“And yours, I’m sure.”
He made a face. “Jamie has always been a natural flirt. Mom used to joke that he charmed the nurses in the hospital nursery from the very beginning. I, on the other hand, was always more comfortable behind a keyboard.”
“I doubt that. I’m sure you do just fine with the ladies, working that sexy geek thing you’ve got going.”
The faint echo of her own words seemed to circle around the kitchen, growing louder and louder in her mind. Oh, no. Had she really just said that? Hot color soaked her cheeks. Where was the darn off switch on her mouth sometimes?
He gave a strangled sound that wasn’t quite a laugh and just gazed at her for a long moment, until she wanted to sink through the radiant-heated Italian tiles of his kitchen.
“Okay, can we just forget I said that out loud? I had a concussion yesterday, remember? I’m not in my right mind.”
A new awareness seemed to spark between them, sizzling and arcing like heat lightning on an August afternoon.
“Sexy geek?” He spoke the words in a low voice that made her insides shiver.
Oh, like he didn’t know how that smile broke nerd girls’ hearts everywhere. “It’s the glasses,” she said. “Not to mention the whole computer-genius thing.”
Okay, she had to stop now.
“Mama? Mama! Where are you?”
In all her life, she had never been so grateful for her daughter.
“In the kitchen, honey. Stay where you are, I’ll be there in a minute.”
She turned back to Aidan and found him watching her with an expression she couldn’t quite read.
“I’ve got to go. Thanks for the, um, delicious sandwich. Oh, and the primer on your family. It helps. Maybe I won’t make a total fool of myself around anyone but you.”
She scooped up the notebook, drained the rest of her water and hurried out of the kitchen as fast as she could manage.
CHAPTER NINE
T
HE
STORM
FINALLY
started to ease again about the time she and Maddie put the finishing touches on the tree.
Her daughter clasped her hands together at her chest and gazed raptly up at the tree. “It’s so pretty, Mama. The most beautiful tree I’ve ever seen!”
Eliza had to agree. The tree made a stunning statement in front of the big two-story windows of the great room, its greenery a vivid contrast to the stark white snow blanketing everything outside.
“You’re absolutely right.”
She looked up sharply at the voice and found Aidan standing at the end of the hall that led to his office, where he had retreated to take a phone call an hour earlier, shortly after they finished their quick sandwich and she had completely humiliated herself.
His hair was a little rumpled on the left side, as if he had run his fingers through it while on his phone call.
She had actually called him a sexy geek. Where was a conveniently placed snowdrift to dive into when she needed one?
“Hi, Mr. Aidan. Do you like it?” Maddie asked.
“I think it’s the most beautiful tree
I’ve
ever seen, too. The two of you did a great job.”
“You helped! We couldn’t have reached the top without you.”
“Not unless one of those angels swooped in and carried you up to the top.”
She laughed, delighted at the image, as Eliza heard a rattling of pans in the kitchen, followed by muffled swearing.
Aidan glanced in that direction. “I guess Sue must be feeling better.”
“She says she is.”
“What about you?”
She still ached, she couldn’t deny that. Even now, she had to fight the urge to knead her fist into her throbbing lower back, but she firmly believed staying in motion had been the best possible medicine. By this time tomorrow, she expected even those aches and pains would dissipate.
“Almost back to normal,” she answered.
“Good.” He gave her one of those irresistible smiles and for a moment she was once more in his gleaming kitchen with the electricity snapping and sizzling between them.
He was the first to look away. “The snow seems to have finally stopped. Feel like getting some air? I thought maybe we could bundle up and walk out to the barn to check on the horses.”
“Yes!” Maddie answered instantly, before Eliza even had a chance to think. “Can we, Mama? Oh, please!”
She didn’t want to spend any more time with him than she had to but maybe the best way to deal with her mortification would be to wade straight through it. After snowfall all day, the temperature would undoubtedly be icy. A nice walk in a blizzard might be just the thing to cool down her overheated imagination right about now.
“Sure. A little fresh air would be nice. Maddie, why don’t you work on straightening up in here while I go find our coats?”
“Okay!”
Maddie eagerly scurried around underneath the tree picking up extra hanging wire and stray clumps of paper towel someone had used to wrap around some of the ornaments in storage.
She was such a sweet girl, always so earnest and ready to please. With a heart full of gratitude, Eliza hurried to the guest bedroom. She hadn’t had time to move their things to the cook’s quarters off the kitchen yet but planned to do that before dinner.
She shrugged into the wool peacoat she’d bought on clearance two winters before and picked up Maddie’s pink-and-purple parka. When she returned to the great room, she found Maddie and Aidan, heads bent together as they looked at something on the Christmas tree.
