The Naughty List Bundle with The Night Before Christmas & Yule Be Mine. Fern Michaels
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cousin—and there were endless numbers of them—was uncanny. Dark hair, flashing blue eyes, charming grin, above average height and build, all of which held true whether they were male or female.
While Griffin was certainly impressive enough in the latter two departments, he was neither dark-haired nor blue-eyed. In fact, it was his close-cropped sandy blond hair, slightly darker brows, and thickly lashed, pale-to-almost translucent green eyes that had caught her off guard when she’d come bustling out of the back.
He looked lean and rugged, even in a perfectly cut suit and overcoat that had likely set him back more than she cleared in a month. His face was hard and angular, giving him the almost brutish air of someone who could hold his own in a brawl. The slight bump on the bridge of his nose indicated he probably had. Then he’d smiled, and there had been a surprising twinkle in his eyes, an unexpected sensual curve to those chiseled, hard lips, all combining to transform him from street tough to fallen angel. One with a very tarnished halo, who would no doubt try to tempt her into any number of unwise adventures.
After losing an entire morning’s work when her cooling racks had collapsed, she’d already been thrown for a loop, more concerned about replacing the crushed cupcakes for the Hamilton Senior Center centennial birthday celebration than rushing to see to the immediate needs of whoever was in the front of her shop.
To discover him behind the counter, and worse, finding herself hopelessly caught up in those ethereal eyes of his, and the naughty promises his smile was making…not to mention that absurdly sexy accent hanging in the air between them…well, it was no surprise she’d taken refuge in the anger and frustration she’d already built up toward him, even though their paths had never crossed. It seemed a lot safer than allowing herself to think, even for one tiny second, that she might be attracted to the man whose very presence in her little town was a threat to everything she held dear.
Ever since the discovery of the diary, the town of Hamilton couldn’t stop buzzing about whether Lionel would recognize Trudy’s descendant as a true heir to the massive Hamilton empire. Trevor had come back long enough to help Sean and Holly verify the story in the diary, eventually connecting Griffin with Lionel and reiterating his desire to live his life on his own terms. Last Melody had heard, he was doing quite well with that plan. He lived in North Carolina with his wife of several years, Emma. In fact, Trevor and Emma had just added to their menagerie of rescue animals with a bouncing baby boy.
Melody smiled at the thought as she brushed flour off the front of her jacket, thinking it nice that people followed their dreams and found happiness in their successes. She’d thought she’d done that very thing when she’d left Hamilton as a high-minded seventeen-year-old, intent on earning a law degree and living her life in the fast-paced, oh-so-current world of the nation’s capital. By the time she’d entered law school, the grandmother who’d raised her was gone, and Hamilton was merely a fond memory of a childhood left behind for bigger and better things.
Melody snorted at that. Bigger maybe, but better, not so much. She’d lasted four years post graduation in the toxic hell that was life as a DC tax law litigator. Staring at her thirtieth birthday, worried about having the soul sucked directly out of her, she’d realized she needed a new dream.
She’d initially been lured back to Hamilton by her best childhood friend, Bernadette, the only one she’d remained in contact with over the years. Bernie had begged her to come and lend her tax and legal expertise in setting up Bernie’s new bakery business. So Melody had taken her first vacation since…ever, deciding she could use the two weeks away from the merry-go-round her life had become to do some serious soul-searching and rethink her goals.
Instead, she’d found herself baking. A lot of baking, in fact. She hadn’t reached any conclusions, but the baking had calmed her, centered her, given her something to do with her hands, and freed her mind from the endless loop it seemed to be on of late. When she returned to her life in DC, still unsettled and unhappy, she’d enrolled in a pastry chef course. Then another one. Followed by an entire semester, crammed in with her regular workload, at a local culinary school. She still hated her life as a tax attorney, but baking things helped level out the stress. In the absence of any other great life plan, it was better than nothing.
Then Bernadette had broken down and told Melody what had really led her to ditch her job as a senior advertising accountant with Hamilton Industries and follow her private dream to launch her own bakery…she had cancer. Starting a bakery was something she’d wanted to do before she died. With stage four Hodgkin’s lymphoma, that eventuality was going to happen sooner than she’d thought.
Melody’s path had become crystal clear then, all her priorities painfully and abruptly defined. Without a single pang of regret, at the age of thirty-one, she’d handed in her resignation, packed up her essentials, and walked away from the law degree she’d spent many years and a ton of money obtaining, along with a career that was the envy of many. Heading south to be with her friend for whatever time they had left, she’d learned how to run a bakery…and how to watch a best friend die. Ten months later, she was alone in Hamilton again…and the new owner of Cups & Cakes. Bernadette’s dying wish became Melody’s new lease on life.
A new life Melody had grabbed with everything she had. In the town she’d thought a part of her past, she’d found her future and more happiness and fulfillment than she’d ever thought possible.
“I’ll be damned if some spooky-eyed Irish devil is going to screw things up now.”
With that thought bolstering her, she squared her shoulders and headed back to the kitchen area to face the first disaster of the morning. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do about the second one.
She’d had every intention of being at the town council meeting, along with a number of the town square business owners. The news of Lionel’s bold new plans for the town—which had turned out to be Griffin’s brainchild—had leaked out about a month ago and spread like wildfire. The speculation was that Lionel had known the truth about Trudy’s bastard child all along, and had, in fact, gone to great lengths to keep it quiet. For decades. When he announced he was naming Griffin the heir who would be stepping forward to assist in guiding the future of Hamilton Industries, it had been the biggest scandal to hit the town in as long as anyone could remember.
Thomas Griffin Gallagher—and, rightfully, also a Haversham—was reputedly a mini-Lionel in his own right, already well on his way to establishing a burgeoning empire of his own in the U.K. His specialty, so the nosy hens of Hamilton had ferreted out almost before he’d set foot on American soil, was finding new ways to market and brand old concepts, old businesses, even entire old towns, and revitalize them into something prosperous, thriving. All for a percentage, of course.
He’d spun himself to be the pied piper of revitalization, a veritable Extreme Town Makeover magician. Until you dug a little deeper and discovered that not one of those little businesses, brands, or towns remotely resembled what it had been, once the reincarnation was complete. More prosperous? Sure. But lost in the reconstructed and homogenized shuffle was what had made the businesses, brands, and towns special in the first place. Melody understood in some of those cases, without change, there would have been no corporation, brand, or village left to save. It wasn’t the case here. Hamilton wasn’t failing.
There was a difference between saving a sinking ship…and changing things purely for greed and the desire of more-more-more.
Melody didn’t care if Griffin took on the expansion of Hamilton Industries’ global prospects, but as far as she was concerned, he could leave the town of Hamilton itself right the hell alone. “I just want the town I already have,” Melody grumbled, as she started clearing the mess in the back room. She had enough cupcakes in reserve to cover the centennial birthday, but it would leave her shop empty of its namesake treats…and none of the reserve cupcakes had been decorated as yet.
After Melody had scraped the last of the dumped cupcakes and bigger cakes that had been on the bottom rack into the trash and shoved all the trays into the industrial-size sink, she got the mop to start on the floors. “Fondant on floors is so much fun to clean.”
She blew her hair out of her face—again—indulged