The Naughty List Bundle with The Night Before Christmas & Yule Be Mine. Fern Michaels
off his gloves and brushed her cheek with his fingertips. “Good memories. I’d somehow forgotten there were some of those, sprinkled in.”
“I’m sorry I made you go back. I am,” she went on, when he would have silenced her. “I didn’t know. I mean, I suspected it wasn’t good, your childhood, but then you said something about your grandmother’s place and I guess I just wanted to understand you better. I thought if I got a sense of where you came from, I’d be able to figure out who you are now.”
“Why does that matter?” He pressed a finger across her lips, and the touch made her shudder with renewed awareness. “Because it will help you figure out how to fight me?”
“Yes,” she answered honestly. “At least, that would be the intellectual answer.”
“There’s a different one?”
“There’s more to it than that—now. It matters, Griffin.” She touched his face and was stunned by the way his eyes instantly darkened. His reaction to her gentle touch was…visceral. “I don’t know why. We’ve only just met. But…it matters. That I know you. I didn’t just want to know more. I needed to know. Not because I’m scared of losing the hometown I love to some re-imagined resort vision of yours. I’d have sworn to that before. But now…”
“Now?” he prodded.
“You’re surprising me.” She cupped his cheek, held his face, looked at him directly. “I don’t know what this is, but it’s not about Hamilton—the town or the company. And it’s not about Lionel, or why you came here. Not this part. This part…is about me. I’m…you’re—” She broke off.
“What are we, Melody?” he asked quietly.
“We’re not like anything I’ve experienced. You’re—different. From what I thought. From what I know. I’m drawn to you.” She smiled a little. “And it’s not just the accent, and not just because I wanted to taste you.”
His fingers tightened on her, and she could feel him all but vibrating beneath her touch. Or maybe it was her. “You, the man…you intrigue the hell out of me. And…I want more. I want to know…everything. I wish to God you were here for any other reason, because I want what I want…and that includes keeping Hamilton the way it is.”
“That’s no’ going to happen,” he said gently. “No matter if the town as a whole rises up. We’re going forward with the resort, the hotel, the golf courses, all of it.” He braced her face. “We’ve no choice, Melody.”
“Then why not tell me the whole of it?” she asked, just as fervently. “If I can’t change it—”
“You can make it a lot harder than it has to be.”
“So tell me why I shouldn’t bother. Tell me, Griffin. I know your loyalty is to Lionel in this, but it’s my home. I deserve to know. We all do.”
He held her gaze for another interminable minute. “Lionel…has made some mistakes. Some bad ones. The decisions on how to fix it—they’ve been made, Melody. The money has been invested. We will go forward, and we must succeed. We’ll need your help, the help of all of you, to make it the best success possible, and the swiftest, which is to everyone’s advantage. But it will go forward regardless. Or you won’t have a hometown.” He pulled her in closer. “Without this change in direction, Hamilton Industries will collapse.” He tugged her into his arms, and, stunned, she let him. “Lionel didn’t offer me anything”—he whispered in her ear—“because he didn’t have anything to offer. But if I save this…then what I save will be mine to build on.” He kissed her temple, then nudged her until she looked at him again.
She knew her eyes were swimming with tears. Tears of loss, tears of shock, tears of grief.
“I take care of what’s mine, Melody. I always have. And I always will.”
7
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