PROLOGUE
Fourteen Months Ago
Miranda Tyler chewed absently on the pen between her fingers, oblivious to the germs she was probably ingesting from the well-used object. She stared pensively at the blank email draft in front of her. Was she really going to do this? It seemed pretty pointless, and yet . . .
Her friend Emily had just gone to try to speak personally with the only Sinclair living in the area, the only man who had the resources to save Christmas for the seacoast town of Amesport, Maine.
It wasn’t Emily’s fault that all of the funds for the Youth Center of Amesport had been stolen, but Miranda—otherwise known simply as Randi to her friends—knew that Emily was blaming herself completely for the fiasco. Her friend was sweet, trusting, and those traits had gotten her completely screwed. All of the money was gone from the Christmas fund for the Center, stolen by an asshole who Emily had trusted, and now they desperately needed help.
Come on, Randi. If Emily can go try to talk to the Amesport Beast, Grady Sinclair, you can find the damn balls to send a stupid email.
Honestly, sending an email off to a generic address in the hopes that one of the billionaire Sinclairs might actually read it and help the town of Amesport did seem like a meaningless action. But Randi was desperate, and she couldn’t seem to conjure up a better idea, although she badly wished she had one. Her foster parents had left her their home, but her teaching job wasn’t exactly lucrative. She got by on what it paid, but she didn’t have the kind of funds needed to replace the Christmas money. If she did, she’d give it without a thought. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option.
Once Emily had gone to meet The Beast—aka Grady Sinclair—Randi had sat down at one of the Center’s aging computers, trying to find email addresses for the rest of the Sinclair family. Like the billionaire brothers and cousins are really going to make their personal emails public? Still, Randi wanted to do something.
Emily had been so devastated and desperate. Randi couldn’t bear it, and she couldn’t sit and do nothing while Emily went to grovel to Grady Sinclair and continued to make everything her fault. In reality, Emily was an amazing director for the Center, a selfless woman who had dedicated herself to the nonprofit organization that was the heart of Amesport life. The Center was a better place since Emily had accepted the job of director.
Just do it! Send the damn email. What’s the worst that could happen?
Randi put down the pen she was chewing on and copied and pasted the “info” email address published on the Sinclair Fund web page into her empty draft. She’d found the site during her search—the organization was a large group charity in which all of the billionaire Sinclairs participated. More than likely, her email would end up in the hands of some assistant or secretary. She very much doubted that any of the Sinclairs were really hands-on with the charity. But maybe one of the employees would have a heart and pass the emailed info to one of the bosses. It was almost Christmas.
Dear Mr. Sinclair:
Randi paused after typing the generic greeting, figuring that was as good a start as any, since every one of them had the same last name. She quickly wrote the shortest email possible, explaining the crisis and practically begging for their assistance. When she finished, she breathed a sigh of relief. She hated groveling for anything; it rubbed her the wrong way. But she loved Emily, and there was very little she wouldn’t do for her real friends.
Grady was the only Sinclair who lived in Amesport, and Emily was currently approaching him personally. With his reputation for being a jerk and a recluse, it had taken a lot of guts for Emily to seek him out on the secluded Amesport Peninsula.
Her eyes darting to the clock on the wall, Randi realized that Emily was probably just now arriving at Grady’s mansion. Grady’s brothers Evan and Jared each had a home on the same cape right at the edge of town, as did their sister, Hope. The mansions were currently empty and rarely, if ever, visited.
Plenty of people gossiped about the Sinclairs, especially about Grady, but nobody really knew any of them. Honestly, Randi couldn’t remember an occasion where she’d actually seen any of the other Sinclairs come to Amesport on vacation. Jared had overseen the building of his siblings’ homes on the exclusive peninsula, but she’d never seen any of them.
All of the Sinclair men have to be stiff-necked snobs! They certainly have never frequented any of the local businesses, or people would know them.
Randi dearly wished she had found information on the Sinclair sister, but Hope was rarely in the media and apparently not active on social media. Grady’s cousins, Micah, Julian, and Xander, had little connection to the town, but some of their heritage was here. So she’d try to appeal to their sense of family.
