Читать книгу The Naughty List Bundle with The Night Before Christmas & Yule Be Mine - Fern Michaels - Страница 17

Melody wasn’t sure who had been more surprised when Griffin was still there for breakfast that next morning and that he’d offered to make it himself. Best omelet and toast she’d ever had. More surprising was she’d enjoyed his presence, crowding her in the small galley kitchen, and delaying her second cup of coffee with an impromptu shower break. Both of them had had a very full day ahead of them…and yet, they’d lingered over that second cup.

She’d told him she’d brazen out his leaving the shop in broad daylight…well before Cups & Cakes opened for regular business. But he’d parked himself in her shop kitchen and worked from his BlackBerry while she finished the cake she’d left undone the night before, and got everything organized for the senior center birthday extravaganza. He’d left, all business-suit perfect, from the shop’s front door—just another local businessman with a fresh cup of coffee to go—when she’d opened for business. Though Melody had found herself not caring so much if anyone realized he hadn’t entered the store that morning…only exited it.

That had been six weeks ago.

And their one-night stand had extended to…she’d lost count.

Of course the whole town knew. There was a crispness to the air, and everywhere you looked, all the Christmas decorations were out in full force. That festive spirit seemed to amp up the pleasure everyone was taking in murmuring about their supposed romance. But Melody and Griffin kept up the open-for-business morning exit pretense nonetheless. The only difference was he carried his laptop so he could get more work done before the shop opened…and there was a second toothbrush in the china cup in her bathroom.

She liked that. She liked that a lot.

Too much, really.

It wasn’t about the sex, although she was pretty sure there was a stupid, silly grin on her face at all times. Even that wasn’t about the sex, either, if she were being honest.

The man spent all day in back-to-back meetings, had handled the town meeting with charming aplomb. At least, so she’d heard. Just to keep the chatter down, she hadn’t attended. She already knew everything that was going to be said. No matter how long the day, he always made his way over to her shop at the end of it, some nights later than others. Most often he worked on an empty kitchen worktable in the back room while she kept up with the demand for Christmas-themed cupcakes. Or “the wee cakes,” as he called them. Occasionally he helped. Occasionally she didn’t need to work late.

Then they went upstairs and cooked together in her tiny strip of a kitchen, laughed and talked over food and a bottle of wine, often into the wee hours, before he took her to bed. Some nights there was no sleep.

She liked that a lot, too.

He was a part of her life, a part of her routine. She used to love the quiet of her work kitchen after hours, working alone, sometimes with a soundtrack, often humming her own tunes. Now she didn’t want to think about the time when she’d be humming alone, to herself. What had felt peaceful and quiet, she knew would feel lonely and sad. She would miss him. Terribly. More than she thought she could stand.

When the town wasn’t buzzing about the behind-doors romance going on between her and Griffin, people were buzzing about the coming changes to Hamilton. Everyone was excited. Melody wanted to be.

Nothing had been started yet, but she’d seen all the plans, down to the detailed blueprints and marketing brochures being used to woo overseas investors and companies that would almost act like exchange students. You build your shop here, we’ll build ours there, and cross promote.

Griffin hadn’t given up trying to talk her into at least thinking about it. He knew, better than she’d ever thought anyone could, how much the hands-on work meant to her. He knew she didn’t want to be a bakery mogul. She wanted to be a baker. But as time marched on, his sales pitches to her had strengthened, not weakened.

She usually diverted him into telling her all about his business in Dublin, the other jobs he was working on, about his home there, the people who worked for him. Just as he saw the passion she had for designing cakes, she saw the true passion he had, not only for the people he helped through his visionary approach to rebuilding and revamping corporate entities but also for the people who had joined his team, shared his dream. They still took on the smaller accounts, and oftentimes, he told her, he took on jobs that his people didn’t even know about. Not charging for those, just helping out because he could.

He was charming, successful, funny, and he made her feel like the only woman on earth every time he walked through the door. All he had to do was look at her, and she felt more alive than she could ever have believed possible. Baking was the only thing that had ever come close. She knew she was meant to do that.

So…it stood to reason that if she was meant to be a pastry chef, she was also meant to love Thomas Griffin Gallagher.

“What in the hell have you gone and done?” she said, as she bent over the second tier of what was going to double as both the anniversary and Christmas office party cake for Jim Traybill’s real estate firm. Twenty-five years he’d run his brokerage. All from the same location.

