A Princess for Christmas

Zeke tipped his beer in Jake’s direction. “I am, too. You’re one of those wunderkinds. Rocketship to the top and all that.”

Jake shrugged. He hated that label. Maybe he should color his hair gray. That might stop people from commenting on his status at the top of the company before he’d celebrated his thirtieth birthday.

“Must make your dad proud.”

“Something like that,” Jake said. He tugged his PDA out of his jacket pocket and began thumbing through his e-mails, hoping Zeke would get the hint and stop talking.

He didn’t.

“’Cept your dad’s had some troubles lately, I read. Company’s struggling a little.”

“It’s fine,” Jake said.

“And you…wasn’t there something that happened a few years back…?” Zeke rubbed at his chin. “Can’t remember what it was. Some accident and—”

“I’m not here to discuss my personal life, Mr. Carson.” The words clipped off Jake’s tongue. Harsher than he’d intended.

“Zeke, please.”

“Zeke.”

The other man didn’t say anything for a minute. Jake hoped he’d given up on the conversation. Zeke drank his beer, watched the game on television. Then he shifted in his seat toward Jake again. “So, why Harborside?”

Jake thought of cutting off the conversation, then reconsidered. Perhaps talking to the local newspaper editor would be a good idea. Could garner some good press for Lattimore Properties. “You read the financial pages. You tell me, Zeke.”

Zeke thought a second, clearly pleased to have his own brain picked. “It’s undiscovered. Centrally located. Has just enough beach for one of your fancy-shmancy hotels, but not so much sand that the place’ll get crowded with big bucks homeowners and their McMansions.”

“So far, so good.” Jake pushed the PDA aside, and reached for his drink, but didn’t sip it.

“Let’s see…” Zeke leaned forward, his gaze meeting Jake’s. “You like a challenge, and Harborside is one. We’re New Englanders. Stubborn, set in our ways. Not much for change of any kind. Hence, the big challenge. Why pick an unpopulated area, with no one to push around and bully when you corporate giants can go after this place and have a little fun while you’re at it?”

Was that how people saw him and the company? As a bully? “I offer a fair price for the land. The buildings. There are no strong-arm tactics at work.”

“Maybe that’s how you see it.” Zeke raised his beer, took a sip, then put it down again. “You oughta read the paper more often. Sometimes it gives you the side of the story you’re not seeing.”

Jake had little use for the media. He found most reporters intrusive, annoying and hardly interested in anything other than a sensationalized headline to splash across their pages. He called them when he needed press for a new launch, tried to stay under their radar the rest of the time. “I’m only concerned about the business section, Mr. Carson,” he said.

“Zeke, please. Mr. Carson makes me sound like my father, and he’s old.”

Jake laughed. Despite everything, he found he liked Zeke. “Zeke it is.”

Zeke finished his beer, then slid off the stool. He placed a firm hand on Jake’s shoulder and met his gaze, with light blue eyes that had seen and experienced a lot of life. “I’m not here to tell you if your plans for this town are good or bad. There are arguments on both sides of the fence for that, and enough people to battle it out to start World War Three. But take some advice from a young-at-heart newspaperman.” He glanced around the bar, not to see if anyone was listening, but as if he was trying to include the Clamshell Tavern in his case. “There are people whose whole lives are Harborside, and what you’re proposing will turn their lives upsidedown. I’ve seen and read about the kinds of hotels your company builds, and they may not be the right ones for here. Change isn’t always a good thing, and you have to think about what’s going to happen after you build this thing and head back to your big glass office in New York.”

“What do you mean?”

Zeke pointed out the window, at a ship cutting through the cold ocean. “See that boat? It’s plowing forward, on to its destination. It doesn’t think about what happens in its wake. What the propeller is doing to the fish, the seaweed, all the flora and fauna living in the dark water underneath. That’s why those channel markers are out there, to keep the boats in line. Keep them from destroying nature.”

“And I’m the big bad boat, ripping up the seaweed in my wake, is that it?”

“You can choose to be, or you can choose to be a sailboat, leaving the ocean more or less as you found it.” Zeke gave Jake’s shoulder one last pat. “Think about it.”

The old man left, and Jake turned back to his drink. Well, he’d been given a warning and a philosophy lesson, all at once. Seemed this town didn’t want him around. Jake didn’t care. He saw a business opportunity here, one he needed, on a professional and a personal level, and he had no intentions of walking away from it.

Outside the window, he saw Mariabella Romano striding up the boardwalk toward the Clamshell Tavern. As he watched her, he realized something he hadn’t noticed before.

She had a way about her that didn’t seem to fit this town. Heck, this world. It was more than the accent, the exotic beauty. She carried herself straight and tall, spine absolutely in line, as if she were balancing a book on her head and her stride—well, that could almost be called…

Regal. Yeah, that was the word for it.

Maybe she’d gone to one of those finishing schools or grown up in a wealthy home. Either way, she didn’t fit his image of a small-town art gallery owner.

She entered the tavern, then the bar, her fiery gaze lighting on him as if he were the devil incarnate. A grin slid across his face. “Miss Romano. Just the person I wanted to talk to. I have an offer for you.”

“And I have one for you.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I would like to pay you to leave Harborside, and find another town for your hotel. Name your price, Mr. Lattimore, and I will pay it.”

Just when Jake had thought things couldn’t get more interesting—

They did.

CHAPTER FOUR

IT WAS an incredible risk, and Mariabella knew it.

But if money was what it would take to rid Harborside of Jake Lattimore, then she would take that chance. She had resources she could dip into—not an endless pool, of course, but probably more than enough to get this man to change his course. “So,” she said, “what is your price?”

He chuckled. “You couldn’t pay it. Not unless you have a few masterpieces in the back of your gallery that I don’t know about.”

“I have the resources I need to make this offer,” she said, leaving the issue of where the money was coming from out of the discussion.

He leaned an elbow on the bar and studied her, clearly amused. She shifted under his scrutiny. How long had it been since a man stared at her like that, with such clear interest?