Julia’s hands tightened on the steering wheel as he gunned it, swerving the wheel in front of her mere seconds before a sedan came around the bend in the opposite direction.
Another five seconds and the SUV would have caused a head-on collision, all because the driver was impatient that Julia wasn’t driving the speed limit.
The near-miss did nothing to calm her nerves as she negotiated the final curve to Snow Angel Cove, the beautiful, sprawling glass and cedar lodge Aidan had bought when he first moved to Haven Point.
Being nervous was stupid. Eliza was a dear friend. She had visited them many times and had even met other Caine family members at various events over the years and considered a few of her sisters-in-law more than casual acquaintances, almost friends.
So why this panic?
She could answer that in one word. Jamie. The two of them might have forged a tenuous friendship, as she had told Lani, but she was still fiercely attracted to him.
Oh, she had to stop this right now. The man had gone out of his way to do a favor for her by taking the boys with him to Hope’s Crossing while she volunteered at the senior center.
She refused to repay him by acting like a brainless, quivering spinster who had never spoken with a man before. She wasn’t—far from it. If fate hadn’t intervened, she would be long married right now, probably with a houseful of children, as she and Maksym had often discussed.
She could think of no reason why she couldn’t be casual and friendly with Jamie, treating him the same way she did Aidan, Bowie Callahan, Ben Kilpatrick. All her friends’ husbands.
They didn’t make her palms sweat or her thoughts scatter like withered leaves in a November wind.
Anyway, she thought as she parked in front of the house, Jamie told her there would be dozens of people here. Odds were good she wouldn’t even have to talk to him.
If she could make it through this dinner without making a fool of herself, she would truly have something for which to be thankful.
* * *
JULIA WINSTON WAS LATE.
Jamie checked his watch one more time before shifting his gaze in the direction of Aidan’s huge front door, as if he expected her to materialize simply because he willed it.
He didn’t know the woman well, but he had a feeling tardiness was extremely out of character.
She was supposed to have been here nearly an hour ago. Road conditions were quite treacherous out there. Maybe she slid into a tree or something...
“What do you think?” Aidan asked. “Should we start without her? The natives are growing restless. You know how Carter gets if he doesn’t eat on schedule. Looks like the two boys you brought along take after him.”
The day had actually been a delight, the most enjoyable he had spent in a long time. The boys had adored the airplane, especially when he let them into the cockpit and explained some of the controls to them.
As he had suspected, they hit it off with Carter like gangbusters. No big surprise there. Brendan’s youngest son was a funny, kind, imaginative kid. It was hard not to like him.
Just now, they were setting out place cards under the watchful eye of Sue, Eliza and Aidan’s longtime housekeeper.
“She’ll be here,” he said now to Aidan. “She texted me forty minutes ago that she was on her way.”
He wasn’t sure what was taking her so long, though. The drive between Snow Angel Cove and Shelter Springs should only take twenty minutes, and that was with slow traffic.
“I still can’t believe you’ve invited a woman for Thanksgiving dinner,” his brother Dylan said. “You never bring anybody to family events. I mean ever.”
“I believe that’s on the first page of the Jamie Caine handbook,” Brendan said.
He rolled his eyes, though his skin prickled with heat. How had his usually clueless brothers picked up on that?
Yeah, it had been a conscious effort. You only brought the keepers home to meet the family—and he never dated keepers.
His family was irresistible. He never wanted to run the risk that some unsuspecting woman might fall for his family, which would only complicate things when he broke up with her.
“Not only is he bringing a woman, but he spent all day babysitting a couple of boys for her. Personally, I can’t wait to meet this Julia Winston,” Brendan said.
“You’ve met her,” his wife, Lucy, told him as she set a vegetable tray down in the middle of the massive table Aidan had bought specifically for these family gatherings.
“Have I?” Brendan frowned, obviously trying to figure out when.
“She was here at Liam’s christening last year and the Fourth of July party we had,” Eliza said as she carried in a bowl of creamy mashed potatoes that made Jamie drool.
“Is she one of your Helping Hands?” Genevieve, Dylan’s wife, asked from the seat she had been firmly relegated to. Gen was hugely pregnant, a few months further along than Lucy, and gloriously beautiful—especially in contrast to Dylan, with his eye patch and scars.
Dylan used his remaining hand to refill his wife’s water glass from the fruit-infused pitcher on the table. As Jamie watched his brother, long-familiar guilt pinched at him. He acknowledged it, then shoved it back to the dusty corner with all his other demons.
“She’ll be here,” Eliza said. “If there’s anyone in this world you can trust to do what she says she’s going to do, it’s Julia Winston. She’s the most dependable, steady person I know.”
Eliza made Julia sound like a golden retriever. He frowned, but decided he probably shouldn’t call his sister-in-law out about it without drawing even more attention from his annoying brothers.
The doorbell rang before he could, anyway.
“I’ll get it!” His niece Maddie raced past him toward the door.
Jamie felt stuck. He didn’t know how to play this. He had invited Julia and the boys to the Caine family dinner, but he hadn’t realized how his brothers would put some kind of romantic spin on the gesture.
