One Mistletoe Wish

by A. C. Arthur

“Well, I don’t know about you, Harry, but I’d like to see those run-down buildings stay right here in this town. They’re a part of our history and even if he’s just returning to town, they’re a part of Gray’s history as well,” she insisted.

  “‘Gray,’ as you call him, doesn’t give a crap about this town or those buildings. He’s just worried about how much money they can make him,” Harry quickly retorted.

  Morgan wanted to yell. She wanted to tell him that Gray did care and that’s why he was still here, giving her time to prove that the buildings should stay. But she couldn’t because she really didn’t know that what Harry just said wasn’t true. Instead, she stood and shook her head.

  “Somebody has to try and convince him to do otherwise. But since people in this town would rather sit back and talk a situation to death instead of getting up off their butts and doing something, I guess that someone has to be me,” she said.

  “He doesn’t give a damn about you or anyone else in this town. The only use he has for a pretty woman is to get her in his bed.”

  Morgan’s cheeks were on fire now. Her hands clenched at her sides as she tried valiantly to remain calm. Harry had no idea that she’d been with Gray in that way. He couldn’t possibly know.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I don’t mean to upset you.”

  She was already shaking her head. “No. I’m not upset.”

  Morgan lied. She was upset and embarrassed and she wanted Harry to leave so that at least some of her emotions would subside.

  “But I do have a ride home. Thank you so much for the offer, though. I guess I’ll see you later at the caroling,” she said when Harry made a motion to walk around the desk to where she was standing.

  “Who’s taking you home? I saw Wendy going to the hospital. She’s working the night shift.”

  Okay, she hadn’t secured a ride home, but Morgan would walk if she had to. It wasn’t that far, even though she’d probably end up carrying Lily at some point. It didn’t matter—she was not getting in Harry’s truck.

  “I am.” Gray’s deep voice sounded from the back of the classroom.

  Harry turned and Morgan looked back to see Gray—dressed in another custom-fit and too-damn-sexy suit—walking toward them.

  “She doesn’t need to take rides from you in that fancy car,” Harry said the moment Gray stood in front of him. “I can drive her around just fine.”

  That might be true, but Morgan didn’t want him to. If she was still not completely convinced that Harry’s feelings for her were much more than she wanted to reciprocate, she was positive now.

  “That’s okay, Harry. You don’t have to spend your time worrying about me and my kids. Gray can drive us home,” she said.

  On one hand, she was still feeling too embarrassed and confused to be around Gray again. On the other, being with Harry was only going to feed his belief that there was something more between them. Morgan figured she was choosing the lesser of two evils.

  He turned so fast and stared at her with such hurt and anger that Morgan almost faltered. Harry just continued to look at her as if waiting for her to say something different. She didn’t and when he took a step toward her, Morgan saw Gray move. He was standing beside her in the next second.

  “I’m ready whenever you are,” Gray said, more to Harry than to her, she thought.

  “I, um, just need to grab my things and go get the children. The bell should be ringing in a few minutes and the music class is near the back door,” she said and moved to the side, away from both men.

  “You don’t get to come here and start barking orders,” Harry told Gray.

  Morgan looked up at him, still shocked that he was acting this way. “He’s not giving anyone orders, Harry. He offered me a ride and I accepted. That’s all.”

  “He’s using you!” Harry shot back.

  Morgan was angrier now than she’d thought she’d ever been before. “Using me? I’m a grown woman, Harry. And I’m pretty sure I’m capable of deciding who can give me a ride home. How that equates to him using me, I’m not sure.”

  “He’s cozying up to you so that he can get you to give in about those damn buildings. That’s what his type does to women. You don’t see him coming to town to talk to any of the men about the buildings, do you? Hell, he should be dealing with Fred Randall, not you. You’re just a teacher.”

  “That’s enough,” Gray said solemnly and once again moved closer to Morgan.

  “Don’t talk to me like that,” Harry said, his voice booming in the room as he stepped closer to Gray.

  “Stop it!” Morgan said, squeezing between the two men. “Harry, you’re acting like an ass. I’m taking the ride home with Gray and since you think I’m nothing but a fluff-head female that can’t tell when someone is using me or not, why don’t you run along and find yourself someone else to insult!”

  She didn’t move and wouldn’t look away when Harry stared down at her. It was a standoff, which she never would’ve imagined herself in, between two men who looked like they could probably do each other bodily harm. And her own adrenaline was drumming through her veins as if she might want to physically do some damage herself.

  How dare Harry stand here and say all the crap he’d just said to her?

  “You should leave,” she heard Gray say from behind her.

  “You,” Harry said, pointing a finger at him. “Don’t tell me what to do!”

  “Go, Harry!” Morgan said. “I have a ride so there’s no need for you to be here right now.”

  She felt a little like crap speaking to Harry—her longtime friend—that way, but hell, he deserved it after insulting her the way he just did.

  Harry huffed and looked like he was going to actually take a punch at Gray, but he didn’t. Instead, he stormed out of the classroom looking like a petulant child.

  Chapter 9

  Have a holly jolly Christmas! Have a holly jolly Christmas!

