Naughty But Nice

by Donna Kauffman

  “Nothing,” she said tightly, then quickly clattered the cake pans she was juggling onto the waiting cooling racks. She dropped the oven mitts and curled the fingers of one hand into a fist.

  The cakes were a rich golden yellow, and their warm, sweet scent made his empty stomach growl. But he was more concerned with the color of her hand.

  “Did you burn yourself?” He closed the distance between them. “Let me see, I can—”

  She shooed him back as she shifted to the other oven in the smooth, almost graceful manner of someone who had danced between them many, many times. She handled the mitts better and was more purposeful, sliding out one tray at a time and placing them on a different cooling rack.

  He didn’t push her about the burn, he just got out of her way. “Do you ever tire of the scent?” he asked. “It’s wonderful, and, along with your fresh roast, quite like paradise would smell, I imagine.”

  She didn’t respond. He noted she didn’t look at him, either. He should just let the moment go. Only he didn’t want to. Hence his lame attempt at conversation. He thought her lack of response was because she was busy unloading her ovens, arranging cooling racks, and rearranging the hot racks inside the ovens. But once those tasks were complete and the beeping timer had ceased, she made herself enormously busy arranging the hot pans just so on the cooling racks, then going over to the refrigerated units and burying her head inside one, then another, rooting around ... but coming out empty-handed.

  “It’s the one memory of my grandmother’s place, of my childhood, that stays with me,” he persisted. “The scents, I mean.” Then he abruptly snapped his mouth shut. He didn’t like her withdrawing, had wanted to keep her in the moment with him, but he had no earthly idea what had made him blurt out that little tidbit. He didn’t mind sharing the personal stories of those he’d helped over the years. He considered those stories triumphs, business successes. He didn’t share stories about himself. And definitely not about his childhood. Other than surviving it, there was nothing worth mentioning.

  In fact, he should take the annoying intrusion of those blasted timers as the signal they surely were. A signal that it wasn’t the time, nor the place, and she was most definitely not the woman to be distracting himself with. He had a very specific job to do. One that, if done properly, would become the single most important thing he’d done to date. Definitely the most meaningful. That opportunity was everything he’d dreamed his future could be. He’d tackled bigger jobs, even more prestigious ones, at least as far as the initial stages of the Hamilton project went. But it was very different from all the others. Because it was personal. It was his.

  Where he could go with it, where he could take it, if he worked hard, and made the right decisions . . . went beyond his wildest dreams. And he’d allowed himself to dream pretty big. He’d had to. The last thing he needed at such a precipitous moment was a reminder of where he’d come from.

  And yet ... he’d been the one to bring it up. Even more startling to him was that he hadn’t been lying. It was the best memory of an otherwise brutal childhood. The very best. He hadn’t allowed himself to think about it in a very long time. Because it was hard, if not impossible, to think about one part ... and not all the rest. A long time ago, he’d needed to use those memories, every vile one of them, to motivate himself when things were hard, or when he thought his wits weren’t going to be enough to get him where he wanted to go.

  They had to be enough—the only other things he had were his fists. He knew, all too keenly, what it felt like to fight his battles with those. That sure as hell wasn’t going to be his future.

  “Look at me now, Da,” he murmured beneath his breath. “Look at me now.”

  “What kind of restaurant did she run?”

  He jerked his gaze up, and his mind away from that path. He shouldn’t be here. He looked at her then, trying, struggling, to regain the perspective that was as natural to him as breathing. The perspective that steered him singlemindedly toward his goals. Being with her ... wanting her as he did, was not the way to get there.

  So, when he quite readily said, “Irish pub, actually,” he knew with absolute certainty that somewhere between sipping her coffee and kissing her lips, he’d lost his mind.

  “I know Sean’s place over in Willow Creek is absolutely wonderful. Warm atmosphere, good hearty food, great music on the weekends. I’ve always felt a warm welcome there. Was your grandmother Gallagher’s place like that? There’s more than one Gallagher place in Ireland, I know. Sean talks about his extended family all the time,” she added.

