“From the very first, I wanted to tell you about Trent and his last meeting with your company. It seemed like an uncomfortable secret I didn’t want to keep but I didn’t know how to bring it up.”
“I’m glad you did. I can’t believe you would come to work at Snow Angel Cove at all. You must be sorry you ever heard of me.”
“How could I be?” she murmured.
He gazed at her, blue eyes glittering with emotions she couldn’t name, and the moment seemed to stretch between them, as thick and heady as the chocolate he had melted for her.
This was dangerous territory, she knew. She had to go, before she made a mistake she would regret for a long time.
“And now I think I had better go to bed. I find confessions exhausting, don’t you?”
He stood up as well. “Here’s a confession for you, then. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that kiss the other night.”
She stared at him, the empty mug heavy in her hand. Oh, yes. Dangerous territory.
“If we’re being frank with each other,” she whispered, “neither have I.”
His gaze shifted to her mouth and she swallowed, already tasting him there. He made no move to kiss her, though, only continued to let the moment stretch out between them.
He was giving her control, letting her make the decision about whether there would be another kiss between them, she realized.
She tried to order herself to move away. The smart choice would be to take the mug into the kitchen, rinse it out and then escape to her bedroom.
She was tired of always making the smart choice. Why couldn’t she dance close to the fire, for once in her life? Okay, maybe her toes might get burned, but at least she would be warm for a while.
When she was old and gray, she could see his face on a magazine somewhere and remember the time when he had wanted her, if only for a moment.
For all she knew, that kiss the other day had been a fluke. Didn’t they owe it to each other to find out for sure?
With a sense of inevitability, she set the mug back down on the table with fingers that trembled and then, without giving herself an instant to talk herself out of the insanity of it, she stepped forward and lifted her mouth to his.
He let out a little groan, as if he hadn’t been sure which course she would take, and wrapped his arms tightly around her.
His father’s cocoa was delicious enough straight out of the cup. It was absolutely intoxicating when it flavored their kiss and turned it into a sensory experience of chocolate and heaven.
If the kiss the other night had been a shock of heat and fire, this one was slow and sensual, a soft, delicious exploration, learning each hollow, each curve. Completely devastating.
She was in deeper waters than she expected, with heavy, terrifying currents. Any moment now they would be closing over her head.
Desperate to return things to safer ground, she forced herself to pull away with a shaky breath.
“There.” She forced a casual smile, though it made her teeth ache. “Now we’ve got that out of the way.”
He gave her a long look out of those hot, gorgeous eyes that seemed to see entirely too much. “Have we?”
She forced herself to blunder on, though her skin felt hot, tight, itchy. “I told you, I haven’t been able to get that kiss out of my mind. Every time I see or talk to you, the memory simmers just under the surface. You might be talking away about the house or about Haven Point or your family and the only thing I can think about is, wow, that man knows how to kiss.”
He raised an eyebrow and she felt herself blush even more. “Thank you. I guess. Right back at you.”
She wouldn’t let herself find pleasure in that. Okay, maybe a little pleasure.
“Of course, we both agreed it was a mistake that shouldn’t have happened. But as mistakes go, you’re right, that particular one the other night was, um...” Incredible. Amazing. Off-the-charts sexy. “Noteworthy.”
“Noteworthy,” he said faintly. “And did you? Take notes, I mean?”
“I’ve been trying to forget it. It was a mistake, right?”
“Unwise, certainly.”
“Bingo. I couldn’t agree more. And now I’m going to have to spend the next week trying to forget this kiss, too. As if I didn’t have enough to do, with your family coming in only a few days! Thanks for that.”
The frustrating man actually seemed to find the situation amusing. “Well, then, I’d better try to make a lasting impression.”
“Aidan,” she began, but he moved forward with that inexorable focus of his and lowered his mouth to hers again.
This time the heat raged back, exploding between them with wild intensity, as if the earlier kiss had only been the warm-up act to the real thing. He held her close and she wrapped her arms around his back. She was vaguely aware of random sensations. The heat of him, the leashed strength of his surprising muscles, the wonderful, half-forgotten ache in all her girly places.
If he threw her back on the sofa and began ripping buttons and tangling zippers, she wouldn’t have been able to protest.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him closer as her body turned liquid and soft. She wanted this man, so much she couldn’t breathe around the hunger. She wanted to feel him around her, inside her.