She paused and watched them, a funny little ache in her chest. The only men in Maddie’s life were her doctors and Eliza’s dear friends Sam and Julio, a gay couple who had lived in the apartment across the hall.
“This is my favorite ornament on the whole tree,” Maddie declared.
“It’s a nice one,” he answered, “but why is this particular ornament your favorite? There have to be hundreds of angels on the tree.”
“Because it’s a boy angel, just like my daddy. See?”
He bent his head to see it better and Eliza couldn’t help craning her neck for a closer look. She remembered hanging that one earlier. The porcelain angel had looked antique to her so she had been extra careful with it and had let Maddie look but not touch. It did indeed have slightly masculine features, she recalled, though they looked nothing like Trent’s.
“Mama says Daddy is watching over us from heaven. Whenever I have to go to the hospital, she tells me he’s there helping the doctors know what to do.”
“I’m sure he is,” Aidan murmured. He must have sensed her presence because he looked up and met her gaze. His eyes were filled with compassion and a warmth she didn’t want to see.
Something inside her seemed to soften and stretch like caramels left out in the sun.
Don’t read anything into it, she warned herself. He only felt sorry for the poor widow with the sick little girl.
“Here you are, honey,” she said, her tone more abrupt than she intended as she handed Maddie her coat. She didn’t look at him as she helped her daughter stick her arms through the sleeves and then her hands into the mittens.
“Let’s go through the mudroom. My coat is there,” Aidan said when Maddie was bundled up. He led the way toward the kitchen, where Sue was rolling out what looked like pastry dough.
“It smells de-lish-ous in here!” Maddie exclaimed. Eliza had to agree as the comforting smell of carrots and onions and chicken seeped into the air.
“Oh, trust me, it will be,” Sue declared. She seemed to be back to her old self. Her features had lost that wan, pinched look of earlier when her migraine had attacked. “I’m making my famous chicken pot pie. Seemed just the thing for a snowy day and it’s always been one of Aidan’s favorites.”
“Yours is even better than my pop’s, but if you tell him so, I’ll deny it to my dying breath.”
She rolled her eyes. “As if I would ever say such a thing to that sweet Dermot!”
“What did I tell you about my pop and women? Doesn’t matter if they’re seven or seventy,” Aidan said to Eliza, startling a smile out of her.
“I’ll have to get his recipe when he’s here,” Sue said, pretending not to hear the exchange. “Never hurts to try something a new way.”
“Why mess with perfection?” Aidan countered as he headed into the mudroom. He emerged a moment later, shrugging into the sheepskin-lined leather ranch jacket she had seen him in earlier.
Sexy Geek with a side of cowboy. How was a girl supposed to resist that?
“Are you ladies ready?” he asked.
“Yes! I can’t wait to see the horses!” Maddie declared.
When they walked outside, the air didn’t feel as cold as she might have expected, maybe because of the cloud cover and because the wind had died down. The lake shone blue, a vivid contrast to the snow all around. From here, she could clearly see the shape of the nearby cove, just like its eponymous snow angel.
Through her research on the area before deciding to take the job at the inn, she had learned that Lake Haven rarely froze completely because of its depth and because of all the geothermal activity in the area feeding warm water into it. The minerals in the water gave it the lovely color.
Whatever the reason, it made for a beautiful scene in the twilight.
From here, she could also see lights begin to twinkle from the clustered buildings of Haven Point up the shoreline. In the fading remains of a stormy winter day, the pretty little town looked warm and inviting.
The walk hadn’t been cleared since the snowfall resumed in the afternoon and walking through it took effort. Maddie struggled for only a moment before Aidan picked her up and settled her on his shoulders, much to her glee.
She said something to him Eliza couldn’t hear and they laughed together. The sound warmed her even more than her wool coat.
She inhaled deeply of air scented with pine and snow and resolved to simply enjoy the moment. Whatever her reservations about working for Aidan Caine—the tangled past she doubted he even knew about, her pride that balked at taking a job offered out of pity, this silly schoolgirl attraction—she couldn’t deny that Maddie seemed happy here.
When they reached the barn, he opened a small door next to the huge double doors and set Maddie down inside before reaching a hand out to help Eliza over a patch of ice. He wore leather gloves but she could swear she felt the heat of his skin through them.
She quickly pulled her hand away and looked around the cavernous space.
Through her thirty-one years on the planet, she had spent very little time inside of barns. If someone ever asked her to design the perfect barn, however, she would have pointed him in the direction of this aging building at Snow Angel Cove.
Made of weathered wood with a traditional gambrel roof, the barn smelled of hay and horses and dust. A mouse-fat calico tabby sidled out of view as soon as they spotted it but a black-and-white border collie wandered immediately over to them, long, busy tail wagging.
