Marry-Me Christmas (6 page)

That made him laugh. Flynn MacGregor’s laugh was deep and rich, like good chocolate. “No. Definitely not. Most of the women I know spend their entire day obsessing about how to whittle their waists down to the next single digit.”

Sam patted her hips. “Well, as you can see, that’s definitely not me. My waist has never been considered whittled. Though maybe if I did cut back on the—”

“Don’t.” Flynn’s steady gaze met hers. “Enjoy the lasagna. Your waist is perfect just the way it is.”

Heat pooled in Sam’s gut. Other men had looked at her with desire of course. She’d had boyfriends who had made her feel wanted, even pretty, but never before had a single sentence set off a blast of fireworks in her veins. And here was this big-city playboy, seeing her as a sexy woman.

“You don’t have to butter me up,” she said. “I already agreed to the interview.”

He leaned forward in his seat, his blue eyes assessing her intently. “I’m not buttering you up for anything at all. You look beautiful tonight, Sam.”

A trill of joy ran through Sam, skating down her spine. “Well then, thank you.” She felt a blush fill her face, and she cursed under her breath. Time to get the focus off herself. Every time he looked at her like that, she got distracted from what was important. “I’ve told you plenty about me. It’s your turn.”

He paused. “I’m from Boston. I write for a magazine. I live alone, have no pets.”

She laughed. “You’re not a man who shares a lot about himself, are you?”

“Just the facts, ma’am.” He smiled.

But behind that smile, an invisible wall had been erected. Curiosity rose in Sam. What made Flynn MacGregor tick? What made him smile? Until tonight, he’d rarely done so. When his mouth did curve into a grin, the gesture transformed his face, his eyes, and seemed to make him into an entirely different person. The kind of person she would—under other circumstances—want to get to know.

Not today. Despite their agreement to put the interview on hold, she reminded herself to watch her words. Aunt Ginny’s warning about
Food Lovers
’ tendency to want the story behind the story came back to Sam. She’d have to be on guard tonight. Flynn MacGregor could be doing all this simply to get her to open up.

And not because he wanted her.

She should be happy. For one, she had no time for a relationship. She had a business to run, a business that was on the cusp of taking off and becoming something so much bigger than this little town, that corner location. She had people depending on her to take Joyful Creations to the next level—and getting sidetracked by dating was just not part of the recipe.

But what if it could be?

The lasagna arrived, and Flynn immediately took a bite of the steaming Italian food. “It pays to follow the locals when ordering food. This is delicious.”

“I know. It may say steaks and ribs on the sign out front, but the owner is a full-blooded Italian, so that’s his specialty, which also explains the décor. I think he just has the other things on the menu, because that’s what tourists expect when they come to Indiana. Not that we get many in Riverbend, at least until the last few weeks.”

“Because of the airline magazine’s mention of the shop.”

Sam buttered two pieces of bread, and handed one slice to Flynn, who thanked her. “That article, and the boost in business, was a blessing and a half, but one that has kept us hopping from sunup to sundown. In fact, after I leave here, I’m going back to the shop to get a start on tomorrow’s baking.”

“Tonight? But you already put in a long day, didn’t you?”

“That’s the life of a baker. No free time.”

“And yet, you want more.”

“I’m not a sugar addict, Flynn. I’m a success addict.” She shot him a smile.

Flynn pulled his notepad over and jotted down those words. If anything reminded her this wasn’t a date, that did. A flicker of disappointment ran through her, but Sam brushed it off.

For a minute, he’d given her the gift of a normal life. Let her feel again like a normal woman, a beautiful woman. That would be enough. For a while.

A really long while.

“Why?” he asked.

“Why does anyone want success?” Sam bent her head and took a bite of food, chewed and swallowed. “To prove you did well with your business.”

“That’s all? No other reason?”

No other reason she wanted in print. “That’s all.” She signaled to Holli to box up her dinner and pushed her plate to the side, her appetite gone. But that wasn’t what had her wanting to get out of the restaurant so bad. It was the way Flynn kept studying her, as if he could see behind every answer she’d given him, as if he knew she was holding something back. “Is that all you need? Because I really have to get back to the shop.”