Same godawful puke-green and gold leaf sign on the front above the door, too, she thought. Still with the missing a from Jim’s last name, which had flaked off so long ago she couldn’t remember ever having seen it.

She smiled, thinking about that. It would all change when they did the “unification” of the town square shops. Everyone would get new signs, new awnings, and, in some cases, newly updated storefronts—which they wouldn’t be responsible for. It was all part of the renewal grants Griffin had secured with his investors. She’d seen the drawings for the proposed changes, which the shopowners consulted on. No one she knew had asked to change a thing from the originals, which were pretty charming, she had to admit. There was no denying their little burg would look sweet, all spiffed up, bright and shiny new.

But she was going to miss that puke-green sign.

She kept her opinion and her malaise about the coming end of the town she’d grown up in to herself. No point in being a buzzkill. But Griffin knew, and he drew her out, let her…whine. She smiled a little at that. She was such a whiner. Griffin indulged her, charmed her out of it most times, and bullied her out the rest. By bullied, she meant seduced. She’d tried telling him that distracting her wasn’t going to make her forget. He generally didn’t listen. And she generally let him distract her.

She’d also get over it. She had to. Because she was going to stay.

She’d given it a lot of thought, and had decided there was no point in leaving. She had no real desire to adopt some other small town that wasn’t her own, just to say she was baking cupcakes in a rural setting. She had absolutely no intention to stop baking. So that left…assimilation.

“Like the Borg,” she muttered.

“Bjorn?” came a sexy, accented voice from the kitchen doorway.

“No. Cylon.”

He frowned. She laughed.

“Americans,” he said.

“Which you partly are.”

“Aye. Must explain why I can’t stop hanging around you.”

She looked up at him, and everything inside her warmed. “Must be.”

“That, right there,” he said, and slid his briefcase and gym bag onto the nearest empty workstation, before crossing to her.

She’d already put down her tools and turned to him, so he could sweep her up against him and kiss her senseless.

She liked that, too.

“That’s why I keep coming back,” he said, when he finally lifted his head. His eyes were glittering, and she wanted to have him right there on the worktable. And had. Actually.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because when you see me, you get that same look in your eye.”

“Same look as what?”

“As when you talk about your cakes.”

She laughed, but could feel her cheeks heat up. “You like it that you excite me as much as a cupcake?”

“Aye,” he said, folding her more tightly into his arms. “It’s what I knew I wanted most, that first night here, in your kitchen.”

“What are you talking about?” He teased her, endlessly, about pretty much everything and anything. But he’d never once said anything like that before.

“When you talked about your passion for baking, you looked…luminescent. It was the first time I’d ever let myself really want something else.”

“Something…else?” She thought he was teasing her still, but though his eyes sparkled and his brogue grew thicker she’d never seen him so intent. So…serious?

“Something that had nothing to do with my business. Something…just for myself.”

“What was it?”

“For you to look at me with that same passion.”

She looked down, feeling overwhelmed and more than a little exposed. They’d talked, laughed, prodded, cajoled. But one thing they hadn’t done was talk about their feelings…or their future. Because they couldn’t have the latter, there was no point in discussing—exposing—the former.

Apparently that was going to change. And she wasn’t sure she was ready. Because a talk about their feelings would lead to a talk about the end.

“Griffin,” she said, lifting her chin. “I’m not—”

“Hey now,” he said quietly, dipping in for a kiss. “I lost my sparkle. What did I say?”

“We don’t…we don’t talk like this.”

He cupped her face. “Maybe we should.”

A hot stab of fear pierced her heart. No. She simply wasn’t going to. She felt like a child, thinking if she just closed her eyes, she could will time to go backward instead of forward, and she could stay where she was, in the perfect place, with this perfect man, forever.

“Melody.”

But, of course, that wasn’t going to happen. It hadn’t worked when Bernie had been drifting in and out of consciousness her last few days, and it wasn’t going to work now.

She lifted her gaze to his. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

His mouth tightened, just a little, at the corners. She already knew him well enough to know what that meant. The regret she saw in his eyes chipped at what little control she had left. She’d tried her hardest not to think about the day he would leave, but when she had, she’d tried to believe she’d somehow be strong. Insouciant, even. Able to celebrate her fortune in having had him in her life for the time they’d been together.

All true. But she hadn’t envisioned curling into a sobbing mess while being confronted with the finality of it.

