“Stop wriggling around,” he said with a laugh. “You’re only making it harder.”
She instantly subsided.
“What do you need me to do while you’re gone?” Eliza asked.
“Finish fixing breakfast for his orneriness here,” Sue said. “That should do it.”
“You don’t need to fix me anything,” Aidan protested as he carried her out the door. Jim picked up Sue’s purse and headed out after them. He paused in the doorway and turned back to Eliza.
“Whatever you said to convince her to see a doc, thanks a million,” he said gruffly. “I owe you.”
“Anything you think you might owe me has been paid in full many times over with the kindness you and Sue have shown to me and to Maddie,” she said firmly. “Please call and let us know when you find out anything.”
After they left, Eliza pressed a hand to her chest. How was she supposed to protect her heart against Aidan? Every time she turned around, she found more things to love.
She stood there for only a moment as she fought the bleak realization that leaving this place was going to hurt worse than anything she had experienced in a long time, then she rubbed her hands briskly down her thighs, threw on an apron and went to work.
Aidan came back inside a few moments later. He looked at her standing by the stove and frowned. “You really didn’t have to make me breakfast. Toast and coffee would have been fine.”
“Too late. It’s already cooking. How do pancakes, bacon and eggs sound?”
“Delicious, if you want the truth.”
He walked farther into the room and approached the stove, bringing in the delicious scent of snow and leather and him.
“What can I do to help?” he asked.
“Not a thing,” she answered. “It’s under control.”
At least the breakfast was. Tension seemed to sizzle and pop between them like the bacon frying in the pan. She heartily wished she could go back and unkiss him. Okay, not a word, but it absolutely fit in this circumstance. She wanted to go back to those sweet moments they had shared on the drive home from the boat parade, when they had shared confidences and she had felt warm and safe.
Instead, all she could think about was being in his arms again.
“I can flip the bacon,” he said.
“No need. It’s just about there.”
He looked as if he wanted to argue but finally crossed to the coffeemaker and poured a cup then carried it over to the island where Maddie had finished her math homework and had pulled out crayons and a paper.
“What are you drawing?”
“It’s a feel-better card for Miz Sue.”
“Wow. That’s really good. She’s going to love it. It’s a horse, right?”
She nodded, her bottom lip firmly nestled between her teeth as she concentrated. It was a mannerism she had either inherited or picked up from Eliza. “Yep. It’s Cinnamon. See? There’s the white patch on her face.”
He peered closer. “Oh, sure. It’s an exact likeness. Way to go, kiddo.”
They shared a smile of perfect accord and something soft seemed to twist in Eliza’s heart.
She quickly turned her attention back to crisping the bacon before setting it on paper towels to drain the grease. Breakfast, in her estimation, was the hardest meal of all to prepare because all the typical breakfast dishes only took a moment to cook and everything needed constant pouring, stirring or flipping.
She was nevertheless quite pleased with the results as she plated golden pancakes, fluffy eggs and perfectly cooked bacon then set it down in front of him.
“Thank you,” he said, that unreadable look in his eyes again.
“You’re welcome.”
She fixed a plate for Maddie and one for herself. While she would have liked to escape to her little sitting room to eat somewhere she could put a safe distance between them, she couldn’t come up with a good excuse to leave.
“Did you see Sue’s ankle?” he asked when she finally sat across from him.
“Only a glimpse. It looked nasty. Swollen and horribly bruised. I must confess, I felt a bit like a hypocrite urging her to go to the doctor after my own recent history of being on the other side of the situation and not wanting to see a medical professional, either. To my untrained eye, it looked worse than a sprain.”
“Yeah, I suspected as much or she never would have agreed to see a doctor. Well, that will make for an interesting house party.”
“I told Sue I’ll be her cook’s assistant. She can sit there on a stool and tell me what to do. I might not be a culinary genius but I’m sure I can do an adequate job with a little supervision.” She gestured to his plate with her fork. “I didn’t poison you, did I?”
“It’s delicious. All of it. But I didn’t hire you to feed twenty people.”
She swallowed a bite of pancakes, lush and delicious with the genuine gourmet maple syrup Sue stocked in the refrigerator. “I’m perfectly aware you invented a job for me to do, Aidan. We both know Sue could have handled everything on her own, with help from the girls she hired to take care of the laundry and housekeeping chores.”
He opened his mouth but she didn’t give him a chance to reply. “I’m not stupid. I know you hired me out of guilt because you felt bad for the little mishap we had that first day and you could see I was in a tough situation.”
