Snow Angel Cove

by RaeAnne Thayne

  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.”

  “They might not care, but I do. I want Snow Angel Cove to be perfect for you and your family. That’s why you hired me, isn’t it?”

  In light of this attraction, he was beginning to question his own motives for wanting to keep her around, but he decided it probably wouldn’t be wise to mention that to her.

  “All right. We’re going for perfection. I can do that. From here on out, I’ll climb the ladder and take the higher branches. Your job is to hand me more ornaments when I need them and to keep an eye out and be sure I’m not making a mess of things.”

  She made a face. “Right.”

  “What this party needs is a little Christmas music.”

  “I know!” Maddie concurred. “I can keep singing but my voice is a little tired.”

  “You need a break. Let me see if I can find something.”

  One of the first things he had insisted upon after purchasing a house was the installation of a top-of-the-line entertainment system that could stream throughout the house. He had yet to crank up the classic rock like he did sometimes at his house in San Jose.

  He opened the cabinet that held the components and punched in a few criteria, then let the server search for music online while he returned to the Christmas tree. Soon, soft, jazzy holiday music filled the great room from the built-in speakers.

  “That sounds nice,” Maddie said.

  “Definitely,” her mother agreed.

  “It’s unanimous, then. We’re officially ready to get our tree decorating on.”

  He grabbed several of the ornaments and climbed the stepladder, ignoring the slight unsteadiness in his equilibrium. His own sense of balance wasn’t the greatest yet and he probably shouldn’t be scrambling up and down ladders, either, but he wasn’t going to tell her that.

  While the snow continued to fall outside the huge windows with relentless abandon and the flames in the grate danced and swayed, they worked together to decorate the tree.

  Maddie chattered about Christmas and about the vast variety of angel decorations on the tree—most that Sue had unearthed in a box in the attic that had been left over from the previous owners.

  As they worked, Aidan was aware of an odd feeling, so rare for him, especially lately, that he didn’t recognize it at first. Peace. A soft, sweet contentment seemed to seep through him as Eliza handed him ornaments with instructions about where to hang them. At first, she was hesitant, as if afraid to overstep by telling him what to do, but it didn’t take long before they fell into a comfortable rhythm.

  “I need to get a drink,” Maddie announced just as he finished the top branches.

  “Okay. Come right back,” Eliza said.

  Her absence left a conversational void that even Tony Bennett’s smooth version of “My Favorite Things” couldn’t quite fill.

  “I haven’t done this in years,” he said. “The Christmas-decorating thing, I mean. Probably since I left home for MIT. My roommate in college used to put up a little tree but I was too busy to bother. After college, it always seemed like too much effort, until I could afford to hire a decorator to do it for me.”

  That sounded pretty pitiful, when he thought about it.

  “Was Christmas a big deal at your house?” she asked.

  “Definitely.” He thought of crazy mornings around the Christmas tree and the frenzy of gifts and ribbons and wrapping paper. The Hope’s Crossing Christmas Eve candlelight ski had always been one of his favorite traditions at home, where they would all bundle up and either gather to watch or strap on skis to participate in the annual tradition, where all the lights on the runs at the ski resort would be extinguished except the small candles each skier carried down the hillside.

  He usually watched with Charlotte and his mom while his brothers took to the mountain. Downhill skiing had never been his favorite winter activity. He loved snowshoeing or cross-country skiing, where he could be all alone on a trail, able to savor the hushed magic of moonlight on thick new snow or watching a nuthatch seek out the last few berries on a currant bush.

  “When I was a kid, decorating the Christmas tree was the best part of the year,” he told her. “We had certain ornaments we all used to fight over, each of us determined to have the privilege of hanging them. And when I say fight, I mean punches were thrown. Seriously.”

  Her laughter was every bit as magical as a dusky evening spent alone on a winter trail. “You’re telling me your family actually came to fisticuffs over Christmas ornaments?”

  “Usually it was Dylan, Jamie and Brendan. They were always the most competitive. As the older two, Andrew and Patrick did their best to stay above the fray and Charlotte would usually burst into tears the minute voices were raised.”

  His childhood had been crazy and chaotic and wonderful. He wouldn’t have changed a minute of it, even if he had sometimes felt like the odd one out.

  “I said it before but it bears repeating. Your mom must have been the most patient woman on earth.”

  He felt the same sharp pang he always did when thinking of Margaret Caine. “She was an amazing person. She gave us all the same love and affection and never once treated any of us differently than the others. Of course, I always knew I was her favorite. We both loved books and music and old movies. The funny thing is, when I talk with my brothers or Charlotte, they say the same things. Every one of us thought she treated us as her favorite.”

  “You still miss her.”

  “Yeah,” he murmured, hanging a little angel with beaded wings and a glittery halo on a bough.