“Melody, I—”

“I guess I didn’t think it would happen so soon. You’re right, maybe we should have talked more about what was coming.” Almost by silent agreement, they’d never discussed at what point he wouldn’t be needed in Hamilton any longer. She just thought it would be a point far away. “We haven’t even started with the first phase yet.”

“It’s no’ that. I’d hoped to stay longer.”

“Is something wrong? Back in Dublin?”

“Not wrong, just…complicated. All business matters, no worries, no’ anything personal. But…I’m needed there.”

“For how long?”

He simply looked at her, his eyes growing increasingly more miserable.

“You’re not coming back?” She barely choked out the words. “But—” She cut herself off. But what? What had she expected? She’d known this. It was her own fault they hadn’t prepared themselves better for it. She could have asked, could have made it a part of their ongoing discussion.

But she’d been too busy enjoying her little dreamworld. It had been enough harsh reality dealing with the fact that her town was going to morph into a miniature Disney World before her very eyes. She’d told herself she deserved to have some fun while she could.

Stupid, stupid plan.

“Melody,” Griffin repeated, taking her face in his hands. “You’ll recall I didn’t come in here unhappy.”

“You’re much better than me at putting on your happy face. We both know that.”

“It wasn’t a put-on face. I was a man with a plan when I walked in here. It was your very happy face lighting up when I walked in that removed any doubt I might have had about my plan.”

“Plan?”

“I don’t want to leave you. That smile, the way you instantly light up for me, I don’t want to get to the end of my day and not have that waiting. My days have always been planned around work, as were more of my nights than not. What brought me joy was success in business. Now, I get to experience that through the day, with the knowledge that when that day’s work is done, I’ll double that joy by coming home and sharing it with you.”

He’d said “coming home,” she noted in some distant part of her brain that wasn’t buzzing loudly with panic. She tried desperately to quiet it so she could hear what he was saying to her. Had he realized what he’d said? Did he know the rush of pleasure that sentiment brought to her?

“I’m not sure how I ever thought my life was full. I decided, long ago, that relationships weren’t something I was made for. I never wanted them.” He pulled her closer. “But I believe I was made for you. And I want this. I want you.”

“Griffin,” she whispered, looking into eyes glowing with what he’d claimed he’d seen in her own. If she hadn’t been so worried, so confused, and trying so hard to stave off the crushing avalanche of grief she knew was coming her way, she’d have felt the warmth of it all the way to her toes. “You’re…leaving. I don’t understand.”

“Why do you think I’ve been trying to talk you into expanding your shop globally?”

“I don’t want to run an empire. That’s your job. I want to bake.”

“I know. I’m hardheaded, and also so out-of-my-head besotted with you, that I clearly haven’t been thinking straight. But I do listen. I do.”

He’d said besotted—which was a lot like love. And exactly how she felt about him. Only she’d never told him. Because they didn’t talk about that. Should she tell him now? Would it make a difference?

All she knew was that she felt better. Knowing. So she had to think he would, too.

“I know what you mean,” she said, surprising him. “About not thinking clearly. I’m having a hard time, right now, thinking at all, because I can’t even stand the idea of not seeing you. Ever. I’m…” She faltered, not because she was scared to say it, but because she was scared to feel it. But silence wasn’t going to make the feelings go away. “Griffin, if anyone had told me, that morning when I found you behind the counter, that you’d consume my every waking thought, and every single one of my nights, I’d have called them crazy and offered them a cookie. But you’re right. It took one day.” She smiled. “Besotted. I rather like that word.”

She hadn’t realized how much fear he was feeling, too, until she saw the nerves twitch as he tried to smile, but failed to sustain it.

“What?” she asked. “Tell me.”

“I was listening to you, Melody. All those nights that we talked. I’ve watched you work, often when you had no idea I was watching you.” His smile grew then. “I’m not always glued to my BlackBerry, you know.”

“Yes, you are,” she said, and they both laughed.

“There are moments, here and there,” he said, the lingering smile moving to a grin, and that light returning full force to his eyes. “I know this is what you’re meant to do. I know the joy it brings you. I’ve watched you handle your books like the overly educated shopkeeper you are, but I know you aren’t motivated by increasing your bottom line, or investing for future growth potential.”

“If I was, I’d have already done that.”

“I know. So I’m not asking you to think about going global with Cups & Cakes. I’m just going to ask you to consider relocating the one shop you have from this village…to a different one.”