As she read the hastily written note to check for errors, she hesitated on how to sign the letter. Writing from her email at the Center, she could be anonymous, a worried citizen. Everyone in the town of Amesport had access to email here in the tiny computer room of the Center, and Randi had her own free email address she’d created only for business here. She rarely utilized it except for sending progress reports to the parents of the students she helped tutor after hours as a volunteer. Unfortunately, she was fairly certain most of the parents didn’t even bother to read her correspondence.
She ended up simply signing the email: A Concerned Resident of Amesport.
Hitting the “Send” button with a heavy sigh, she watched as the letter was sent off into cyberspace, wondering exactly who would read it. Probably an assistant who would delete it without another thought. The Sinclair Fund was an enormous charity. They were in the business of raising funds for large nonprofit organizations, not giving them out to a small town in crisis.
Randi signed herself out of her email for the Center and shut down the computer. She’d promised Emily she’d watch over the activities here while her friend was approaching Grady Sinclair to try and raise the funds they needed to save Christmas for Amesport and the surrounding villages. Unfortunately, Christmas wouldn’t be very merry if they couldn’t get the funds back for presents for needy children and the annual Christmas party. For some of the kids, whatever they got from the Center would be their only gift, and the food provided at the Christmas party their main Christmas dinner.
Randi pushed the dreary thought from her mind as she looked at all of the decorations around the old building. Emily had brought life into the aging structure, even though the tired Center desperately needed maintenance. Colorful wreaths and Christmas decorations were everywhere, hung with love for the season by its employees and volunteers.
Peeking into the area where the senior citizens held their bingo sessions, Randi’s stomach rumbled at the enticing smells coming from the room. She’d come to the Center, straight from her teaching job at the local school, to tutor a few students who were struggling with their studies, and she was starving.
Sneaking quietly into the room to snatch a few chicken wings and some cake without being detected by some of the sharp old ladies was never easy, but she was up for the challenge. Snatching food had become almost an art for her in her early teenage years.
After a nervous week of checking for an answer with no return message, Randi completely forgot about the email she had sent in desperation . . . until she finally got a reply . . .
Two Months Later . . .
Evan Sinclair might have laughed at the ridiculous email he’d just finished reading—if he was actually the type of man who found humor in anything . . . which he didn’t. Ever!
He stared at the email, frowning as he read it for the second time. What kind of person would have the gall to ask a charity raising big money for cancer research, abused women, and the several other urgent causes that the Sinclair Fund actually helped, for money? And it wasn’t even for a good cause, in his opinion. It was for a small coastal town that needed Christmas funds. Did the author of the missive really think he was some sort of friendly elf to grant her Christmas wish?
Hardly!
Evan didn’t believe in Christmas. If there was a modern-day version of Scrooge, it would be him, except he wouldn’t ever have the apparent epiphany that old Ebenezer experienced. In fact, the holiday did irritate him and always would. It meant a disruption of business, and scheduling meetings around the frivolous, commercialized season. It hadn’t been a pleasant holiday when he was a child, and he abhorred it almost as much as an adult.
Normally, none of his brothers or cousins looked at the mailbox for the Fund, and they certainly didn’t answer letters personally; they had employees for that. But the email had caught his eye when his assistant had written to him about a complaint a big donor had mentioned over the quality of assistance he was getting via email from the website. Evan had logged in to the mailbox from home to evaluate how some of the inquiries were being handled. They couldn’t afford to lose important donors, and especially not people who donated millions.
He could hardly miss the subject line “Help Us Save Our Town” as he scrolled through old emails.
Intrigued, he’d opened the missive.
Now, he was scowling at the correspondence in front of him. The email’s author was anonymous, the email address generic, simply signing the short explanation and plea for help with “A Concerned Resident of Amesport.”
He should have dismissed it, especially since he knew his brother Grady had already solved the problem well before Christmas. In fact, Grady was now a town hero in Amesport because he’d donated the needed funds. He had also gotten himself engaged and then married to the Center’s director, Emily.
Christmas is over. Leave it. Grady solved the ridiculous situation, getting himself injured in the process.
