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

engendered any number of faery jokes. He’d simply thought them idiots for not even giving his scheme a shot. “My cousins in Dublin weren’t much more open to the idea.”

      “Really? I was thinking that was your first success story.”

      “I think of it as my biggest failure, actually. But you can’t change what people don’t want fixed.”

      “I asked before, but do you think maybe they feel as I do?”

      “In some ways, yes. In most ways, they’re simply too stubborn to hear they might not be doing something the best way possible.”

      “That trait runs in your family tree,” she laughed. “I’m shocked.”

      He did have the good grace to smile, and, for the first time, soften his view regarding his family’s choices…at least a little. “It was while working for my Dublin cousins that I made a few suggestions to another shopkeeper. He thought they sounded like a good idea and put them to use. I didn’t make any money on that deal, but it gave me the confidence to flesh out my ideas. I started taking university courses while working, and that shopkeeper passed my name along, which led to a few small consulting jobs. And”—he shrugged—“it’s hard to explain, but it became a business. Lots of stops and starts and going off in far too many wild directions, but that’s what it took to figure out what would work. I was young, so it didn’t matter if it wasn’t good right from the start. I had the restaurant in Dublin as backup, always had a little cash in my pocket, and, eventually…well—”

      “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.