As their mouths tangled, he groaned her name and the sound seemed to jolt her back to her senses.
They couldn’t do this. As much as she wanted to make love to him right now, she sensed it would leave her shattered.
Somewhere deep inside, she at last uncovered a forlorn little shred of self-protectiveness. Though it was the hardest thing she had ever done, she managed to slide her mouth away from his.
“We have to stop. Please, Aidan.”
He eased away, his breathing ragged and a slightly unfocused look in his eyes.
“Why?”
She scrambled for words, her thoughts as scattered as paper snowflakes on the wind. “I like you,” she finally said. “I like you very much. And you’re a fabulous kisser. As I believe we have quite firmly established. But I...I haven’t even dated since Trent died. I can’t just jump headfirst into the water with someone like you.”
“Someone like me?”
She eased away another few inches and tried to tuck her hair out of her face with fingers that had a rather embarrassing tendency to tremble. “You’re larger than life, Aidan. I’ve seen pictures of you with the kind of women you usually date—thin, gorgeous, perfectly made up. They’re not frazzled mothers who drive an SUV with Cheerios under the seat and juice boxes in the cupholders. You’re not interested in a relationship with me. The idea is completely laughable.”
“Funny. I’m not laughing.”
“Come on, Aidan. Be serious. You’re the CEO of your own billion-dollar business and I’m a heartbeat away from being homeless.”
“You’ve had a run of hard knocks. That’s hardly your fault and certainly doesn’t negate the possibility of a relationship between us. I don’t think less of you for circumstances out of your control, El. You’re one of the hardest-working women I’ve ever met. What you have done with Snow Angel Cove is amazing.”
He wasn’t listening and she couldn’t seem to make her brain cells cooperate to come up with a cogent argument. “Thank you. But that’s not the point.”
“What is? This is the point, as I see it. I’m attracted to you. You’re attracted to me. I like you very much and enjoy your company. I suspect you feel the same, though I could be wrong.”
She shook her head. “You’re not wrong.”
“I already care about your daughter. As far as I can see, there aren’t that many additional barriers that would keep us from pursuing this attraction.”
On a logical plane, she would lose any argument she put forward. The reality settled over her with depressing force. “You forgot the most important one. Yes, I like being with you. Yes, I’m obviously attracted to you. You’re the Geek God and I haven’t been with a man in more than three years. I would have to be dead
not
to be attracted to you.”
“You’re saying it’s only physical.”
For some ridiculous reason, she thought he actually looked a little hurt by that.
“I’m saying that for the next week, you’re my employer and that has to be the only relationship between us. I apologize for kissing you. It was completely inappropriate and won’t happen again.”
She didn’t want their wonderful evening together to end like this, with cold words and anger but, again, the words to make it right just wouldn’t come.
“What about friendship? Any interest in that?”
Suddenly, for no reason she could have pinpointed, her throat felt tight and her eyes burned. “Of course. I told you I like you, Aidan. Far too much for my own comfort, if you want the truth. I just...I’m a realistic kind of girl. Life hasn’t given me a lot of choice in that pragmatism. The way I see it, you’re like a fairy-tale prince and I’m Cinderella without the godmother and the cool shoes.”
And on that ridiculous, entirely too revealing statement, she moved toward the kitchen and her rooms. Before she left the great room, she turned back and found him standing by the fire, the glow silhouetting him. “Thank you again for a wonderful evening. I’m sorry I spoiled everything.”
“You didn’t spoil anything,” he assured her, but she knew it was a lie.
She tried a shaky sort of smile and then hurried out of the room before she could make an even bigger fool of herself.
Once in the safety and privacy of her sitting room, she closed the door quietly behind her—no emotionally wrought slamming of doors here—then collapsed onto the sofa.
She felt completely wrung dry, as if she had just tried to swim the length of Lake Haven.
She couldn’t believe what she had just said to him.
I like you, Aidan. Far too much for my own comfort... The way I see it, you’re like a fairy-tale prince and I’m Cinderella without the godmother and the cool shoes.
The truth was deeper than that and far more serious. She was falling for him, just as she feared she would. She was coming to care for his kindness, his funny sense of humor, the rare vulnerabilities he showed.
For her own self-preservation, she ought to pack up her daughter and her things and drive away from Snow Angel Cove and Lake Haven.
She could find a short-term lease somewhere in Boise and start seriously looking for another job.