Evan wasn’t crazy about the outcome, especially the fact that his younger brother had thrown himself into the line of danger to resolve the whole debacle and rescue his new bride. But Grady seemed happy enough since his nuptials with Emily, even though, in Evan’s opinion, he’d married with far too little thought and way too much haste.
The entire holiday season had passed . . . thank God. Unfortunately, the audacity of the person who had sent the correspondence still annoyed him.
He frowned as he read the email again, still wondering about the author. It was a well-written account of the situation at the time it was composed, but it was still presumptuous. He hated the fact that the words were trying to play on his sense of guilt, duty, and family. If there was one thing that Evan did, it was watch out for his family. As the eldest in his broken family, he considered everything that happened to his siblings his business, his responsibility.
Uncharacteristically, he forgot about why he was in the mailbox for the Sinclair Fund in the first place. He switched gears and signed up for an anonymous email address on one of the numerous free sites that offered them, and decided to reply to the inquiry. The email had been appropriately ignored previously by employees, and probably should have just been deleted. For the sake of the charity, he didn’t want the sender to know exactly who was replying. He just wanted the author to understand that the Sinclair Fund wasn’t an appropriate place to seek a donation for a trivial problem. He could reprimand the person, discourage future emails of the same nature to the Sinclair Fund, and no one would ever know.
He copied and pasted the original email from the mystery author before replying.
Dear Concerned:
How else could he start the return email? He wasn’t even sure about the gender of the person writing, but he would place a hefty bet on the writer being a female. Women seemed to get ridiculously sentimental over certain holidays.
He promptly shot out a reply, closed the window for the free email site, and forgot all about the issue as he returned his attention to the Sinclair Fund mailbox to see if his donor actually had cause for complaint. Evan didn’t even think about the annoying email again . . . until he got an answer several days later.
Randi gaped at the rudest email she’d ever received, her mouth actually opening and closing like a fish out of water that was struggling to take a breath.
Dear Concerned:
I’m curious as to whether you really expected to receive an answer to your email sent before Christmas. Did you really think one of the Sinclairs was going to read your email, then actually provide funds for a town that isn’t even on the map, and for such a ludicrous reason? We are trying to help solve pressing concerns in both our nation and the world with the Sinclair Fund, not masquerade as Santa Claus. I think it would have been much more appropriate for you to address your email to the North Pole.
However, it is my understanding that you and the citizens of Amesport did get your Christmas wish. Wasn’t this issue completely resolved by Grady Sinclair?
Sincerely,
Unsympathetic in Boston
“Unsympathetic in Boston? Oh, my God! What a jerk!” Randi scowled at the computer screen at the Center, completely taken aback by the response to the email she’d sent two months earlier. After so long, she’d completely given up on getting an answer.
The only reason she’d signed in to that email address at all was to contact a parent of one of the children she was tutoring, and she’d been stunned to find that she finally had a reply to the email she’d sent to the Sinclair Fund.
She checked the date and realized her plea had only been answered a few days ago. Why now? She’d pathetically checked every single day for over a week after writing her email to the Sinclairs, desperately hoping somebody would respond. And so they did . . . after Christmas had passed, and with the snottiest comments imaginable!
Randi’s temper started to slowly simmer as she continued to gape at the snooty response, unable to believe that an employee of a charity would respond so bluntly. Maybe the problem did seem small to them, but it was important to her town.
“Condescending asshole,” she whispered to herself even as she wondered at the question in the email, about the situation being resolved. Truth was, the crisis had been more than adequately fixed. Emily was now married to Grady Sinclair, and the Center was not only thriving, but undergoing some major renovations.
She closed her email, shut down the computer, and stood up, deciding she’d do progress reports tomorrow. She was too pissed off to do them now.
“Not on the map? Amesport?” she mumbled under her breath as she picked up her jacket from the back of the chair. Luckily, she was alone in the computer room, so it didn’t matter that she was talking to herself. Nobody was around to listen. While Amesport was no Boston, it was a thriving seacoast town, a place where tourists flocked in the summer to enjoy the beauty of the ocean and a multitude of water sports. “Write to Santa Claus my ass!” She yanked her coat on and picked up her purse from the desk before exiting the room, her brain still trying to process the fact that a Sinclair employee had been that rude. It hadn’t been necessary. The person could have politely declined. Or better yet . . . ignored the email like they already had for months now. After all, Grady had rescued Christmas, and her request was two months old. What would possess someone to answer an old email with that much arrogance and condescension?