  She was nervous, he realized. It was the only explanation for her sudden chattiness. Welcome to the party, luv, he thought, making no move to leave, as he bloody well knew he should.

  “Aye, there are several. I grew up in West Cork.” He’d started to say his branch of the family was from there, but skipped it. He was still unresolved about the information that had been kept from him all his life. A life that could have been improved far, far sooner had he known the truth. “Our pub was down by the waterfront, so it brought in an interesting . . . clientele.”

  She opened the cooler doors again, and came out with a large container. “Here,” she said, handing it to him, then turning around to get another, and still another.

  He put the first carton on a rolling tray beside the worktable. Apparently . . . he was staying.

  “Sounds like an interesting childhood,” she said. “Did you spend a lot of time in the pub? Or were you too busy going to school or”—she paused for a moment as she reached over the worktable, trying to set it back to rights, then glanced at him as she finished—“playing sports?”

  He saw her gaze roam over his face. He knew exactly what she saw. And what she thought. Probably wasn’t far off in her assessment. Most people assumed he’d earned his scars and odd bumps the hard way, by putting his fists up first, and thinking later. In actuality, he’d earned them a far, far harder way, but he never corrected the assumption.

  “I worked in the pub my whole life, or as long as West Cork was my home, anyway. Everyone in the family did.”

  “Did you resent it?”

  He caught her gaze then, and realized she wasn’t asking idly, or making empty conversation. She was looking at him, and her expression was one of sincere curiosity.

  “Because I think I would have,” she went on, when he didn’t immediately reply. “At least a little.”

  “I loved being in the pub,” he said quite honestly. It was when he’d been the safest. For him that meant the happiest. “Not so much the bar itself, but the rest of it. Families came, no’ just the men to play darts or lift an ale. Everyone we knew was there at one point or another over the course of the week.”

  Memories tugged at him, and he was quite surprised to realize that not all of them made him flinch and want to look away. It had been a very long time since he’d pulled them out and looked them over. Up until a year ago, he’d avoided thinking about the past. He’d gone home then, leaving Dublin for Cork for a brief spell, when he’d found out about Lionel Hamilton. About being a Haversham by blood.

  And not a Gallagher.

  “That sounds kind of nice, actually,” she said.

  “What did your parents do?” he asked, partly because he was curious, and partly because he needed to think a bit more about his past before he shared it with her.

  “My father worked for Hamilton Industries as an account manager. My mother ran a daycare in our home. My grandmother—on my mom’s side—helped out with that. My folks both died when I was three, so I don’t have any real memories of them, other than the pictures and the endless stories my grandmother told me. She raised me after they were gone.”

  He set the last carton on the rolling tray, then walked over to her. “You’ve experienced a lot of loss in your life, Melody Duncastle.” He laid his palm on her shoulder, turning her toward him. She didn’t pull away. “I’m sorry for that.”

  “It was a very long time ago,”
she said, “but thank you.”

  “Your grandmother, she’s gone as well now?”

  She nodded. “Also a long time ago. Right before I started law—uh, college.” She looked from his hand to his face. “You’re very affected by that. By loss. You were before, when I spoke about Bernadette passing away.”

  She was right about that, he supposed, though he’d never thought about it. He’d had far too few people to care about in his life, and even fewer to care about him. He was sensitive to the bond of love, cherished it for the special and unique gift it was, and knew how critical the loss of it truly could be.

  He had no earthly idea how he’d come to that moment, that conversation, that topic. But there he was. It was just as surprising as the fact that he was doing absolutely nothing to forward his personal agenda with her—getting her on his side of the Hamilton project.

  He supposed exposing himself, talking about things he’d rather leave unspoken, might have been seen as a tactical maneuver to gain her sympathy and her trust.

