by Cara Colter
What he wants for Christmas...
His billions can’t buy!
Widower billionaire Aidan Phillips is determined to give his daughter the traditional country Christmas she wants. But his vibrant hostess, Noelle McGregor, is showing him that money can’t buy happiness. As a snowstorm swirls outside, Aidan recognizes the pain in Noelle’s mesmerizing eyes, and finds himself opening up about his past. Might he have found the perfect present for his little girl after all: a mommy for Christmas?
Aidan was drinking in her face with a look she could not move away from.
“Not beautiful,” Noelle stammered. “I’m not.”
“What would make you believe such a thing?”
Her mouth opened to begin reiterating a long list of proofs, but not a single sound came out.
Aidan took off his glove. He reached out with a gentleness that was so exquisite she felt she might cry for the confirmation of his truth in it. His hand warm, his skin silk over iron, touched her cheek, rested there. She could not move away from his touch, held there, captive to his unexpected tenderness.
“You are so beautiful,” he said softly. “You may be the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”
Her mouth fell open. She could feel herself leaning toward whatever she saw in his eyes.
“Daddy, are you going to kiss Noelle?”
The little voice, inquisitive, delighted, yanked them apart.
His hand fell down. He shoved it into his pocket. “Of course not!” he said.
“No!” Noelle agreed.
But that near-miss, near-kiss moment was sizzling in the air between them.
Dear Reader,
Life has dealt me a few unexpected challenges in the past few years. Naturally, my initial reaction is indignation. What? I’m a good person. I don’t deserve any bad luck, failure or bumps in the road.
But when I think about it, isn’t an unexpected ill fortune, a gut-wrenching disappointment, a heartbreak at the very soul of every single story?
In real life, as well as in fiction, herein lies the turning point, the opportunity to be braver than I have ever been before and to explore life’s unpredictability and fragility. I always seem to emerge from a challenging period humbled, but somehow more whole and more human.
I become more aware of simple gifts threaded through everyday life: sunlight spinning my dog’s fur to gold, the comforting slosh of the dishwasher running, my partner throwing back his head and laughing.
I am more aware than ever of how the gift of a great story can provide respite from troubles and give hope of better days to come.
So, in this season of wonder, I give you this story, my Christmas gift to you. I wish you blessings and miracles and a heart that is open to receiving them.
With love,
Cara
Snowbound with the Single Dad
Cara Colter
Cara Colter shares her life in beautiful British Columbia, Canada, with her husband, nine horses and one small Pomeranian with a large attitude. She loves to hear from readers, and you can learn more about her and contact her through Facebook.
Books by Cara Colter
Harlequin Romance
The Vineyards of Calanetti
Soldier, Hero...Husband?
The Gingerbread Girls
Snowflakes and Silver Linings
Battle for the Soldier’s Heart
Snowed in at the Ranch
Second Chance with the Rebel
How to Melt a Frozen Heart
Rescued by the Millionaire
The Millionaire’s Homecoming
Interview with a Tycoon
Meet Me Under the Mistletoe
The Pregnancy Secret
Housekeeper Under the Mistletoe
The Wedding Planner’s Big Day
Swept into the Tycoon’s World
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
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To Carol Geurts, who shows dignity, courage and integrity through all of life’s storms. You are an inspiration.
Praise for Cara Colter
“The story is filled with romantic scenes, from swimming lessons, to picnics and dancing under the stars. There’s humor and laughter, there’s pain and sorrow, but most of all, there’s a love that heals the broken hearts, and brings these two lonely souls together.”
—Goodreads on Soldier, Hero...Husband?
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
EPILOGUE
EXCERPT FROM BEST MAN FOR THE WEDDING PLANNER BY DONNA ALWARD
CHAPTER ONE
“THERE’S MY LITTLE Christmas star!”
Noelle felt a swell of joy as she watched her grandfather, Rufus, shut down the tractor and climb down off it. He paused to lift the old black Lab, Smiley, out of the cab. Then he turned and came through the snow toward her, Smiley shuffling behind him with his happy grin in place, despite the dog’s pained gait.
She was relieved to see that, unlike Smiley, her grandpa was agile, surprisingly strong-looking for a man of seventy-eight years. He was dressed for cold, in a thick woolen toque, mittens and a lined plaid lumber jacket.
His embrace, too, was powerful as he came and hugged her tight, lifting her right off her feet.
He put her down and regarded her. “You haven’t been losing weight, have you?”
“No,” she said quickly, although she wasn’t at all certain. She had always been a slight girl, but she hadn’t been near a weigh scale since the abrupt end of her engagement. Noelle was fairly certain you could not lose weight eating chocolate ice cream for supper. And also, sometimes, for breakfast.