“Oh,” Maddie exclaimed, shrinking away from the creature. She loved horses but dogs, on the other hand, freaked her out a little.
“It’s okay,” Aidan assured her. “He won’t hurt you. This is Argus. He’s the king of the barn.”
“Really?”
“Well, he thinks he is, anyway. He bosses everybody around. But he’s really gentle. I promise, he won’t hurt you.”
Her daughter didn’t look completely convinced but because her middle name should have been Spunky, she petted the dog’s head with ginger care then giggled when the dog licked her, his tail wagging even harder.
“Mama, I think Argus likes me.”
“Looks like it.” She knelt down to pet the dog, too, and was rewarded with a nuzzle and a lick.
“Did he come with the ranch?” she asked.
“No. He’s Sue and Jim’s baby. Goes everywhere with them.”
“Do you have a dog?” Maddie asked.
“No. But my whole family does.” He gave Eliza a rueful look. “I forgot to mention when I was giving you the guest rundown that they’ll be bringing a miniature herd when they come. Dylan would never travel without his dog, Tucker, a black-and-tan coonhound, Andrew has a chihuahua named Tina and Lucy and Brendan each have little mutt purse pooches who are less than a year. Daisy and Max. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” Eliza assured him. She loved dogs and always had. When she was a girl, she’d had a Labrador retriever named Frisbee. She had adored that dog and grieved deeply when he died at thirteen, just before Eliza went off to college. She had dreamed of having a half-dozen pets when she had children—of which she had wanted a half-dozen more.
Life as a single working mother with an ill child had forced her to put that dream on hold. Maybe when they were settled somewhere permanently, she would consider it.
They spent a few more moments showering love on Argus until one of the horses made a raspberry sort of sound that made Maddie giggle.
“That’s Cinnamon,” Aidan said. “The gentlest horse in here. I got her specifically with Carter and Faith in mind.”
He had bought a horse strictly for the rare visit from his nephew and niece. She knew that shouldn’t touch her heart but she couldn’t seem to help it.
Which was the real Aidan? The tough businessman who ground up his competitors and sprinkled them on his espresso or the softie who bought a horse for his niece and nephew who might only visit him here a couple times a year?
“Oh,” Maddie breathed, her eyes wide as she approached the stall containing the red horse. Roan, Eliza thought it was called, though what did she know? She had absolutely no knowledge of horses, other than what she had seen watching
Gunsmoke
and
The Rifleman
reruns with her dad.
“She’s beautiful. The most beautiful horse in the whole wide world.”
Her daughter was obviously in love. She had her hands clasped together at her collarbone like the heroine of a melodrama and was gazing at Cinnamon with a rapt expression.
The horse was pretty, Eliza had to admit, with kind, gentle eyes. Even she could tell, though, that she was by no means the most elegant horse in the barn. Most of the half-dozen other horses she could see were muscled and strong, especially a big black with a flowing gray mane.
“Bob says they’re all nice horses but he likes Cinnamon the best,” Maddie declared.
“Would you like to make friends?” Aidan asked. “I brought a couple of carrots from the kitchen. You can feed her some.”
Her daughter looked torn. “Bob doesn’t like carrots. How do I feed her?”
He took her hand and led her closer to the horse, then handed her the carrot. “Nothing to it. You just hold it out for her and Cinnamon will do all the work.”
“She might bite me, though.”
“Not this old girl, I promise.”
Eliza held her breath as Maddie hesitated for only a moment then offered up the carrot. Cinnamon lapped it out of her hand in one bite, with a grateful whinny.
Maddie giggled. “It tickles, Mama!”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Eliza said.
“I’ve got another carrot if you want a turn.”
Despite Aidan’s confidence that the horse wouldn’t bite, those teeth were
big
and she wasn’t at all eager to put her fingers within reach.
“I’m good. Thanks.”
“Okay, Maddie. Looks like you get to be the designated carrot-delivery girl. Here you go.”
He gave her another one and this time she held it out with more confidence. She even found the courage to pat the horse’s neck and was rewarded with a gentle head butt that made her giggle again.
“See? She likes you.”
“I like her, too,” Maddie announced, which wasn’t really news to anyone.
He chuckled. “I need to check on a couple of the other horses. We have one who’s going to foal in the next month. Are you two good staying here with Argus and Cinnamon?”
Eliza nodded. As he walked down to the far end of the barn, she tried not to watch him go, focusing instead on her daughter introducing Imaginary Bob to her new friend while the other horses whickered for attention and the somehow comforting scents of hay and horses swirled around them and dust motes floated in the air like gold flakes.