Holly had dealt with that kind of ruthlessness before, with the kind of hardball businessmen who cared more about turning a profit than turning foster children out of their home. Fury filled her, but Holly buried the useless emotion and the ache of tears that accompanied it.
She watched Forrester hand the Santa a piece of paper. Was he donating to charity? Perhaps the holiday spirit had the power to touch even the most cynical hearts. Forrester smiled, but the twitch of his lips reflected the look of a man who accepted victory as his due.
Holly waited until he strode away before approaching. “We’ll have to hurry to get there on time, Charlie,” she told the costumed Santa.
A bad feeling crept into her stomach the second he glanced toward Clay Forrester’s departing figure. “Uh, Miss Bainbridge, something’s come up. I’ve got another party to go to.”
She couldn’t believe it. “I have half a dozen kids waiting for Santa, and you’re going to disappoint them?”
“Sorry, Miss Bainbridge.”
Sorry. People always said they were sorry. But apologies didn’t make heartaches heal any faster or hurt any less. She had promised the foster kids at Hopewell House a Santa, and she was not going to disappoint them! Especially this year, when the group home would soon be closing its doors for good.
Determined, Holly marched toward the elevators where Clay Forrester stood waiting. A bell chimed, and the gilded mirrored doors slid open. The rapid tattoo of her boots striking the marble floors increased as she ran toward the elevator. She squeezed through the doors, with inches to spare.
He glanced at her with a touch of curiosity as the elevator rose. Holly had seen the handsome businessman before; a woman would have to be blind not to notice six feet of black-haired, blue-eyed perfection. But she’d never had the chance to study him up close. Never noticed the straight, serious eyebrows, the stubborn jaw, his sculpted, sensuous mouth…
“Mr. Forrester…” Flustered by the huskiness in her voice, Holly stopped speaking.
He looked again, charting a course from the top of her dark hair, to her sweater and jeans, to her ankle boots. By the time his lingering gaze made its way back to hers, curiosity had turned to interest, and somehow the elevator reached high enough altitude to steal the breath from Holly’s lungs.
“I’m sorry. Do I know you?”
It should have put her at an advantage, knowing who he was when he didn’t know her. Instead, Holly felt insignificant. “Holly Bainbridge. I work at the flower shop, and you stole my Santa.”
“Excuse me?”
She flushed. If only he weren’t so darn good-looking, maybe she could complete an intelligent sentence. “Charlie promised me he would make an appearance tonight.”
“He did mention another job, but—”
His words cut off as the elevator jerked to an abrupt halt. Holly gasped, losing her balance and falling against Clay. He caught her body with his as the elevator went dark. She couldn’t see a thing.
But she could feel. Oh, yes, she could feel. The imprint of each finger grasping her upper arms. The slight catch in his breath as her breasts grazed his chest, the quickening of his heartbeat. His rock-solid chest beneath her hands. And his belt buckle, hard and cold against her stomach, a sharp contrast to the rest of him, which was definitely hard and warm.
Awareness skittered along nerve endings, and her own heart beat double time, nearly drowning out the sound of their combined breathing.
“What happened?” she asked when she found her voice.
Holly felt the slight shaking of his chest a split second before laughter filled the small space. Jerking away, she demanded, “What’s so funny?”
“I’ve got the Three Stooges remodeling my office, and my guess is that Larry just blew a fuse.”
Adrift in the darkness, without his touch to anchor her, she reached back for the elevator wall. “The building’s lost power?”
“With the luck I’ve had recently,” he said wryly, “all Chicago’s probably lost power.”
A faint electronic hum punctuated his words, and after a tense moment hanging in space, the car resumed its ascent. Giving a sigh of relief, Holly closed her eyes and sank against the side of the car.
“Are you okay?”
Opening her eyes to find Clay standing inches away, Holly thought the elevator might have fallen after all. She certainly felt like she’d lost touch with solid ground, her heart hovering somewhere in her throat. She grasped hold of the handrail to keep from swaying closer. “I’m—I’m fine.”
He searched her expression as if looking for the truth, and Holly purposefully held his gaze instead of allowing her attention to slip to his lips, hovering above her own.
In a voice deeper than moments before, Clay said, “I’m sorry about the Santa thing.”
His words dimmed the rush of attraction as Holly imagined using that brush off with the disappointed children. Hey, kids, sorry about the Santa thing.
The casual crushing of hopes and dreams reminded her of her ex-boyfriend’s easy defection. Even after she’d trusted Mark enough to share the truth about her painful childhood, he’d let her down in the worst possible way. “Sorry, Holly, but I don’t even know if I want kids of my own, let alone raise someone else’s kid.”
Those words, spoken by the man she thought she loved, the man she thought she wanted to marry, had instantly dragged her into the past. Into her old insecurities about her self-worth.
She wasn’t like other people. She didn’t have biological ties to bind her to another living soul. She wasn’t Bob and Carol’s daughter or Jimmy’s little sister.
Holly had truly thought she’d escaped those stigmas, until Mark’s insensitive remark brought them all back. Now she couldn’t escape the fear that her rootless past might haunt her yet again. What if the system decided a nobody like her wasn’t good enough to be a foster mother?
“Look, maybe there’s something I can do,” Clay offered.
It took a second for Holly to refocus on the conversation and realize he was talking about the Santa-less Christmas party. “I don’t know what,” she said, not putting much hope in the offer as the elevator bell announced their arrival at the top floor.
“Let’s call Charlie.”
Slipping through the doors the moment they opened, Clay didn’t look back as his long strides carried him into the reception area. Completely focused on what he wanted, he didn’t wait to see if she followed. Holly gazed at the button for the lobby. It would be so easy to push the button and slip away from Clay Forrester, hopefully leaving her disconcerting attraction behind….
“I don’t have his number,” she said as she stepped off the elevator and into the plush office. Her heels sank into the patterned carpet, and she glanced at the leather chairs and a circular work-station. Double doors barred the way to Clay’s inner sanctum.
“Okay.” Her words barely slowed his stride. “I’ll call the hotel where my party’s being held and tell Charlie to go to yours instead.”
His determination knocked the legs out from under her earlier anger. After all, Charlie was the one who’d broken his promise, but Holly couldn’t forget that Clay’s money had been the deciding factor. As always, money talked, and Holly went through life unheard.
“What time does your party start?” she asked.
Clay twisted his wrist to check his watch, and Holly caught a glimpse of gold and the expensive wink of diamonds. “In an hour and a half.”
An hour and a half before they could reach Charlie—if he showed on time—then the ride from the