island in the San Juans his father had bought when J.T. was a teenager. Hurricane Island was the only place on the planet where he felt anything remotely resembling a sense of peace. It was too bad he couldn’t stay long enough to sail out to it for a while.
“Does anybody know why the Old Man called this meeting?” Justin asked as he tapped one of the balls with his cue stick.
At six foot three, as long and lanky as the rest of them, Gray gave a shrug. “My secretary said he wouldn’t tell her the reason.”
Alex sat forward at that. “Harry called you himself? Me, too.” He waved his bottle of Black Sheep Ale toward J.T. “What about you, J. T? Did you get the message from his secretary, or from Harry personally?”
“From Harry.” Rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, he yawned and leaned forward himself. With his elbows on his thighs, he dangled his glass of bourbon between them. “I told him I’d have to cancel meetings in New Delhi and spend half a day on the corporate jet to get home in time, but he insisted I be here.”
The trip made no sense to him, either. Since Harry’s health didn’t seem to be the issue, given the vigor in his father’s voice when he’d called, J.T. couldn’t imagine anything the man wanted that couldn’t have been handled by phone, fax or e-mail. Harry had practically perfected the technologies. The least he could have done was use one of them.
Running his hand through his dark hair, he looked at his Rolex. With the thirteen-hour time difference between Seattle and New Delhi, at the moment he had no idea what time his body clock was on.
He’d just decided it wasn’t worth figuring out when the hall door burst open. Six feet six inches tall, his black hair nearly devoid of gray, Harrison Hunt strode into the expansive room with its rich cherry wood paneling and handbound collections of books. Black, horn-rimmed bifocals framed blue eyes sharp with the intelligence that had invented the software and technology that had made HuntCom a household word.
“Ah, you’re all here. Excellent.” His energy totally belying the heart attack he’d suffered only a month ago, he headed for his massive mahogany desk. Four chairs faced it. “Join me, boys.”
As Harry settled himself into his executive chair, J.T. watched Justin lean against the wall. Gray moved behind one of the chairs, remaining there while Alex leaned against the wall not far from where Gray stood.
Rising, J.T. stayed the farthest back, separated from them all by a long credenza defining the seating areas.
Harry frowned first at Justin. “Why don’t you sit down?”
“Thanks, but I’ll stand.”
That frown swept them all.
With an impatient shrug, Harry muttered, “Very well. Stand or sit. It makes no difference to the outcome of this meeting.” He paused, clearing his throat. “Since my heart attack last month,” he began, “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this family. I’ve never thought a lot about my legacy, nor about having grandchildren to carry on the Hunt name. However, the heart attack made me face some hard truths I’d ignored. I could have died,” he said flatly. “I could die tomorrow.”
He rose from his chair, leaned forward with his knuckles resting on the desktop. “I finally realized that, left to your own devices, you four never will get married…which means I’ll never have grandchildren. I don’t intend to leave the future of this family