“Oh. You’re back,” Sue said. “How is it out there?”
“Deep. We could barely get the door open to the garage in order to get the pickup truck with the plow. We finished clearing around the house. Now Jim is working on clearing the drive to the main road.”
“I was just showing Eliza the cook’s quarters.”
“Have you made a decision, then?” he asked her.
Despite Sue’s avowal, Eliza wasn’t convinced her help was actually needed. She was almost positive he only wanted her to take this perfect position because he felt sorry for her and to ease his guilt.
Her pride urged her to tell him she didn’t need or want his pity. But this provided such a better situation for Maddie than any other alternative. Snow Angel Cove could provide a sanctuary for them for a while, at least a place where Maddie could be free to enjoy the holidays. How could she let pride stand in the way of that?
She forced a smile. “Yes. If you’re serious about your offer, I accept. We will stay through the holidays and help you with your family.”
A fierce, satisfied expression crossed his handsome features. He didn’t look particularly surprised, however. Why should he be? What woman in her right mind could refuse such an offer?
“I’ll contact my assistant immediately and have her email you some forms to fill out. Nondisclosure, confidentiality, the standard employment requirements. I don’t want you doing anything but resting today and even tomorrow. Shall we say you’ll officially start in a couple of days? Monday?”
“I am feeling fine, I promise. There’s no reason I can’t start today, especially since time is limited before your family arrives.”
“Don’t overdo anything. I want you and Maddie to both feel comfortable here. You’re welcome to use any of the facilities—the horses, the pool and spa, the game room. Sue can tell you, I like the people who work for me to feel more like family.”
“You’re sure you don’t mind Maddie underfoot? She loves to help me and when I’m doing a task where she can’t help, she’s usually very good at entertaining herself.”
“I don’t mind at all. In a week, this place will be crawling with kids. She’ll fit right in with everyone else.”
For an instant, she could picture it with vivid clarity—children filling the big house with laughter and excitement, Christmas music ringing through the space, the air rich with the smells of cinnamon and vanilla and pine.
She had hoped to give her daughter a memorable Christmas but this one might turn out to be more amazing than she had ever imagined.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“G
ET
ME
THE
projected specs by Friday, then make sure your team takes time with their families over the holidays. They can hit it hard again after the New Year. Yeah. Same to you.”
He hung up the phone with one of his project managers then turned back to the trio of computers in his home office, almost a complete duplicate of the setup at his office at the Caine Tech headquarters and his home office in San Jose.
The furniture was the same style and arrangement in each location—one which he found most productive to his workflow—and he used the very same brand and model of office chair.
Aidan had long ago accepted that he knew what worked for him. Messing with that structure only erected mental roadblocks that wasted his time and energy.
His brothers sometimes accused him of having obsessive-compulsive tendencies. They were usually teasing when they said it but he wasn’t bothered by it. A man didn’t amass a fortune out of nothing without careful attention to detail and a healthy self-awareness of his own strengths and weaknesses.
Afternoon sun pierced the thick cloud cover to slant through the vertical blinds. With a flick of a remote, he turned on the gas fireplace—a unique but necessary feature of this particular one of his three offices—and dialed Louise, his very efficient assistant.
They spent a few moments going over details of a pending merger before he turned the conversation to his family’s upcoming visit.
“Yes. All the arrangements have been made,” she said briskly. “The pilots will pick them up at the Hope’s Crossing airport on the twenty-third and will return them all Sunday evening, the twenty-eighth.”
That was as long as he could manage to convince them all to stay, as Pop didn’t want to be gone from the café too long and others had work and volunteer obligations at home.
“Great. Thank you. And your holiday plans are in place?”
“Yes. Ken and I will fly out to South Carolina that same day, on the twenty-third, to meet up with Stephanie, Lane and the children for Christmas and then we’re all driving down to Orlando together the day after. The kids didn’t think Santa could find them if they weren’t in their own house.”
He absently doodled on the unprinted edge of a report. “I’ll keep my fingers crossed for good weather. We were completely socked in last night and this morning with a blizzard. It’s still coming down here.”
“You don’t have to tell me, I already know we’re crazy to travel this time of year. Even without a storm, the parks are going to be completely packed over the holidays. We won’t be able to move—and don’t even get me started on the lines. The kids are so excited, I hope it will be worth it. Every time we Skype, they don’t want to talk about anything else.”
Louise’s son-in-law had recently been transferred to Charleston. Aidan knew how hard it had been on his longtime assistant—and good friend—to have her grandchildren so far away. He suspected within the next few years she would be retiring to move closer to them.
“Enough about me,” she said after a few minutes of discussing her vacation plans. “How are you feeling?”
