One Mistletoe Wish

by A. C. Arthur

  “She can just drop me off at the B and B once she leaves here,” Harry was saying when Morgan looked up to see that he and Wendy were still standing there.

  “Ah, actually,” Morgan said, “I was going to ask Wendy to take the kids home with her. Granny wants them to help her wrap presents.”

  “Sure,” Wendy said with a slow nod toward Harry. “And since your parents’ B and B is right around the corner, I can drop you off, too.”

  Harry immediately looked to Morgan.

  “That’s great,” Morgan said. “I have to just get the kids together so they’ll be ready when their parents show up. Thanks again, Harry.”

  Morgan replied to Gray’s text as she walked away. Tomorrow she’d have to buy Wendy some of those chocolate-covered raisins she loved so much from Mr. Edison’s candy shop. Not only was her sister taking her kids, but she’d also thwarted Harry’s plan to be alone with Morgan.

  * * *

  It had been a while since Morgan had been out to the Coolridge farm. Two years ago, with revenue from the farm tight, the Coolridges decided to use the space where the family used to breed horses to hopefully make ends meet. As far as Morgan knew, they were still barely scraping by as there didn’t seem to be that many tourists who wanted to come stay on a farm without the basic amenities of the real world.

  She walked up the steps to the Owner’s Suite, where Netta had informed her Gray was staying. For a moment Morgan had thought about texting Gray and asking where his room at the farm was instead of alerting someone else to her presence there. Then she decided what the hell. The entire town already knew she and Gray were involved ever since she’d had the brilliant idea for them to decorate her Christmas tree in front of the news cameras.

  “Hi,” she said when he opened the door.

  “Hey. Come on in,” Gray said before walking away.

  The first thing Morgan realized as she stepped inside and took off her coat was that she’d never seen Gray like this before. He was disheveled. He wore jeans, which she’d gotten used to over the past couple of weeks. There was no doubt that this man could wear the hell out of a suit, but the jeans gave him an even more dangerous and rugged look that she found enticing as well. Closing the door behind her, Morgan also noted that he wasn’t wearing any shoes and his T-shirt, which he would normally have neatly tucked into his pants, was out and wrinkled.

  There were boxes and papers all over the place. A tablet sat on the table amidst more papers and files. On the bed were his cell phone and briefcase. Something was definitely going on with him and despite her resolve to draw the line between them, Morgan wanted to know what it was. She wanted to help, if she could.

  “What’s going on, Gray?” she asked.

  “I found it,” he said.

  He ran a hand down the back of his head and sighed heavily. “I found it,” Gray repeated.

  “You found what?” she asked. It looked like he could easily lose something in this room.

  “The money,” he told her, a slow grin creeping onto his face.

  “What money?”

  Gray was a multimillionaire, Morgan knew that. So watching him look excited and relieved over money left her baffled.

  “My father’s money. I mean, the money he put aside for the town,” Gray continued.

  He moved quickly to the table, picked up a folder and thrust it toward Morgan as he continued to talk.

  “It was Fred,” he began. “He’s the one that told Millie about my dad’s plans for the hospital. Remember you told me about that?”

  Morgan looked up from the bank statements she was reading and nodded. “Yes, I remember.”

  “Well, I found the plans. They’re right here,” Gray said, picking up another file. “He outlined everything here. When I first saw them I read them over and over again, wondering why he would go through all the trouble to write this down if he didn’t really have intentions to see it through.”

  “Okay, wait a minute, slow down. I don’t understand,” Morgan told him.

  “After my father’s attorney read his will, me and my siblings split the money and sold his house in Syracuse. None of us wanted it. I had everything from the house put into storage until one of us felt like dealing with it. There were two cars, a truck and a sedan. His will said he wanted them donated to the Pediatric Cancer Foundation in Richmond. He was born there and he had a twin brother who died from leukemia when they were three. Then I came here to sell the last properties he owned. We just wanted to be done with everything that concerned him as quickly as we could.”

  “Okay,” she said, trying to follow the conversation and relate it to the huge sums of money she read on the statements she held. “So if you already split the money, sold the properties, put his belongings in storage, what is this?”

  Gray smiled then. A huge smile that touched his eyes and squeezed Morgan’s heart.

  “My father was a simple man. One of the things I remember about him was that he didn’t like flashy cars or clothes. When we were on television there were lots of offers for endorsements. Companies would send boxes and boxes of clothes and toys and things. Dad sent them all back. The paycheck from the show was all we needed. That’s what my mother told us. That’s one of the reasons she couldn’t understand why my dad had suddenly fallen for the glamorous producer and walked away from his family.”

  He shook his head.

  “After he was gone and they divorced, Dad started doing something he’d always loved—building things. He built engines and he turned that into a profitable business. My mother never had to fight him about child support because he always paid and sent gifts on our birthday and Christmas. He also sent us clothes at the beginning of the school year. He had bought a house in Syracuse—a modest house—and the two cars. Everything else, every other dime he made, he’d put into seven accounts in a bank on Grand Cayman Island.”

  Morgan was beginning to understand now.