“What do you—”

“My village, Melody. I want you to come to Dublin. We’ll find the perfect spot.”

Her head was spinning…but not in panic. It was with…excitement. She had decided against leaving Hamilton because she’d had noplace else to go that mattered to her. But Griffin mattered. Wherever he was would matter to her, too. Could she adopt a whole village? “Would the Dubliners accept me?”

“I fell in love with you in a single day. I’m sure you’ll work your magic on them, too. One cupcake at a time, if necessary.”

“Sugar shock them into it, you mean,” she said dryly. Her mind was still on the “I fell in love with you” part, and she basked in the heady glow of the words for a bit, even as her mind was already racing ahead, to all the possibilities. It was scary, and not a little exhilarating. The thing that made her mind up was that even though it was terrifying to contemplate uprooting not only herself but her entire livelihood, she had absolutely no doubts about being with Griffin.

“Wait. Can I do that?” she asked. “Open a shop in Ireland? Aren’t there laws?”

“You can work for a period of time on a visa.” He shifted back long enough to slide his hand in the pocket of his overcoat. “But you could stay forever, as my wife.” He pulled out a small ring box.

She gasped. Okay, now she was truly hallucinating. She’d gone from dreamworld, to crazy town. In her wildest dreams…

“I’d thought to ask you come the new year. Time for new beginnings and all that. Or, if I couldn’t wait, which I’m pretty sure would have been the case,” he said, grinning when she smiled, “I’d have had Saint Nicholas pay us a short visit next week on Christmas. But the time came upon me sooner than I’d planned…and I don’t want to go back without you.”

“I don’t want you to, either.”

“Is that…does that mean…will you?”

It turned out he was quite adorable when he was flustered. She’d never once seen him lose his composure. Unless he was on top of her, making her come as he thundered through his own release. But that was different. His hopeful look claimed her heart just as fully as he’d claimed the rest of her. “It does,” she said, her smile trembling as the full force of the moment came over her.

“You’ll have time to know for certain,” he said in a short rush. “We’ll apply for the visa and you can take that time to find the right place, and find out if you can stand having me in your—”

So very adorably uncertain. “Griffin, I’m saying yes.” She pulled his mouth to hers and kissed him. Fiercely. Possessively. And reveled in it. When they finally came up for air, she remembered…about the ring box. “Can I see it?”

“Oh! Oh, right. Of course. This is brilliant!” He all but jumped and did a fist pump. She might have joined him. “Here.” He opened the box, working to get the hinge to spring free.

“When did you get—oh, Griffin, it’s stunning. That setting.”

“It was me mum’s engagement ring. Passed on to me.”

“You just…carry it around with you?” she asked, stumbling, saying anything that came into her head, until she could pinch herself and make herself believe this was really happening. She couldn’t take her eyes off it. It wasn’t big and ostentatious, which suited her just fine. “It’s so charming, and so beautifully set.” She finally lifted her gaze to his. “I’d be honored, but…are you sure, Griffin?”

“I had it sent to me three weeks ago.”

“Three weeks—really?”

“Remember the night you had to do all the cupcakes over for the Brunelli shower because—”

“She found out it was a boy after not wanting to know, and announced it the day before the surprise shower, and her mother-in-law simply wouldn’t hear of having gender-neutral colors. Even on the cupcakes. Oh, I remember.” Melody smiled. “You stayed up half the night helping me. I was afraid you’d finally give up and walk away after that. I was not exactly a cheerful camper. But then, I’d had other plans for the night.”

He wiggled his eyebrows. “I know. You came upstairs and I saw all the trouble you’d gone to—”

“Well, we’d missed all of Thanksgiving together with everything else we were obligated to do and I just wanted something that made me feel like I had…” She drifted off then. She hadn’t told him her motivation behind cooking him a turkey and some of the other traditional dishes she’d always had growing up. She’d had to cater the civic center event that day, and Griffin had used the empty offices at Hamilton to run daylong conference calls back home so he could catch up on his work, uninterrupted. She’d never really felt she lacked family on that holiday as she’d usually been working the community affair and enjoyed the festive event just as much as a family dinner. Or so she’d told herself.

But she’d missed being with Griffin that day, and watching the other families enjoy each other’s company…had made her wistful. So she’d picked the next time they both had time free, which had been a few days later, and decided to cook him a big meal. He didn’t have to know it was her Thanksgiving. But she did.

And then…the great cupcake do-over had happened.