“All right. Maybe initially,” he conceded. “But you have proved your worth a hundred times over. The house looks incredible—festive and warm and inviting. Everything is perfect, El, from the gourmet soap baskets to the little guidebooks you left in each of the bedrooms. I love her dearly but, let’s face it. Sue could never have pulled off all those welcoming little touches on her own.”
His praise made her glow. “I’m really happy you like it,” she said.
“You’ve done the impossible here. You’ve created a home I am proud to welcome my family to for Christmas. But you have enough to do without adding kitchen duties, too.”
“I can handle the meal prep. Don’t worry.”
“The minute Pop finds out something happened to Sue, he’s going to be in here taking over. He has a thing about feeding people. And if Pop’s in here, everybody else will follow. The issue isn’t going to be finding enough help for the meal prep, it likely will be finding enough counter space for all the cooks who will be in here spoiling the broth.”
She couldn’t wait for his family to arrive and felt as if she already knew them all. Even before she actually met them, though, she already had the sneaking suspicion this would be one more thing about him she would miss when she left Snow Angel Cove.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I
N
A
RARE
twist for him, Aidan couldn’t seem to concentrate, no matter how he tried.
For the past thirty-six hours, he had been obsessed with a new project. He loved the completely natural buzz that sometimes bubbled through his veins when he knew he was on to something sure to be a hit—when he could sometimes spend twenty-plus hours straight at his computer, until his eyes blurred and his shoulders ached.
That same excitement hummed through him about the project he was currently developing, but at the moment he couldn’t seem to focus on any of the three screens in front of him.
Little wonder, he supposed. The largest jet of the Caine Tech corporate fleet was wheels up at the moment, on its way here carrying his family, and was due to touch down in less than an hour.
After piddling around a little longer, he finally sighed, saved the encrypted file and shut down his network.
He wasn’t precisely nervous. His family had visited him in California plenty of times—maybe not en masse like this, but he had hosted them in smaller groups without problem. Pop and Charlotte had flown out and spent a few days with him over his birthday weekend a few years ago. Dylan and Jamie had each crashed with him for a while between deployments.
Hosting everyone at Christmas added an entirely new dimension, especially at a new house. He wanted everything to be perfectly memorable, which turned out to be a hell of a lot of pressure. Who knew?
As he walked through the house, some of the stress eased. Everything would be great. How could it be otherwise? The house looked terrific, from the Christmas tree to the garlands to the glittery lights everywhere.
Jazz Christmas carols played softly on the excellent stereo system, something Eliza must have programmed since he had completely forgotten about it.
He meant what he said earlier. She had done wonders with Snow Angel Cove. It was cozy and warm, exactly as he wanted.
Now that Sue was temporarily sidelined, Eliza had been forced to step up in the kitchen, too. He found her there, standing at the work island before a huge stainless-steel bowl filled with a puffy mound of dough.
She wore a Christmas-patterned apron and was humming softly to the music. He watched her for a long moment, enjoying the graceful economy of her movements as she rolled bits of dough between her palms and transferred them to muffin cups, the way she nibbled on her bottom lip just as Maddie did, the little sprinkle of flour she left behind when she rubbed the back of her hand along her cheekbone.
He had been so consumed with the project, he had only seen her briefly over the past few days. Each time he did, he was surprised all over again by the way the world suddenly seemed a brighter, happier,
better
place when he was with her.
What would it be like to have her here all the time? Not here at Snow Angel Cove, specifically, but in his life, in his bed. In his heart.
He didn’t think he made a sound as he watched her but eventually she must have sensed his presence. She looked up from the dough and her cheeks turned a little pink.
“Oh. Hi. I’m sorry. I didn’t see you come in. How long have you been standing there?”
“Only a moment.” He moved farther into the kitchen, wishing he had the right to wrap his arms around her from behind and tug her against him, to kiss the delicate skin at the nape of her neck, under her ponytail.
He pushed away the yearning. “You’re on your own in here.”
“I could tell Sue’s cast was bothering her so I strongly encouraged her to put it up for a while, before everyone gets here. She’s in my sitting room with Maddie. I believe they were about to watch a Christmas special.”
“Sue is a little addicted to them.”
“I suspect she may end up sleeping through this one.” She smiled softly as she set another ball of dough in the muffin tin.
