Snow Angel Cove

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “Can you tell me a little about the rest of your family? The more I know about them in advance, the easier task I’ll have anticipating what they might need while they’re here.”

  He gave her an approving smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes behind his glasses and she had to order her unruly hormones to stand down. She took a hasty drink of water, trying not to choke on it. This was her boss, she reminded herself.

  “I told you about my pop. You’ll love him. Everybody does.”

  That struck her as a singularly sweet thing for a son to say about his father.

  “His wife is Katherine Thorne. They’re newlyweds, so expect plenty of billing and cooing. That’s what my dad would call it—you know, all the gooey sweetheart things people in love tend to do.”

  She was aware of a sharp pang, one she rarely allowed herself these days. She and Trent had done their share of billing and cooing the first year after their marriage. They had been disgustingly gooey. Love notes written on lipstick on the bathroom mirror, picnic lunches at the park, sweet texts and emails.

  She had loved her husband deeply and had spent that first year feeling cherished. Adored, even.

  And then had come her unexpected pregnancy. They had talked about children but not yet, not until he was more settled in his job as a financial planner. When they discovered she was pregnant despite birth control, everything changed.

  She understood it on an intellectual level. He had spent most of his childhood far below the poverty line, as his older sister, barely out of her teens herself, had been forced to work menial labor jobs just to keep them afloat after his mother died. He had craved security above all else and discovering he was about to be a father for the first time had sent that need into overdrive.

  By the time Maddie was born and the doctors first diagnosed her heart condition, Trent had become obsessed with making money, however he could.

  “Actually, be prepared for a lot of lovey-dovey stuff,” Aidan went on, and Eliza jerked her attention away from the difficult memories and back to the warm, comfortable kitchen at Snow Angel Cove.

  “Sure. Okay,” she said.

  “You’ll have three sets of newlyweds in the group. Pop and Katherine, my brother Dylan and his wife, Genevieve, and our sister, Charlotte, and her husband, Spence. All of them married within the last six months.”

  She suddenly realized she was going to have to do a better job of keeping track of them all than just her memory.

  “Sorry. You lost me. Hold on.”

  “I know. We can be overwhelming.”

  “No. I just need to grab something to write down the names.”

  She grabbed a pad of paper from a small desk Sue must use to organize recipes and grocery lists and carried it back to the work island.

  “Okay. Start over from the top.”

  He chuckled. “My oldest brother, Patrick, is a banker. He’s married to Christine, a pediatrician. They live in Denver and have three kids, Maggie and the twins, Josh and Jake.”

  She jotted down the names. “Check. Go on.”

  “Andrew is next in the pecking order. He’s an attorney. He and his wife, Erin, live in Hope’s Crossing, where she teaches at the elementary school. Their kids, Ava and Ben, are both teenagers.”

  What was she going to do with a house full of young people? The game room was well-equipped with a pool table, old-fashioned pinball machine and foosball. That would do, for starters. Her tour of the house earlier had also revealed a luxurious media room with a massive flat-screen television, also something the teenagers would enjoy.

  She would have to see what equipment the lodge had for outdoor activities, like ice skates and toboggans.

  “Brendan comes next. He’s the Hope’s Crossing fire chief and is a widower who lost his wife and unborn baby a couple of years ago.”

  “Oh, how terrible!”

  “It was tough on everyone. Jessie had a heart condition that went undiagnosed until their third pregnancy. Bren has two great kids, Faith, who’s eight, and Carter, who’s six. Maddie’s age.”

  “Oh, the poor things.”

  “They had a rough couple of years but they’re finding their way. Brendan is actually dating again. He’s pretty serious with a woman who worked for me for about five minutes. Lucy Drake. She’ll be coming along for the holidays.”

  “Brendan, Lucy, Faith and Carter. Right.” She wrote those down and circled them to indicate they were a unit.

  “I’m next in birth order—smack dab in the middle—and just younger than me is Jamie. I don’t think he’ll be able to make it, so you don’t have to worry about him. Then you have Dylan and his wife, Genevieve.”

  “Got it.”

  He paused, sudden shadows in his eyes. “Since you’re creating a dossier here, I should probably tell you, Dylan was badly injured in Afghanistan a few years back and almost died. He lost an arm and an eye because of his injuries.”

  The Caines certainly had seen their share of hardship. Cancer, heart conditions, war injuries. No family escaped pain and sorrow. Sometimes it ripped them apart but she sensed Aidan’s family had drawn even closer together.

  “That must have been difficult for all of you,” she murmured.

  “He had a pretty rough time coming back from it for a while there. I’m not sure where he might have ended up if not for Gen. She’s surprised all of us—a society belle who ended up seeing past the scars and the anger to the good man still somewhere inside there.”

  Intrigued and looking forward to meeting the woman—along with the rest of his family—she wrote down the two names with another circle.

  “And finally Charlotte.”

  “The lone sister who had to put up with all of you boys.”

