He didn’t say anything, his penetrating gaze causing a ripple of unexpected excitement and a wave of nerve-tingling caution.
“You know,” he finally said, “for the life of me, I don’t get why you think you need to pay me to have sex with you.”
Chapter Two
“What!” Grace leaped from her seat, Ayden following, his features contorted in a harrowing pose. He reached out, and she yanked away, humiliated and embarrassed he’d thought such a thing.
She wanted to yell at him, set the moment straight, but she couldn’t catch her breath.
“It appears, I might have jumped to the wrong conclusion—”
“M-might have? Don’t you think you’re being just a little…pretentious?” she said, still annoyed that he’d thought her so desperate for a man she had to pay a guy to sleep with her.
“Perhaps you should sit down and explain exactly why you’re here and why you want to pay for a room at Hearth’s Gate.” He pointed back toward the booth.
Warning bells told her to run…very fast, away from Ayden McCabe. “I think I’d rather see if there isn’t another place around here for me to stay.” She sent him a tired headshake and reached for her suitcase when his large hands wrapped firm around her small wrist. Wondrous, exciting heat pulsed against her skin.
“I’m sure I wounded a little bit of your pride, Miss Evans, but trust me when I say you’re not going to find another place for miles.”
With two dozen people watching them, she relented on a long exhale and slipped back behind the table, much of the bar beginning to pay more attention to them than to the multiple screens above their heads.
When she didn’t start the conversation, he did. “My name is Ayden McCabe. I own a construction company, and I’ve lived in Mistletoe…most of my life,” he said, stretching his hand toward her. She hesitated long enough to prompt a humor-filled laugh, deep and jaunty. “I don’t bite.” He kept his arm locked before her.
It wasn’t his bite she was worried about. Despite the internal warning, she lifted her hand and slipped it into his, the warmth of his palm caressing, the strength of his grip enthralling. He smelled nice, too. Not like department store cologne. It was more like warmth, nature, and sensuality rolled into one.
“Grace Evans. I…uh, don’t own anything, although I’d like to one day. I work in a bakery, and I’ve lived in San Francisco all my life.”
He nodded. “All right, now tell me why you’re here.”
She grabbed for her purse, rummaging through the cluttered compartments to pull out the item that had started this entire misadventure. She hesitated before handing him the holiday postcard, front side up.
“About twenty-four hours ago, my mom found this slipped inside the mailbox. It’s from my sister Danielle who’s supposed to get married on Christmas Eve Eve.”
Ayden glanced over the mailer depicting the picturesque Christmas town of Mistletoe, Washington. He flipped the card over and read her sister’s neat handwriting. Since Grace had recited the words over a hundred times on the train, she knew what it said by heart: I needed some time to think. Don’t tell Trevor. I don’t want to hurt him. Love you, Danielle.
When Ayden finished skimming the back a few times, he lifted his gaze to Grace and rested his elbow on the long table. She tried not to stare as he raked his thumb over the sensual curve of his mouth, his strokes hypnotic and causing a slow heat to spread through every cell in her body.
“So, are you here to steal her away?”
Grace deliberated on her answer, unsure if he was being serious or sarcastic. “She’s supposed to get married. I’ve been sent to keep her from making the biggest mistake of her life.”
Ayden glanced around before his gazed sliced back to her. “Sent by whom?”
She stared at him until her fidgety movements lifted the corners of his sensual mouth.
“Look, I don’t need to explain everything to you. So, if you don’t have room for me, I’d appreciate it if you’d not waste any more of my time.” She was tired and angry that this trip to make things right, to fix things in her small, broken family again, had set her back so far with Rick and opening her own place. Once, just once, she wished she knew how to speak up for herself and say the word no.
While she waited for Ayden to answer, she blew out a shaky breath and squeezed her eyes closed until his masculine voice breached her consciousness.
“What are you thinking?
She only needed a second to reflect on his question. “That I’m going to wake up soon and realize you, this moment, and this place are just a grand figment of my imagination.”
