Naughty But Nice

by Donna Kauffman

  “You had full pockets,” she finished on a smile.

  “Actually, for a very long time, I didn’t. I put everything I made back into the business. Sent the rest to my grandmother.”

  “Was she doing okay?”

  “She was fine. She had family to take care of her. But it was on me to do that, and I left.”

  “But—”

  “I didn’t say I regretted leaving. But it was still my place, my responsibility. I sent money, every month, until she passed.”

  “That was good of you.”

  “I wish I could say I did it for good, but it was part family responsibility, and part me wanting to show all my cousins back home what I’d made of myself. Not the most charitable of motives.”

  “I think you wouldn’t be judged too harshly for that.”

  In point of fact, he simply didn’t think about it. Not anymore.

  “Have you ever gone back?”

  “For her funeral,” he said. “To finalize her property.”

  “Didn’t the restaurant go to you?”

  “No, it rightfully went to my uncle, who’d worked for her for years, and had taken over most of the day-to-day as she’d grown more infirm. It was his family’s source of income, and they all worked there, too. It was the right thing. But she had personal things, and those I took care of.”

  One of those personal things had been her diary. He hadn’t read it at the time, not caring to dredge up history that was already well and truly behind him. He wondered what he’d have done with the knowledge that he was half American by blood, if he’d known back then. He would have looked up the Havershams to be certain, and possibly traced their last living heir, the long deceased Trudy, to Lionel himself. But that was neither here nor there, now. Funny, but talking to Melody about it should have made it feel more immediate all over again. Instead, he felt more settled with his history than he ever had before.

  “Do you keep in touch with them? Your uncle and his family?”

  He shook his head. “I went back last year, after I heard from Trevor and Sean.”

  “About Trudy’s diary.”

  He nodded.

  “I can’t even imagine what it would be like, to find out my family history isn’t what I thought it was.” Then her mouth formed a little O and she looked up at him again. “For you that had to be doubly brutal, coming from ... a difficult past. Had you known ... Do you resent not knowing? That your grandmother never told you?”

  “She would never have betrayed the maternal bond with my father, not even for me. Protecting him was far too deeply ingrained by then. Besides, we were Gallaghers. And Gallaghers stuck together. To be fair, I’m sure she thought she was doing the right thing, keeping me in the fold, as it were.”

  “So, no one else knew?”

  “Her husband, of course, but he died long before I came along. Everyone else thought my father was her natural-born son.”

  “But they all know now?”

  He nodded.

  “Do you feel ... I don’t know ... vindicated in some way?”

  “I thought I would. It did explain a lot. About why I look so different from all my cousins, and possibly even why my instincts follow industry rather than the traditional Gallagher love of cooking. Trudy’s family were industrialists, too, like Lionel’s. It’s how they met and why they married.”

  “I know. It was a great love affair, not just a business merger. The stuff of legends in these parts.”

  “I know that, too. They were lucky.”

  She tilted her head, studied him with a half smile on lips he was suddenly dying to taste again.

  “What?”

  “You don’t strike me as the sentimental type.”

  “I’m not. But I know what a bad union is like. If they could combine their family fortunes with a strong personal union, then more power to them.”

  “So, what did everyone think about your heritage when the truth came out?”

  “I didn’t ask, so I don’t know.” He didn’t really care, either. “What I do know is that you are way too far away.” He pulled her up on top of him. “Enough about me. I want to know all about you. Starting with this.” He wove his hands through her hair, and drew her mouth down to his, effectively ending her line of questioning ... for the rest of the night.

  10

  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 h
ands-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.”