  He smiled again as he rose and carried his plate to the sink. “Exactly. Poor thing. She’s the other newlywed, as I mentioned. She married Spencer Gregory this summer.”

  The familiar name made her stare. “Not Spencer Gregory, the baseball pitcher?”

  “The same. He grew up in Hope’s Crossing, too, and hung out with all of us, especially Dylan and Jamie. You a baseball fan?”

  For a moment, she was back to being a teenage girl, trying to connect with the father who had been a somewhat distant, unapproachable figure, a quiet, introverted man who always seemed tired after his twelve-hour days working as a road crew supervisor.

  “Baseball was one of the few places where my dad and I could connect, especially after my mom died. He was a big Portland Pioneers fan. We used to drive from our house in Lincoln City to watch them whenever we could. I saw Smokin’ Hot Spence Gregory pitch his very first game in the big leagues.”

  She had also had a bit of a celebrity crush on him her last year of high school and into college and had followed his career with interest even after she married. The supermodel wife, endorsements, the records he continued to break.

  His plummet into disgrace and scandal had come right around the time of Trent’s death and had struck her like one more personal blow.

  Over the past year, Spence had been vindicated, the drug-dealing charges against him revealed to be a fabrication and cover-up. He was now respected, vaunted, on track once more to be entered into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

  Again, she had taken his redemption in the public eye far more personally than she should have, finding a much-needed ray of hope in watching him rehabilitate his public image.

  It seemed silly, she knew. She’d never even met the man. Now he was coming here, to Haven Point—and he was apparently married to Aidan’s sister. Oh, she was going to be such a dork around him and probably wouldn’t be able to string two words together. Perhaps she could at least manage to tell him how grateful she was as a true-blue fan for the many hours of enjoyment he provided her and her father and how happy she was that he had been abl
e to turn things around.

  Or maybe she would just stand there like a tongue-tied idiot when she finally met him.

  “Spence has a daughter from his first marriage, Peyton,” Aidan went on. “She’s now about fourteen and good friends with Maggie and Ava.”

  She wrote that all down, trying not to be overwhelmed at the task ahead of her. “It’s probably going to take me a few days to figure out who’s who. Most likely, I’ll make a few embarrassing mistakes and mess up names.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Everyone is pretty easygoing. I have pictures of the whole family from Pop’s wedding. I’ll print out a couple for you and tag everybody so you can start putting names with faces.”

  “Great idea! That would be very helpful. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He gave her a bright, unreserved smile, and all her girly parts sighed, forgetting all about smokin’ hot jock baseball players.

  There was just something about a man in glasses, especially one whose brilliance was off the charts. She wanted to pull them off and toss them onto the table so she could see those amazing eyes....

  She jerked her attention back to the matter at hand. “Your family sounds terrific,” she said. “I can understand why you’re so close to them.”

  “Pop worked hard to keep us tight after our mom died. It wasn’t always easy with so many kids, especially when we were all heading in different directions by that point. Over the years, it has become more difficult to get us all under one roof.”

  “What a nice gesture, then, to bring everyone here for the holidays. I am sure your family will be grateful.”

  She thought she saw a shadow flit across his gaze before he blinked it away. “I hope so,” he said. “My motives are mostly selfish. This way I get to spend Christmas with everybody but don’t have to sleep in the uncomfortable twin bed of my childhood room at Pop’s house on Winterberry Road.”

  She didn’t believe his casual tone. This holiday with his family was important to him, for reasons she didn’t quite understand.

  She had picked up the impression before. Somehow she sensed he needed his family around him this year—maybe because of the heartache they had all endured over the past few years or perhaps to celebrate anew the joy that had come hand-in-hand with the sorrow, as it often did.

  He wanted everything to be perfect and she resolved again that she would do her best to make sure of it.

  She slid off the chair to her feet. “I had better finish with the Christmas tree. Those angels aren’t going to jump on the tree by themselves, you know.”

  He smiled and reached to clear her plate. “Angels fly, you know.”

  “So I’ve heard. I can do this, really.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve got it. Pop’s number one rule in the kitchen, if you don’t work, you don’t eat.”

  “I haven’t even met the man and I already like him.”

  “You’re going to love him, I promise. All the women do. They just can’t seem to resist that trace of an Irish accent. One time Jamie and I went to a party over in Steamboat when we were in high school and he convinced me to pretend we were exchange students from Ireland. It wasn’t that tough since we had spent our childhoods imitating Pop’s brogue. You should have seen the ladies topple at Jamie’s feet.”

  “And yours, I’m sure.”

  He made a face. “Jamie has always been a natural flirt. Mom used to joke that he charmed the nurses in the hospital nursery from the very beginning. I, on the other hand, was always more comfortable behind a keyboard.”

  “I doubt that. I’m sure you do just fine with the ladies, working that sexy geek thing you’ve got going.”

  The faint echo of her own words seemed to circle around the kitchen, growing louder and louder in her mind. Oh, no. Had she really just said that? Hot color soaked her cheeks. Where was the darn off switch on her mouth sometimes?