His pen jerked across the edge of his doodle. “Fine,” he said.
“Is the headache any better?”
“Some.”
Out of a habit he couldn’t seem to shake, he reached his index finger to the spot just behind his left ear. The hair in that particular spot hadn’t completely grown back, it was about an inch long now, bristly and itchy. Fortunately, the scar was in a spot where his hair was long enough to camouflage.
Pop was going to tell him he needed a haircut. He was going to have to preemptively come up with a strategic response. He wasn’t sure his father would believe he wanted to audition for a rock band or he was going on the road as a competitive snowboarder.
“The new medicine Dr. Yan prescribed is helping,” he answered Louise now. It was partly true. The pain was a dull, constant ache most of the time instead of a piercing, howling roar.
“Why don’t I believe you?” Worry threaded through her voice.
Maybe because she knew him too well. “Don’t concern yourself about me,” he told her. “Just enjoy the holidays with your family.”
He was doodling a Christmas tree now, complete with little curlicue ornaments.
“Same to you. It’s a good thing you have a good one—and a big house to host them all. Twenty houseguests for the holidays are enough for anyone. Sue is definitely going to have her hands full.”
Right. That had been the main reason for his call. “Speaking of Sue, can you email me the standard employment forms? I’m hiring someone to help her run the household while my family is here.”
“I can contact the employment service in the area and have someone sent over. It might take a day or two.”
“Not necessary. I’ve already found someone.”
He could almost hear her frown communicated across the line. “You hired someone on your own? Someone from the area?”
Louise was a master—mistress?—at conveying volumes with a well-placed pause. As one of the few with total knowledge of his health issues—information that had been deliberately withheld from Caine Tech stockholders and the general public—she had become extremely overprotective since September.
“Relax. I vetted her first, you can be sure. I spoke with a previous employer and received nothing but glowing reviews.”
Technically, Eliza had never actually worked for Megan Hamilton, since the poor woman’s hotel burned down first. Her loss, his gain. He decided not to mention that to Louise.
“What do you know about her?” his assistant asked.
Not as much as he would like. While he couldn’t put a finger on it, he sensed Eliza had secrets she was deliberately keeping from him. “She’s a widow and single mother, new to the area. She has been working on the management team at a small hotel in Boise and is eminently qualified to run the household, which will leave Sue free to focus on what she loves best—the cooking.”
“If she can manage to keep Dermot out of the kitchen.”
“Maybe I’ll hire a bouncer for that, too.”
Louise laughed, that rich, full laugh that always made him smile. “That’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. You might just need one.”
“Better send me two sets of employment forms,” he joked.
They hung up after a few more moments and he scratched a few more embellishments on his doodled Christmas tree while he thought about all the people who worried about him.
He was a lucky man.
A few months ago, he wouldn’t have been able to say that as he had stared down into the abyss of human frailties.
He looked through the floor-to-ceiling windows with sweeping views overlooking the lake and the mountains—okay, there was the
big
difference between this office and those in California—and saw the snow had begun to fall again, not as hard as the day before but big puffy snowflakes.
His stomach growled loudly. When he glanced at his watch, he was surprised to discover it was after two, hours since the quick breakfast he had grabbed before he’d headed out to clear snow with Jim.
He could use a break, he decided. Without Louise there to gently remind him, he would work straight through without eating. He was surprised, actually, that Sue hadn’t brought him a tray. She usually did.
He filed the paperwork—doodles and all—then rose, stretched and headed toward the kitchen.
The moment he walked out of his office, he heard a small voice singing “Jingle Bells.” Maddie, he realized. What a cute kid. The heart condition, though. He felt a little squeeze in his chest as if in sympathy. That seriously sucked, though she didn’t seem to let it bother her.
Maddie and her mother were decorating that behemoth of a Christmas tree. Eliza stood on a ladder hanging ornaments while the little girl worked on the lower branches.
They must have been at it for a while, since only about half of the branches were still bare. He had to wonder how many rounds of “Jingle Bells” Eliza had endured.
Maddie finished the song with a flourish. “What should I sing next, Mama? Do you want me to sing ‘Rudolph’ again or ‘Way in a Manger’?”
“You choose,” she said. Even though she faced away from him, he could tell she was smiling by the tone of her voice.
She had no business being up on a ladder, especially after she had sustained a head injury the day before. He moved forward to tell her so but Maddie spied him before she could even get to the shiny nose part of her song.
“Hi, Mr. Aidan.” She beamed at him. “You have the biggest tree I ever saw. It’s bigger than the one at the mall!”
The tree was about fifteen feet tall. To a little girl who probably barely topped three feet tall, the tree must seem gargantuan.
“This is a big room that needs a pretty big tree. A little one would look kind of sad in here, don’t you think?”
