A Hamilton Family Christmas - Donna Kauffman Page 0,120

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 in for a kiss. “I lost my sparkle. What did I say?”

“We don’t . . . we don’t talk like this.”

He cupped her face. “Maybe we should.”

A hot stab of fear pierced her heart. No. She simply wasn’t going to. She felt like a child, thinking if she just closed her eyes, she could will time to go backward instead of forward, and she could stay where she was, in the perfect place, with this perfect man, forever.

“Melody.”

But, of course, that wasn’t going to happen. It hadn’t worked when Bernie had been drifting in and out of consciousness her last few days, and it wasn’t going to work now.

She lifted her gaze to his. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

His mouth tightened, just a little, at the corners. She already knew him well enough to know what that meant. The regret she saw in his eyes chipped at what little control she had left. She’d tried her hardest not to think about the day