Their worry was mutual. It was to be their first Christmas without Grandma McGregor. In those months after Grandma had died, there had been something in her grandpa’s voice on the phone, which Noelle had not heard before—a weariness, a disconnect, as if he was not quite there. Sometimes he had made mistakes about what day it was, and seemed confused about other small details of daily life. Other times he had reminisced so obsessively about the past that Noelle had been convinced he was declining, too, dying of a broken heart.
Then, a few weeks ago, she had noticed an improvement. To her great surprise and relief, he’d actually seemed excited about Christmas. It had always been such a magical time of year in her family, partly because it was her birthday, too. Would it be too much to expect a Christmas miracle that would begin to heal their losses this year?
But when Noelle had driven into the yard and seen her grandpa had not put up a single decoration, she had felt her heart fall. Then, when she had noticed the tractor tracks, heading off into nowhere, she’d been frightened. He didn’t have cattle anymore. Where was he going? She’d followed along the tracks with great trepidation.
“Grandpa.” She sighed, feeling that sense
of coming home. She got down on her knees and gave Smiley a long hug and an ear scratching before she got up and surveyed her grandfather’s project.
He seemed to be clearing snow in a large square in the middle of what used to be a cow pasture. “What on earth are you doing?”
His arm looped over her shoulder, he turned and looked with pleasure at his handiwork.
“I’m building me a helicopter landing pad,” he said, and her sense of well-being plummeted.
“A what?” she stammered.
“You heard me. Don’t go giving me that have-you-lost-your-mind look. Come on, we’ll go to the house and have coffee. You brought everything you need for a nice Christmas at the ranch?”
She thought he might want to take the tractor back to the house, but instead he turned with her and walked the pounded-down snow of the tractor track, Smiley dogging their heels.
“Yes.” Noelle hesitated, and then asked, “I wondered why you didn’t have any decorations up yet?”
“I thought it would be good to do it together.”
Even though she had never helped with things like putting the outside lights up, she loved the idea of them working together to re-create Christmases like the ones they had always enjoyed.
“That sounds fun. I’m so looking forward to the break. I’ll be here now until just after New Year’s.”
“Ah, good. Good. Everybody else will leave Boxing Day, so we’ll have a bit of time for just you and me.”
“What do you mean everybody?” she asked, surprised.
“Oh, my goodness, Ellie,” he said, calling her by his pet name for her, “wait until I show you what I’ve gone and done. Have you ever heard of Me-Sell?”
She cocked her head at him quizzically.
“You know, the place on the interstate where you put the ads up?”
“The internet? Oh, you mean I-Sell? That huge online classified ad site?”
“That’s it!”
The thought of her grandpa on I-Sell gave her pause. He still heated his house with wood. He received two channels on his old television set—if he fiddled with the rabbit ears on top of it long enough. He did not own a cell phone, not that there was signal anywhere near here. He and Grandma had never had a computer, never mind the internet.
“I go down to the library in the village and use the interstate,” he said.
“Internet,” she corrected him weakly.
“Whatever. I decided to sell some of my old machines out in the barn. Just taking up space. Ed down the road got a pretty penny for his. He did it all on I-Sell.”
“Do you need money?” she asked, appalled that somehow this had passed her by in their weekly telephone conversations. She got out here to visit him at least once a month. Why hadn’t she noticed he was pinching his pennies? Had her own double heartbreak made her that self-involved?
“Good grief, no! Got more money than I know what to do with since I sold off most of the land except for this little parcel around the home place.”
Another of the recent heartbreaking losses had been that decision to sell off most of the land that had been in the McGregor family for generations. There was no one left to work it. In her fantasies, Noelle had hoped one day she and Mitchell would buy it back.
They came over a little rise, and both of them paused. There it sat, the home place, prettier than a Christmas card. Surrounded by mounds of white snow was a large two-story house, pale yellow with deep indigo shutters, a porch wrapping around the whole lower floor, smoke chugging out the rock chimney.
If her grandmother had been alive, the house would have been decorated by now, December 21. There would have been lights along the roofline and a huge wreath on the front door, the word HOPE peeking out from under a big red bow. The huge blue spruce in the front yard would have been dripping with lights. But this year there was not a single decoration, and it made Noelle’s eyes smart, even if her grandfather had waited for her to do it.
Behind the house was a barn, once red, now mostly gray. In the near distance the foothills, snow dusted, rolled away from them, and in the far distance the peaks of the Rockies were jagged and white against a bright blue sky.
They passed the barn on the way to the house, and two large gray horses with feathered feet and dappled rumps came running out of a paddock behind it.
“Hello, Fred, hello, Ned,” she said affectionately.
