Читать книгу The Naughty List Bundle with The Night Before Christmas & Yule Be Mine - Fern Michaels - Страница 14

He was going completely off the rails. Telling her things he’d agreed with Lionel not to speak of, ever, if possible. Griffin hadn’t agreed with that decision, but he hadn’t had the final say. Lionel understood his town, his company, his people, a hell of a lot better than Griffin did, so he hadn’t fought him on it. But he knew secrecy had been the wrong way to go.

He wasn’t sure he could trust Melody not to say anything, at least until he’d had time to talk to Lionel. He wanted to believe he could trust her. But she’d had a day to get to know him. And a lifetime to know her hometown. He knew who was going to win that showdown, every time.

“I need to talk to him—Lionel,” Griffin said, “so if you could just give me that time before rounding up—”

“I’m not going to say anything.”

He leaned back slightly, eyebrows raised. “I appreciate that. I don’t know how long I’ll need, but I’ll tell you as soon—”

“No, I mean, I’m not going to say anything, ever.”

He frowned. “Didn’t you just get done telling me—quite convincingly, I might add, that you’d fight me on this no matter what?”

“I did. And I’m glad you told me, glad you understood why it was so important to me. But you have a point, too, about not panicking anyone. That won’t do you or them any good. Not if the company is in as bad shape as you say. If people panic and leave, look for work elsewhere, or start the great migration that has crushed so many of the small towns out this way, Hamilton won’t be able to rebound. As it stands, you have the support of the majority, at least if the gathering today was any indication. I meant what I said about trusting us, too, and I still believe everyone should know what’s going on. You will need to tell them at some point, when the timing is best for both sides, but that will be your decision. Or Lionel’s. Not mine.”

He continued to study her. “You were all ready to take up the crusade earlier today, and now you’re surrendering the field completely?”

“I didn’t say I liked it,” she said, quietly and he saw the pain behind her seemingly casual declaration. “But I have no actual cause to fight for. You’ve made that abundantly clear. I’m not big on wasting my time. So…I’ll have to…accept that I can’t change this. I don’t know what your plan will end up meaning to me. What it will change for me. Knowing it’s a fait accompli helps somewhat. I’m glad you told me. It gives me some time.”

“Time?”

“To figure things out. Make choices.”

“What choices?” he asked. “You realize, don’t you, that the resort will almost certainly boost your particular niche business? With our plans for global partnerships, the world will be your oyster. You’re only limited by how big you dream.”

“Bigger isn’t better for everyone, Griffin,” she said gently. “I tried bigger. That’s why I came back here. Well, I came back for Bernie, but it’s why I stayed. I was unhappy in Washington, unhappy in my career, unhappy with bigger, brighter, better.”

“You were a lawyer there? In Washington.”

She lifted a questioning brow.

“You stuttered earlier, over saying your grandmother passed away as you were heading to law school. What kind of law?”

“Taxes.”

He groaned. “It’s a wonder you didn’t put a gun to your temple. My God.”

“I was quite good at it,” she said, without a shred of defensiveness—or any real emotion.

“But you hated it.”

“With gun-to-the-temple passion,” she said, then her lips finally smiled a little. A bit of life came back into those dark blue eyes, but not enough to hide the sadness that was still evident.

He felt badly for putting the sorrow there, but would have felt worse if he’d kept the truth from her any longer.

“The problem was,” she went on, “I knew tax law wasn’t for me, and I knew that I hated living in the city. I just…didn’t know what else I wanted to be when I grew up. I thought I needed the stimulation of a bigger town, with more people, to push me intellectually. I didn’t think I could find that kind of satisfaction in my hometown. I love everyone here dearly, but I thought my world needed to be bigger to truly fulfill what I saw as my potential.”

“Sometimes, you do have to leave. You weren’t wrong to try.”

“No. No, I wasn’t. You’re right. I don’t regret the choices I made. Or the education I worked so hard for. But while I was realizing those choices were sucking the soul out of me, Bernie was launching this business. I started to bake. And baking…” She let the sentence drift off on a sigh. A sigh so full it captivated him.