That would be the wisest choice.
She had made a commitment, however, and she was a woman of her word. Aidan was counting on her to see to his family’s needs while they were here and at this late date, he wouldn’t be able to find someone else.
Oh, Aidan and his family would survive if she wasn’t here. Between Sue and the cleaning crew that would be coming in daily to help, she didn’t doubt the house party would run magnificently without her.
They would go on to have a wonderful holiday without her. She, on the other hand, would know she had made a commitment and then reneged on it. She knew too well what being on the losing end of broken promises felt like.
Beyond that, Maddie had been through enough tumult these past few weeks. She didn’t need another upheaval. Her daughter was happy here and was looking forward to spending the holidays at Snow Angel Cove. Her heart would be broken if Eliza packed her up again and hauled her to some impersonal hotel.
For her daughter’s sake and for Aidan’s, she would be a professional and do her job. No matter how difficult, she would keep her relationship with him professional, casual, friendly—and do her very best to protect her heart.
If she wasn’t already too late.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A
IDAN
SAT
BY
the fire for a long time after Eliza left, trying to sift through the past few moments.
He felt like a different person than he had been earlier in the evening—as if everything he was and everything he wanted had just undergone a radical shift.
After the doctors found his brain tumor, he remembered walking out of the office and into the August sunshine, amazed to see people going about their business, driving down the road, walking into stores, eating in restaurants. How could life just go on around him like normal when his world had just been completely rocked on its axis and nothing would ever be the same?
This evening spent with Eliza and Maddie felt much the same, for reasons he didn’t quite understand.
He had feelings for her. He wasn’t sure how or when they started, but he was coming to care deeply for her courage and her strength, her sweetness and warmth.
He didn’t want to think about her and Maddie leaving. But how could he convince her to stay when she was throwing up barriers between them as fast as she could come up with them?
You’re like a fairy-tale prince and I’m Cinderella without the godmother and the cool shoes.
He smiled a little at the silly analogy, though it bothered him that she saw the two of them through that filter.
He was no Prince Charming. His brain tumor had forced him to take a hard look at his life and he wasn’t sure he liked what he saw. He was driven and focused, which could sometimes come across as cold and uncaring.
He might live in a nice house—a few of them, actually—and have a private jet at his disposal but that wasn’t the heart of him. He would never argue that he liked the luxuries he could afford now. More than that, he liked that his family members were all comfortable financially because he had given them stock in his company early on.
If Pop didn’t want to work another minute at the Center of Hope, he could have a more-than-comfortable retirement. Charlotte had been able to buy her candy store in Hope’s Crossing and a nice house in a very expensive resort town real estate market. Dylan had bought his property in Snowflake Canyon. Jamie could leave the army right now if he wanted and never fly a helicopter again for the rest of his days.
All of Pop’s grandkids could have their pick of any university, thanks to the education trust funds he had set up for each of them.
He liked the trappings of his amazing success but beneath it all, he was a man who had come face-to-face with his own mortality in recent months and had come to realize it wasn’t enough anymore.
He wanted a family.
He wanted someone to share his life with. He wanted someone sweet and warm and generous, who would light up when she saw him like Lucy did when she saw Brendan, like Genevieve for Dylan or Charlotte for Spence.
He remembered talking to Dylan shortly after he and Genevieve started seeing each other. Though he had known he was risking a right hook, he had asked his brother what he possibly saw in Gen, the spoiled society belle who had finally managed to make his wounded warrior brother smile again. They were the most unlikely of couples but somehow they just
worked
together.
Instead of reacting with his fists—or fist, in these days, as his arm had been amputated—Dylan had shrugged with that slightly besotted look he wore most of the time these days.
“She calms the crazy,” he had said simply, looking a little embarrassed to admit such a thing to his brother.
Aidan hadn’t known what the hell his brother was talking about until right this moment. He was not only drawn to Eliza on a physical level but on a deeply emotional one, as well.
When he spent time with her and Maddie, the usual frenzy of his thoughts—constantly racing from idea to idea and project to project—seemed to quiet to a low murmur, allowing him to simply
be.
It was a rare luxury, indeed, and one he suddenly craved with a fierceness that shocked him.
He sighed and sipped at what was left of his chocolate. It was cold now, congealed in the cup, and he quickly set it down again.
What was he going to do with her?