  But even he wasn’t cold enough, calculating enough, to mine his own past for gain. He’d go to many other lengths before trying that one. Hell, he might even accept defeat first.

  “I know what it’s like to have, and to have lost,” he told her. “I’ve seen my share of it. Experienced it. It’s never a good thing.” It was the first lie he’d told her. Not all loss was for the worse. “Not for those left behind, anyway.” That was a half truth, at best.

  She stopped rolling out what looked like a slab of rosecolored modeling clay and turned to face him fully. Her gaze was direct, probing, and highly disconcerting. No one ever looked at him like that. “Is that why you do what you do? To help people gain rather than lose?”

  It was a valid question. Stunning, because she very well might have a point. But he’d never put it together like that. Mostly because he didn’t spend much time analyzing his past, or himself. “I have a knack for figuring out ways to make things, places, more attractive. When things are eye-catching, they attract attention. It’s a simple law of nature. And it’s . . . I don’t know. I guess it always seemed quite obvious to me. How to improve things, how to make them more successful. But no one else seemed to see it. I could never figure out why.”

  “So it’s like a puzzle to be solved for you.”

  “I suppose that’s one way to look at it.”

  “Did you do that for your family? Help make the restaurant a success? Is that what launched you in that direction?”

  He snorted before he could stop himself. “Hardly. Although it was certainly where I’d first noticed what could be done.”

  “So . . . why not help them?”

  “For the very same reason you don’t want my help,” he said, with a dry smile. “They like things just as they are.”

  To her credit, she looked at least a little abashed, and nodded to concede the point. “But they are still doing well.”

  “On their own scale of measure, I suppose, aye.”

  “But not yours.”

  He didn’t respond to that, simply held her gaze steadily. She knew the answer to her question.

  “So, do you ever think their logic might apply here? That we’re fine the way we are?”

  “Cork, and my family’s business there, or, more to the point, all of the family businesses, are doing fine without my help. Aye, that is the truth of it. I’d thought to take all of our independent restaurants and pubs and unify them.”

  “You mean, like making a chain out of them?”

  “As you term it here, something like that, yes. The Gallaghers could have doubled their successes and provided more security for their countless offspring. Were any of them truly visionary, they could have taken it far, far beyond that.”

  “But they didn’t want to. And, maybe more to the point, they didn’t want you doing it for them.”

  “Correct on both scores.” He purposely broke the intimate link their connected gazes seemed to have forged and turned his attention to the rolling cart. “Now, what can I do to help?” he asked, blatantly changing the subject.

  “I’m sorry if my questions trespassed on territory you’d rather leave untouched.”

  “ ’Tis all right. But perhaps we’ve wasted enough time and should be seein’ to getting these wee cakes frosted. I used to be a fair hand in the kitchen when I was a boy, so if you give me a bit of direction, I imagine I can do a passable job.”

  She didn’t respond right away, and he could feel her gaze on him. It should have felt awkward or uncomfortable. But it was neither. He realized he felt comfortable with her in a way he’d never felt with anyone else. He wasn’t entirely sure why. She was hardly nonthreatening, certainly not naïve. She was clever, smart, and very likely to poke and prod at things he’d rather she didn’t. She would not be easily steered and definitely not readily controlled.

  Yet, he’d never found himself so drawn to a woman, so swiftly and easily smitten. Maybe it was because of the challenge she presented. Not just from a business perspective, but also from the personal one. He never let anyone in. Not ever. No exceptions. Yet, he was falling all over himself to spill out each and every one of his deepest, darkest secrets. And he had more than the average share.

  Perhaps it was because her interest was sincere; she truly wanted to understand him. He didn’t feel judged when he offered up an answer. Instead, he simply felt more clearly understood. That was ... well, quite an intoxicating thing. Something he hadn’t realized he even wanted for himself. He’d never much cared what anyone thought of him, only of his ability to meet their business needs.