“You are truly a miracle worker if you could convince her to rest just before the chaos I call a family descends on Snow Angel Cove. How did you manage to pull that off?”
“I wouldn’t have been successful if her foot wasn’t killing her. Christmas is a terrible time to have a fracture and have to wear a cast.”
Sue had ended up with what doctors called a Lisfranc fracture of the small bones in her foot from the twisting injury of falling off the curb. It hadn’t required surgery but she was now hobbling around with a cast and a small knee walker to keep her weight off it as much as possible.
“Looks like she put you to work before she went to rest. What are you doing? Cloverleaf rolls?”
She gave him a sideways smile that made him hungry for more. “Careful, Aidan. Your culinary experience is showing. Sue might end up putting you to work.”
“She knows I can hold my own if she needs my help.”
“Actually, I think we have everything under control. Sue wanted me to make rolls to go with the turkey tenderloins we’re making for the late lunch. She babysat me through her recipe to make sure I didn’t overwork the dough but trusted me enough to make the balls for rolls on my own.”
“They look great. Good job.”
She made a face. “Thank you for not mentioning all the misshapen circles.”
“I can’t see any from where I’m standing.”
“You must not be looking hard enough,” she said.
He wanted to argue that he could see fine and everything within his view looked perfect but he was afraid that would sound cheesy.
“In my experience, we tend to see our own mistakes and weaknesses far more vividly than other people do,” he said instead.
“Isn’t that the truth?”
The lapsed into silence broken only by the soft music on the sound system, now playing a vibraphone version of “Winter Wonderland.” Did she feel the tensile attraction tug and stretch between them or was it wholly one-sided? He wasn’t sure but by the occasional sidelong glance she sent his way, he suspected the former.
“I know I haven’t said it enough,” he said after a moment, “but thank you again for stepping up to help Sue out with the meal prep. We really would have been sunk without you.”
“I’m glad I was here.”
“Again, let me just say that I’m terribly sorry I ran into you that day and I’m probably going to have nightmares about it forever, but somehow it turned into one of the best things that’s happened to me in a long time.”
“Oh.” The word escaped her on a small breath of sound and she gazed at him, green eyes wide, arrested. It took a great deal of wrestling for him to fight down the urge to lean across the work island and kiss her right there, over the bowl of cloverleaf roll dough.
“I mean it, Eliza. I’m very glad you and Maddie are here—and not only because you’ve been a lifesaver in the kitchen.”
“I am, too,” she said after a moment, and he knew it was a confession she didn’t make easily.
“How long before your family arrives?” she asked, changing the subject quickly.
“Within the hour. Jim and I need to be leaving in a few minutes for the airport pickup.”
“You have the list of room assignments, right?”
“Yeah. I looked it over this morning. It all should be fine.”
“We talked about leaving most of the evening unstructured. We’ll let people settle into their rooms before we put out the late lunch buffet style an hour or so after everyone arrives. Dinner tonight is pizza, which is already prepped, and then we have the sleigh ride on the agenda.”
“Right. Okay.”
He did a little mental reorganizing. He had entertained some vague idea of welcoming his family for a few hours and then going right back to his project but that wouldn’t work. Jim would need his help handling the team of draft horses temporarily on loan for the sleigh ride.
“Do you have a route in mind?” she asked.
“Yes. We won’t go far, just around the road that circles the ranch property and down by the cove.”
“Oh, that sounds perfect. You’ll have a lovely view of the stars and the moonlight down by the lake. Your family will love it.”
“I hope so. You and Maddie will, too. She has been dying to ride in the sleigh ever since she spied it in the barn the other day.”
Her mouth tightened. “We probably would enjoy it, if we were going with you.”
“Of course you’re going! You have to!”
“Is that an order?”
“If it has to be,” he retorted. He hated when she threw the fact that she technically worked for him between them like razor-topped concertina wire.
“How can I go? I’ll be busy cleaning up after twenty people and I don’t feel comfortable sending my child along for someone in your family to babysit.”
“First of all, the primary rule in my family is, if you don’t work, you don’t eat, as I’ve told you before. Everybody will help you clean the kitchen before we leave. Watch. Pop will insist on it. And second of all, you have to come. Fine, consider it an order, if that helps you sleep at night. We both know Maddie’s heart would break if we left her home.”
She was silent, brow furrowed as she concentrated on rolling the last bit of dough into a ball. “Can’t you see how awkward this is for me? I’m a total stranger to your family. A total stranger who
works
for you! What are they going to think when I just start hanging around, going on sleigh rides and eating dinner with you?”
