by Natalie Ann
Copyright 2018 Natalie Ann
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without a written consent.
Dedication: To Rachel, in memory of your father, André. May he know how very much he is loved and missed daily. He will forever live in your heart and will never be forgotten. May this Christmas bring you fond memories to help ease your sadness.
Also to Heather Snyder as the Fresh Fiction contest winner.
Author’s Note
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The Road Series-See where it all started!!
Lucas and Brooke’s Story- Road to Recovery
Jack and Cori’s Story – Road to Redemption
Mac and Beth’s Story- Road to Reality
Ryan and Kaitlin’s Story- Road to Reason
The All Series
William and Isabel’s Story — All for Love
Ben and Presley’s Story – All or Nothing
Phil and Sophia’s Story – All of Me
Alec and Brynn’s Story – All the Way
Sean and Carly’s Story — All I Want
Drew and Jordyn’s Story— All My Love
Finn and Olivia’s Story—All About You
The Lake Placid Series
Nick Buchanan and Mallory Denning – Second Chance
Max Hamilton and Quinn Baker – Give Me A Chance
Caleb Ryder and Celeste McGuire – Our Chance
Cole McGuire and Rene Buchanan – Take A Chance
Zach Monroe and Amber Deacon- Deserve A Chance
Trevor Miles and Riley Hamilton – Last Chance
The Fierce Five Series
Brody Fierce and Aimee Reed - Brody
Aiden Fierce and Nic Moretti- Aiden
Mason Fierce and Jessica Corning- Mason
Cade Fierce and Alex Marshall - Cade
Love Collection
Vin Steele and Piper Fielding – Secret Love
Jared Hawk and Shelby McDonald – True Love
Erik McMann and Sheldon Case – Finding Love
Connor Landers and Melissa Mahoney- Beach Love
Ian Price and Cam Mason- Intense Love
Liam Sullivan and Ali Rogers- Autumn Love
Owen Taylor and Jill Duncan – Holiday Love
Chase Martin and Noelle Bennett- Christmas Love
Zeke Collins and Kendall Hendricks – Winter Love
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Can Jolene help Gavin find the Christmas spirit when he’s the epitome of Mr. Bah Humbug?
Gavin Fierce didn’t always hate Christmas. He wasn’t always grouchy about caroling, decorated trees, and the holiday spirit. But a tragedy broke him of all those fond family moments and memories. Now it’s not worth opening himself up to it again. Why bother to magnify the hurt even more?
Jolene O’Malley has always gotten her way. A little loud, a little overzealous, and a whole lot of pushy. She doesn’t know why Gavin feels the way he does about her favorite holiday, but she’s determined to make him understand. To make him feel something she knows is just hidden away trying to find its way out again. If anyone can make Gavin change, it’s her. After all, she’s a master at helping others.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Losing his Mind
More Like You
Make it Festive
Mr. Bah Humbug
Right on Point
Put in his Place
Take Patience
Sweet Thought
Walk of Shame
His Lifesaver
Epilogue
Prologue
“Gavin, can you take the boys into the other room, please?” his mother asked.
He sighed. “I want to go outside and help Dad. I want to see if the ice turns to snow.”
“I’d rather you entertained the boys while I finish getting dinner on the table. If it does snow, it’ll still be there after dinner.” His mother stopped and turned to the set of twins currently chasing each other around the kitchen table, knocking into it and jarring the ingredients his mother was trying to lay out for his favorite Christmas cookies. “Boys! Enough. If you don’t stop, then Santa won’t come tonight and I can just stop baking right now rather than leaving out a snack for him. You’ll scare him away with all this noise.”
Grant and Garrett stopped in their tracks. At five years old, nothing put fear into a kid more than Santa not showing up.
At twelve, Gavin could care less. He stopped falling for that threat years ago. Now he’d rather be outside with his father throwing salt during the ice storm they were getting. Maybe with any luck it’d actually snow, though the chances of snow in Charlotte weren’t always that great. Still, he’d been waiting to have a snowball fight for his whole life.
“Santa has to come,” Garrett said, grabbing Grant’s hand and pulling him out.
“Go get them,” his mother said to Gavin, adding the smile that always melted his tough outer preteen shell even as he tried to deny it. “Just make sure they don’t knock the tree down wrestling.” He went to open his mouth and argue, but his mother had lifted her eyebrow in a knowing look that told him any argument would fall on deaf ears. “They look up to you like you do to your father. Think of it that way.”
He wanted to dispute it, but couldn’t. She knew him well enough. “All right.”
Twenty minutes went by with Gavin playing referee to his younger brothers rolling around on the ground trying to pin the other down. It was kind of amusing.