“You wanted to create a moment, a memory, that made you feel like part of something more than just yourself. Or even a member of the community. You wanted us to have that meal, together. And I wanted that, too. You have no idea how badly.”

She knew now, about his background. All of it. For him to want anything that resembled a family gathering…“Griffin, if I’d known, I’d have told Mrs. Brunelli to take her gender-neutral colors and—”

“I sent for the ring the next day. I didn’t know when I was going to ask for your hand, Melody, but I knew then it was just a matter of making sure you wanted it, too.”

“We’ve never said…”

He grinned. “I took a chance.”

She grinned. “It’s about to pay off. Can I…?” She nodded toward the box in his hand.

“Let me.” He slid the ring from the aging, crushed velvet cushion, then set it aside to take her right hand.

“It might not—it fits,” she said in wonder, as he slid it on her ring finger.

“I might have borrowed one of your rings, just for a day.”

She looked up from the joyful, charming antique ring adorning her finger to look at Griffin. “So, you’re telling me that Mr. Henneman knows.” He was the only jeweler in Hamilton.

“Melody…everybody knows.”

She started to ask how, then laughed at herself. She’d been so intent on keeping her little fantasy bubble intact, she’d tuned out all the chatter and gossip about what anyone thought of her and Griffin. “So…what’s the word?” she asked, admiring her ring as she slipped her hands up his shoulders and around his neck. “Should I have been placing bets down at Hannigans?”

He shook his head. “The odds suck.”

She felt a little deflated at that. “Really?”

“Unless you were going to bet against us. Everyone thinks you’ll say yes.”

“Oh!” She grinned then. “Well, turns out they were right.”

He lifted her up into his arms and spun her around. “How much work is left on the Traybill cake?”

“I finished just as you came in.” She leaned down and kissed him.

“Perfect.”

He scooped her up in his arms, which elicited a little squeal of surprise. She liked the caveman thing, too, as it turned out.

He leaned over just enough so she could reach the worktable. “Grab that red one. The chocolate one, too,” he said, meaning her pastry bags.

“Why?” she asked, even as she leaned down and snagged them both.

“I thought we could start planning the wedding cake design a little early.” He turned and headed up the back stairs. He bumped them through the door and didn’t stop until she was in the middle of her bed.

She hadn’t had the chance to make it since they’d left it earlier that morning. The linens were in a heap, and the pillows were still arranged in the way he’d moved them under her stomach so he could—

“Oh!”

He’d slipped her surgical pants down and had started to create his own version of a rose…on her inner thigh.

“Damn,” he said. “That didn’t come out right.” He leaned down and caught her eye as he licked it off. “Let me try again.”

“It’s dark in here, you can barely see. You don’t know how to do roses yet.”

“I know.” He grinned. “Lucky you.” He slid her panties off, and started another one. Right in the middle of—“Damn,” he said, seconds later.

Her hips rose to meet his tongue. “Lucky me, indeed,” she gasped. She reached for him, but he was intent on having his way with her…with his usual maddening, perfectly torturous, slowly wrenching thoroughness, until she was quivering, shaking, and clutching at him. “Come here,” she managed, grasping his arms as he settled between her thighs.

“Oh, I’m coming, luv,” he said, treating her to a cheeky wink.

Then he slid inside her, but rather than slip his arm beneath her back, and move immediately into the primal rhythm they both so easily gave themselves over to, he stayed, buried deeply, and slipped her hand from his neck, turning it palm up, where he pressed a gentle, beautifully sweet kiss in the center of it, then curled it closed, so the diamonds on her ring finger twinkled in the moonlight.

“Ye have me heart, Melody mine. Ye’ve made me the happiest man on earth, agreeing to come back with me, to my home. I’ll do everything in my power to make sure ye never regret it.”

“I know I won’t,” she said, caressing the side of his face, as she lifted her hips and he slid more deeply inside her. He already knew her body so well, so instinctively, she was swiftly climbing to another peak. She moved her hips beneath him, also knowing his body so well that she knew just how to take him with her.

They kept their rhythm slow, their gazes locked, and each stroke was like a promise. As she felt him gather, he lowered his mouth to hers, to claim her in the same instant that she would claim him. She whispered against his lips, “I know I won’t, because we’re already home, Griffin. That’s always going to be wherever we are together.”

“Then welcome home, luv,” he said, grinning as he took her mouth…and the rest of her heart. “Welcome home.”