She
had
said one thing that rang with resonance. She worked for him. Yes, it had been a cobbled-together job offered more out of guilt and obligation than any real need, but she had proven herself indispensable.
He had a dilemma, then. He didn’t want her to leave but he didn’t want her to stay on as his housekeeper-slash-hostess, either.
Okay, solving problems was what he did best. He would set his considerable mind to it and figure out a way to convince her a relationship between them was not only possible but inevitable.
She might not have a fairy godmother, but she had him.
* * *
“S
UE
,
YOU
NEED
to see a doctor.”
Eliza frowned at Aidan’s cook, who stood at the big six-burner stove with her foot on a stool. She was pale and drawn, with lines of pain around her mouth.
“I’m fine. This is stupid. I’m just such a klutz.”
“You told me you tripped. What exactly happened?”
“I wish I knew. It was just one of those weird things, you know? One minute I was walking along minding my own business, enjoying the night after the parade, the next I slipped off a curb and twisted my foot. I’m sure I was quite a sight, a dried-up old broad lying there in the gutter.”
Sue tried to make a joke and smiled at Maddie, sitting at the work island doing one of her math worksheets, but as she twisted to reach for the egg carton on the countertop, she winced as if she had dropped a heavy cast iron Dutch oven on her foot.
She swallowed a moan and Eliza moved forward to grab the eggs for her and move them closer so she could reach. She
wanted
to haul the woman to the doctor herself. Worry was a hard knot in her stomach.
“Please, Sue. You need to sit down.”
“Oh, don’t fret about me. By tomorrow, I’ll be in fighting form. You’ll see.”
“The only thing you’re going to be fighting is me if you don’t sit down and take some weight off that foot. I mean it. I can’t believe Jim didn’t take you into the E.R. for an X-ray last night.”
“He wanted to, that old worrywart. I wouldn’t go. Told him, I didn’t need to waste our hard-earned money for a doctor to tell me it was only sprained. The only way I was going to that clinic was if he tossed me over his shoulder and dragged me there kicking and screaming. He knew it wasn’t an idle threat—just like he knows darn well he can’t lift me anymore, what with his bad back and all.”
She hopped to the work island for the package of bacon she had left there. By the time she hopped the short distance back to the stove, she looked close to passing out.
“Good grief, you are one stubborn woman,” Eliza exclaimed. “Sit down. I’m making breakfast. I can handle pancakes and bacon.”
Sue looked as if she wanted to argue but didn’t quite have the strength to do it. After a moment, she sighed and sank onto one of the stools around the work island. Tears of frustration and pain gathered.
“What am I going to do? Aidan’s family is coming in two days.”
Eliza snatched a tissue from the box on the counter and handed it to her, then grasped Sue’s other hand in both of hers. “Please let me take you in for an X-ray. If it’s a sprain, you can at least get some crutches so you’re not hobbling around in pain with only that old cane you’re using. Who knows? Maybe they can give you a brace or something, or one of those cool little knee walkers I’ve seen people use at the grocery store. You don’t want to do more damage to it, possibly make things worse, right? If you can’t even stand up, you won’t be any use to Aidan while his family is here. You know that.”
The older woman seemed to waver. “I hate hospitals.”
Maddie slipped down from her chair and came over to Sue. This darling girl who had endured too many hospital visits placed a hand on the older woman’s leg. “You shouldn’t hate hospitals. The doctors and nurses only want to help you feel better.”
“Is that right?” Sue gave a little chuckle at receiving words of advice from a five-year-old.
Maddie nodded. “Even when they have to hurt you, it’s only so they can fix what’s wrong with you, then you’ll be all better.”
Sue tugged at one of Maddie’s braids. “You’re a pretty smart cookie, you know that?”
Maddie beamed at her and even though Sue looked tired and cranky and sore, she still smiled back.
“I don’t have
time
for a sprained ankle,” she said under her breath. “In forty-eight hours, twenty-plus people will be arriving here with empty stomachs.”
“We’ll make sure nobody goes hungry, Sue, I promise.”
“You know what the worst thing just might be? Having to admit everybody else around here is right and I just might be wrong.”
“We’ve all been there, right?”
Eliza smiled, thinking how very dear this woman and her husband had become in the time she had been at Snow Angel Cove. She wanted to be just like Sue some day, plucky and strong, opinionated and hardworking and efficient.