“Who’s winning, Gavin?” his father asked when he walked in the front door shaking water and ice from his head and broad shoulders. So much for the wish of snow by the looks of it. Stupid rain and ice again. That was all they ever seemed to get.
“Garrett has Grant by one round,” Gavin said.
The twins didn’t even stop to notice their father standing there, as both were too busy trying to pin the other to the carpet. His father ran his fingers through his hair, sending water cascading around the room, grinned and said, “I’m going to go help Mom in the kitchen. I’m starving.”
Helping Mom in the kitchen normally meant “stay out while your mom and I steal a few kisses.” Not that his parents ever said those words to him, but he’d walked in and interrupted them enough in his life. No kid wanted to see their parents kissing.
An hour later, the twins had gotten tired of wrestling and were now upstairs banging around doing something else loud and annoying, but at least they were out of his hair and not his responsibility.
Instead, he and his father were sitting on the couch watching football because it was Sunday and football was always the most important thing on Sundays.
“Dinner is ready,” his mother said, walking into the living room, leaning down and kissing his father on the forehead, then turning toward him. She was going to kiss him too if he didn’t skate out of there fast.
Jumping up, he said, “I’ll get the boys.” Which meant yelling for them at the bottom of the stairs. “Dinnertime,” he shouted. The noises stopp
ed over his head and then four feet could be heard running as they jostled each other out of the way to get to the table first.
They were halfway through the roast beef his mother had slaved over for the past two hours when the phone rang. Mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans. All his father’s favorites. Gavin’s too, because he was just like his father. Everyone said so. And Gavin could only hope he’d reach his father’s big six-foot-four-inch build someday.
His father got up and grabbed the phone before his mother could get it, and dread was filling Gavin’s stomach instead of the food.
“Okay, I’m on the way,” his father said.
“Do you have to?” Gavin asked. “It’s Christmas Eve.”
His father walked over and ruffled the hair on his head. “Sorry, bud, you know how it is. Big fire and they’re calling everyone in right now.”
Gavin knew how it went, but he hated when his father was working. “I know. I’ll watch over Mom,” he said before his father could tell him.
His father leaned down and gave Garrett and Grant a hug and kiss on the head like he always did before he went to work. Then he slapped Gavin five because twelve was too old to be hugged and kissed by his father. “Go to bed early for your mother. Maybe I’ll meet Santa leaving the house when I get home later. See you all in the morning.”
Only it was the last time they ever saw their father alive again.
Losing his Mind
Sixteen years later (Thirty-five years before Fierce Five-Brody)
Gavin looked around the bar that he’d sweated blood and tears over. Not that he’d ever tell anyone about the tears because men didn’t cry when they were tired and frustrated. Or they didn’t admit it if they did.
No one would believe him anyway. Big, tough, and a force to reckon with that matched his last name. Fierce.
He wasn’t feeling too fierce though after the last thirty days when he emptied his entire savings account out to renovate this bar.
His mother told him he was nuts, but there was nothing new there. She’d been saying it to him for years after his father died. Telling him he needed to loosen up. But he couldn’t because he had to be the responsible one in the family.
He didn’t care if she lectured him. All he cared about was buying this old run-down bar and turning it into what he envisioned it could be. A place where people went after a long day of work to have a beer, grab a burger and chat. The working class. Firemen, policemen, laborers. Nothing fancy, nothing upscale. A family of sorts to bring people together to laugh and relax.
Looking back, he remembered how his father would often get a drink after his shift at the firehouse and how Gavin always loved listening to the stories of heroism his father relayed when he’d come home. Were some of them made up? Probably. But back then as a kid, Gavin didn’t care because everything his father said was gospel to him.
After spending the past ten years in construction, Gavin was done with it. He was done working for someone else. He wanted to be his own boss. He’d been working since long before his sixteenth birthday trying to help support his family and take the load of responsibility as best he could from his mother’s shoulders.
When he graduated from high school, college wasn’t in the cards for him. It wasn’t his thing. He was smart, he was talented, and he was personable. But he needed to make more money than something part-time to help with his younger brothers still at home. He couldn’t do that if he was going to school.
But now his brothers were graduating from college in the spring and he’d done his duty as best he could. It was his turn to put himself first.
Starting with his own bar. Fierce. It was simple, it was his last name, and it suited him perfectly.
He put the last coat of varnish on the cherry wood bar, then threw his rag in a bucket and made his way to the bathroom to clean up. Now he needed more staff for when he officially opened the doors next week.
All his old buddies from his last job were itching to come in and check the place out. Many had sweated a few pounds off with him while he made this place shine. He owed a lot of free drinks to a lot of people and he was hoping that wouldn’t put him under before he even got off the ground.