  Gray rolled over, dropping an arm over his still-closed eyes, and grinned. Three days after they’d gone caroling, he could still hear Lily singing. She’d sung all that night, even as she ate chicken salad sandwiches and slurped chicken soup at the church. Every song they’d sung as they walked through the streets of Temptation, plus a few she’d added because she said she’d heard them on the radio earlier that day. Gray took that to mean two things—that she loved Christmas as much as her mother and that she also loved to sing.

  Jack, on the other hand, wanted his sister to stop the minute she’d begun.

  “She sings so loud,” he’d complained as he walked beside Gray, holding his hand.

  Lily, once again, was in Gray’s arms. He never really knew how she ended up there, just that whenever he came near her, his arms seemed to itch to hold her. She was light as a feather, her cherublike cheeks soft as she nuzzled against him when she hugged him close. Was there ever anything that had felt this good? Gray had wondered as they’d moved through the streets.

  “It’s cold enough to snow,” Jack had said after two or three songs.

  He’d only sung the parts to the songs he knew, and usually only after Morgan had given him a questioning look because he was too quiet. Gray could totally relate. He wasn’t a singer, either. Still, there were some lyrics he knew and when they came to a stop across from a row of homes where he was told the town’s oldest living couple lived, they sang “O Come, All Ye Faithful” and Gray sang along. His mother had liked this song. She had sung it every holiday as they decorated their Christmas tree.

  When he opened his eyes it was to a dim room and Gray immediately turned to look at the clock on the nightstand. It was after eight in the morning. He’d stayed up late last night going through the boxes of documents that Phil had sent from his father’s house and his office. There’d been so many interesting things inside that Gray hadn�
��t wanted to stop until he’d gone through each one.

  One box had been full of Theodor’s papers, copies of his divorce decree and all their birth certificates, which had been clipped together. Gray had frowned when he’d found those, then quickly put them to the side. His mother had the originals. Gray knew because he and Gemma had been the ones to go through Olivia’s things after she’d died. Another box had large brown envelopes inside. On each envelope was one of the Taylor children’s names. Gray shuffled through until he found the one with his name. He didn’t realize how long he held that envelope in his hands until finally he decided to put that on the side, too.

  There were also notes on what Theodor had planned for the properties in Temptation. He’d wanted the hospital to undergo another renovation, one that would include an addition to the building. This would be called the Taylor Generational Wing and would feature a state-of-the art facility focusing specifically on infertility and the management and care of multiple pregnancies through multiple births. Theodor planned to put twenty-two million dollars into the project.

  Gray had been stunned.

  The money from Theodor’s estate had been equally divided between him and his siblings. There was nothing else. So where was Theodor getting this type of money from?

  Gray continued going through the other boxes, finding pictures of them when they were young, many more than he’d ever thought his father would have kept. There were also bonds for each of them that probably should have been kept in a safe-deposit box. Gray doubted they were worth very much, but he’d put them on the table with the envelopes that he would have delivered to his siblings. The last thing Gray had found before he’d headed to bed was a picture of his mother and father. It immediately reminded him of the portrait he’d seen that day at the B and B, because his mother was seated and his father stood behind her with a hand on her shoulder. Theodor did not wear a hat, as the man did in that portrait, but his facial expression was stoic, almost to the point of being worried. His mother’s expression was complacent, a look he’d seen her with much too often. Still, his gaze had rested on his mother’s wedding ring and the gold band his father wore also. They were committed to each other, regardless of what was going on at that moment in time. Gray had wondered what had happened to that commitment.

  Sleep had taken a while to come that night. He’d been plagued by thoughts that he was more like his father than he’d wanted to realize. The only thing that Gray had ever committed fully to was his company. He kept tabs on his siblings and communicated with them, because he knew his mother would have wanted them to stay together. But if there was something that needed to be done on the work front, he’d been known to put his family on the back burner. What did that say about the type of man he was?

  With a sigh Gray climbed out of bed and went to the window. He looked out to see the farm blanketed in snow. The weatherman had predicted winter weather the night they’d gone caroling and Jack had been more than ready for it, but it never came. Now, days later, it looked like a world of white out there.

  Gray went to take a quick shower. Once he was dressed he tried to bring some semblance of order to the papers and things from the boxes. He didn’t want to repack them just yet because he was still taking notes on the buildings and Theodor’s plans for them. He also wasn’t ready to put away the envelopes with their names on them—something inside warned him that they were important. So important that looking at them right away was almost terrifying.

  Gray made a call to Phil, instructing him to go back over all of his father’s financials to see if he had some hidden stash of money that even Theodor’s lawyers didn’t know about.

  “I want to know about every penny and every account with his name on it,” Gray told his lawyer. Then he had a thought.

  Turning with his cell phone in hand, Gray looked at the six brown envelopes still lying on the table where he’d put them last night.

  “Check for bank accounts in our names,” he told Phil. “Use each of the children’s names and search the banks in and around the area of Temptation. Also, offshore accounts.”