Despite the busy jukebox and the humming of the bar crowd, Grace heard nothing, not even a slight stirring coming from his side of the booth. Forced to flip her eyelids open, she found him still there, anything but a creation of her tired mind.
Above, a tear-shaped lamp illuminated his attractive mouth, incisive eyes, and clean-cut jaw. When she tried to make her mind think about Rick, she couldn’t even remember the shape of his face.
“Excuse me.” Grace popped up, believing if she spent one more second sitting across from Ayden McCabe, she’d risk the chance of falling face-first into a romantic crush doomed for a heartbreaking end.
She stepped at a rapid pace across the planked floor, aware of every prying eye on her. Inside the lady’s room, she plopped her purse onto the marble sink before lifting her face toward the mirror. How anyone thought her pretty, she didn’t know. Her disheveled hair surrounded a face so pale it almost appeared to glisten.
Damn near exhausted, she bent over to splash a handful of cold water onto her pallid features. If she decided to take the rest of her money and go back to California, what was the worst that could happen? Did insane asylums even exist in California any more?
“So, are you Ayden’s choice?”
Through moistened bangs, Grace peered into the wall-length mirror to find the woman who’d slapped him; her tall form leaned against one of the bathroom stalls. Her stance defiant, her expression unsmiling, the woman tapped her long fingertips against crisscrossed arms.
Grace inhaled, the warm scent of cinnamon and potpourri filling her nostrils and burning her throat. She turned and braced herself before the perfectly featured woman. She had not one corn-silken hair out of place and her eyes were as large and brilliant as two fluorescent moons.
“I’ve known Ayden all my life,” the woman said. “I’ve been in love with him since grade school, along with a lot of the women in Mistletoe.”
Grace intended to reassure Rachel of her unromantic intentions toward the town’s hero. All Grace wanted was to find Danielle, return home, and figure out what to do next with Rick and the rest of her life. She understood she might have to start planning things and sticking to them, instead of always flying by the seat of her pants.
Yes, things had to change, not only with her life, but with Rick. She just didn’t know if she had enough nerve to make it happen. One phone call was all it took, but Rick refused to answer his phone. Worse, she refused to leave the message.
“You probably don’t want any of my advice, but I’m going to give it to you anyway,” the woman said in a cool and sultry voice. “Ayden is an old spirit, born with more pride and chivalry than three of Jane Austen’s characters put together. Once you lose him, he’s lost forever.”
With those incisive and literary words, the woman slinked out the door, leaving Grace to decide if she needed to reread Emma, Persuasion, or Pride and Prejudice all over again.
****
Ayden downed the rest of his beer, unsure whether what he was about to do was a brilliant idea or one drastic and tragic mistake. He knew nothing about Grace Evans except that she was uncommonly pretty with perhaps more freckles on her small nose than most women he knew. She also appeared a bit unorganized and seemed to carry the weight of the world on her small shoulders. He had no doubt most of that world didn’t even belong to her.
However, she was nice and
didn’t seem to want anything from him except a room. As he planned his next move, she exited the bathroom behind Rachel, her fine features perplexed and pinched into careful deliberation. At least she didn’t head straight for the exit; she ambled toward their booth.
When she sat down, she tucked a wisp of dark shoulder-length hair behind an ear, a nervous habit he found innocent and sensual at the same time. Not that he liked to memorize a woman’s attributes; he did find her deep hazel eyes intriguing, especially when she narrowed them in serious thought.
“I guess I was wrong about you. You are very popular around here,” she said, peeking up from her timidity.
He chuckled and sank against the cushioned seat, believing Grace Evans presented him with more problems than he was ready to handle. Yet, he knew she awarded him a solution to at least one of them.
On a gamble, he shifted forward and drew out the flyer he’d ripped off the wooden post a few feet from them. On the table before her, he flattened out the edge and tapped the center where his face lay wrinkled and distorted.
