The Naughty List Bundle with The Night Before Christmas & Yule Be Mine. Fern Michaels

up. I thought I needed the stimulation of a bigger town, with more people, to push me intellectually. I didn’t think I could find that kind of satisfaction in my hometown. I love everyone here dearly, but I thought my world needed to be bigger to truly fulfill what I saw as my potential.”

      “Sometimes, you do have to leave. You weren’t wrong to try.”

      “No. No, I wasn’t. You’re right. I don’t regret the choices I made. Or the education I worked so hard for. But while I was realizing those choices were sucking the soul out of me, Bernie was launching this business. I started to bake. And baking…” She let the sentence drift off on a sigh. A sigh so full it captivated him.

      “Your eyes go all…” He lifted a shoulder when the words weren’t there. It was an arresting sight, to be sure. “When you talk about what you do now, a look comes into your eyes. That’s your soul, all aglow. But you know that.”

      She nodded, but looked surprised at his description. “You’re very—”

      “Observant,” he finished for her, feeling somewhat exposed. She brought out things in him even he didn’t know resided there. “It goes with my line of work.”

      “Thoughtful, was the word I was going to use. You put a lot of thought into what you do, what you say.”

      He had a laugh at that. “Most of the time, I’d say aye to that. But around you? Let’s just say I haven’t found it to be the case. Apparently I’ll blurt out just about anything.”

      “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

      He grinned. “If you say so. What is it about baking that soothes the savage tax attorney?”

      “I’m not certain,” she said, and that smile came across her face again. It truly did light her up from the inside. “I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I still haven’t any idea. Except you used the right word: soothe. It’s exactly that. I don’t know that I needed soothing. I needed something I cared about more than taxes, maybe. But it wasn’t like my life was horrible. Just not fulfilling. I only started baking to help Bernie. But it seemed to…I don’t know, settle my mind, center me. Working with my hands, understanding the basic chemistry of cooking, and then applying imagination to that…” She shook her head, but the dreamy look was there again, and when she turned that smile on him, it was incandescent. “You’d think a tax lawyer wouldn’t have a creative side.” Her smile widened. “But, apparently, I do. And it has been an endlessly satisfying and gratifying experience, giving myself a chance to explore it.”

      It was at that precise moment, the very look on her face, in her eyes, made an ache bloom inside his chest. For the first time in his adult life he let himself want something other than business success. He let himself want the one thing he’d very, very carefully made sure he’d never allowed himself to consider. He understood that the whole world did not operate the way his family had. Even in his own family, despite the passionate squabbling, he’d seen a lot of loving relationships. He just hadn’t been part of one personally.

      What he knew about love had a lot more to do with ducking punches and being constantly belittled for looking different, being different. He’d ducked, he’d hidden, he’d done whatever he could to avoid the kind of “love” his father had for him. His own grandmother had tried to protect him, but his father was her only child, and she doted on the drunken bastard. She’d done what she could for Griffin as her son’s only son, scuttling him into her kitchen at the restaurant as often as she could, shielding him as best she could. But at the end of the night, she sent him home to sleep under the same roof as his father. There were only so many ways to disappear in a two-bedroom flat.

      When Griffin had gotten older, he’d fought back. Against his father, against his cousins, against his schoolmates. Against everyone who belittled or made fun of him. Everyone except Grandmama. She’d at least tried to help him. She loved him, in her own way. It was as close to an honest love as he knew. But she also loved the violent bastard who had been his father. She hadn’t wanted to involve anyone in what she viewed as a private family matter. She loved Griffin, but she hadn’t made the torment stop. When he was finally old enough to make it on his own, at age sixteen, he’d left. He’d decided then perhaps love was an emotion best avoided altogether. At least where he was concerned.

      He didn’t doubt its existence. He’d even entered into relationships, seeking companionship, if not much more. But he hadn’t truly made himself available in any of them. He understood the self-fulfilling prophecy there. He hadn’t been motivated or willing to reach beyond his past, beyond his choices, and change the pattern. He knew he was afraid of trying…and failing. He didn’t want to know that about himself. So Thomas Griffin Gallagher had focused on the things he knew he could do.

      The ache tightened further inside his chest as he watched Melody begin to work on her cake. His thoughts were inextricably twined, past and present. What he wanted, standing in front of him…and what he’d left behind. A year ago, he’d gotten life-altering news. About the diary. About his real heritage. All the pain, the hurt…and the rage, that he’d felt were so far behind him had come roaring back. All those years, his grandmother had listened to the mocking and the sneers. From inside the family and out. From his own father, who hadn’t even been her natural-born son, but whom she’d loved, perhaps to an unhealthy degree for the fear of losing him.

      They’d all taunted him mercilessly, about how he looked so different from the rest. And how ridiculous he was with all his fancy ideas of what they could make of themselves if they’d only listen to him. They’d thought he had no pride in his family, that his ideas were meant to denigrate their achievements. But they couldn’t have been more wrong.

      His grandmother had watched it all, and never told him. Never saved him by giving him the one thing he needed: a real family who understood and loved him for who he truly was.

      Griffin had her diary, knew she’d been unable to conceive, and that having a child had been the cornerstone of her every desire. When she’d heard about the babe being given up, she and his grandfather had stepped forward, then fled back to Ireland, due to her irrational fear the Havershams would take the baby back. She’d never told a soul, claiming the baby as her natural-born son, for fear he’d be shunned by the family if they knew. Griffin’s father had enough of the Gallagher look about him to get by, and no one had ever learned who his parents had truly been. But apparently Griffin had the look of Trudy’s family, fairer of hair and lighter of eye. He’d borne the brunt of being the outcast, not only because of his different looks but because of his different demeanor and way of thinking. If he had only known…it would have explained so much. Saved him from so much.

      But what was done was done. Whatever his last name was, or what blood coursed through his veins…didn’t matter. He knew who he was and what he wanted. If Lionel Hamilton could get him one step closer to fulfilling his dreams, then he’d take that as the first stroke of honest-to-God luck he’d ever had, and build on it. It was the kind of foundation he understood. He knew how to grow that, nurture it.

      Looking at Melody Duncastle he was filled with…want. Want of all those things he’d shut himself off from. Want of things that scared the ever-loving hell out of him. He looked at her, and he wanted what those dreamy, content, confident eyes could bring to his life. He wanted her to look at him and feel all those same things. He wanted her to look at him…and glow.

      Bloody Christ, I never should have come in here this morning.

      “I’m a very lucky woman,” she said, as she continued the task at hand, bending down to begin a cluster of amazingly intricate roses. “To have literally stumbled into something that has been such a good fit for me. I do know that.”

      A lucky woman, he thought. No. Of the two of them, he was the lucky one. To have met her, been beguiled by her, compelled to open up to her. In the span of a single day, she’d turned his head completely around, and his thoughts to things he’d never contemplated before. If that had been the first day, what would a lifetime of days with her be like?

      Not that he’d ever know. He was no prize, that was for certain. She might