“Sure. Thank you for your time, Miss—” He paused. “Sam.”

She reached into her purse to pull out some money for dinner but Flynn stopped her with a touch of his hand on hers. A surge of electricity ran up her arm.

“My treat,” he said.

“I thought you said this wasn’t a date.”

“It’s not. I have an expense account.”

Once again, disappointment whistled through her as brisk and fast as winter’s winds. “Oh. Well, in that case, thank you.” Sam rose and grabbed her coat off the back of her chair. “If you have any other questions, call me at the shop. That’s pretty much where I live.” She turned to go.

“Wait.”

Sam pivoted back, part of her still hoping—some insane part—that all this really had been a date, and not an interview. “Yes?”

“You mentioned something about having dial-up Internet access at Joyful Creations. Do you think I could come by tonight, if you’re going to be there anyway, and access my e-mail?” A grin flashed on Flynn’s face. “I’m having acute withdrawal symptoms. Fever, aches, pains, the whole nine yards.”

She’d been wrong.

He wanted her—but for her Internet connection only. That was for the best. Even if it didn’t feel that way.

“Certainly,” Sam said. “Like I said, that shop is my life.”

F
LYNN STARED
at the picture for a long time. The edges had yellowed, the image cracked over the years, but the memories were as fresh as yesterday. Two boys smiling, their hair tousled by the wind whisking up the Atlantic and onto Savin Hill Beach, their grins as wide as the Frisbees they held in their hands. One day, out of thousands, but that one day—

Had been a good one.

Flynn put the picture back in his wallet, flipped open his cell phone and scrolled through his contact list until he got to the name Liam.

Flynn shut the phone without dialing. He didn’t have a signal anyway. Not that he would have called if he had. He hadn’t dialed that number in over a year.

Liam hadn’t answered his calls in two.

He’d driven all this way, with a crazy idea that maybe Liam would see him if Flynn called. If he said he was a few towns away, and asked if Liam wanted to see him? Or maybe if he just showed up on Liam’s doorstep and surprised him, saying “hey, it’s Christmas, why don’t we just put all this behind us?”

Flynn shook his head. Maybe too much time had passed to heal old wounds.

Flynn rose and put his wallet into his back pocket. He swallowed back the memories, the whiff of nostalgia—had it been nostalgia or something else?—that had hit him for a brief second, then grabbed his laptop and headed out of the bed and breakfast and over to Sam’s shop.

From outside the window, he could see her inside, softly lit by a single overhead light, the golden glow spreading over her features. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have thought she was an image from a Christmas card—the painted kind famous for their lighting and muted colors.

Flynn shook off the thought. What was with him today? He was going soft, that was for sure. First, the picture, followed by the quick detour down Memory Lane, then the temptation to call Liam, and finally the comparison of this woman to an artist’s impression, for Pete’s sake. He was not the emotional type. Clearly, he needed to get out of this odd little town and back to the city. He entered the shop, his presence announced by a set of jingle bells above the entrance.

Jingle bells. He scoffed. Of course.

“I’m in the kitchen,” Sam called to him.

He headed through the darkened shop, pulled as much by her voice as by the scent of baked goods. The quiet notes of vanilla, mixed with the more pungent song of nutmeg, all muted by the melody of fruits and nuts. The scents triggered a memory but it was gone before he could grasp it. “Smells good in here.”

She looked up and brushed a tendril of blond hair off her forehead with the back of her hand. “Thanks. I’m usually too busy to notice anything other than how low the flour supply is getting.”

He slipped onto a stainless steel stool in the corner and laid his laptop on the small desk beside him. “Don’t you take breaks to taste the cookies? Dip into the muffins?”

“Me? No. I rarely have time.”

“Didn’t we already have this discussion about all work and no play…?” He let the old axiom trail off, tossing her a grin.

She gestured toward his computer. “Hey, speak for yourself, Mr. Nose to the Grindstone.”

Right. Get back to work. Flynn had no intentions of missing this deadline, because doing so meant putting his road trip on hold, and even though he wasn’t so sure of the reception he’d receive, he knew it was time to see Liam. That meant he needed to check in with the office and get a head start on writing his article. Procrastinating wasn’t going to restore his reputation at the magazine, nor was it going to get him any closer to seeing Liam. “Speaking of which…Can I use your Internet connection?”