  “He saved money for each of us and for this town,” Gray told her. “It was his intention to give back to the town that had given him his family.”

  She looked down at the statements again and shook her head the same way Gray had just done. It was incredible and astonishing, and it made Gray extremely happy. For Morgan, surprisingly, that was enough. She stepped over the papers on the floor and went to him, wrapping her arms around him and hugging him tight.

  Gray hugged her even tighter, burying his face in the crook of her neck.

  “All these years,” he said, “I wanted to hate him. He left us and we didn’t know why. We thought he didn’t love my mother, or us, enough to stay. As I grew older I just thought he was an ass and I didn’t want anything to do with him. But while I wanted nothing to do with him, all he thought about was us the entire time he was gone.”

  Morgan nodded. “Yes, he did. He was determined to take care of you and your brothers and sisters, even when he was gone.”

  Gray pulled back. “And this town. He loved Temptation and all that the town had brought him.”

  “It seems he did,” Morgan said, still holding the folder. “He loved the town a lot.” A nervous giggle escaped as she recalled the 6.8 million-dollar sum in the account marked The Taylors of Temptation, LLC.

  “He did,” Gray said with a nod. “He absolutely did love this town, and you know what?”

  “What?” she asked as Gray slipped the file from her hand and dropped it to the floor.

  “I can see why he did. I can see why this small town of Temptation was so alluring to him.”

  “You can—” Her words were cut short when Gray grasped the nape of her neck, pulling her lips to his for a scorching-hot kiss.

  He was devouring her and she loved it, loved the feel of his fingers scraping over her scalp as he tilted her head for deeper access. The other hand, strong, gripped her bottom, pressing
her closer to his already thick arousal.

  “Since day one,” he murmured against her lips, “it’s been you. Not this town, but you.”

  Morgan heard his words, even over the wild beating of her heart. She wrapped her arms tightly around his neck in an effort to hold him as close to her as she possibly could. Gray apparently wanted the same thing. As he turned, he lifted her up so that her legs wrapped quickly around his waist.

  “Now you’re all I think about,” Gray said before thrusting his tongue deep into her mouth once more.

  Morgan accepted his kiss and luxuriated in the heated sensations moving swiftly throughout her body. The sound of his voice, the touch of his hands, his mouth. Everything about him, about this moment was like a drug and she was deathly afraid that she was addicted. So much for drawing a line between them.

  He walked them over to the bed then, keeping her in his arms as he reached behind him to push everything on top of the comforter onto the floor. He lowered her to the bed, yanking her sweater over her head, then hastily undid her pants and pushed them down her legs. When they stopped at her boots, Gray pulled them off quickly, tossing them across the room. Morgan undressed him as well, as anxious to feel him completely as he was to feel her.

  “Since day one,” she said, repeating his words, “it’s been this way since day one.” And there was no denying that now.

  “Yes,” he murmured, now naked, as he came over her, lifting her legs to once again lock behind his back. “Just you,” Gray said, sinking his rigid length slowly, but most deliciously, inside of her.

  Morgan trembled, her blunt-tipped nails digging into the skin of his shoulder. “Just you.”

  He moved much slower than she’d anticipated, which made the moment that much more intense. This was the moment she knew she had fallen. She’d wondered in the past few days, thought it was a fantasy, that it could ever happen this way, this quickly. Hell, she’d been in love before so Morgan was certain she knew how it felt. She was so damn wrong.

  They rolled over the bed, Gray holding her tightly as she came up over him, continuing their slow ride to pleasure. When he sat up, too, holding her closely and kissing her mouth eagerly, she whimpered. This emotion was so much stronger and gripped her heart until she thought she might choke.

  “I don’t do relationships,” he whispered in her ear. “You don’t want this.”

  Morgan shook her head. “No,” she sighed. “I don’t.”

  He moved and she moved, their bodies joined to the hilt. He was thick and hot inside of her, filling physical and mental places she’d never even known existed.

  “Yes,” he whispered again, his hands going from her back, down to cup her bottom. “Yes, Morgan. Yes!”

  She was shaking her head, her legs and arms trembling. His voice echoed in her head. His laughter, his smile, his words.

  “Yes,” she said, repeating him. “Yes, Gray. Yes!”

  This plunge was different than before. Not like she’d fallen off a cliff to bliss, but as if she’d decided in that moment to make the jump. “Gray!” she yelled as every part of her shivered and shook with the intense release that claimed her.

  He was right behind her, holding her tightly as his erection throbbed deep inside of her. He kissed her then, swallowing her cries into his own, until they both went still, only their hearts beating.

  * * *

  “Sonofabitch!” Kym screeched the moment she stepped inside Gray’s room.

  He moved quickly, pushing Morgan away from him and pulling the comforter over to cover her nakedness. As for the fact that he, too, was naked, Gray didn’t really care. He was much more concerned with his assistant, who had just barged into his room without calling or knocking first.

  “What are you doing?” he asked as he got off the bed and reached for his jeans.

  “Apparently, not as much as you are,” Kym quipped. “I heard the rumors flying around, but you know, it’s a small town so you never know what to believe. Besides, I didn’t think you would ever sink so low.”

