The Naughty List Bundle with The Night Before Christmas & Yule Be Mine. Fern Michaels

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СКАЧАТЬ don’t know that they didn’t,” Trevor said. “But no contact was made”—he looked to Griffin—“which was a shame.”

      Griffin shrugged and slipped his arm around Melody’s shoulders. “I’ve become a firm believer that all things happen for reasons grander than we might know at the time. In the end, everyone got what they wanted most, am I right?”

      Smiling and nodding, they all lifted their glasses, though Emma and Holly reached for water glasses, rather than the champagne that had been poured for each table before they’d arrived. It took a moment for Griffin to realize that Melody had reached for water as well.

      Using his own water glass, he’d started to propose a toast, but turned to look at her instead, his glass shaking a bit in his hand. “Too early for a bit of the bubbly, luv?” he managed, not sounding remotely as casual as he’d hoped.

      “Oh, no,” she assured him.

      Those lovely midnight blue eyes of hers still took on that special glow he’d come to cherish over the past four years. There seemed to be an additional something special about them.

      “About, oh, six weeks too late, actually,” she finished.

      Emma and Holly squealed. Sean and Trevor shared a quick grin with each other, then looked at Griffin, on hold for any cue from him before congratulating him, manly comrades-in-arms first, dads-to-be second.

      “You’re…?”

      She sipped her water, trying to look oh-so-innocent. “I didn’t tell you before we left, because you’d have never let me get on the plane.”

      “You can fly up until your third—” Emma started to say.

      “Tell that to Captain Worrywort here,” Melody said.

      “I am no’ a worrywort, or any kind of wort,” Griffin said, clearly affronted, feeling more than a little poleaxed.

      “You almost came unhinged when you found me up on that scaffolding outside the shop last summer.”

      “You could have fallen to your death.”

      “I was ten feet off the ground.”

      Everyone laughed, and he had the good grace to look a little abashed. Though he’d have made the same choice again. A lot of things in his life had taken on far less importance over the past few years. Melody’s importance to him had only grown. And now she was carrying…

      “Griffin,” Melody said, sounding a bit alarmed.

      “Just give me a minute, luv,” he said, then bagged trying to look as if he had any control at all and dabbed the corners of his eyes on his sleeve. “Come here.” He pulled his squealing wife into his lap, and everyone raised a glass. “To getting everything we ever wanted in this life.” He looked at his wife, who’d never glowed so beautifully. “And then some.”

      All I Want for Christmas

      CYNTHIA EDEN

      1

      The strains of Elvis’s “Blue Christmas” drifted in the air as Christie Tate tried really, really hard to disappear inside the women’s restroom.

      “Did you hear?” The more-than-slightly catty female voice asked from a few feet away.

      Christie hunched her shoulders and stared at her heels.

      “Charles Crenshaw is already seeing Vicki from accounting. I mean…what’s it been? A week? Two? He and Christie were—”

      “I think he was seeing Vicki on the side,” another female voice chimed in, oozing sympathy.

      Fake sympathy.

      Christie glanced at the gleaming black door, aware of the heat building in her cheeks. Was this what she’d become? A thirty-year-old woman hiding in a bathroom stall?

      She knew those voices. Marsha Chad, a marketing assistant, was the one with the fake sympathy. And the other one—

      “I heard Charles thought Christie was just…boring,” said Lydia Clyde. “I mean the woman’s a genius, but when it comes to men and sex, she’s—”

      Enough. Christie’s spine shot up at the same instant her hand slammed into the bathroom door. The door flew forward and she caught the sound of two feminine gasps.

      Her eyes narrowed as she took in the two women. “Lydia. Marsha.” So what if her cheeks were flaming? She wasn’t going to hide in the bathroom another second.

      Not thirteen anymore. Not the nerdy girl.

      “Christie.” Lydia’s blue eyes bulged. “I didn’t realize you were—”

      Christie jerked the faucet on and washed her hands. “For the record”—she lifted her head and met her own gaze in the mirror. Backbone, girl, backbone. How many times had she heard her mother say that over the years? Don’t ever let them see you break—“sex with me is never boring.”

      She saw their jaws drop. Good. Great. She kept her chin up, kept her back straight, and with really fast steps, she was able to escape that hellhole.

      And trade it for another one.

      Christie burst from the women’s restroom and walked straight into the full-on madness that was the Tate Toy Company’s annual Christmas party. Bright lights. Elaborate bows. Mechanical toys—trains and soldiers—that marched across the floor. Christmas trees. So many giant, colorful Christmas trees. Normally, she would have loved the sight, but right then, she just wanted to escape.

      She sucked in a sharp breath and tasted pine. Christie glanced to her left and found her ex, Charles, arguing with Vicki under a giant piece of mistletoe. The pretty redhead’s hair tumbled down her back as she shook her head at Charles, then she jabbed a finger into his chest. Trouble in paradise?

      I think he was seeing Vicki on the side.

      Jerk.

      A waiter sidled by her. Christie grabbed a glass of champagne and drained it in one gulp. Elvis kept singing.

      Can’t get much bluer than this, buddy.

      She marched forward, putting more distance between her and Charles. Can’t attack. Because that wouldn’t be classy. A lady couldn’t go up and jump on her ex’s back as she started to pound the crap out of him. A good girl wouldn’t do that. She’d been raised to be a good girl. Good girls became ladies, right?

      But she was damn tired of being good. Damn tired of being gossiped about. Damn tired of it all.

      Even tired of Elvis. And she loved the King.

      Christie marched through the crowd, stopping only to pick up a few more glasses of champagne. Oh, but that bubbly went down nice and fast. Some folks tried to talk to her, but if they didn’t have a tray of champagne flutes near them, she kept going.

      Kept going until…

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