The Naughty List Bundle with The Night Before Christmas & Yule Be Mine. Fern Michaels
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’.”
8
He crushed his mouth to hers, and it only took the breadth of a single heartbeat for her to respond. She grabbed him right back…and took him on fully, willingly, and completely.
One of them growled. She didn’t know which end was up, or down, and in that moment, didn’t much care.
Far too many things had happened that day. The very last thing she needed to do was complicate an already seriously complicated situation by having anything more to do with him. Certainly that particular kind of anything.
Yet, it was the only thing she felt certain of. She wanted him. She might not be able to keep him, but with everything