For a moment, the dimensional quandary seemed to stump her. She looked at the tree then at the room in general, then gave a serious nod. “It would be like my American Girl doll trying to ride my pet horse named Bob. He’s way too big for her.”
“Right.”
Eliza started to climb down from the ladder and he instinctively moved forward to spot her, which had the added benefit of giving him a front-row, eye-level view of her perfect curves. She was lush in all the right places.
He swallowed hard, suddenly forgetting all about his hunger. The kind requiring food, anyway.
“I hope you don’t mind that we started to decorate your tree. Sue showed us where to find the ornaments.”
He forced his mind back to safer channels. “You shouldn’t be up there. You were supposed to be taking it easy today. Climbing up and down a ladder like a monkey so you can decorate a Christmas tree doesn’t really fit in that category.”
She made a face. “I told you I’m not very good at doing nothing.”
He couldn’t argue with that since he had the very same problem. His doctors still gave him a hard time about how he had tried to send off a couple of important emails just before being wheeled in to surgery.
“Maybe you just need more practice,” he said—which was a good reminder for himself, too. He was hoping the time he spent here would help him relax a little more.
“You can help us if you want,” Maddie offered. “It’s
your
Christmas tree. You should put at least a few of the ornaments up.”
“Oh, honey. I’m sure Mr. Caine is busy with other things.” A hint of a rosy blush crept over Eliza’s high cheekbones.
“No, she’s right.” He smiled at the girl. “It
is
my tree. It’s only fair I help you decorate it.”
“That’s really not necessary,” Eliza said quickly. “We’ve got it covered. It shouldn’t take us long to finish up here.”
She obviously didn’t want his help, which conversely made him all the more determined to pitch in. Blame that obstinate streak of his.
“I’m helping,” he said, giving her no room to argue. “I didn’t have time for lunch. Give me five minutes to grab a snack and I’ll be right back.”
In the kitchen, he sliced a couple of apples, added some grapes to the plate, a few peppered water crackers and some of the imported French cheese that Sue always kept on hand, then carried the plate and a glass of water back into the living room.
Maddie beamed with delight when he returned, which sent a little burst of warmth through him, as if he had stepped into a sunbeam. Her mother, on the other hand, looked less than thrilled and even a little surprised, as if she hadn’t really expected him to follow through.
Who had disappointed her so badly? Her husband? Questions about the man simmered just below the surface. He wanted to ask what had happened to him but he couldn’t do that with Maddie there.
“Do you want anything?” He held the plate out to both of them. Eliza shook her head but her daughter reached for an apple wedge and a piece of cheese.
“Any idea where Sue might be?” he asked.
“Lying down, I hope. She had a migraine so I urged her to take a rest. I hope that’s okay.”
He stared. “Okay, what’s your secret? You actually persuaded Sue to stop for five minutes in the middle of the day? How on earth did you manage that?”
“It wasn’t hard. It helped that she really didn’t feel well. I told her she wouldn’t be able to take care of anyone if she didn’t care for herself first. That seemed to do the trick.”
“And you don’t see the irony here? The day after being hit by an SUV, you won’t be persuaded out of wearing yourself out by decorating a Christmas tree.”
“This is fun, not work,” she said, with that appealing blush soaking her cheekbones again.
He could quickly grow addicted to teasing out that color.
The thought and the sudden fierce, simmering attraction beneath it unnerved him.
What was the matter with him? She was lovely, yes, with that soft spill of hair, those big green eyes framed by the dark fringe of lashes, the little tracery of pale freckles on her nose. But he could think of a dozen reasons why he had no business wanting to lick the very center of that plump bottom lip, to explore those luscious curves and nuzzle that soft curve of her neck.
He couldn’t imagine a worse time for him to become embroiled in a relationship—or with a more unlikely woman.
Applying the same concentration and determination he used at Caine Tech, he worked hard to shove down the attraction and turn his attention to the matter at hand.
He picked up an ornament in each hand. “It’s been a few years since I’ve decorated a Christmas tree. What do we do here?”
“It’s easy,” Maddie declared. “Just hang them where Mama tells you.”
He laughed. “Fair enough. I await your command, then.”
He told himself not to be delighted by her rueful smile.
“I’m not a control freak usually, I swear,” she said. “If this were our tree, I would let her hang the ornaments any which way. Isn’t that right, honey?”
Maddie nodded her head. “But your tree is super fancy so we have to be careful.”
“I only thought you might be a little more discriminating, especially as you’re entertaining guests for the holidays,” Eliza explained.
“Guests who honestly won’t care if the ornaments on the Christmas tree are upside down or sideways or clustered all together, I promise.”