“Your eyes go all…” He lifted a shoulder when the words weren’t there. It was an arresting sight, to be sure. “When you talk about what you do now, a look comes into your eyes. That’s your soul, all aglow. But you know that.”

She nodded, but looked surprised at his description. “You’re very—”

“Observant,” he finished for her, feeling somewhat exposed. She brought out things in him even he didn’t know resided there. “It goes with my line of work.”

“Thoughtful, was the word I was going to use. You put a lot of thought into what you do, what you say.”

He had a laugh at that. “Most of the time, I’d say aye to that. But around you? Let’s just say I haven’t found it to be the case. Apparently I’ll blurt out just about anything.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

He grinned. “If you say so. What is it about baking that soothes the savage tax attorney?”

“I’m not certain,” she said, and that smile came across her face again. It truly did light her up from the inside. “I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I still haven’t any idea. Except you used the right word: soothe. It’s exactly that. I don’t know that I needed soothing. I needed something I cared about more than taxes, maybe. But it wasn’t like my life was horrible. Just not fulfilling. I only started baking to help Bernie. But it seemed to…I don’t know, settle my mind, center me. Working with my hands, understanding the basic chemistry of cooking, and then applying imagination to that…” She shook her head, but the dreamy look was there again, and when she turned that smile on him, it was incandescent. “You’d think a tax lawyer wouldn’t have a creative side.” Her smile widened. “But, apparently, I do. And it has been an endlessly satisfying and gratifying experience, giving myself a chance to explore it.”

It was at that precise moment, the very look on her face, in her eyes, made an ache bloom inside his chest. For the first time in his adult life he let himself want something other than business success. He let himself want the one thing he’d very, very carefully made sure he’d never allowed himself to consider. He understood that the whole world did not operate the way his family had. Even in his own family, despite the passionate squabbling, he’d seen a lot of loving relationships. He just hadn’t been part of one personally.

What he knew about love had a lot more to do with ducking punches and being constantly belittled for looking different, being different. He’d ducked, he’d hidden, he’d done whatever he could to avoid the kind of “love” his father had for him. His own grandmother had tried to protect him, but his father was her only child, and she doted on the drunken bastard. She’d done what she could for Griffin as her son’s only son, scuttling him into her kitchen at the restaurant as often as she could, shielding him as best she could. But at the end of the night, she sent him home to sleep under the same roof as his father. There were only so many ways to disappear in a two-bedroom flat.

When Griffin had gotten older, he’d fought back. Against his father, against his cousins, against his schoolmates. Against everyone who belittled or made fun of him. Everyone except Grandmama. She’d at least tried to help him. She loved him, in her own way. It was as close to an honest love as he knew. But she also loved the violent bastard who had been his father. She hadn’t wanted to involve anyone in what she viewed as a private family matter. She loved Griffin, but she hadn’t made the torment stop. When he was finally old enough to make it on his own, at age sixteen, he’d left. He’d decided then perhaps love was an emotion best avoided altogether. At least where he was concerned.

He didn’t doubt its existence. He’d even entered into relationships, seeking companionship, if not much more. But he hadn’t truly made himself available in any of them. He understood the self-fulfilling prophecy there. He hadn’t been motivated or willing to reach beyond his past, beyond his choices, and change the pattern. He knew he was afraid of trying…and failing. He didn’t want to know that about himself. So Thomas Griffin Gallagher had focused on the things he knew he could do.

The ache tightened further inside his chest as he watched Melody begin to work on her cake. His thoughts were inextricably twined, past and present. What he wanted, standing in front of him…and what he’d left behind. A year ago, he’d gotten life-altering news. About the diary. About his real heritage. All the pain, the hurt…and the rage, that he’d felt were so far behind him had come roaring back. All those years, his grandmother had listened to the mocking and the sneers. From inside the family and out. From his own father, who hadn’t even been her natural-born son, but whom she’d loved, perhaps to an unhealthy degree for the fear of losing him.