If he paid too much attention to her, they would tease him mercilessly—and worse, probably her, too. But ignoring her seemed unnecessarily rude.
For now, he would leave Maddie to welcome her, he decided.
The eight-year-old beamed at Julia, grabbed her hand and tugged her inside. “Hi, Miss Winston! You look so pretty today!”
“I...thank you, honey.”
Julia had a dazed, what-have-I-gotten-myself-into look as the wall of sound probably crashed over her. Still, she managed a smile for Eliza’s daughter as the girl took her coat with perfect manners.
“We had so much fun flying to Hope’s Crossing today. I wish you could have come with us. Davy and Clint were scared at first, but I told them I’ve been on Jamie’s plane like a billion times and never even had a crash.”
“Did you?” This time her smile looked a little more natural. She had a truly lovely smile. It lit up her features from the inside, making her glow with life.
“Uncle Jamie even let me hold the rudder. That’s the thing that helps you steer the plane. I only got to do it for like three seconds because Clint wanted a turn.”
“That does sound exciting. I’m sorry I missed it.” She looked around the room until her gaze found his. He wanted to think the nervousness in her eyes seemed to calm a little when she spotted him, but that might have been a trick of the light.
“You’re all waiting for me. I’m sorry. The snow is coming down, and the roads were turning to slush. It took me longer than I expected to make it around the lake.”
“You’re here now. That’s the important thing.”
He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised when his father hurried over to make the newcomer feel welcome. Dermot grabbed her hand and hooked it through his arm, then led her into the room, pouring on the Irish charm, as he always did in th
e company of a pretty woman.
Apparently Julia was no less susceptible than any other woman. Her cheeks took on that rosy glow he was coming to enjoy so much, and those glorious eyes gleamed.
Dermot might be past seventy and very happily married to the dear friend he had finally wed a decade after his first wife died, but that didn’t prevent him from charming all women, young and old.
He was a little surprised when his father led Julia straight to him, as if by some mysterious master plan. He was also intrigued when her color seemed to heighten.
“Jamie. Hi. Um, how did things go today?”
“Great, at least from my perspective. Maybe you’d better ask Clint and Davy, though.” He turned to the boys, who were jostling to find a space at the overflow table. “Guys, how was the airplane?”
“It was awesome,” Davy exclaimed. He ran over to them, his gap-toothed grin wide. “You should have been there, Julia. We were higher than the clouds. I’m not even lying, am I, Clint?”
His brother, not far behind, shook his head. “Jamie said we were going six hundred miles an hour. Six hundred! Can you believe it?”
She looked duly impressed. “That’s amazing. I want you to tell me all about it, but why don’t we wait until after dinner. It looks like everyone is ready to eat. I’m sorry again to keep you waiting.”
“You didn’t,” Eliza assured her. “We’re only now setting everything out.”
“Can I help with anything?”
“You can sit down and enjoy yourself. I understand you’ve been helping all day at the nursing home in Shelter Springs. I think you’ve earned a rest.”
Julia looked as if she wanted to argue, but Eliza—ever the consummate hostess—urged all of them to take their seats.
“My handsome helpers have put out turkey place cards with everyone’s names on them. Go ahead and find yours.”
“Hurry up,” Carter said. “I’m starving.”
Jamie quickly realized Eliza had seated him next to Julia.
Oddly, he couldn’t remember a Thanksgiving dinner he had looked forward to more.
* * *
“THAT WAS A fine meal, wouldn’t you say?” Dermot said to the kitchen in general—which contained Jamie and most of his brothers, charged with cleaning up after the big meal.
As he had told the boys, cleaning up together was a Caine family tradition, one he enjoyed almost as much as the turkey—though he would never admit it, even under the threat of torture.
“Delicious, as always,” Dylan said. “Thanks for hosting again, Aidan.”
“You know Eliza.” Aidan’s smile was smitten as he put silverware back in the drawer. “She’s always up for a party.”
“You picked a good one there.” Pop beamed.
“Don’t have to tell me.”
All of Jamie’s brothers had married well. He adored each of his sisters-in-law.
“It was nice to have a few fresh faces, too, just to liven up the conversation,” Dermot said. “Julia seems very nice. I like her.”
Of course he would like her—Pop loved everyone. Anyway, he was lucky. Julia had at least talked to Dermot. She seemed to have made it a point through dinner to virtually ignore Jamie, unless it was to ask him to pass the potatoes.
He wasn’t sulking, he told himself.
“She is very nice,” he agreed, scrubbing a little harder at a small glob of potatoes on a plate. He really didn’t want to talk about Julia with his brothers, but couldn’t think of another topic quickly enough to shift the conversation.
“I believe this might be the first time you’ve dated a librarian,” Brendan said.
“We’re not dating,” Jamie said.
“You mean you’re not checking her out?” Dylan said, a pun that earned groans of disgust all around.
