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 hands-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