They’d all taunted him mercilessly, about how he looked so different from the rest. And how ridiculous he was with all his fancy ideas of what they could make of themselves if they’d only listen to him. They’d thought he had no pride in his family, that his ideas were meant to denigrate their achievements. But they couldn’t have been more wrong.

His grandmother had watched it all, and never told him. Never saved him by giving him the one thing he needed: a real family who understood and loved him for who he truly was.

Griffin had her diary, knew she’d been unable to conceive, and that having a child had been the cornerstone of her every desire. When she’d heard about the babe being given up, she and his grandfather had stepped forward, then fled back to Ireland, due to her irrational fear the Havershams would take the baby back. She’d never told a soul, claiming the baby as her natural-born son, for fear he’d be shunned by the family if they knew. Griffin’s father had enough of the Gallagher look about him to get by, and no one had ever learned who his parents had truly been. But apparently Griffin had the look of Trudy’s family, fairer of hair and lighter of eye. He’d borne the brunt of being the outcast, not only because of his different looks but because of his different demeanor and way of thinking. If he had only known…it would have explained so much. Saved him from so much.

But what was done was done. Whatever his last name was, or what blood coursed through his veins…didn’t matter. He knew who he was and what he wanted. If Lionel Hamilton could get him one step closer to fulfilling his dreams, then he’d take that as the first stroke of honest-to-God luck he’d ever had, and build on it. It was the kind of foundation he understood. He knew how to grow that, nurture it.

Looking at Melody Duncastle he was filled with…want. Want of all those things he’d shut himself off from. Want of things that scared the ever-loving hell out of him. He looked at her, and he wanted what those dreamy, content, confident eyes could bring to his life. He wanted her to look at him and feel all those same things. He wanted her to look at him…and glow.

Bloody Christ, I never should have come in here this morning.

“I’m a very lucky woman,” she said, as she continued the task at hand, bending down to begin a cluster of amazingly intricate roses. “To have literally stumbled into something that has been such a good fit for me. I do know that.”

A lucky woman, he thought. No. Of the two of them, he was the lucky one. To have met her, been beguiled by her, compelled to open up to her. In the span of a single day, she’d turned his head completely around, and his thoughts to things he’d never contemplated before. If that had been the first day, what would a lifetime of days with her be like?

Not that he’d ever know. He was no prize, that was for certain. She might have had the luck of the Irish in finding her true life’s calling. But she’d never consider him a lucky catch.

What did he have to offer? Money? Yes, he had a pile of it, but she’d likely made plenty of that on her own as a lawyer. She’d walked away from that success to live over a shop where she put in far more hours than at any law firm, and all to live in a town that didn’t even boast a single traffic light. Clearly, the one thing he had was the last thing that would impress her.

There was chemistry. Explosive levels of it. That, and not his fortune, could possibly get him laid—if he was very lucky—but nothing more.

“So, no…I don’t want the big dream,” she went on, turning the cake around, and starting another cluster at the top corner, oblivious to the blade she was sinking, so smoothly, deep into his chest. “I don’t want to take my business global. I don’t want”—she looked up from what she was doing, to him—“I’m sorry. I’m not meaning this as an insult, you understand that now, don’t you? But I don’t want what you’re selling. I imagine most of the folks here will. But not me.”

“So, what will you do?” he asked, trying not to care, to start building a wall of indifference, right then and there. She was no longer a thorn in his side. That’s the only way he should be looking at her. She might be leaving Hamilton altogether from the sounds of things. He wouldn’t have to risk bumping into the one thing he wanted that he couldn’t have. He could focus, instead, on what he should be doing, which was launching the project. It was all good news.

So why did he feel as if the best thing that had ever happened to him was slipping through his fingers before he even had the chance to figure out how to hold on to it?

“I honestly don’t know,” she said. “It’s a lot to think about. What about you?”

“Me?”

