Christmas in the City - Jill Barnett Page 0,55

staring down at him.

"Go to bed! Now!"

Two pairs of feet scampered over the floor above. - He looked back down at Nellibelle. "Just how long has that hole been there?"

"Oh, let's see . . . Not too long," she said.

"How long?"

"About eight years."

Then she slid her arms around his neck and laughed, that joyous, wonderful laugh. And once again, Conn Donoughue saw the Christmas gift he'd always loved the best. He looked into his wife's smiling face and saw how truly beautiful a woman could be.

My Lucky Penny

Chapter 1

Late 19th Century New York City

Edward Abbott Lowell was named man of the year by the four hundred esteemed members of New York City's most exclusive gentlemen's club. As he walked around the grand ballroom of the Union Club, shaking hands after his acceptance speech, Edward was struck by the strangest feeling that something was off. Not with the club or its members, but something else, as if the air around him was vibrating when there was no elevated train nearby.

He rubbed a hand over his neck then noticed the waiter who had quietly appeared with his bourbon. He took advantage of a break in conversation, taking a long draw off his drink and turning away from the busy mayor chatting with his cronies. The man must have taken a bath in Macassar oil. He smelled like a cross between a lift engine and Aunt Martha's Christmas buns.

Edward needed air.

A few minutes later, he closed the door behind him and effectively shut out the din of loud voices, the distant sound of a tinny piano, and the raucous male laughter inside the club. Before he turned away, he looked at the crowded room through the sleek glass of the terrace doors; it was full of expensively tailored coats and custom-fitted vests, pockets slung with many a gold pocket watch and diamond fob, a veritable sea of mustaches, clipped beards, and hair slicked back so all those top hats lined on shelves in the lobby coat room would sit atop the owner's head at the right jaunty angle.

Man of the Year--the Union Club's highest honor...hard to believe. He shook his head and moved to the stone balustrade that rimmed the third floor terrace and overlooked Fifth Avenue.

How many of the city's new business deals would be struck or sealed in that room tonight?

Like most of the city's big business, his largest and last project--and the one that had earned him man-of-year distinction--the Grant Building, had been negotiated and confirmed with a solid handshake in this very gentlemen's club a few years ago. And it had only taken him over a decade of hard work, and the sheer luck of being picked out of Boston Tech to go to Chicago as a prot茅g茅 to the great architect William LaBaron Jenney, proof that even a blind monkey could find a peanut once in a while.

And now he had a lot of peanuts...more than his father had lost in the big crash, more than his wealthy grandfather had earned in his entire lifetime, and his great grandfather before that, and Ed was twenty-nine.

But tonight, before he'd stepped out to that podium, he'd felt as if he were that young kid again, nerves raw, feeling as if he didn't fit into his feet, and taking him back to that first day of college, a mere two days after his sixteenth birthday, when--green buck that he was--he had tentatively walked into that Back Bay building--one that embodied the sheer possibilities of everything he had ever wanted. That was what tonight was all about to him--the culmination of all those fantastical possibilities.

He heard the doors open and turned to see Harold Green closing the door with his foot while balancing cocktail glass in each hand. "Look who the cat dragged in," Ed said. "And here I was just thinking about green."

Hal grinned and handed him one of the drinks. "Somehow I doubt it was about me, my friend. More than likely about the scandalously low-cut green gown the delectable Miss Marrianne Fitzgerald wore to Fleming House last evening. Arthur, Rand, and I were taking bets on how long before she busted out of it. And you, lucky fellow, seated to her right all through that nine course dinner. So tell me if you set her free a few hours later," Hal said...far too cheery to hide the truth. "I have a few hundred riding on the fact that you got lucky since it was you who took the lady