She paused as she opened the door, remembering the last line of the reply:
Wasn’t this issue completely resolved by Grady Sinclair?
“How do they know about that? Why do they care?” she pondered quietly as she pulled the door completely open. “If this person thinks my email was stupid, what does it matter whether Grady helped the town or not?”
Pushing aside the fact that someone had tried to make her feel ridiculous and small, she wanted to make sense of the last comment in the email. Did this person really expect her to verify the question?
Taking a deep breath, she did her best to ignore her negative thoughts and to reason without anger. She really shouldn’t answer the email. Emily was her friend, so she should tell her about the rude employee. Randi had actually come to like and respect Emily’s new husband. But something in her gut wouldn’t and couldn’t leave the situation as it stood. She wasn’t about to go running to Grady just because she could now call him a friend. The email address had been weird, a free service that was unlikely to be traceable. If she was the victim of a bad joke, or an unhappy person, she’d fire back. Some idiot in an office somewhere wasn’t going to insult her and her beloved town without some kind of answer.
The Center was quiet as she exited the front doors. Very little was happening tonight, except for the few men still left in the building working on improvements. Randi shivered as the bitter-cold wind did a full-frontal assault, reminding her that she hadn’t bothered to zip her jacket. Tugging the ends of the material together, she sprinted for her vehicle, smirking evilly as she decided on just how to reply to her churlish prankster. She was a teacher, a woman with an education. If there was one thing she was good at, it was finding mistakes and stating facts.
So, that’s exactly what she did the very next day.
Two Days Later . . .
Evan wasn’t sure why he even bothered to check his bogus email address. It wasn’t like he had nothing better to do. He was in his downtown offices, and he had an important meeting in less than fifteen minutes. Checking his notes and making sure he had all of the documents he needed should be his priority at the moment. Nevertheless, he was drumming his fingers on the oak desk in front of him, waiting for the free email page to appear. It came up after a wait he considered way too long, even for a free service, and he logged in impatiently.
This is a waste of time. I have work to do. Why do I even care if some presumptuous person in Amesport answered my email?
He knew for a fact that Grady had more than rescued the Center and the town of Amesport. Evan didn’t need an answer. Still, he wondered if there was an answer to his question, and if the sender of the email had felt appropriately sorry they had sent a letter to a worthwhile charity for help with such a small issue.
Frowning as the annoyingly slow mailbox appeared, he noticed that he did indeed have mail. Clicking the mouse efficiently, he deleted the junk that was a prerequisite to signing up for the free service. He hesitated uncharacteristically as he saw that there actually was a response from the same generic email that he’d written to a few days earlier. A haughty, dark brow rose as he saw the subject line:
Proof that Amesport is On the Map!!
Intrigued, he clicked on the response.
Dear Unsympathetic:
Had I known that all of the Sinclair Fund employees were as heartless and arrogant as you appear to be, I would have definitely written to Santa Claus instead. In the future, I’ll direct all urgent email to the North Pole.
You’re also uninformed. Amesport certainly is on the map and is a popular tourist destination in the summer. The town appears quite clearly. Please see the attached.
P.S. Grady Sinclair is a wonderful man with a heart, and the issues with the Center are completely resolved. Luckily, there is someone affiliated with the Sinclairs who actually has a heart.
Sincerely,
No Longer Concerned in Amesport
Evan read the email again, strangely amused by the less-than-pleasant response. It wasn’t often that anyone addressed him with anything less than complete reverence. It was oddly . . . refreshing.
He clicked on the attachment, staring at it for a moment before he truly understood exactly what it was. It was a map of the Maine coastline, with the town of Amesport circled in red and blown up so that it was prominently displayed with a handwritten caption.
The town of Amesport certainly is on the map. It appears quite clearly.
Evan looked from her comment to the oversized area of Amesport circled in red. Then, Evan Sinclair did something he almost never did . . . he laughed.