  “You must be very close to your family.”

  He couldn’t argue with that. As far as families went, they were close. He loved them all dearly and knew that he could call on any one of his brothers and they would have his back.

  At the same time, over the years as he had gone first to MIT and then to Silicon Valley, an inevitable distance had widened between them. He only connected in person with his family three or four times a year while everybody else saw each other almost every Sunday, when Pop would host a big noisy family dinner.

  Aidan knew it was his own fault for moving away from Hope’s Crossing, an inevitability, really, but it added to his own sense of...separateness, barring a better word.

  “What about you?” he asked, turning the conversation around. “Are you close to your siblings?”

  “Only child,” she answered with a stiff smile that didn’t fool him for a moment.

  “You said your mom died when you were a teenager.”

  “Yes.” She picked up one of the few remaining angels and hung it on the tree with brisk movements, but not before he saw her eyes cloud with sorro
w.

  “And your dad?”

  “He remarried a few years ago and lives in Portland now. His wife has a couple of teenagers from a previous marriage so I have a couple of stepbrothers. I don’t know them well, as we have always lived apart.”

  He sensed more to the story. What was her relationship with her father? And had she planned to spend the holidays with him before Aidan had basically blackmailed her into staying at Snow Angel Cove?

  “My sister sometimes tells me I can be arrogant and insensitive. It’s just occurred to me that asking you to help me with my family might be keeping you from seeing your own family at Christmas.”

  She shook her head. “My father doesn’t have a lot of room at his place and, to be honest, his wife and I have...issues.”

  “Issues. That’s a complicated word.”

  She sighed. “We didn’t get off on the best footing. My fault, mostly.”

  That surprised him. He had a short acquaintanceship with her, true, but Eliza struck him as someone a great deal like his sister, Charlotte, sweet and kind and maybe a little too forgiving for her own good.

  He had hit the woman with his vehicle, for crying out loud, and she still seemed eager to help him create the perfect Christmas for his family.

  “Why do you say that?” he asked, genuinely curious about what she might have done to warrant enmity between her and her stepmother.

  “He married her and moved to Portland right in the midst of everything with Tre—my husband’s death. I was lost and grieving and really needed my dad, you know?”

  She couldn’t even say her husband’s name after three years. The depth of her sorrow gave him that same kick in his gut as he would get from a hard topple off the ladder.

  More evidence of his arrogance. A few minutes ago he had been thinking what a lousy time it was for him to be attracted to a woman, focused only on himself again. Why would he even think for a minute she would return that attraction, when she was obviously still grieving her late husband?

  “I needed him here to help me with Maddie but instead he got married after years of being a widower and packed up everything to move to Portland with Paula and her children. I acted like a spoiled brat, I guess, and I’m afraid I wasn’t the most gracious of new stepdaughters to her. Our relationship since then has been...strained. Which means my relationship with my father is strained, too.”

  Her father should have been less concerned with his own love life and raising some other man’s kids and more concerned about his own grieving daughter who needed him. Why hadn’t he bothered to put his wedding on hold for a few months, just long enough to help his daughter when she needed him?

  People did things for their own reasons, which often eluded Aidan. Usually selfishness, if he had to guess.

  Here was one perfect example of why he preferred to work with computers and code. They did what was required of them. They didn’t cheat, didn’t betray, didn’t wake up one morning with a damned tumor that knocked them to their knees.

  “What about your husband’s side? Does Maddie have paternal grandparents?”

  “No. My husband’s parents died when he was ten or eleven. An older sister raised him. She’s on the east coast. We stay in touch and she’s very kind to Maddie, sending gifts and letters and so forth, but she’s busy with her own children and grandchildren now, which is only natural.”

  So she really had no one in her corner. His family might drive him crazy sometimes and he might lament the inevitable geographic and emotional distance between them over the past few years but they were his and he would be lost without them.

  “Don’t,” she said, her voice a little sharp. “You don’t have to look at me like I’m some lonely little widow with no one. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have a core group of very good friends in Boise who would do anything for me. They have stood by my side through everything with Trent and with Maddie. I also have a strong network of other parents I’ve met through the cardiac unit at the hospital or online and we share everything.”

  “I don’t feel sorry for you, Eliza. Far from it. I think you’re amazing.”

  She blinked, those green eyes reflecting the lights of the tree.

  Embarrassed at words he never should have said, he looked around the room. “Speaking of Maddie, is she still getting a drink?”

  “Oh. I thought she came back.”

  She looked around the room a little wildly. They both spotted the little girl at the same moment. She had curled up on the sofa angled in front of the big fireplace and was sound asleep with her horse toy tucked in the crook of her arm, along with one of the soft-bodied ornaments from the tree, as if she had been making the angel ride the little horse.