Once he’d washed his hands and face, he walked back up front and took a seat in one of the booths he’d reupholstered. He loved how he got this bar so cheap, but once he had everything ripped down to the studs he understood why. If it wasn’t for the outer brick walls of the massive building, nothing would have been standing inside, which meant spending more time and money than he had anticipated.
But now everything was brand new. Bigger than he needed, but he’d grow into it, he’d told everyone and he believed it. At some point, but that point wasn’t now.
He looked up when he heard heels on the wood floor. He’d left the front door open, trying to get the thick chemical smell out of the air before he started interviewing.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hi. I was wondering if you were hiring?”
Her voice was firm, her smile bright and her dark hair pulled back exposing her lovely face. Her eyes were light, but he wasn’t sure what color, and they weren’t assessing him in the way he’d have preferred had he been out on the town some night looking for female companionship.
“I am. Did you drop off a resume? I’m doing interviews today, as a matter of fact.”
She walked forward and held her hand out to him. Firm again, but soft under the grip. “Jolene O’Malley. I didn’t drop off a resume, but I’ve got one with me.”
“Gavin Fierce,” he said, then let go of her hand and gestured toward the seat opposite him. “If you’ve got time, we can do an interview right now.”
She reached into her oversized bag and pulled out a folder, then a piece of paper. “My resume,” she said. “I’m going around dropping them off. I’d love an interview.” She unzipped her long coat but didn’t take it off, just slid into the booth.
He looked the piece of paper over that she’d slid in front of him. Waitressing experience, so that was a plus, just not in a bar. “Have you ever served alcohol before?”
“The restaurant I’m in right now serves alcohol, so yes. I do both. Food and drink. The more they drink, the more they eat, or vice versa. I’m good at getting customers to keep going.”
She laughed and he liked the sound of it. A little bit excitable, a little bit raspy, and a shitload of heat. “Why are you looking to leave?”
“They’ve got a lot of staff, so my hours aren’t as plentiful as I’d like. I’m either looking for a second job or one with more hours.”
He could use someone full-time if the person was reliable. “Can you cook?”
She burst out laughing. “Oh sorry. I thought you were joking. I can make the basic things, but nothing special. I’m not interested in a kitchen job if that is all you’ve got available.” She looked around the bar. “It’s beautiful in here and I’d feel really bad if you got horrible food reviews because I gave someone food poisoning.”
He smiled. He had to. Something about her was just engaging and yanking him into a world he’d pushed aside so he could get the bar going. “I do need some kitchen staff, but since I’ve put a lot of work into this place, I’d just as soon not have the paramedics here. Not unless they’re here as paying customers.”
She nodded her head rapidly. “Good point. But I’m great at carrying big orders. I’ve got phenomenal balance and I move fast.”
Since she hadn’t really stopped moving since she sat down, he was thinking she was telling the truth. If her hands weren’t waving while she talked, then her eyes were taking in everything. Probably a good trait to have in a bar. She’d be able to keep up on all the busy nights he was hoping to have.
“I was thinking of hiring several part-time waitresses, but if your schedule is open and you want more hours, I could swing it full-time.”
It might make more sense to have one or two reliable full-time staff. He was going out on a limb thinking she was reliab
le. She’d been at the same restaurant now for almost two years.
“Really?” she asked, almost bouncing on the seat. “What are the hours of business going to be here?”
“I’ll open around eleven, start serving lunches then, close midnight during the week, two on the weekends.”
“I’ll take any and all shifts you want to give me. When are you opening for business?”
“Next week,” he said. “I’m hoping to get the rest of my staff in place. I’ve got a cook and he’s hiring the rest of the staff as need be in the kitchen for me, but we’re just starting with him and one other right now.”
“I should give at least two weeks notice where I am. It’s a great place to work and they’d give me more hours if they could, but they try to be fair and I understand that. Still, I don’t feel right not giving them a few weeks notice.”
He was right—responsible. “I understand. Why don’t you let me know your schedule there and we’ll work around it. If you know of anyone else looking for a job, send them my way. Like I said, I’m doing interviews today, but just a few and that doesn’t mean I’ll hire them.”
“I know some people,” she said. “Let me think about it though. You want fast and friendly just like me, right?”
She winked at him and he felt a flush creep up his neck. When was the last time a woman winked at him...or that it affected him?
“Fast is good as long as they don’t drop anything. Friendly sells, so that’s a plus.”
She slid out of the booth. “Well then, I guess I don’t need to go looking for any more jobs today. Must be my lucky day.”
He shook her hand again. “Must be. Then again, with a name like O’Malley, you probably experience a lot of luck.”