“Not that I agree one should try and find someone who has voluntarily disappeared, but I want to propose a scheme of sorts. I can help you find your sister, but I need something from you in exchange.”
She glanced up, her glittering eyes narrowing to distrusting slits in the muted lamp light. He thought about recanting his thoughts, convinced no one would ever believe she’d caught his attention, for he preferred them taller, a little vain, and more liberated. This girl, on the other hand, barely cleared his chin, possessed not one conceited bone in her small body, and appeared, at present, as cautious and jittery as a baby rabbit ready to bolt.
He waited for the displeasure of such a woman to sink into his gut, causing him to change his mind. When, after a few moments of glancing at her wondrous brown-hazel eyes, his body reacted more with temptation than reluctance.
“You need me, Grace. I can see it. I can feel it. And I can help you.”
She shook her head, making him wonder how often she accepted help from anyone. Too stubborn to give up on her, he settled in and presented his case. “My sister—her name’s Maggie—has it in her romantic head that if I find a woman to settle down with, I won’t sell Hearth’s Gate. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Grace’s pretty gaze narrowed. “Okay…but I don’t understand how I can help.”
He smiled at her naïveté. “All I’m asking you to do between us locating your sister, is stay close to me, pose as my girlfriend, and in the end, crush and leave me a dejected mess. Maybe then Maggie will stop interfering in my personal life.”
Grace blinked long lashes at him. “Girlfriend? But…I-I don’t think I could…be your girlfriend or even do something so heartless.”
He had to laugh at her innocent response. “Grace, I have no intention of losing myself in the charade. I’m just asking you to help teach my sister a lesson.”
The sooner the better, he thought. He needed to sell Hearth’s Gate in order to pay for the low bid his construction company made on the county contract. With Maggie breathing down his back about keeping it, this was no different from what their mother did to their father. Although he’d loved his mother, she was a woman who spent so much time planning everyone else’s life, she didn’t even stop to consider what his father or anyone else wanted. Now, they were both gone. Losing someone, Ayden realized, made one reevaluate their life and the burden of loving another human being.
“So, all I have to do is to pretend to be in love with you?”
He shook himself from his thoughts and narrowed his gaze, afraid to say the wrong thing lest she run screaming from O’Shannon’s, or worse, get lost in the sham and declare them engaged by the Christmas Eve Eve Dance. This was a thin rope he had to cross. A very thin rope.
“Love is an awfully strong word, Miss Evans. Besides, it will only be for a week, just long enough to convince Maggie she can stop trying to find me a wife.”
Grace chewed on her bottom lip and blinked her hypnotic eyes. “Will your sister believe you’ve met someone and fallen in love in such a short amount of time?”
Valid question. “Ah, you don’t know Maggie. She’s a hopeless romantic…love at first sight, that sort of nonsense. But just in case, we’ll try and avoid her at all cost, until we know enough about each other to pull this off.”
He grinned, enjoying waiting for Grace’s answer. In the meantime, he waved to the nearest waitress his sister had yet to fix him up with, signaling her to bring them another round.
“I-I think you should know,” Grace said, her voice apologetic. “I’m not very good at pretending. Danielle says I have the tendency to wear my heart on my sleeve, which at times, can get pretty messy.” She sent him a quick smile as if she’d confessed to some silly secret she’d held onto most of her life. “Your sister would see right through me.”
He nodded his understanding. “My sister sees what she wants to see.”
“But—”
“And I’m willing to take that chance.”
Grace dropped her gaze to the flyer, using her index finger to pull it closer to where she sat. He studied her reaction and her delightful facial features, staring long enough to make her wiggle in her seat. He supposed he should have waited for her to drink another mug of beer before popping the question. The one she was nursing was still three-fourths full.
“How many women answered her ad?” Grace finally asked, her eyes still diverted to the picture of him this summer during an impromptu rugby game in the field behind O’Shannons.
He drew out his phone. Ten more responses lit up both his text message and missed calls. “At least twenty-five.”
