The Magical Christmas Cat

Ian was about to say he'd thought the same thing when his cell phone rang on Bree's bedside table. He reluctantly pulled himself away from Bree and grappled for the phone to check caller ID.



Damn. It was Darius Damiano, his eccentric millionaire client who wanted to buy Bree's house for indecipherable reasons. "I really should answer this, babe. It's a client. Do you mind?"



"No, go ahead. I have to go to the bathroom anyway."



Ian said, "Ian Carrington," into the phone, distracted as he watched Bree walk across the room naked before pulling on panties and a T-shirt retrieved from her dresser. It was dark, but not pitch-black, and he could see the outline of every one of her delicious curves as she moved.



"Carrington, it's Darius Damiano. I figured out how to get that house I want."



"What?" That snapped Ian back to reality. "What do you mean?"



"The Victorian monstrosity in Ohio's Most Haunted Town. I know you said the owner isn't going to sell, but I did a little digging, and she's going to want to unload it after she hears what I found."



Ian gripped his phone tighter, glancing toward the doorway through which Bree had disappeared. This didn't sound good. "What did you find?"



"She owes eighty grand in back property taxes.



Turns out her granny had a little arrangement with the appraiser and her house value was frozen at 1989 prices. I suggested this was illegal and might land him in some trouble if he didn't reevaluate the property and go after back taxes, and he agreed with me."



"Holy shit." It was all Ian could think to say. He was sitting in Bree's bed in the very house Damiano was talking about. Bree was going to be furious, and somehow Ian doubted she had a spare eighty grand lying around. He felt a measure of responsibility in that he should have known Darius was a wealthy businessman—he went after what he wanted, and usually got it. Ian should have seen some kind of maneuver coming, but he had been too busy undressing Bree to pay attention to the signs.



"And I'm reasonable, you know that. I don't want to screw her. I'm perfectly willing to still give her my last offer. It's significantly higher than market value, and she'll be able to pay the tax bill and still have the same cash that she would have if she sold the house in an open market."



It was reasonable, and wouldn't leave Bree out any actual money. But Ian couldn't support the way Darius had gone about securing himself a purchase, nor could he ever put a price on Bree's attachment to her grandmother's house. It wasn't about money, it was about emotion. And Bree's ran high. God, she was going to be devastated, and that devastated him.



"I'll inform the owner of her options," Ian said carefully. He heard the toilet flush down the hall, and he wanted off the phone when Bree returned to the bedroom. "And I'll get back to you as soon as possible."



"Thanks. I think we can have this locked up by Christmas. I'd like closing on January 1, and have her out of the house by February 1."



"Okay, I'll present that request to her." Ian really wanted to ask Darius why the hell he was so



determined to have a house in the middle of nowhere four hundred miles from his penthouse in Chicago, but Bree had walked back in and was settling down onto the bed beside him. There was no way he wanted to ask that question in front of her. It was going to be hard enough to tell her what was going on. "I'll call you as soon as I have an answer, Darius."



"Great. Thanks, Ian."



Ian turned off his phone and set it back on the nightstand. He stared at the table and tried to formulate words for what he had to tell Bree. He had none. The situation sucked, plain and simple.



Bree touched his back. "What's the matter? Who was that?"



"That was Darius, the client who wants to buy your house."



Bree felt a tremor of alarm disrupt the calm contentment she had been feeling. Ian was acting strange. He wasn't looking at her, but was staring intently at her nightstand, his back arched. "What is this Darius like? And what did he want now?"



Ian finally glanced at her over his shoulder. He was biting his fingernail. "What's he like? Well, he's . . . brisk. Efficient. He's twenty-eight and worth close to $50 million, so he has a certain confidence."



Bree still wasn't sure why Ian looked and sounded so stiff, so she leaned against his bare back and kissed his shoulder blade. "How does someone get fifty million dollars by the age of twenty-eight? That's unreal. Did he inherit it?"



"No. He investigates hauntings for a television show, and he's made some wise investments."



She forgot all about her desire to squeeze the warmth of Ian's rock-solid biceps and sat straight up.



"Wait a minute. Do you mean Darius Damiano? The guy who stays overnight in haunted houses on camera?"



"Yes."



Sure she'd seen Ian wince, Bree crawled around until she was off the bed and standing in front of him.