  Phil probably had no idea what Gray was talking about—it was barely ten in the morning on a Saturday. Gray was positive that his thirty-year-old attorney, who liked to spend his nights in hot clubs and his days in the courtroom, was still rebounding from his Friday-night antics. Gray didn’t care, he needed to find out if Theodor had been hiding money and why. His father had studied engineering while in college, only to return to Temptation, where he worked in the town council’s office supervising and approving any road work and handing out permits for renovations to citizens. Once he’d left the town and his family, Theodor had opened the first Taylor Manufacturing Company in Syracuse, New York. There, the different engines he designed began being sold to various toy and clock companies.

  Over the years Theodor made good money and then he’d been contracted by a Japanese auto company to build engines for their entire new lineup of cars and trucks. After that, Gray had watched the stock in Taylor Manufacturing soar and his father become a billionaire before he turned fifty. To an extent, Gray knew that was part of what drove him. He’d always wanted to be better than Theodor Taylor.

  When the call was finished, Gray grabbed his coat and a change of clothes. What he had planned for the day was bound to get messy, he thought with a smile as he left his room and ventured out into the blustery cold morning.

  His car was not made to be driven in a foot of snow, but with the help of Jim Coolridge, who was already up and out shoveling his walkway so that he could get out and tend to his animals, Gray’s car was finally on the road. He drove slowly, as there’d been no plow coming down these streets. He marveled at the fluffy white substance that hung on trees and covered the landscape because it had been so long since he’d last seen it. When the weatherman had called for snow and Gray knew he’d still be in town, he’d ordered some things online. Luckily, they’d arrived yesterday morning. He wiggled his toes in the insulated boots he was now wearing. They were oddly comfortable, even if the puffy ski jacket he wore was beginning to make him sweat in the heated interior of the car.

  When he pulled up in front of Morgan’s house, Gray couldn’t wait to go inside. He felt like a kid again as he slumped through the snow, only to frown as he saw that the snow had once again started to fall and that Morgan’s sidewalk was covered with it.

  “Got a shovel?” he asked the moment she answered the door.

  “What?” she asked with a confused expression, obviously not used to men showing up at her door on Saturday mornings.

  “So I can shovel the sidewalk,” he told her.

  While she was standing there looking perplexed, Gray smiled. He liked seeing her hair matted to one side and her thick purple robe belted tightly around her slim waist. He knew that as cold as it was out there, the last thing he should be thinking about was how sexy she looked, but he couldn’t help it. He wanted to grab her up in his arms and swing her around. He’d nuzzle her neck the same way Lily did his and enjoy the softness of her.

  “Yay! Mr. Gray’s here! We’re gonna make snowmen!” Jack yelled from where he now stood behind his mother.

  “Can we, Mama? Can we go out and make snowmen now?” Jack asked.

  “It’s cold and it’s still snowing and—” Morgan stammered.

  “I know I’m from Miami, but I’m thinking these are the best conditions to make snowmen,” Gray told her.

  “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. It is. Best conditions, Mama. The best!” Jack continued, this time pulling on the belt of Morgan’s robe.

  “Mr. Gray’s here in the snow! He’s not wearing a suit, Mama,” Lily noted when she peeked her head around Morgan’s other side.

  Gray shrugged. “You might as well toss me the shovel and get them dressed. They’re never going to give you any peace if you don’t.”

  Her frown said she’d de
al with him later. The children’s excited laughter as she backed away and closed the door meant she was going to take his suggestion. The shovel was tossed outside moments later, followed by the door slamming.

  * * *

  Two hours later it was still snowing. Morgan had never seen such huge flakes as they fell all around them. She’d bundled up the kids and dressed herself warmly and had come outside to see Gray moving the snow with ease. He’d been almost finished shoveling the walkway at that point and she’d gone over to help him, while Jack and Lily had instantly fallen onto the ground to make snow angels.

  “You make one, Mama,” Lily insisted, coming over to grab Morgan’s hand.

  “Let me finish this first,” Morgan said.

  Lily pouted and seconds later, Morgan felt herself being lifted from the spot where she stood. With a yelp she wrapped her arms around Gray’s neck as he’d easily scooped her up into his arms. “You wouldn’t,” she warned just seconds before he’d grinned down at her and then dropped her into the snow.

  Stunned, embarrassed, irritated. None of those words meant a thing in comparison to Lily’s and Jack’s immediate giggles. They both jumped happily on her as she lay there and Morgan hugged them close. She loved when they were happy. That was the reason she’d hustled them to the side, got up and then fell back in the snow on her own, spreading her legs and arms to make an angel.

  Gray was standing beside her when she got up.

  “Beautiful,” he said, and used his gloved hands to wipe flecks of snow from her face.

  “I’ve always been good at making snow angels,” she told him.

  He shook his head and whispered, “Not the angel.”

  Jack’s snowman took priority after that and the four of them worked long and hard to build the biggest and friendliest one they could. Morgan tracked snow through the house to find a scarf, an old thick Magic Marker for its nose and spare buttons for the eyes.

  “He doesn’t look like Frosty,” Lily proclaimed as they stood back and admired their handiwork.