“Julia is great,” Aidan said, an unmistakable hard note in his voice. “She’s one of Eliza’s dearest friends. We would hate to see her hurt.”
The implication that Jamie might be the one doing the hurting rankled. Did his family really think him so heartless?
“No one is going to hurt anyone,” he said stiffly. “I told you, we’re not dating.”
Aidan didn’t seem to believe him. “I’m just saying, Julia is not your usual love-’em-and-leave-’em sort. She’s had a rough time of things and seems a little more...breakable.”
He fought the urge to dunk his brother’s head into the dishwater. His brothers were his closest friends. Did they really think him so cavalier that he would purposely set out to make a soft, innocent woman like Julia fall for him, just so he could break her heart?
“She’s my landlady. That’s all. We happen to be living under the same roof for the next few weeks, until my condo is finished.”
“Your landlady that you invited for Thanksgiving dinner,” Dylan put in.
“I was being nice! She was stressing about the boys coming to live with her, which all happened at the last minute yesterday, so I offered to entertain them for her today by taking them with us on the plane. It only made sense for all of them to join us for Thanksgiving dinner. That’s all there is to it. We are not romantically involved whatsoever. I don’t know why you all think I can’t be nice to a woman without having some sinister ulterior motive, but it is possible. Aidan, you can go back and report to Eliza that you heard it firsthand. I have no evil designs on Julia. I don’t intend to seduce her, to debauch her or to break her heart. Okay? Are you happy? Would you all back off now?”
The kitchen fell silent for several awkward seconds before Drew cleared his throat. “Clear enough. I guess we’ve been told.”
What the hell? Where had that come from? He had been way too emphatic, and now everyone was looking at him like he was one can shy of a six-pack.
“So. Informal count. Who’s planning on coming back here for Christmas?” Aidan asked.
To his relief, the conversation shifted to the upcoming holidays and the big gala fund-raiser in a few weeks for Spence and Charlotte’s charity, Warriors of Hope, that provided recreational therapy for injured veterans.
Little by little as the dishes were done and dried, the kitchen emptied of all but him and Pop. Jamie had a feeling his father had hung back on purpose.
That hunch was verified when Dermot finished drying the last dish, then gave Jamie a stern look. “I know you said Julia Winston is only your landlady, but I just wanted to say I think she’s a lovely girl.”
“I... She is.”
“And maybe a lovely girl is exactly what you need.”
“Pop,” he began, but Dermot cut him off.
“You need to start thinking about your future, son. You’re out of the military now, with your own successful business. Do you want to spend the rest of your life as a carefree bachelor, dating a different woman every week?”
Was that so terrible? Half the married men he knew would trade places with him in a heartbeat. Not his brothers, of course. They were all happily married, but he considered that an anomaly.
“I appreciate your concern, but I’m doing fine. I have a pretty damn good life.”
“Do you? Are you really happy? Have you looked ahead to a decade from now, two decades?”
He didn’t want to talk about this, so he chose to remain mute.
“Katherine told me not to say anything, that it’s not my business. I agree, but I keep thinking of your dear mother and how it would break our Margaret’s heart to see you alone. You need a family of your own. Children of your own.”
“Not everybody is cut out for the white picket fence.”
“I agree. Some are alone by choice or by circumstance and have wonderful, meaningful, beautiful lives. If that’s truly what you want, you know I will accept and support you. But I can’t help thinking that you’re still punishing yourself, all the
se years later. I worry you don’t think you deserve to be happy.”
He felt himself go cold as the ghosts of the past rose up once more. “Pop.”
“What happened with Lisa was not your fault. I’ve said it to you many times and I’ll say it again now. No matter what story you tell yourself, you weren’t to blame.”
He and his father would never agree on that. “You think I’m punishing myself because of something that happened nearly twenty years ago?”
“I think somehow you’ve convinced yourself you don’t have the same right to the happy-ever-after that your brothers have found.”
He was saved from having to answer when Eliza came in looking for something to cut the pie. Not for the first time, he would have gladly kissed his sister-in-law for her excellent timing, and he hurried back to the great room before Pop could hound him further.
CHAPTER NINE
“SO YOU HAD a good Thanksgiving?” Julia asked the boys as she pulled the Lexus into the driveway of Winston House.
“Yes. It was the best one ever,” Davy said, voice brimming with excitement.
“What about you, Clint?” she pressed when the older boy said nothing, keeping his eyes focused on the darkness outside the vehicle window.
“It was okay, I guess,” he finally mumbled.
“Just okay?”
He shrugged as she pulled into the garage, turned off the engine and started helping the boys out of their seat belts.
“You looked as if you were having a wonderful time playing with the other children. Carter and Faith and the others were so nice, weren’t they? And I can only imagine how exciting the airplane ride was.”
“Riding on an airplane was fun at first, then it got kind of boring,” he answered.
“You weren’t bored! You loved it just as much as I did,” Davy said.
Clint glowered at his brother as they went up the steps to the house. “Shut up. I did not.”
“You said it was fun!”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Sugar Pine Trail--A Small-Town Holiday Romance Page 10