A Princess for Christmas. Shirley Jump

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      She needed to find a way to ask his intentions, without seeming to be asking. When he reentered the main room, she crossed to him. “May I offer you a cup of coffee? Tea?”

      “Coffee. Black.”

      Again, barely a flicker of attention toward her. His mind seemed on something else. She let out a breath of relief as she crossed to the small table holding a carafe of fresh coffee, filled a cup, then loaded a small plate with raspberry thumbprint cookies. She turned—

      And found him right behind her.

      “Here is…here is your coffee. And these cookies—” Mariabella forced herself to breathe, not to betray the nervousness churning in her gut “—were baked by a local chef.”

      His attention perked at that. “Chef? Does he have a restaurant?”

      “She, and no, Savannah Dawson is the owner of Make it Memorable, the catering company in town.”

      He nodded, taking that in, but otherwise not responding to the information. Damn, he made her nervous. Nor did he accept a cookie. Instead, he merely sipped at the coffee, watching her. “And who are you?”

      He didn’t know her name. That meant he wasn’t here for her.

      Unless the question had been a ruse. No, she doubted that. He didn’t look like a reporter, and didn’t have the accent that said he’d been sent by her parents.

      She’d worried for nothing. He was simply another tourist, albeit, not the most friendly one.

      “Mariabella Romano,” she said, putting out her hand, and with it, a smile, “gallery—”

      “Thank you. That’s all I needed.” Then he turned and began to walk toward the door. That was it? No return of his name? No explanation why he had come here?

      On any other day, she would have let this go. Not everyone who walked through the doors of Harborside Art Gallery walked back out with a piece of art. But this man—

      This man had an agenda; she could feel it in her bones. And somewhere on his list, was her gallery.

      A surge of fierce protectiveness rose in Mariabella’s chest, overriding decorum and tact. “Who are you?”

      He paused at the door, his hand on the brass handle, and turned back to face her. A shadow had dropped over his face, from the awning outside, but more, it seemed, from something inside him that he didn’t want to tell her. “I’m…an investor.”

      “Well, sir, if you are thinking you are going to buy this shop, think again.” She took a step closer to him, emphasizing her point. Like a terrier guarding her territory. “The owner loves this place. She will never sell.”

      A smile took over his face, but it held no trace of friendliness, not a hint of niceness. “Oh, I don’t want this shop.”

      Relief flooded Mariabella. She’d read him wrong, he wanted nothing to do with her precious Harborside Art Gallery. Or her. Thank God. “Good.”

      That smile widened, and dread sunk in Mariabella’s gut. And then she knew—she’d gotten it all wrong. She hadn’t read him right at all.

      “I want the entire block,” he said. “By the end of the week would be convenient.”

      CHAPTER TWO

      JAKE LATTIMORE peered down the boardwalk of Harborside, Massachusetts, and knew he didn’t see the same thing the other people did. The brightly waving flags on the masts of the few covered boats wintered in the marina didn’t beckon to him. The shop windows hawking T-shirts and sunglasses didn’t attract his attention. The cafes and coffee shops, their doors swinging open and shut as people drifted in and out, sending tantalizing scented snippets of their menus into the air didn’t call to his appetite.

      No, what Jake saw wasn’t even there. Yet.

      Condos. A hotel. Maybe even an amusement park, and down the beach, Jet Ski rentals, parasailing stations.

      By this summer, if at all possible, so profits could start rolling in immediately.

      In other words, a vacation mecca, one that would expand his—and that of his financial backers—portfolio, and take this sleepy little town up several notches.

      He glanced again at the boardwalk, at the festive holiday decorations. The notes of a Christmas song carried on the air as someone walked out of the stained-glass shop across the street. The melody struck a memory in Jake’s heart, followed by a sharp pang.

      A long time ago, this kind of place, this kind of setting, would have had him rushing in to buy a gift. Humming along with the song. Thinking—

      Well, he didn’t think that anymore.

      He got back to business. That was the only place heartache couldn’t take root. Jake returned his attention to the facts and figures in his head, dismissing the sentimental images around him.

      He’d done his research, ran his numbers, and knew without a doubt, Harborside was the perfect location for the next Lattimore Resort. Located along the Eastern seaboard, beneath Boston and above New York, away from the already congested areas of Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard, the tiny town had been tucked away all this time, hardly noticed by tourists, just waiting for someone like him to come along and see its potential.

      This was his specialty—find hidden treasures and turn them into profit machines.

      This town would be no different. He’d find each shop owner’s price, and pay it. Everyone, Jake had found, had a price.

      He wouldn’t let a little thing like dollars and cents get in the way of adding this resort to the Lattimore Properties empire. Not with so much on the line.

      If he didn’t land this deal, and went back to New York empty-handed, he knew what would happen. The whispers would start again. People saying he’d only been promoted to CEO because he was the Lattimore heir. Not because he had the chops to handle a project of this scope.

      His father had handed him a challenge, sent him to prove he could achieve the goal on his own, and Jake had no intentions of doing anything but exactly that. He’d worked side by side with Lawrence Lattimore for five years, learning the business from the ground up. In the last year or two, though, his father had begun to lose his magic touch. Lawrence’s decision making had become less sound, and the Lattimore Properties balance sheet showed the signs of his uneven hand.

      The board began talking forced retirement, so his father had put Jake in charge and given him one directive:

      Pull off a miracle.

      When Jake returned to NewYork triumphant, with the Harborside jewel in his back pocket, no one could say the junior Lattimore wasn’t up to the task of helming the multimillion dollar corporation. Lattimore Properties would once again be on the way to being the powerful company it had once been, and the downward slide that had begun under the last two years of Lawrence’s tenure would be reversed.

      “Who are you?”

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