  Kym gasped and pointed to where Morgan still sat on the bed. “Her? Really, Grayson? You’re choosing her?”

  “You’re out of line,” Gray told her once he had his pants buttoned. “You’ve been out of line for weeks. I want you to leave this town today and get back to the office.”

  “She’s a small-town slut!” Kym continued. “Looking for a daddy to her bratty children.”

  “Now you wait a minute,” Morgan said, climbing off the bed, the comforter still wrapped around her. “You are not going to talk to me or about my children like that.”

  “Shut up!” Kym yelled at her. “You’re stupid, too. How can you be tasked with teaching children when you’re so damn stupid? He’s not in love with you. This isn’t some rags-to-riches story, sweetie. He’s a millionaire. He doesn’t belong in this sorry town and he certainly won’t stay here with you, no matter how much you put out.”

  Gray didn’t see it coming. He would have never in his wildest dreams thought it would happen right in front of him, but it did. Morgan punched Kym so hard in the face that Kym fell flat on her ass, onto the pile of papers Gray had been reading just an hour ago.

  “I’m pressing charges,” Kym immediately squealed as she tried to get up.

  Gray looked at Morgan to make sure she was all right. She wasn’t even breathing hard. He resisted the urge to smile and moved to help Kym up from the floor.

  “I want her in jail, Grayson. She needs to be behind bars and then we’ll get out of this dirty little town,” she continued.

  “No,” he said simply. “You’re going back to Miami. Today. And if I hear one word about you talking to the cops, you’re going to be sorry you ever met me.”

  Now on her feet, Kym wrenched her arm free of his grasp and looked at him with pure anger bubbling in her eyes. “I already do,” she told him before turning and walking out of the room.

  “She’s going to sue you for wrongful discharge,” Morgan said from behind him.

  He’d been watching the open doorway, feeling the brisk cold of the evening against his bare chest and wondering how he’d come to be here in this place and in this predicament. Six months ago he was in Dubai brokering yet another lucrative business deal. He was sleeping in penthouse suites and sipping fifty-thousand-dollar bottles of champagne. Now, he was staying on a horse farm, wearing jeans and freezing his ass off.

  “She can’t,” he said as he moved to close the door. “She’s an at-will employee. Meaning she’s there at my will. I have the sole authority to fire her without cause or notice. My employee handbook is clear and airtight, as per my attorney, who is on a monthly retainer.”

  She’d pulled on her jeans by then, and her sweater, alerting Gray to the fact that she’d thrown that punch while wrapped only in a comforter. How was that for sexy?

  Morgan ran her fingers through the top of her hair.

  Gray moved closer to her, taking her hand and kissing her slightly bruised knuckles.

  Chapter 12

  Christmas Eve

  Today was going to be a busy day. Not that the last couple of days hadn’t been, Morgan thought as she sipped on her second cup of coffee. Wendy had already picked up the children and they were doing what her sister called the best type of shopping—the last-minute kind. They were all going to meet at the community center at four o’clock this afternoon. Before then, Morgan needed to wrap her own gifts, clean her house and make sure everything was in line for the play that night. That meant she needed to go to the center and check on all the props, the programs and the lights, and had to call Mrs. Reed to see if she required any assistance with the food.

  Yes, Morgan thought, she needed this second cup of coffee, and possibly a clone to get through this day. That thought had her smiling and shaking her head. She realized she wouldn’t wan
t her life any other way. She loved the tasks she was responsible for in Temptation, and loved the thought of all the pleased faces once the play was finally being performed. Tomorrow would be Christmas, the first Christmas where the children would have her and Gray...and the barrage of toys he’d purchased for them.

  Morgan still couldn’t believe all the stuff that was delivered to Gray’s room at the farm. The train set that Jack had been begging her for all year long and the baby doll that looked like a real child that Lily insisted she needed to complete her five-year-old life. Plus so much more. He’d also bought clothes, shoes and coats for them. It was too much, Morgan knew, and she’d attempted to tell him the same.

  “Nothing is too much for them,” he’d told her. “This is the only time in their entire lives that the most important thing will be the promise Santa keeps. It’s a magical time of wishes and expectations, cheer and excitement. I want that for them. The same way I had it, I want Jack and Lily to have the same.”

  She’d stopped the argument then because the mere fact that this man wanted so much for her children left her speechless. There was a lot about Gray that had left her without words or explanations lately. She’d enjoyed thinking about him about as much as she enjoyed being with him, which was part of the reason she almost didn’t hear the knock on her door.

  Morgan put down her cup and made her way to the door, then pulled it open without looking through the peephole to see who it was. A part of her had thought—hoped—it was Gray. That part was sadly mistaken.

  “Happy Christmas Eve,” Harry said, a huge grin on his face.

  Morgan heard his voice but it took her a moment to realize he was down on his knees.

  “Happy Christmas Eve, Harry. What are you doing?” she asked, pulling her robe closed tighter around her.

  Harry reached for her hand, holding it tightly in his. “I wanted to do this right now before things got too hectic today,” he told her.