“They’re going to think the more the merrier. And five minutes after they all show up, you will feel like one of the family. One of my pop’s favorite Irish sayings is, there are no strangers, only friends you haven’t met yet.”
She huffed out her breath. “Do you always manage to get your own way?”
“Not even close,” he murmured. How could she say that, when she came up with excuse after excuse to fight the feelings growing between them?
She gazed at him and her mouth trembled slightly, just enough that he knew he couldn’t go another moment without kissing her. In this, yeah. He insisted on his own way.
As he lowered his mouth, she caught her breath and he saw her pupils dilate, then turned shocked when he only pressed his mouth to that dusting of flour on her cheek.
“You had a little something there,” he said, his voice low.
“Oh.”
Her lashes fluttered down and she leaned into him slightly, almost as if she didn’t realize it. Just before he leaned in to kiss her—really kiss her this time—he heard the mudroom door slam and cowboy boots on the tile.
Jim.
He eased away and stepped back a pace just as the man strolled into the kitchen. Jim looked between the two of them with a slight frown, as if he sensed some of the sparkling tension in the room but wasn’t sure of the origin.
“There you are, boss. We should probably get moving to pick up your family, since we’ll each have to make a couple of trips to haul them all, plus their stuff, plus their dogs.”
Right. His family. He needed to focus on his priorities here.
“You’re absolutely right. Let’s go.”
Before he left the kitchen, he turned back and found Eliza pressing a hand to her cheek. She dropped her fingers quickly, eyes slightly defiant, then quickly turned back to the rolls as he headed out the door.
* * *
“N
O
,
REALLY
. I
can do this,” Eliza insisted, stacking another plate on the tray she was using to bus the dining room table. “I promise, I don’t mind cleaning up by myself. Go on your sleigh ride while it’s still clear, before the snow starts up again.”
Dermot Caine, a sturdy, handsome charmer who had passed his striking blue eyes on to all his children, wagged a finger at her as he picked up silverware. “Nonsense, my dear. We aren’t leaving you with this mess! With all of us pitching in, it won’t take but a moment to have that fine kitchen sparkling once more. Then we can
all
go for a sleigh ride, hmm?”
Apparently Aidan had inherited more than his father’s blue eyes. His stubbornness must be a family trait, too.
“It’s not necessary,” she tried again. It had become a point of honor to her but Dermot overrode her as easily as his son usually did.
“Dylan, Bren, Andrew. Snap to it, boys.”
The men—far from boys and every bit as gorgeous as their brother—obeyed their father with alacrity and Eliza could do nothing but be swept along in the tide of Caines grabbing up plates and trays and bowls.
Spencer Gregory—
the
Smokin’ Hot Spence Gregory, who turned out to be not only more gorgeous in person but amazingly nice, too—smiled as he picked up a bowl containing just a few corkscrew curls, all that was left from a massive pasta salad.
“That pizza was really great, Eliza,” he said.
“Thanks.”
“Fantastic,” Brendan Caine, the biggest of the brothers concurred. “I do believe I could have eaten one pie all by myself.”
“Sue did a great job, didn’t she?” She refused to take undue credit when she had merely followed directions.
“Couldn’t have done it without you, dear,” Sue piped up from her spot at the kitchen table, where she was going over the menu for the next day.
“The boys and I will take care of these dishes,” Dermot said before she could even reach for a dishcloth. “Go on. You deserve to put your feet up and rest up a bit before our sleigh ride.”
Argh. Wouldn’t anybody listen to her? “I’m just going to wander through the house and see if I can round up any other dishes.”
In her experience, cups and plates and bowls tended to be scattered far and wide as people carried snacks and drinks from room to room.
“Might as well, might as well. I need to put Dylan to work here with a dish towel.”
“Sure. Why not make the guy with one arm do all the hard stuff?” Aidan’s younger brother, the wounded army ranger, gave Eliza a teasing wink.
“That one-arm thing sure comes in handy sometimes. Didn’t seem to stop you from kicking our butts at billiards earlier,” Andrew, the attorney in the family, threw out.
They were bickering good-naturedly as she headed out to canvas the other rooms.
In the great room, she saw Dylan’s huge black-and-tan coonhound stretched out in front of the fire while a trio of much smaller dogs—a lean chihuahua and a couple of tiny cute puffballs who had to be related—cuddled up to him.