“If you get lucky.” Sam colored. “I, ah, didn’t mean that the way it came out. I meant—”

“If the lines are working.”

“Yes.” She nearly breathed her relief.

“I wouldn’t have thought anything else.”

But hadn’t he, for just a second? Samantha Barnett was an attractive woman. Curvaceous, friendly and she was surrounded by the perfume of cookies. Any man with a pulse would be enticed by her, as he had been—very much so—at dinner a little while ago. Mimi had never seemed so far away.

Not that he and Mimi had what anyone would really call a relationship. They were more…convenience daters. When either of them needed someone to attend a function or to see a movie with, they picked up the phone. Days could go by before they talked to each other, the strings as loose as untied shoelaces. Mimi liked it that way, and so did Flynn.

Samantha Barnett, who wore her small-town roots like a coat, was definitely not a convenience dater. He’d do best to keep his heart out of that particular cookie jar.

Flynn cleared his throat, turned to his bag and unpacked his laptop, plugging the machine into the outlet on the wall and the telephone line into his modem. Sam gave him a phone number to dial and connect to her provider. He typed in all the information, then waited for the magic to happen.

Nothing. No familiar musical tones of dialing. No screeching of the modem. No hiss of a telephone line. Just an error message.

He tried again. A third time. Powered down the computer, powered it back up and tried connecting a fourth time.

“No luck?” Sam asked.

“Are you sure we’re not on Mars?”

Sam laughed. “Pretty sure. Though there are days…” She tossed him a smile, while her hands kept busy dropping balls of chocolate chip cookie dough onto a baking sheet. “That remoteness, that disconnect from city life, is all part of the charm of Riverbend, though. And what draws those droves of tourists.”

Flynn shot her a look of disdain. “All five of them? Not counting your temporary flood, of course.”

“Actually, it’s pretty busy here in the summer. And you saw the lines outside the shop today. People from big cities really like the rural location, and the fact that we have lots of lakes nearby for boating and camping.”

“The cityfolk roughing it, huh?”

“Yep. Except we have running water here.” Again, another grin. He noticed that when she smiled, her green eyes sparkled with gold flecks. They were the color of the forest just after a storm, when the sun was beginning to peek through the clouds.

Or maybe that was just the reflection from the overhead lights. Yeah, that was it.

Flynn gave up on his computer and shut the laptop’s cover. He rose and crossed to Sam. Was it the light? Or was it her eyes? “Why do you live here?”

She paused in making cookies, as if surprised by the question. The scent of vanilla wafted up from the dough. “I grew up here.”

He took another step closer. Only because he still couldn’t decide what caused the gold flecks in her eyes. Mother Nature or sixty watts. He’d been intrigued all night, first in the restaurant and now, wondering, pondering…thinking almost nonstop about her. A bad sign in too many ways to count, but he told himself if he could just solve this mystery of her eyes, the thoughts would stop. “Okay, then why did you stay? You didn’t have to keep the business open. You could have closed it and moved on.”

She opened her mouth, then shut it again, as if she had never considered this question before. “Joyful Creations has been in my family for three generations. My family was depending on me to keep it open.”

Another step. Flynn inhaled, and he swore he could almost taste the air around Sam. It tasted like…

Sugar cookies.

“What did you say?” Sam said.

Had he said that out loud? Damn. What the hell was wrong with him? He did
not
get emotionally involved with his interview subjects.

He did
not
lose his focus.

He did
not
forget the story. He went after it, whatever the cost.

Flynn backed up three steps, returned to his laptop and flipped up the top. It took a few seconds for the hibernating screen to come back to life. Several long, agonizing seconds of silence that Flynn didn’t bother to fill. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to work here for a little while. That way, if I have any questions while I’m writing, I can just ask them.” Meaning, he intended to probe deeper into the clues she’d dropped at dinner, but he didn’t say that. “And, I can try to connect to the Internet again.”

“Sure.” Her voice had a slight, confused lilt at the end. She put the sheet of cookies into the oven, then started filling another one.