  It led him to wonder what her needs were ... and if there was any chance in hell he could be the one to meet them.

  6

  They’d been working practically side by side for several hours. She had a rolling rack full of cheerful, frosted cupcakes to show for their efforts, each decorated with a festive holiday touch. It was past midnight, and there was still an hour or two of work left, providing he stayed. Melody wondered why he had. But she hadn’t asked. In fact, from the time he’d so abruptly changed the subject to the work at hand, that had been the only thing they’d talked about. Most of the time, they’d worked in total silence.

  It should have been awkward. It had been a very . . . unusual evening between them. But it hadn’t been awkward at all. Far from it. She wouldn’t go so far as to say it had been comfortable; his nearness was far too disconcerting for that. But they’d found a good working rhythm almost effortlessly. He’d been right about having a natural sense for working with his hands, working with food.

  She’d noticed that despite the strength in his big, scarred, callused hands, he could be quite gentle, precise even. As the night wore on, she’d given him more of the intricate work, short of the actual details he simply wouldn’t know how to do without a great deal of practice. He’d turned out to be far more help than she’d expected him to be.

  Still, as distractions went, he was a mammoth one. Not in terms of getting work done ... but certainly in terms of his effect on her.

  Griffin Gallagher wasn’t someone who could traipse into, then back out of, her life without leaving an indelible mark. Even after one night spent together, she’d remember him in exquisite, unforgettable detail. Eyes like his could haunt, that accent would certainly resonate inside her thoughts and memories . . . and his kiss—she couldn’t think about it if she had any hope of completing the highly stylized decorating she was attempting.

  The man she’d begun to know, the few layers she’d peeled back, had been tantalizing to her. There was depth, and thoughtfulness, and a great sense of purpose. And a background he was clearly ill at ease talking about. There was a roughness and a refinement to him. She’d bet the former had come first, which meant he’d had to work hard to achieve the latter. He was complicated and complex, and he intrigued the hell out of her. The chemistry made him that much harder to ignore.

  So, what should she do when the bubble burst, and the
y were forced to return to the real world, and the very real people in it? They were on opposing sides. Granted, she saw his side far more clearly ... but the insight hadn’t changed her opinion on his proposed changes to her home.

  “Should I bring the larger cake over now?” he asked, as he gracefully took the tray of cupcakes she’d finished detailing and slid them onto the last storage rack. “Is the fondant soft enough for rolling?”

  She smiled at that. “Listen to you, sounding like a pastry chef.”

  He shrugged, but smiled. “Not me. Growing up, I never fancied making desserts. Was always far more attracted to chopping things up, I suppose.”

  “Well, you’d have made a good baker. You’ve got the hands for it.”

  He laughed outright. The sound of it was rich, melodious, and surprisingly infectious, much like his voice. “These hams?” He held them up, the latex gloves he was wearing stretching tightly over his knuckles.

  “You’re surprisingly graceful with them,” she said, her tone as dry as her smile. But she’d been sincere with the compliment. “If you ever decide to give up your burgeoning empire and the need to make the world over, I could use them here. A little bit of time and training, and I daresay you’d soon be challenging me as lead baker.” She cocked her head. “Goodness knows what kind of innovative things your mind could come up with. We could put Cups & Cakes on the map.”

  She’d been teasing, but hadn’t expected his expression to change like it did. She’d expected, maybe, some double entendre about her needing his hands, had—maybe—said something along those lines for that very reason. She just ... was mixed up and turned on and tired out.

  She wasn’t prepared at all for the way his expression grew serious, or the way he took her shoulders in his big hands and turned her gently but firmly so he could trap her between him and the table.

  She didn’t reject the invasion of privacy. Hell, her body was all but throwing a welcome party. If she were being honest, she’d wanted his hands on her again since the damn oven beeper had gone off hours ago. But the look in his eyes wasn’t sensual, or even predatory, though it felt like both to her. He was just ... serious.