Noelle went over to the fence and held out her hand. Fred blew a warm cloud of moist air onto her hand. She reached up to touch his nose, but just as she did, a tiny little horse, as black as Smiley, exploded through the snow from behind the barn, and the other two took off, snorting and blowing.
The tiny horse, having successfully chased away the competition, strained its neck to reach over the fence, and nipped at where her fingers dangled.
She snatched them away, and the pony gave an indignant shake of its scruffy black mane and charged off in the direction it had come.
“Who—or what—is that?” she asked.
“That’s Gidget,” her grandfather said. “She seems like a nasty little piece of work, but you’d be surprised how hard it is to find a pony close to Christmas.”
“A pony for Christmas?”
Noelle shot her grandfather a look. Again, she had the terrifying thought her grandfather might be slipping, that maybe he thought she was a little girl again.
“She’s a Christmas surprise.”
“Oh! You’re keeping someone’s surprise pony until Christmas?”
“Something like that. Look at you shivering. City gal.”
He took his toque off, revealing a head of very thick silver hair. He placed it on her own head and pulled it tenderly over her ears, as if she was, indeed, twelve again and not twenty-three. This time, instead of terrifying her, the casual gesture made her feel deeply loved.
He moved to her car, an economy model that had struggled a bit on the very long, snowy road that led to his place from the secondary highway. Her grandfather wrestled her suitcase out of the trunk. It was a big suitcase, filled with gifts and warm clothes, and her skates. The pond behind the house would be frozen over. The suitcase had wheels, but her grandpa chose to carry it and Noelle knew better than to insult him by offering to help.
When they walked in the back door into the back porch, the smell of coffee was strong in the house, though she immediately missed the just-out-of-the-oven aroma of her grandmother’s Christmas baking.
They shrugged out of jackets and boots, and left the suitcase there. Noelle pulled off her grandfather’s toque and smoothed her hair in the mirror. Her faintly freckled cheeks and nose were already pretty pink from being outside, but she knew herself to be an unremarkable woman. Mouse-brown hair, shoulder-length, straight as spaghetti, eyes that were neither brown nor blue but some muddy moss color in between, pixie-like features that could be made cute—not beautiful—with makeup, not that she bothered anymore.
The dog had already settled in his bed by the wood heater when she got into the kitchen. While her grandfather added wood to the heater, Noelle looked around with fondness.
The kitchen was nothing like the farmhouse kitchens that were all the rage in the home-decorating magazines right now. It had old, cracked linoleum on the floor, the paint was chipping off cabinets and the counters were cluttered with everything from engine pieces to old gloves. The windows were abundant but old, glazed over with frost inside the panes.
Aside from the fact that her grandmother would not have tolerated those engine pieces on the counter, and would have had some Christmas decorations up, Noelle felt that sigh of homecoming intensify within her.
Her grandfather and grandmother had raised her when her parents had died in an automobile accident when she was twelve. In all the world, this kitchen was the place she loved the most and felt the safest.
“Tell me about the helico
pter pad,” she said, taking a seat at the old table. The coffee had been brewing on the woodstove, and her grandfather plopped a mug down in front of her. She took a sip, and her eyes nearly crossed it was so strong. She reached hastily for the sugar pot.
“Well, it really started when I was watching the news one night.” He took the seat across the table from her and regarded her with such unabashed affection that it melted her heart and the intensity of that feeling home grew.
“There was this story about this girl—not here, mind, England or Vancouver—”
Both equally foreign places to her grandfather.
“—who was going to be all alone for Christmas, so she just put an ad on something like I-Sell and all these people answered her, and she chose a family to have Christmas with.”
Her grandfather was beaming at her as if this fully explained the helicopter pad he was building in his cow pasture.
“Go on.”
“So I was on there anyway, trying to figure out how to put up a posting for my old junk in the barn, and I just had this thought that I missed Christmas the way it used to be.”
“You and me and Grandma?” she said wistfully, thinking of music and baking and decorating, and neighbors dropping by.
“Even before that. You know, TV was late coming to these parts. It was better without it. And a whole lot better without the interstate.”
No point telling him again. Noelle waited.
“Don’t even get me going on what cell phones are doing to the world.”
“I won’t,” Noelle said, though in truth she knew it wouldn’t be long before she missed all her social media platforms. Or more to the point, relentlessly and guiltily spying on someone else’s newly exciting life through their prolific postings.
“We used to have big gatherings at Christmas,” her grandfather said longingly. “When I was a boy, on Christmas Day the whole community would show up at the old hall, and there would be a Christmas concert, and dinner, and games. Those tables would be groaning under the weight of turkeys and hams and bowls of mashed spuds and pies. Oh, the pies! The women would try to outdo themselves on pies.