“You left Dublin to come here and take this challenge on. I know there is a lot of personal meaning in this for you, but, ultimately, is it just another job for you? I mean, are you uprooting your whole life in Ireland to come stake out a permanent home here? What about the business you left behind?”

“Who says I left it behind?”

“So you’re…just temporarily here then?”

“I didn’t say that. But with global marketing and technology, I don’t have to be physically in Dublin to continue forward. In fact, I was rarely there.”

“So you have jobs going on right now that you’re overseeing?”

“I play a very specific role in setting up these kinds of paths for people to take.”

“But you don’t necessarily stay and watch them grow to fruition.”

“That’s not my job.”

He watched her face, saw the edges of disappointment, and felt whatever wall he’d been building crumble to dust. He couldn’t afford to allow hope to elbow its way in. She was pointing out the very reason why, even if he lost every bit of rational sense he’d ever had and decided to pursue her, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

He didn’t stay. It wasn’t in his job description.

“What I do is see the path for others; I establish the best way to get them there, set them up for success. Then I step back and let them walk that path to their own future.” He lifted a shoulder. “I leave and go on to do it again for someone else.”

“But this isn’t a job you’re doing for someone else. This time…I mean, isn’t this going to be yours? Isn’t the success of Hamilton Industries a personal success for you? One that doesn’t end with the planning stages?”

“If you’re asking me if I plan to stay here and run Lionel’s empire, the answer is no. That was never the plan.”

Her mouth dropped open, then snapped shut—pretty much describing what it felt like his heart had done in that same moment. Was it possible? Beyond all reason, she was acting like someone who was thinking the same kinds of things he was, about possibilities and taking chances. Why else would she be looking so disappointed in hearing that it couldn’t possibly happen, even if she wanted it to?

Why in hell did that make him feel so bloody fantastic? It was anything but. They were lost to each other before they could even decide to begin.

It made no sense. She couldn’t possibly truly want him. Griffin. More likely, she merely wanted to fan the sparks of the electricity crackling between them. He was merely mistaking that for the possibility of her wanting something more.

Maybe desire was all he was feeling, too. Perhaps they needed to give in to the heat. Take what was really being offered. It was the best way, maybe the only way, to distinguish what was from what could never be.

“So…you’re not staying in Hamilton long term?”

He shook his head.

“Then…what is Lionel—I mean, who’s going to run the company after—”

“The company—controlling interest in it, anyway—will go to me.” He had less than no business telling her that. But what the hell. Nothing about that day or that night with her was following any predetermined path. So he chucked the path. It was all new territory, and he was following his gut—into the unknown.

What the hell was he thinking?

He suspected he knew what he was thinking with.

It brought him back to his earlier solution, a plan that would wind up with both of them naked. Afterward, he’d bet his future empire on the fact that it would all become perfectly clear to them both—it was about heat. Not about heart.

He had a hunger that he was damned well determined to feed. To hell with the rest. The rest would sort itself out.

It always did.

To that end, he started lugging the remaining cartons containing the quick-pour fondant back to the coolers and sealed the rolled fondant in their tubs.

“What are you doing?”

“Do those finished cupcakes need to get stored in something to stay fresh until morning?”

“Do—what? Yes, but—why are you putting those back?”

“Go ahead and put them where they need to be.”

“I have to finish this cake.”

“Is that one for delivery to someone tomorrow?”

“No, it’s just for the front of—would you stop that?” She watched in disbelief as he rolled another cart to the cooler.

He paused long enough to look at her. For once, he let the walls drop completely away, let her see everything he was feeling, everything he was needing. “No,” was all he said.

“Griffin—”

“We’re going to stop playing baker for the time being.”

“What are you talking about?”

He slid the last carton in the cooler, then strode across the room, absolutely intent, knowing without a single doubt, exactly what he was going to do. His path, at least for the next few hours, was very, very clearly defined.

“The cakes can wait,” he told her. Then he yanked her into his arms and slid the pins from her hair. “This, on the other hand, canno’.”