His phone dinged again, and he glanced down, finding a new text message from his nephew’s pre-school teacher. “Twenty-six.”
Grace tilted her head. “Don’t you think it’s strange, after receiving so many offers, that you wouldn’t consider one of them?”
Yes. However, he wanted Grace. For, unlike the women of Mistletoe, she had somewhere else to go when this was all over. He kept this resolution to himself, waiting for her to make a decision. When she said nothing, he played one last card. “I won’t demand anything from you, not even a penny of the money you offered earlier.”
This information brought her closer to him, yet she remained quiet. His gaze lowered to her lips, her concentrated nibbling causing them to plump up into a delectable ruby shade.
“I don’t know, Mr. McCabe.”
“Ayden.”
She sent him a nervous smile. “Ayden.”
He liked the way she said his name. Shy with a touch of silkiness. “You have nothing to lose here. And I promise—nothing emotional.”
This time, she made a face. “Nothing emotional? What does that even mean?”
Her brown-hazel eyes changed in both shade and mood. Before she managed to add a disapproving comment, he suggested, “We might have to work on your assertiveness, though. I may be able to convince people I prefer brunettes over blondes, but you need to loosen up a little more.”
She recoiled. “I’m certainly loose enough.”
He disagreed behind a fresh mug of dark beer, drinking a generous amount before resuming his thoughts aloud. “You sit there, and sometimes, I swear you stop breathing.”
She didn’t hesitate to retaliate. “Yeah, well, you’re not my type either.”
Her jealous comment caused the corners of his mouth to lift. He was curious now and a little eager to discover more of what motivated her.
“Let me guess, he’s five-eight, black hair, green eyes, and drives a Hybrid.
She shifted toward him, defiance showing in her stiff pose and coiled hands. “Five-ten, dark-brown hair, topaz eyes, and drives a Volvo.”
His humor faded the second she revealed there was, in fact, someone else in her life. He squashed the sudden disappointment, telling himself he’d much prefer her attached. He only wanted her to play a part, not act upon it. “And is he wondering w
hat you’re doing right now?”
Ayden waited as she rummaged through her purse to retrieve her phone. Her short-nailed index finger pressed a few buttons until she found the message she sought. “He says he misses me, and can’t wait to see me.” For effect, she imposed an embellished smile, disclosing the tiniest dimples on each of her cheeks
“You’re right.” Ayden regretted having asked the question in the first place. “You’re not a very good liar.”
Grace closed her eyes, appearing to fight back a flood of unkind words. In a matter of moments, his views changed regarding her relationship status. Did he really want her to be single? He wrestled with himself on why he cared either way, a twinge of guilt at what he’d proposed forcing him to pause.
Until now, every woman he’d dated in the last eight years crumbled before him on their first date, unloading what seemed like a decade of personal overstuffed baggage upon him like an avalanche. He expected Grace to be no different from the rest and waited for her burdens to tumble forth. To his surprise, she fluttered her long lashes and then released a heavy exhale. It occurred to him: this woman would rather die than show a crack of weakness.
“All right.” She said the words both labored and uncertain. “You will help me find Danielle, I can stay at Hearth’s Gate, no charge, there will be no emotional intimacy, and at the end, I leave you a dejected mess.”
He nodded without smiling. “Exactly.”
She shook her head and blinked, a sign of a heavy thinker. “This is insane.”
“Grace.” He reached out his hand to fold over hers. They were small, warm, and soft. “I can give you what you want, and you can give me what I want.” He hesitated, dropping his gaze to her lips.
On a reluctant nod, she gave the answer he wanted. “Fine.”
His head tilted, and his eyes narrowed. “Great. Should we kiss to seal the deal?”
Chapter Three
Before Ayden, Grace’s round cheeks lit up like she’d just eaten a firecracker. He liked the color on her, and he liked that she didn’t grasp at the first opportunity to make their relationship physical right away.
In Mistletoe Page 2