  He gave a strangled sound that wasn’t quite a laugh and just gazed at her for a long moment, until she wanted to sink through the radiant-heated Italian tiles of his kitchen.

  “Okay, can we just forget I said that out loud? I had a concussion yesterday, remember? I’m not in my right mind.”

  A new awareness seemed to spark between them, sizzling and arcing like heat lightning on an August afternoon.

  “Sexy geek?” He spoke the words in a low voice that made her insides shiver.

  Oh, like he didn’t know how that smile broke nerd girls’ hearts everywhere. “It’s the glasses,” she said. “Not to mention the whole computer-genius thing.”

  Okay, she had to stop now.

  “Mama? Mama! Where are you?”

  In all her life, she had never been so grateful for her daughter.

  “In the kitchen, honey. Stay where you are, I’ll be there in a minute.”

  She turned back to Aidan and found him watching her with an expression she couldn’t quite read.

  “I’ve got to go. Thanks for the, um, delicious sandwich. Oh, and the primer on your family. It helps. Maybe I won’t make a total fool of myself around anyone but you.”

  She scooped up the notebook, drained the rest of her water and hurried out of the kitchen as fast as she could manage.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE STORM FINALLY started to ease again about the time she and Maddie put the finishing touches on the tree.

  Her daughter clasped her hands together at her chest and gazed raptly up at the tree. “It’s so pretty, Mama. The most beautiful tree I’ve ever seen!”

  Eliza had to agree. The tree made a stunning statement in front of the big two-story windows of the great room, its greenery a vivid contrast to the stark white snow blanketing everything outside.

  “You’re absolutely right.”

  She looked up sharply at the voice and found Aidan standing at the end of the hall that led to his office, where he had retreated to take a phone call an hour earlier, shortly after they finished their quick sandwich and she had completely humiliated herself.

  His hair was a little rumpled on the left side, as if he had run his fingers through it while on his phone call.

  She had actually called him a sexy geek. Where was a conveniently placed snowdrift to dive into when she needed one?

  “Hi, Mr. Aidan. Do you like it?” Maddie asked.

  “I think it’s the most beautiful tree I’ve ever seen, too. The two of you did a great job.”

  “You helped! We couldn’t have reached the top without you.”

  “Not unless one of those angels swooped in and carried you up to the top.”

  She laughed, delighted at the image, as Eliza heard a rattling of pans in the kitchen, followed by muffled swearing.

  Aidan glanced in that direction. “I guess Sue must be feeling better.”

  “She says she is.”

  “What about you?”

  She still ached, she couldn’t deny that. Even now, she had to fight the urge to knead her fist into her throbbing lower back, but she firmly believed staying in motion had been the best possible medicine. By this time tomorrow, she expected even those aches and pains would dissipate.

  “Almost back to normal,” she answered.

  “Good.” He gave her one of those irresistible smiles and for a moment she was once more in his gleaming kitchen with the electricity snapping and sizzling between them.

  He was the first to look away. “The snow seems to have finally stopped. Feel like getting some air? I thought maybe we could bundle up and walk out to the barn to check on the horses.”

  “Yes!” Maddie answered instantly, before Eliza even had a chance to think. “Can we, Mama? Oh, please!”

  She didn’t want to spend any more time with him than she had to but maybe the best way to deal with her mortification would
be to wade straight through it. After snowfall all day, the temperature would undoubtedly be icy. A nice walk in a blizzard might be just the thing to cool down her overheated imagination right about now.

  “Sure. A little fresh air would be nice. Maddie, why don’t you work on straightening up in here while I go find our coats?”

  “Okay!”

  Maddie eagerly scurried around underneath the tree picking up extra hanging wire and stray clumps of paper towel someone had used to wrap around some of the ornaments in storage.

  She was such a sweet girl, always so earnest and ready to please. With a heart full of gratitude, Eliza hurried to the guest bedroom. She hadn’t had time to move their things to the cook’s quarters off the kitchen yet but planned to do that before dinner.

  She shrugged into the wool peacoat she’d bought on clearance two winters before and picked up Maddie’s pink-and-purple parka. When she returned to the great room, she found Maddie and Aidan, heads bent together as they looked at something on the Christmas tree.

  She paused and watched them, a funny little ache in her chest. The only men in Maddie’s life were her doctors and Eliza’s dear friends Sam and Julio, a gay couple who had lived in the apartment across the hall.

  “This is my favorite ornament on the whole tree,” Maddie declared.

  “It’s a nice one,” he answered, “but why is this particular ornament your favorite? There have to be hundreds of angels on the tree.”

  “Because it’s a boy angel, just like my daddy. See?”

  He bent his head to see it better and Eliza couldn’t help craning her neck for a closer look. She remembered hanging that one earlier. The porcelain angel had looked antique to her so she had been extra careful with it and had let Maddie look but not touch. It did indeed have slightly masculine features, she recalled, though they looked nothing like Trent’s.