“Who knows? It might just be a sprain, just as you said, but you can’t know for sure until you have it checked out. I’ll just finish the breakfast and we can run over to the Lake Haven Hospital.”
“Jim can take me. You’ve got plenty to do here.”
Eliza started to tell Sue that everything else could wait but she heard the door of the mudroom open before she could, then Jim’s and Aidan’s voices.
“Speak of the devil,” Sue said.
A moment later, the two men walked into the kitchen. Eliza’s resident troop of butterflies started dancing around her insides again at seeing him for the first time since she had left his arms the night before.
“Morning,” he murmured to all of them, but she was quite certain his gaze rested on her for much longer than was strictly necessary.
“Hi, Mr. Aidan,” Maddie said cheerfully. “Sue needs to go to the hospital.”
He blinked at Maddie’s casual tone. “What?”
“It’s nothing,” the cook assured him. “I slid over an icy curb at the boat parade last night. I probably should go get a brace or something.”
“I knew it!” Jim exclaimed. “I should have taken you there last night like I wanted to. Maybe if I had, it wouldn’t have been so swollen that you couldn’t even put your shoe on this morning.”
“You’re right and I was wrong. There. I said it. Happy now?”
She looked so miserable that Eliza couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. Any trace of pity seemed completely inconsequential when Jim stepped forward and kissed the top of the woman’s graying head.
“Now, how could I be happy when my darling girl is in pain?” the quiet cowboy said.
Oh. Eliza’s butterflies stopped long enough to go as gooey as the rest of her. She glanced at Aidan and found him watching the older couple with a softness she didn’t usually see there.
“Son, you mind if I take the Suburban?” Jim asked him. “She can stretch her leg out better in that.”
“Not at all. I’ll go pull it around for you.”
He gaze Eliza a quick, unreadable look, then hurried back out to the mudroom and out the door.
“Can you go over to our place for my best black coat and my purse with the insurance information?” Sue patted Jim’s arm, apparently resigned to her fate now and in action mode.
“You bet. Be back in a flash.”
He practically galloped out the door.
“I think the darn thing might be broken,” Sue admitted when it was just the two of them and Maddie in the kitchen again. “I’ve had sprains before and they never hurt like this one.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“What if it is? I’ll ruin everything for Aidan and his family.”
“You’ll ruin nothing,” Eliza insisted. “I told you, we’ll figure it out. I can manage with a little help. You can sit right there at the work island with your cast up on a chair and tell me everything you need me to do.”
“I wanted the holidays to be perfect for Aidan. It’s important to him. Especially this year.”
“Because of his brain tumor?” Eliza asked, after making sure Maddie had gone back to her worksheets and was humming softly to herself, not paying any attention to them.
Sue looked surprised. “He actually let you in on the big dark secret? Wow. I’m shocked. You’re one of only a lucky trusted few. He didn’t even tell most of his household staff in California. He leased a house on the coast to keep it a secret and called me and Jim out of retirement to go help him there.”
“Why the big secret? Do you know?”
Sue sighed and shifted her leg on the chair. Eliza caught a glimpse of her foot, swollen and discolored. It looked worse than a sprain to her.
“He said it was because of how it might affect the Caine Tech bottom line if news trickled out. Make shareholders question the direction of the company and who might take over if his brain tumor turned out to be fatal.”
“What do you think?”
“I think he hates showing any sign of weakness. I don’t know, that might be from having so many tough brothers or it might just be part of who he is, the same way he likes to believe he doesn’t need anybody.”
He was an independent, complicated tangle of a man and she was coming to care far too much about him.
Before she could answer, Jim came in.
“Is this the coat you wanted?” he asked.
“That will do.”
He helped her slip her arms in just as Aidan came in from the other direction. It must have started snowing, as his ranch coat had little sprinkles of snow scattered over the shoulders.
“Your carriage awaits, madam.”
“Thank you, darlin’.”
She gingerly rose to her feet and started hopping to the door with the cane she had brought along. Aidan let her go only to the edge of the work island before he sighed and scooped her up in one smooth motion.
“Put me down, you fool. You shouldn’t be lifting anything, especially not someone my size.”
“You weigh no more than Maddie over there and I carried her to bed last night.”
Maddie giggled as the wiry cook flushed brighter than a poinsettia. “You’re crazy. That’s what you are. Loony as popcorn on a hot skillet. Put me down! Right now!”