Keeping his back to her, Flynn sought the familiarity of his word processing program. He tugged his notepad out of his bag and began typing. The words did what they always did—provided a cold, objective distance. It was as if the bright white of the screen and the stark blackness of the letters erased all emotion, scrubbed away any sense of Flynn’s personality. He became an outside observer, reporting facts.

And nothing else.

He wrote for ten minutes, his fingers moving so fast, the words swam before his eyes. Usually, when he wrote a story, pulling the paragraphs out of his brain was like using camels to drag a mule through the mud. He’d never been a fast writer, more a deliberate one.

But this time, it seemed as if his brain couldn’t keep up with his hands. He wrote until his fingers began to hurt from the furious movement across the keyboard. When he sat back and looked at the page count, he was stunned to see he had five solid pages in the file already.

Flynn scrolled up to the opening paragraph, expecting his usual “Established in blah-blah year, this business” opening, followed by the punch of personal information, the tabloid zing he was known for. Nearly all his stories had that straightforward, get-to-the-facts approach that led to the one nugget everyone else had missed. It was what his editor liked about him. He delivered the information, with a minimal peppering of adjectives.

“Can I read it?” Sam asked.

He hadn’t even realized she had moved up behind him. But now he was aware, very aware. He jerked back to the real world, to the scent of fresh-baked cookies, and to Samantha Barnett, standing right behind him.

“Uh, sure. Keep in mind it’s a first draft,” he said. “And it’s just the facts, none of the fluff kind of thing the airline magazine…” His voice trailed off as his eyes connected with the first few paragraphs on the screen.

“Visions of sugar plums dance in the air. The sweet perfume of chocolate hangs like a cloud. And standing amidst the magic of this Christmas joy, like the star atop a tree, is the owner of Joyful Creations, Samantha Barnett.

“She knows every customer by name, and has a smile for everyone who walks through the door of her shop, no matter how many muffins she’s baked or how many cookies she’s boxed that day. She’s as sweet as the treats in her cases….”

Flynn slammed the top of the laptop shut. What the
hell
was that?

“Wow.” A slow smile spread across Sam’s face. “And here I thought you were going to write one of those scathing exposés, the kind I’ve heard the magazine is famous for. I mean, you barely tasted any of the food here and…”

“And what?” he asked, scowling. He did
not
write that kind of drivel. He was known as a bulldog, the writer that went for the jugular, got the story at all costs. Not this sweet-penning novelist wanna-be.

“And well…it didn’t seem like you liked me.”

He didn’t know how to answer that.
Did
he like her? And what did it matter if he did or didn’t? He’d be leaving this town the second his car was fixed and the roads were clear. After that, Samantha Barnett would simply be one more file among the dozens in his cabinet. “I don’t like this town. It’s a little too remote for me.” That didn’t answer the question of whether he liked her, he realized.

Either way, his editor was expecting a Flynn MacGregor story. The kind free of emotion, but steeped in details no other publication had been able to find. Flynn dug and discovered, doing whatever it took to get the real story. That chase was what had thrilled him from his first days as a cub reporter at a newspaper, and it was what had made him a legend at the magazine.

Getting the story was a game—a game he played damn well.

Sam crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him. “Ever since you arrived here, I’ve been trying to figure you out. Aunt Ginny would tell me that if I had any common sense at all, I’d keep my mouth shut, but I’ve never been very good at that.”

He had turned toward her, and when they’d both been reading the story on his computer, the distance between them had closed. Now Flynn found himself watching that mouth. A sassy mouth, indeed. “And I suppose you’re about to tell me exactly what you think of me? Point out all my faults?”

“You do have a few.” She inhaled, and the
V
of her sweater peeked open just enough to peak his desire.

She had more than a sassy mouth, that was for sure. He reached out and tipped her chin upward. “What if I do the same for you?”

She swallowed, but held his gaze. Desire burned in his veins, pounding an insistent call in his brain. Everything within him wanted to kiss her, take her in his arms, end this torturous curiosity about what she’d feel like. Taste like.

And yet, at the same time, the reporter side of him tried to shush that desire, told him to take advantage of the moment, to use it to exploit the vulnerable moment.