  She looked like one of the angels herself, with that wavy dark hair and her ethereal features.

  “Some days, she gets tired easily,” Eliza said, gazing down at her daughter with a deep love that made something hard in his chest seem to break free.

  He could care about both of them entirely too easily and the realization scared the hell out of him.

  He hung another ornament on a space that looked a little empty. “There. That should do it for this side.”

  “It looks beautiful,” she said. “Absolutely breathtaking, especially in front of the windows with that amazing scenery as a backdrop.”

  There were a few more decorations in boxes for the tree but it was almost done. They stood for a moment, admiring their handiwork. He felt that connection tug between them again. It couldn’t be only one-sided, could it?

  The moment stretched between them, fragile and sweet like a spun glass angel ornament.

  Widow, he reminded himself. Off-limits. And probably not interested, anyway.

  Needing to distract himself, he focused on something within his control. “Think I’m going to take a minute to grab something a little more substantial than apples and cheese.”

  “There’s deli meat in the refrigerator. I can make you a sandwich. I’m sorry. I should have offered earlier. I didn’t think about it.”

  “I can make my own sandwich, Eliza. I can even make one for you, if you’d like.”

  He headed for the kitchen. To his surprise, she followed him.

  “Let me do this,” she said as he started to pull the cold cuts from the refrigerator.

  “Forget it. You’ve been on your feet all afternoon. Sit down. That’s an order from your boss.”

  “I haven’t signed any papers. You’re not my boss yet.”

  He laughed as he grabbed a loaf of crusty bread and reached for a knife. “You sound like my sister. You’re not the boss of me was one of Charlotte’s favorite phrases. We heard it all the time. With six older brothers to contend with, can you blame her?”

  Her smile was as genuine as it was lovely. “I imagine she learned early to stand up for herself.”

  “She did. But she also knew how to listen to us when we actually did know best. Like now, for instance. Please sit down. You’re looking a little pale, which isn’t an easy feat with that nasty bruise.”

  Color crept over her cheekbones as if in rebuttal. After a long moment she pulled a chair out from the work island and complied while he went to work.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  AIDAN CAINE DEFINITELY knew his way around a kitchen. Who would have guessed?

  True, he was only making a sandwich, not lobster thermidor, but still. He didn’t simply slap a couple pieces of cold cuts on bread. No, he evenly sliced bread off a loaf, added some cheese he shaved with painstaking care from a heel and even washed and shredded a couple pieces of a ruffly lettuce she thought might be arugula—not that she was a lettuce expert or anything.

  She watched, fascinated at his clean, efficient motions. He didn’t make a mess, he didn’t waste a speck of food. He even added a little garnish
of parsley to two plates. When he was finished, it was close to a culinary work of art.

  It had been a very long time since a man had fixed her a meal. Trent had hated to cook. He could cook, he just never wanted to, probably because he had worked his way through college as a grill cook at a greasy spoon and had loathed every minute of it.

  Aidan slid the plate across to her. “What else can I get you? Water? Milk? Beer?”

  What sort of wine went with a roast beef sandwich? she wondered. He probably knew exactly.

  “I’m great with water.” She had never been much of a drinker and less so since Trent’s death.

  He poured some in a fresh glass for her and set it down beside her plate.

  “Thank you.” She felt stupid to have him wait on her, considering she worked for him, but she would have felt more stupid arguing again with him about it.

  “You’re welcome.” He picked up his own plate and set it next to hers then took the adjacent stool.

  She did her best to ignore her awareness of him, focusing instead on the delicious meal. He had added some kind of smoky mustard that made the sandwich taste like something she would find in a fancy deli somewhere.

  She was hungry, she suddenly realized. Her stomach had been a little uneasy at breakfast and lunch and she hadn’t eaten much. While everything still ached, she was feeling much better right now.

  “It’s delicious,” she said.

  “You sound surprised.”

  “I’m sorry. I guess you’re a man of unexpected talents.”

  He raised an eyebrow and she felt herself blush. Darn it. Sometimes she really hated her fair complexion.

  “My dad runs a café in Hope’s Crossing,” Aidan said. “The Center of Hope. He put us all to work when we were kids, insisting we all could be comfortable in the kitchen. If you want the truth, I learned most of my best business leadership skills from watching my pop over the years.”

  She was more curious about his family than ever, considering she would be spending the holidays with them. “Does he still have the café?”

  “Yeah. He’s finally cutting back his hours a little, giving his assistant manager a little more leeway to make some of the important decisions. Now that he’s married again, he and Katherine would like to travel a bit, go back to Ireland and all the other places he’s talked about over the years. It’s tough to go anywhere when you’re chained to a stove. The man is sixty-six years old and he deserves to start taking it easy. Convincing him of that is another story.”