"What is going on here?"



"Well. He still wants to buy your house."



"No!" Bree put her hands on her hips. "I wasn't going to say yes before but now that I know who it is, it will never happen. He's a total freak." Just the thought of his walking into her house and putting in some weird modern furniture gave her hives. She had no idea why she thought he would go for contemporary decorating, but he seemed cold, like gray and black and steel would appeal to him.



"How can you say he's a freak because he investigates hauntings? You're a witch."



Bree frowned, offended. "Totally different, Ian. I am not sensationalizing my beliefs, nor am I making money off them."



"Reading tarot isn't putting cash in your pocket?"



Damn it, he had her there. "Okay, that's true, but I don't do it on camera. His show is like a circus act, an illusion. And you have to admit, he goes for drama. I mean, he sleeps in freshly dug graves! Who does that?" She wasn't sure why his show bothered her so much, she just knew that it did, ten times more now that she knew he wanted her house.



Ian put his forearms on his thighs and shrugged.



"Twenty-eight-year-olds worth fifty million."



"So why did he call?" Bree was getting cold from standing in her underwear, but she knew there was bad news coming. She could feel it from Ian, There was guilt leaking off him.



"Well, the thing is, he really wants your house. So he did a little poking around and he found out that you owe $80,000 in back property taxes. I'll have to contact the county, but I suspect they're due by the next tax quarter deadline, which is January 15."



Bree stared at Ian. She could have sworn he had just said something as insane as that she owed eighty frickin' thousand dollars in taxes. That had to be wrong. Had to be. She wouldn't see eighty grand just lolling around in her bank account anytime in her life.



"Excuse me?"



Ian launched into an explanation about her grandmother and something about property values being frozen and some other stuff that didn't register at all because her ears were ringing and her heart was racing and she was pretty damn sure she was going to faint. "Are you actually saying that I have to come up with eighty grand m the next three weeks?"



"Yes. You can take a home equity loan against the house to pay for it, Bree. Since you own the house, it won't be a problem securing the loan, and your payments would only be about six hundred a month, I'd think."



"Only? Only six hundred a month. I can't afford that, Ian! I can't afford half that. I work part-time in a small-town library and read tarot cards for tourists.



I'm not exactly rolling in it here." Bree clutched her throat, wondering why it felt like she could no longer swallow. "Crap, crap, crap. What am I going to do?"



She couldn't even think.



"Is there someone you can borrow the money from?"



Was he smoking crack? Bree looked at him in disbelief. "Not $80,000! I don't know anyone who has that kind of money, except for my little sister Abby.



She inherited over $200,000 from my grandmother, but she can't touch it until she turns twenty-one, which is in two and a half years."



"Maybe you can take the home equity loan and take in renters to pay the loan."



Oh, that sounded like fun. Sharing her house for the next fifteen years with a revolving door of strangers. "Eew," she said. "That sounds horrible."



"Well, you can always sell the house to Darius. He is willing to give you the last offer he made, which is way above market value. You'd have enough to pay the taxes and pocket a substantial amount of cash.



You'd actually end up better off than if you tried to sell the house yourself."



Bree felt slapped as she listened to his words. So there it was. The source of his guilt. He knew that was the most viable option for her, and he was trying to list the benefits of it because if she sold the house, it made his client happy and him money. "Oh my God," she said. "You knew this all along, didn't you?"



To his credit, he looked shocked. "No! Of course not. He just told me on the phone."



"But you think it's a good idea?"



"I think it's a logical one, but I know how much this house means to you."



"You have no idea." Bree felt tears pricking her eyes. She felt panicked and, frankly, betrayed. Ian could talk his client out of wanting her house. He could find another one for him, even right there in Cuttersville. There were alleged haunted houses all over town, and hers wasn't even one of them. But Ian clearly had no interest in talking Darius out of his underhanded offer. And how did she even know that it wasn't Ian who had dug up the knowledge about the taxes at Darius's request?



All while sleeping with her.



Ugh.



She just wanted to be alone. "Okay, you need to leave. I'm going to get dressed and go talk to Charlotte." Bree glanced around for her skirt. She needed a shoulder to cry on and some advice, and she didn't think it would be wise to do that in her panties, though she just might if she didn't find clothes in the next two seconds.